From a statement released on Sunday, July 1, 2007 (more photos here):
Bakers without Borders and Co-optation Watch take action today at the US Social Forum to demand accountability from a self-appointed “spokesperson” whose actions further the commodification of resistance and sabotage our movement’s sustainability and credibility. This person’s actions benefit the NGO Industrial Complex at the expense of real democracy and solidarity.
In particular, we hold Medea Benjamin accountable for:
- Publicly siding with the police and municipal authorities against direct actions performed at the World Trade Organization protests of 1999.
- Administrative authority in an organization that hordes funds raised for community organizations in Guatemala
- Administrative authority in an organization that solicited the economic dependency of residents in Cuba and then abandoned the project, pushing the Cuban participants deeper into poverty.
- Acting as self-appointed spokesperson of the “American Left”. One egregious example is publicly refusing to endorse a call by hundreds of Lebanese citizens for Israel to unconditionally withdraw from Southern Lebanon in the 2006 war, claiming that the American Left would not swallow such a demand.
- Exploiting and dominating movement space, resources, and publicity in the global justice and associated movements.
WATCH THE VIDEO!
You just made my day! Thanks Chuck!
I read the reasons for this stunt. They seem a little half-assed.
Could the person making these claims back them up?
It seems peculiar to attack one of the most effective activist/organizing projects on the left. Medea is a liberal? Really?
No more than Noam Chomsky. She runs non-profits that are not mainly foundation driven, that have dogged the Bush administration and provided visible resistance when there was often no one else around. They also managed to develop an organizing and work style that appeals to people not normally out on the protest lines.
This all seems pretty stupid and juvenile, and poorly aimed. The subtext appears to be “pay attention to me!” without any real political or practical critcisms that are actionable. It’s just the depressing sound of air going out of the radical tire.
After all, it was an open event. Medea Benjamin appeared on several panels, yet the people who attacked her didn’t bother to attend or make their issues known. Nothing Benjamin has done forced anyone to do anything, and the people who attacked her did so from behind and then ran away while hiding behind a mask a anonymity.
If that’s where ya’ll are at, that’s too bad.
Fact checking,
I’m not sure who you’re scolding exactly, but here’s a quote from Benjamin that says a lot about her politics and loyalties:
”Here we are protecting Nike, McDonald’s, the Gap and all the while I’m thinking, ‘Where are the police? These anarchists should have been arrested,”’ said Medea Benjamin, a leader with Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based protest group.
(New York Times, December 2, 1999)