Mobile-Eyes Special Report
On The World Social Forum

Videos

OVERVIEW OF THE WSF AND PRESS CONFERENCE WITH HUGO CHAVEZ
8 min. FSTV production (2003)
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ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE
22 min. (2002)
The World Social Forum, covered extensively by the media in other parts of the world, was virtually ignored by the US press. ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE presents a sampling of the issues and events at this enormous and creative gathering. Amongst the speakers featured are Naomi Klein, Vandana Shiva, Kevin Danaher, Wolfgang Sachs, and Rigoberta Menchu. This documentary impression of the gathering gives hope to US activists that, despite the media blackout, the movement for social justice is alive and well around the world.
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Report from Curitiba
15 min. FSTV production (2003)
Free Speech TV creates a report on this unique "eco-city" and examines its successes and challenges as it attempts to be a model for the world.
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GLOBALIZATION: VIOLENCE OR DIALOGU.
62 min. (2002)
At the beginning of the Third Millennium, opposing visions of globalization confront each other at the slightest opportunity…to the extent where everything is being called into question: including the legitimacy of anybody who speaks in the name of "the people." Globalization could get sucked into more violence or trapped by forces greater than it. Some say that 9-11 is related to globalization. A demonstrator in Genoa, Italy is killed by a policeman. At the 2002 World Social Forum, an Argentinean woman accuses attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos of contributing to the political violence in her country. Confrontations between North and South and between what's called "civil society" and the Powers that Be, occur daily in many parts of the world. This program follows different actors in the conflict in an attempt to understand what separates them and what brings them together.
Coming to the FSTV Store

ATENCO: THE MACHETE REBELLION
30 min.
LAND YES, PLANES NO
26 min.
In October, 2001, the Mexican government unveiled an ambitious plan to build a huge, state-of-the-art new airport outside of Mexico City. Seen as a way to encourage international investment, the plan would have also destroyed enormous tracts of communal farmland in the areas where the airport and adjoining tourist facilities were to have been built. At least five towns and tens of thousands of their inhabitants would have been affected. In the case of the town of San Salvador Atenco, 95% of the community's land was going to be seized. The only problem was…that no one had ever asked the local indigenous farmers if they were in favor of the plan. And all of this land had been obtained 85 years earlier by the blood of their Zapatista parents and grandparents. After a nine-month struggle which combined elements of both traditional and modern-day "Zapatismo," the local people successfully faced down the federal and state governments. During the struggle, the residents of Atenco declared their municipality an autonomous zone. In other words, the residents of Atenco have asserted their right to control local affairs in the arena of health care, education, resource management, and in the execution of democratic elections.
Coming to the FSTV Store

REPORT ON THE MST(THE BRAZILIAN LANDLESS MOVEMENT)
10 min. FSTV production (2003).
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HOW GERALDO LOST HIS JOB AND GOT IT BACK
40 min. (2000)
With the unsettled saga of Seattle still fresh in the public mind, it seems that everybody is eager to know why the world has suddenly woken up to the lofty questions of the economy. Globalization, mondialization, relocation takeovers, bulls and bears. These words are not far from the day-to-day life of Geraldo de Sousa, an ex-manual worker at the Ford plant in the suburbs of Sao Paolo. In December 1998. Geraldo was laid-off as part of a wave of 200 redundancies during the time Brazil was hit by the international financial crisis, and left bemused, he only wants to know who made this decision and why. This is where we got onto the trail: Trekking across Brazil and the United States, from the shanty town (favelas) of Sao Paolo to the head quarters of the World Bank and the IMF in Washington, our roaming reporter, Jon Alpert, hunts for clues to answer Geraldo's questions, keeping him constantly informed through Internet and video-conferencing. A veritable journey into the inner working of the world economy, guarding one burning question: Will Geraldo get his old job back? This film is an attempt towards a new style of investigative series on international issues.
Coming to the FSTV Store

Videos

AKWESASNE: FTAA BORDER ACTION
25min. (2002)
AKWESASNE sheds light on the issues indigenous people living on and around borders face in this age of corporate domination. It is filmed on the Mohawk reservation in upstate N.Y. in conjunction with a massive demonstration against the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit in Quebec City. The film clarifies the solidarity that is growing amongst protestors of globalization and indigenous people.
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UPROOTED: REFUGEES OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMY
28min. (2001)
How the global economy, when corporations cross borders at will, has forced people to leave their home countries. Uprooted presents three stories of immigrants who left their homes after global economic powers devastated their countries. Marciel is one of thousands of women encouraged by the Philippine government to work abroad as domestic workers in order to pay the national debt. Free trade destroyed Jaime's family business in Bolivia. Despite their engineering degrees, they have worked as janitors in the U.S. In Haiti, Luckner worked for 14 cents an hour at a US-owned baseball factory, which moved to China in search of cheaper labor costs. Uprooted raised critical questions about US immigration policy in an era when corporations cross borders at will.
Coming to the FSTV Store

