27th Annual Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Awards

27th Annual Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Awards
John Cavanagh, IPS Director and TNI Fellow
Washington DC, 23 September 2003

Good evening. Welcome to the 27th annual Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights awards.

I am John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy Studies.

This year, the Institute turns the ripe young age of 40. Our co-founder, Marc Raskin, likes to remind us that we've outlasted Life and Look magazines, Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, and the Soviet Union. Our vitality springs from your vitality. We could pioneer Cities for Peace, provide analysis for the peace and justice activists, release new books by Marc, Saul Landau, and our dynamic foreign policy team, lead tours to Colombia, fight slavery here in DC and fossil fuels around the world because you were building the movements for peace and justice and democracy that are paving the path to a better world. Just as we can be proud of our 40 years, each and every one of you should be proud of the progressive political infrastructure and culture that you are building piece by piece, every day, in the work that you do.

Tonight we also mark the 30th anniversary of the coup that ended an era of democracy in Chile with a brutal dictator named Pinochet. We mark it by celebrating the actions of millions in Chile, here, and around the world that brought some measure of justice to the victims of that dictator and we dedicate ourselves to preventing a repeat of US-backed coups in countries like Venezuela, the nation that buried Orlando, where the liars who have hijacked US foreign policy might create more false pretexts to justify empire. Yesterday, several of us at IPS met with Orlando's son, Pancho, an artist of remarkable talents who is here tonight, to plot out a long-term project called Light Among Shadows, to use art in its broadest sense to spread education about the lessons of these past thirty years. I have a feeling that the artist in Ronni Karpen Moffitt would be pleased.

We are all poorer tonight with the death of two of our dear IPS friends in recent days and months. Bishop Paul Moore used his powers as the Episcopal bishop of New York to work on behalf of the poor of that city, the peace crusaders of the past half century, and the democracy workers of places as far flung as East Timor. We miss him. This past week we lost another crusader, one who loved this event and who poured his creative energies into teaching us how to fight the imperial adventures of our government. No one organized researchers for global peace and justice better than Xabier Gorostiaga, and we miss him dearly as well.

But tonight is about celebrating our heroes. Orlando, Ronni, a young woman from the rural areas of Colombia who has picked up where Xabier Gorostiaga left off, a group of crusaders for the rights of our nation's poorest workers, and a poor child turned metalworker turned president who has pledged to eliminate hunger in the nation that houses the worst inequalities in our hemisphere.

As we celebrate these brave souls, we recognize that they are but a few of the heroes who are guiding us to a better world. Tonight I ask you also to celebrate the 14 million people who took to the streets in over 600 cities around the world on February 15 to oppose an illegal, immoral and unnecessary war in Iraq. We celebrate the brave 11 nations that stood up to the United States in the United Nations Security Council and refused to legitimate this war, including thousand of Chileans in the streets and the Chilean government. We are extremely pleased to have with us here tonight the Chilean Ambassador to the United States, Andres Biachi, and the Chilean Ambassador to the OAS, Esteban Tomic, and we thank them for taking a stance in what was one of the proudest moments in Chilean history. That peace movement and the global public opinion that backed it was so strong that the New York Times dubbed it the world's second superpower.

Joined to this peace movement, thousands of global justice activists, including many in this room journeyed to Cancún, Mexico 2 weeks and in an historic union, they joined the governments of the world's largest poorer nations to block the expansion of an unequal and unfair set of World Trade Organization rules. A stunning victory. The leader of those governments was none other than one of the people we honor here tonight, Lula: whose Brazilian government team brilliantly turned the so called group of 21 into a powerful negotiating bloc. This countervailing power, unions and citizen groups linked to poor country governments has not occured since the 1970s, and this brings me to a word about our colleague Orlando Letelier. Orlando prepared us for this moment. His penetrating analysis of how military repression becomes necessary to impose corporate free market reforms describes the Bush administration of today. And, his advocacy of a fairer "New International Economic Order" is now the order of the day. The wisdom of Orlando is guiding us today, and the global justice movement and the global peace movement are picking up where he left off.

One final thought for my dear friend and hero Harry Belafonte, who is with us here tonight, and for all of you. A while ago, Harry threw a challenge to us at IPS. He challenged us with a community in Cincinatti called Over-the-Rhine, which has been boycotting white Cincinatti because of what it calls economic apartheid. In the shadows of corporate Cincinatti, where the CEO of Proctor and Gamble pulled in $ million last year, 95 percent of the people of this community live and die below the poverty line. Harry challenged us to help turn this community into a national symbol of all that is wrong with a government that has turned its back on its people. He suggested that it was poorer than Haiti, and that we should turn it into our Montgomery.

So, I spent some of this week looking at the United Nations figures, and he is right, in terms of infant mortality and extreme poverty, Over-the-Rhine is as poor as Haiti; in some indicators even poorer. Five of my IPS colleagues joined Harry in workshops with the people of Over-the-Rhine last weekend and pledged our help in turning this neighborhood into a symbol of what is wrong in this country and working with its dedicated leaders to turn it into our generation's Montgomery. It is a national shame that there are Over-the-Rhine's and we, together, have the power to change this and our nation and our world.

The energy and creativity of those crusaders for peace who turned back the Bush machine at the doors of the United Nations combined with the miraculous energies that turned Cancún into the Waterloo of corporate globalization can turn Over-the-Rhine into the Montgomery of this generation that can deliver peace and justice and democracy to all of our people.