Rights Action
October 29, 2010
HUMAN RIGHTS & QUESTIONABLE SPONSORS
An open letter to WOLA
It is with deep concern that Rights Action circulates this letter to the Washington Office on Latin America, WOLA. WOLA has historically been associated with the struggle for social justice and respect for human rights in the Americas. It has been deemed by some to be the progressive voice on Latin American human rights issues in Washington.
However, in addition to ongoing concerns over policy positions in relation to the 2009 military coup in Honduras, an October 26, 2010 WOLA event - Benefit Gala and Awards Ceremony -, that included sponsorship from some very questionable lobby firms and other Washington insiders (please read: http://quotha.net/node/1224), contradicts, we believe, the human rights mission of WOLA to the degree that it becomes important that the social justice and human rights community in the Americas voice concern.
While there are many Washington "think tanks" and not-for-profit organizations that receive funding from corporate interests, and take policy positions that favor those interests, WOLA's history and reputation have in the past distinguished it from the Washington political machinery.
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FOR INFORMATION, QUESTIONS: Annie Bird, co-director (annie@rightsaction.org)
WHAT TO DO: See below
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October 29, 2010
Washington Office on Latin America - WOLA
Washington, DC
Dear WOLA:
We write this letter to express concern regarding the sponsorship of WOLA's recent Benefit Gala and Awards Ceremony. The Gala event 'sponsors list' includes defense contractors, international investors, and lobbyists and lawyers that represent defense contractors, intelligence contractors, oil companies, energy companies, telecommunications, the apparel industry and others, some of which have grim records of human rights violations. (http://quotha.net/node/1224)
Your Gala event appears to be an example of much that is wrong with the U.S. political system. It seemingly provided one more space for influence peddling to strengthen the American-global political, corporate, military nexus that generates massive profits and massive suffering around the world, even in communities you purport to help. The ironic situation in which WOLA is coordinating an award to honor Colombian displaced Afro-descent populations and former Chilean President Michelle Bachalet, with funds raised from some of these questionable sources is damaging, at best, and complicit, at worst.
McLarty Associates is the sponsor that first caught our eye. Originally called Kissinger McLarty Associates, formed by Henry Kissinger, the foreign policy icon at the highest levels of government from the Nixon to Ford administrations, and Mack McLarty, Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff, this lobby firm now features John Negroponte, a high level Reagan to Bush Jr. foreign policy icon who oversaw the illegal US support for the criminal Contra paramilitary forces attacking Nicaragua in the 1980s, while working as US ambassador to Honduras during the worst years of State repression and terrorism by that US-backed regime, who ushered in the CAFTA "free" trade agreement, who masterminded privatization of US military and intelligence services, who played a key role in the Iraq war and who is a war profiteer with Agility Logistics. If Yale University's faculty didn't welcome Negroponte in its clubs for "war crime like activities," why does the human rights organization WOLA? McLarty Associates lobbies for oil, telecommunications, pharmaceutical companies, defense contractors, etc.
Creative Associates is a "development" agency that specializes in, among other things, coordinating with the US Department of Defense and State Department in 'quick impact stability support' operations in "non permissive" environments, which are essentially, in some contexts, the "model village" element of military operations, the "beans" in former Guatemalan General Rios Montt's "Beans and Bullets" strategy that WOLA is familiar with from its work in Central America in the 1980s.
Cornerstone Government Affairs provides "strategic counsel and creative solutions" for its clients by lobbying government agencies to get contracts. "Clients" include defense contractors, Homeland Security contractors, energy companies, telecommunications companies, etc.
General Atlantic Global Growth Investors is a "global growth equity firm," a venture capital firm that invests in corporations around the world poised to make big profits, a sector that has benefited from free trade agreements and privatizations, processes often ushered in through repression.
Other Gala event sponsors include a single lobbyist that has received over $20 million in contracts from defense department contractors, an apparel (maquila) industry executive recruiter, international labor dispute lawyers; etc.
WOLA goes beyond accepting funds from these sources; WOLA is coordinating a networking space for them, which is the Gala event. This Gala event took place in the Organization of American States building on the national mall, a demonstration of WOLA's foothold in power structures.
The time and place (the OAS) of the event are particularly concerning given some of the corporate and military interests close to Gala event sponsors are pushing to have the suspension of Honduras (currently ruled by an illegitimate, repressive regime) from the OAS lifted, an act that would put in even more danger the lives and future of the Honduran people, and of other peoples and nations in Latin America that are immersed in conflicts with anti-democratic networks of power that have strong ties to US corporate and military interests.
We believe the acceptance of many of the sponsors of the Gala event is in direct conflict of interest with the human rights mission of your organization and the spirit in which it was founded. Rights Action calls on WOLA to re-examine some of its positions on key issues, some referenced above, and to focus all of its critical work on its original mandate. WOLA must support efforts - north and south - to restrict the anti-democratic political structures that put the US government and military into the service of the financial, economic needs of transnational corporate interests at the expense of the people of the United States and the world, rather than participate in and even benefit from those structures.
In March of this year Rights Action sent WOLA a letter expressing concern regarding WOLA's position and actions relating to the military coup in Honduras, and the role that the US played directly and indirectly in supporting the coup. Since we never received any response to our letter on Honduras, and because of the gravity of our current concerns, this letter is open. We welcome any response.
Sincerely,
Annie Bird & Grahame Russell,
Rights Action co-directors, www.rightsaction.org
FOR INFORMATION, QUESTIONS: Annie Bird (annie@rightsaction.org)
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