COVERAGE OF THE ANTI-WAR DEMONSTRATION IN BRAZIL
6 min. FSTV production (2003)
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REPORT ON MILITARISM
18 min. FSTV production (2003)
Interviews with the international delegates from the World Social Forum on how they view U.S. militarism.
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IN WHOSE INTEREST
27 min. (2002)
This is a fast moving and powerful 27 minute documentary in response to 9/11. San Francisco and London based filmmaker David Kaplowitz leads us on an eye-opening historical journey through the past 50 years of United States intervention, questioning the motives and examining the effects of US foreign policy over that time span. Revealing a pattern of intervention, the film focuses on Guatemala, Vietnam, East Timor, El Salvador, and Palestine/Israel. Archive footage, photographs, recently declassified documents, and media tidbits are dynamically interwoven with personal eyewitness accounts and commentary from academics (such as Noam Chomsky), religious leaders and politicians. IN WHOSE INTEREST is informative and disturbingly honest, yet upbeat, with twists of irony and humor.
Coming to the FSTV Store

REPORT ON MEDIA
21 min. FSTV production (2003)
A workshop supported by Free Speech TV, which brings together representatives of alternative media sources throughout the world.
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DROWNED OUT
64 min. (2002)
Three choices. Move to the slums in the city, accept a place at a resettlement site or stay at home and drown. The people of Jalsindhi in central India must make a decision fast. In the next few weeks, their village will disappear underwater as the giant Narmada Dam fills. Best selling author Arundhati Roy joins the fight against the dam and asks the difficult questions. Will the water go to poor farmers or to rich industrialists? What happened to the 16 million people displaced by fifty years of dam building? Why should I care? Three years in the making Drowned Out follows the Jalsindhi villagers through hunger strikes, rallies, police brutality and a six-year Supreme Court case. It stays with them as the dam fills and the river starts to rise...
Coming to the FSTV Store

WSF WRAP
11min. FSTV production (2003)
An overview at what was accomplished at the World Social Forum.
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TAKE ACTION !

Action Alert #1:
Take the Jobs with Justice Pledge to stand with others in the fight for workers' rights.

Fighting for justice in the workplace forms the core of the work of the Jobs With Justice (JwJ) coalitions. Founded in 1987, the mission of JwJ is to improve the standard of living for working people, fight for job security, and protect workers' right to organize. In order to achieve success, worker's rights struggles have to be part of a larger campaign for economic and social justice. Because it takes action to win concrete victories, JwJ created a network of local coalitions, now encompassing 40 cities in 29 states, that connect labor, faith-based, community, and student organizations to work together on workplace and community social justice campaigns.

Take the Jobs with Justice Pledge and agree to stand up for the rights of working people to a decent standard of living, to support the right of all workers to organize, and to fight for secure family-wage jobs in the face of corporate attacks on working people. By taking the pledge you agree to "be there at least five time for someone else's fight" in the next year.

JwJ coalitions also work to involve labor organizations in community issues that affect working families. Visit their website to find about their successful living wage campaigns in Buffalo and Portland - for ideas you can emulate in your community -- and the fight for immigrant rights, welfare reform, health care for all and more.

You can also find organizing tools such as the JwJ Workers' Rights Directory, which provides listings of international unions, labor artists, research organizations, networks of student allies, labor cartoonists; as well as resources from a faith-based organizing perspective such as the Religious Action Kits, links to members, allies and more.

Action Alert #2:
Work to close the wage gap by organizing a Growing Divide Workshop in your community.

The adage, "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" certainly has been true with a vengeance over the last few decades. But growing economic inequality is NOT inevitable and there is an organization that believes that economies are governed by laws made by people, and not the laws of nature. United for a Fair Economy (UFE) shines a spotlight on the damaging consequences of growing economic inequality. This national, independent, nonpartisan organization provides popular education resources, works with grassroots organizations, conducts research, and supports creative and legislative action to build a social movement that demands a fair economy.

