Self-sufficiency and Sustainability

The Answers to ‘The Big What If’ Question: Self-sufficiency and Sustainability
By Mónica Pérez Nevarez, as published in Business Puerto Rico

Regardless of its Status, Puerto Rico is neither self-sufficient nor self-sustaining at present. What needs to be done to attain a larger measure of both?

In order to become self-sufficient, Puerto Rico has to address several problems: creating jobs in the private sector, balancing a structural fiscal imbalance, promoting agriculture to fill the needs of local consumption, and dealing with federal transfers that currently work as a disincentive to employment, and are but a symptom of the malaise created by the unilateral nature of the relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States (Congress controls federal transfers and trade, and locals have no representation in any federal elections). And within a larger framework, in order to address sustainability, all future policies should begin from a position of environmental consciousness as well as of global competition.

Employment

For the last 50 years, the government has focused on attracting foreign investment in order to generate jobs. That same kind of focus and dedication is needed to cultivate local entrepreneurs now. Small businesses account for over 80% of the US labor force. The new businesses would add to Gross Domestic Product, and once the island reached full employment, overall per capita income would increase by 50%.

The shortfall in employment is daunting: full employment requires at least 1.8 million jobs; currently the government employs 300,000, and the private sector 500,000, so one million jobs need to be created in the private sector, mostly locally owned, so profits remain on the island and collateral businesses have a chance to sprout up.

But what makes a person become an entrepreneur? Necessity. That exists. Education. Currently 28% of all local undergraduate students are studying Business Management (GDB figures, see chart http://www.gdbpr.com/economia/prcifras/documents/PRCifras05.pdf , pg.39,).Experience.Studies show that most entrepreneurs have either worked for their own family’s business or in other small family-owned businesses. Since there are so few local businesses, an incentive program must be devised so internships can be created without unduly burdening the small business owner’s finances. Funding. There are extensive resources for helping people become entrepreneurs, but few resources to finance those endeavors. Instead of developing a few targeted businesses, the Government Development Bank should focus on helping wide swaths of neophyte entrepreneurs fund their businesses. Predisposition. It takes a certain kind of person to become an entrepreneur, and not everyone has what it takes to become one. But the current state of joblessness goes a long way in helping breed entrepreneurs, as seen in the vibrant underground economy, which by some estimates ranges from 28% to 33% of GNP, and in the 1.7 million chronically unemployed on the island, so the predisposition exists.

But what is most sorely lacking is a positive business environment. According to Steven J. Davis and Luis A. Rivera-Batiz, in their contribution to Restoring Growth in Puerto Rico (2006) titled ‘The Climate for Business Development and Employment Growth’, “the strikingly underdeveloped state of the Puerto Rican private sector supports the view that Puerto Rico suffers from an inhospitable business climate.” They go on to explain that “the industry structure is misaligned with the human capital mix of its population…the Puerto Rican economy has for decades failed to generate jobs that matched the educational qualifications of the population. The missing jobs are concentrated in labor-intensive industries that rely heavily on less-educated workers. This testifies to a profound failure of industrial and employment policy.” Now, with the competition from China, manufacturing jobs that would have helped fill the gap have disappeared, and the government should focus on incubating entrepreneurs and their small businesses.

One of their suggestions is getting rid of all tax incentives for special interests and imposing a low tax across the board on all businesses and individuals. Davis and Rivera-Batiz go on to say that in Puerto Rico the tax incentives have not been evaluated as to their efficiency within the local economy, and that a similar case in Indonesia, when efficiency studies were performed, showed that incentives were not as important as other factors to foreign investors (such as low tax rates, growth potential, stable government and positive business environment), and that low taxes generally attracted more investment, as well as boosting the local economy. Any time the government gives incentives to some companies but not others, those that are not included degrade or disappear.

