THE BANALITY OF BILLIONAIRES, POVERTY & EXTREME INEQUALITY
By Grahame Russell, April 7, 2008
(Feel free to publish)
In the “Ideas” section of the Sunday Toronto Star (April 6, 2008), under the column “10 Things We Learned This Week”, one reads:
“3) One Canadian made Forbes magazine’s list of top 100 billionaires: David Thomson and family in 31st spot ($18.9 billion U.S.). (Forbes.com)”
“4) Nearly 3 billion people live on less than $2/ day. (globalissues.org).”
Often, in the media, one reads these casual references to unfathomable and grotesque amounts of both wealth accumulation and poverty distribution.
What are some of the “Ideas” represented in this listing of the Thomson family’s billions of dollars juxtaposed with billions of people subsisting on less than $730 / year?
While individualizing and implicitly honoring the Thomson family for their wealth, this list simultaneously invisibilizes and de-individualizes the lives (and usually brutal early deaths) of billions of people and their $2/day.
A most harmful idea - implicit, not stated in this list - is that there is no link between wealth accumulation at the top of the global development pyramid scheme and the accumulation of poverty, exploitation and dispossession for billions of people at the bottom.
Yet in our complexly intertwined and interdependent global community, if billionaires and millionaires “earn and deserve” their vast and unnecessary amounts of wealth (privilege and power) it stands that the 3 billion earn and deserve their lives of subsistence and early death on $2/day.
The casually presented figures and numbers are not only horrific and numbing, they are misleading. Billions of people do not “live on” $2/ day; they subsist in conditions of extreme exploitation and/ or abandonment, before dying young in usually terrible life conditions.
Such a blasé reproduction of mind-numbing figures trivializes the suffering and exploitation of billions of people living in poverty on our planet. It is a disservice to people and organizations clamoring across the world for an honest debate (presenting real “Ideas”) about the grotesque inequality and injustice of our global economic order that creates billionaires to be honored in the Forbes list and media, while at the same time creating billions of people subsisting and dying young after invisibilized, nameless lives.
[Grahame Russell is co-director of Rights Action, 1-860-352-2448, info@rightsaction.org]
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WHAT TO DO: info@rightsaction.org, www.rightsaction.org
WHAT IS RIGHTS ACTION?
Based in Guatemala, Rights Action (with tax-deductible legal status in Canada and USA) funds and works with community-based development, environment and human rights organizations in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and southern Mexico (Oaxaca, Chiapas); and educates about and is involved in activism related to global development, environmental and human rights struggles.
TO MAKE TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATIONS for indigenous and community-based organizations that are working for justice and to end impunity, and to implement their own development, human rights and environment projects, make check payable to "Rights Action" and mail to: UNITED STATES: Box 50887, Washington DC, 20091-0887; CANADA: 422 Parliament St, Box 82552, Toronto ON, M5A 4N8. CREDIT-CARD DONATIONS: www.rightsaction.org.
* EDUCATION AND ACTIVISM – GOLDCORP Inc. Annual Shareholder’s Meeting
Before and on May 20th, in Toronto, Canada, and Guatemala City, Rights Action – along with other groups in North America, Honduras and Guatemala, will be planning and carrying out education and activist events related to the environmental harms, destruction of local economies, and human rights violations caused directly or indirectly by Goldcorp’s mining operations. For more information and to get involved: info@rightsaction.org.
* EDUCATIONAL DELEGATION - From July 7-12, Rights Action is leading an educational delegation to Honduras to investigate the territorial and human rights struggles of Indigenous/Garifuna peoples and community-based resistance to the environmental and economic harms and human rights violations being caused by Goldcorp Inc’s open pit, cyanide leeching mine. If interested: info@rightsaction.org.
* 3rd SOCIAL FORUM OF THE AMERICAS – GUATEMALA, OCTOBER 7-12, 2008 - Form your own group and/ or join a Rights Action delegation to come to Guatemala around the time of the 3rd Social Forum of the Americas. More than 10,000 people from across the Americas are expected at this gathering to debate and discuss (and enjoy awesome music, art and theater) how Another World Is Possible … And Necessary. For more info: info@rightsaction.org.
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SMILE: And live to make another world is possible, everyday.