Call for a Mass Mobilization April 15-17th, 2005 During the Spring Meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund


The April 16, 2005 meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank will
represent the five year anniversary of the first major demonstrations against these institutions in the United States. Again we will gather in the streets of D.C. on A16 to show that our resistance to these institutions and their greed only grows stronger. A16 will once more be the day we show that our dreams for a better world are not only possible, but under construction at this moment, in all corners of the globe- and the IMF and World Bank, with all their efforts to demolish these dreams and actions, can never stop us.

The World Bank claims to combat world poverty. The IMF claims to promote global economic stability. For the 60 years of their existence, they have done neither. The World Bank has poured billions into dams, mining, and other projects that have caused immense social and environmental destruction, displacing poor, often indigenous, people from their lands and livelihoods, and destroying fragile ecosystems. The IMF has destabilized the economies of countries like Korea, Thailand, and Argentina, creating mass unemployment. Together, the IMF and World Bank have trapped poor countries in a cycle of unpayable debt. To extract debt repayment from them, they have imposed conditions such as budget caps, user fees for health care, and privatization of water. These policies have impoverished billions. They have also corroded self-determination and corrupted political systems, making governments accountable to foreign creditors rather than their own people.


Instead of building the world that they have promised, the World Bank and IMF have plunged it into a global crisis that is now more urgent than ever. The number of people in abject poverty worldwide is at an all-time high, and more and more people lack access to water, healthcare, education and other basic services. The world is headed for environmental disaster, while World Bank fossil fuel projects account for half of world carbon dioxide emissions. The global AIDS epidemic is spreading - 7,000 people in Africa die of AIDS every day. And now it is quickly reaching crisis proportions in the Caribbean, India, Thailand, and Eastern Europe. According to the United Nations, 30,000 people worldwide die every day as a direct consequence of IMF and World Bank-imposed cuts in social services.

Over the 60 years of their existence, the IMF and World Bank have shown themselves to be utterly arrogant institutions which completely ignore people's voices worldwide and systematically enrich multinational corporate interests at the expense of nature and of the rest of humanity. It's time to demolish these institutions and build a better world.

Each day people around the world people are coming together to construct a better, more just
world. Not only are they demonstrating in the streets, but they are actively reclaiming their communities. In South Africa, citizens too poor to afford the privatized water have dismantled water meters and learned plumbing to connect homes to water services. In Argentina unemployed workers are taking over the factories they used to work in and running them as a collectives. Facing the devastating effects of World Bank and IMF Structural Adjustment Policies, people throughout the Global South are working everyday to take back their rights to water, health, land, a clean environment, and self-determination. Five years after thousands of activists came to Washington DC in the first mass show in the U.S. of dissent and solidarity with the global struggle against the World Bank and IMF, the Mobilization for Global Justice is calling for people to come to Washington DC April 15-17th, 2005 to protest the institutions during their semi-annual spring meetings and to celebrate the other, more just world that is under construction due to the daily resistance of millions of people worldwide!


Mobilization for Global Justice’s Mission
The Mobilization for Global Justice is a Washington DC based group that works on issues of global economic and social justice and sustainability. We believe another world is possible and necessary. We envision a world free of corporate domination and crushing debt, particularly in communities of color. We act to expose and change the institutionalized violence wrought by international financial and trade institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization.

The Mobilization is committed to nonviolence and recognizes militarism as a tool used by the global corporate elite to keep money flowing to the privileged few while restricting the rights of people worldwide. We oppose corporate practice which places short-term profits ahead of human dignity, sustainable development and a healthy earth. We stand for the globalization of our rights to speech, thought, religion, assembly, a clean environment, self-determination, freedom from fear and persecution and freedom from poverty.

We stand for the rights of women, children, elderly, affordable health care, strong labor rights and social and economic policies that put people and the environment before profits. Finally, we are committed to linking the IMF and World Bank policies to similar ones that are being implemented in Washington DC which are resulting in decreased access to vital human services for DC's most needy residents. To that other globalization--the globalization of greed and obscene concentrations of wealth--we say that Another World Is Possible and Necessary.

MGJ is a non-hierarchical nonviolent organization of individuals and organizations that promotes the arts, conducts workshops, facilitates nonviolent direct actions, educates, organizes campaigns, empowers, and aims to rip injustice from its roots.

Demands of the Mobilization for Global Justice
We demand that the World Bank and International Monetary Fund:
•Open all World Bank and IMF meetings to the media and the public.
•Cancel all impoverished country debt to the World Bank and IMF, using the institutions' own resources.
•End all World Bank and IMF policies that hinder people's access to food, clean water, shelter, health care, education, and right to organize. (Such "structural adjustment" policies include user fees, privatization, and economic austerity programs.)
•Stop all World Bank support for socially and environmentally destructive projects such as oil, gas, and mining activities, and all support for projects such as dams that include forced relocation of people.
We furthermore demand that the United States government, the largest shareholder and most influential government in the World Bank and IMF, adopt the above demands, and work vigorously to compel the World Bank and IMF to implement them.
Agreed to by Consensus by the Mobilization for Global Justice 2001