Among the many resources UFE provides to inspire, support and foment the economic justice movement, is the workshop, "The Growing Divide: Inequality and the Roots of Economic Insecurity." Visit their website to find out how to bring this workshop, adapted and refined over the course of 1000 presentations, to your community. UFEs "popular education" programs use non-traditional methods primarily aimed towards adults, in a democratic and cooperative style. A sampling of some of their programs:

• Closing the Racial Economic Divide Workshop provides a racial analysis of U.S. wealth and income distribution.
• Learn how to change consciousness about the role of taxation to support the common good with the Fair Taxes for All workshop.
• Find out how to join the global effort for fair trade with UFEs Globalization for Beginners workshops.
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• ind out what rallied tens of thousands of protestors in Quebec against the Free Trade Area of the Americas with the FTAA for Beginners Workshop

UFE has a "knack for transforming dry economic statistics into memorable learning experiences that connect with people's lives and lead to action," Over 70,000 people have attended their workshops; they have trained over 400 trainers and support a network of 150 active trainers. Order their materials to educate yourself about economic justice, request a UFE trainer to come to your organization, or find out how you can be trained as one of their volunteer workshop leaders.

Action Alert #3:
Join the fair trade campaign being organized by the Tennessee Industrial Renewal Network.

"Trade should benefit workers and communities, not just corporations and shareholders." This is the statement of the Tennessee Industrial Renewal Network (TIRN), a broad-based coalition of labor, community, environmental, student and religious groups and activists, who work together to make economic policies that are fair to workers and uplift communities. Based in Knoxville, TN, TIRN members believe that all people, no matter where they're from or what they look like, should have the right to a voice in economic decision-making.

They use an array of methods to work toward achieving economic justice. Visit TIRN to learn more about their Fair Trade and Globalization campaign that consists of:

• Education and political action such as workshops exploring the impacts of globalization on real people.
• Cross-border exchange and education programs which allow workers on both sides of the border to see the impact of trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), building solidarity and an understanding that the 'bad guy' is not the Mexican maquiladora worker but the corporations driving down wages and working conditions on both sides of the border.
• Working on Living Wage campaigns to keep working families out of poverty. TIRN is currently engaged in campaigns in Nashville and Knoxville.

TIRN'S website is a great resource. Find out how you can get involved in their campaigns - or start them in your community -- to promote fair trade coffee, support fair trade stores, fight for Living Wages for workers, and more. Other resources on the Fair Trade issue can be found at the Alliance for Responsible Trade, and the Citizens Trade Campaign.

Action Alert #4:
Debunk corporate-led globalization in your schools with the Rethinking Globalization teacher's guide.

In this age of education based on standardized testing and textbook-dominated curriculum, is there any room for addressing important issues such as the impacts of the globalization of the economy on the people of the world? There is an organization that believes that schools should be about more than producing efficient workers or future winners of the Nobel Prize for science. Rethinking Schools is committed to the reform of elementary and secondary education, emphasizing issues of equity and social justice.

This non-profit, independent publisher of educational materials was founded in 1986 by a group of activist teachers in Milwaukee. Of its many resource materials, Rethinking Globalization, is a 400-page book written to help teachers raise critical issues with students in grades 4 - 12 about the increasing globalization of the world's economies and infrastructures, and the many different impacts this trend has on our planet and its inhabitants. With an extensive collection of readings and source material on critical global issues, teaching ideas, and lesson plans, it is a rich collections of resources for classroom teachers, as well as an excellent resource for non-students.

Rethinking Schools produces a quarterly journal of the same name. An activist publication with articles written by and for teachers, parents and students, it addresses key policy issues such as vouchers, marketplace-oriented reforms, funding equity, with a focus on problems particular to urban schools, such as issues of race.

They also produce a host of publications for classroom use providing teachers with tools for teaching about community, justice and equality; debunking the myth of Columbus; critique standardized testing, provide a critical look at school finance, offer an in-depth look at the Ebonics debate and more.

Another excellent resource for information on the major financial institutions that control the global economy, see the Global Exchange Q & A page on the World Bank and the IMF.

Action Alert #5:
Stay informed, and tell your friends and family to watch Free Speech TV!

These days the revolution IS being televised, so keep that dial set to Free Speech TV! You might even see yourself or someone you know! Working with activists and artists, FSTV presents eye-opening programming and powerful Mobile-Eyes [need to add the link to the "What is Mobile-Eyes" page] campaigns, linking viewers with progressive organizations around the country.

Free Speech TV is the only national, progressive television network working to build the anti-war movement. It airs 24/7 across the country on Dish Network Channel 9415. Visit FSTV's online store to sign up for a free satellite dish and installation. Monthly Dish Network subscriptions start at $22.95, which is less than most cable packages. FSTV also airs part-time on local community cable stations.

Spread the word! Urge your family, friends, and colleagues to tune in and "mobile-eyes" for peace and social justice!

Stay tuned for upcoming programming specials! Sign up to receive FSTV's free weekly E-Guide, with weekly program highlights and action alerts.

And last, but certainly not least, please support progressive television by becoming an FSTV member through our secure on-line donation form. Now, more than ever, the world needs a national platform for voices speaking out for peace and justice. Now, more than ever, FSTV needs your support. Your donation-large or small--will make a difference!

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