Davis and Rivera-Batiz list the following as being contributing factors to the underdeveloped private sector: 1) federal government transfer payment that undermine work incentives; 2) minimum wage laws that discourage hiring less skilled workers; 3) large proportion of public sector employment that discourages the emergence of new private sector businesses; 4) Section 936 of the Federal Tax Code created an industry structure that is not aligned with the type of job opportunities needed by the population (“at best, section 936 provided for a modest number of jobs at enormous cost to the US Treasury”); 5) Puerto Rico’s own tax code benefits special interests at the expense of the general welfare; 6) Puerto Rico’s regulatory environment deters business entry, hampers job creation, and erodes competitive pressures; and 7) the permitting process (construction, real estate development, professional licensing) suffers from serious problems that raise the cost of doing business, undercut the drive for employment growth, and retard economic progress. All of them have to be addressed in order for real improvements to occur.

Fiscal Policy

“…no habia ni nunca ha habido una planificación de la actividad economica” (there was not and there never has been any planning of economic activity…) Eliézer Curet Cuevas, El Desarrollo Económico de Puerto Rico, 1940 – 1972; 1976

“From 1952 to the mid-1980’s, there were no fundamental changes of direction in development policy, only variations on the theme of industrialization dependent on U.S. markets, inputs, technology, financing, and ownership…the local government’s function as a collective capitalist, entrepreneur, and social planner directly involved in the development process [came] to an end with the initiation of Operation Bootstrap [in the 1940’s] and its reliance on external sources of capital and entrepreneurship… Despite an outward semblance of planning and the existence of a planning board and planning laws, there actually has been a surprising lack of instrumental planning for the domestic economy…. Fomento has done planning, of course, but of the sort designed to get results that appeal to U.S. investors... [Economic] planning has revolved around the issue of what is necessary to attract external capital to the island rather than around the issue of Puerto Rico’s needs.” James L. Dietz, Economic History of Puerto Rico, Institutional Change and Capitalist Development, 1986

James Alm, in his contribution to Restoring Growth to Puerto Rico titled ‘Assessing Puerto Rico’s Fiscal Policies’, addresses fiscal deficits and public expenditure, and emphasizes “extensive tax evasion, shrinking tax base, weak tax administration, an unnecessarily complex tax system [creating inefficiencies] and overuse of tax incentives” as the most obvious obstacles to economic growth in Puerto Rico. It is evident that a government that relies on tax income to fund its policies cannot undercut its own income stream by awarding tax incentives for businesses and antediluvian real estate exemptions.

As the preceding quotes reveal, Puerto Rico’s economy needs overhauling. Gilbert Rist, professor at the Institut Universitaire d'Etudes du Développement (Graduate Institute of Development Studies) in Geneva, in the 2002 english edition of his 1987 book The History of Development, writes “The aim [of development] must be to promote ‘sustainable human development’ that favors the poor, nature, women, children and long-term perspectives”. Puerto Rico's policies need to be aligned with sentiments of self-sufficiency such as these, instead of frantically trying to attract foreign businesses to the island.

Rist concludes that one economic model may not be adaptable to all situations, and that imposing one economic model on all economies might not be efficient. According to Rist, current global economic strategy tries to “make reality conform to a simplified model or turns the results of possible observation into the basis of general ‘laws’ which supposedly explain all social practices relating to the use of goods. It is as if, having seen one black swan or one white horse, one were to decree that all others should be the same. There is no doubt that, under the pressure of resource limitation, people sometimes make choices to achieve certain objectives rather than others. What is much less clear, however, is that this represents a paradigm for all possible situations” nor all possible cultures. (Gilbert Rist, The History of Development, from Western Origins to Global Faith, English second edition 2002)

So it is at this crucial juncture in the Puerto Rico’s history that two forces are colliding: first, the undeniable need to fix Puerto Rico’s finances and economic structure; and second, at precisely this point in time, when global warming, Peak Oil and the internet have become facts of life, the whole world has had to realize that the old way of doing business no longer makes any sense.

And there are plenty of innovative ideas and fresh paradigms being carried out by pioneering entrepreneurs around the globe. Some books that shed light on the subject include William McDonough’s and Michael Braungart’s seminal book, Cradle to Cradle, Remaking the Way we Make Things, Paul Hawken’s, Amory Lovins’, and L. Hunter Lovins’ Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, Lester Brown’s Eco-Economy, Building an Economy for the Earth, Marc Benioff’s and Karen Southwick’s Compassionate Capitalism: How Corporations can Make Doing Good an Integral Part of Doing Well, and Brian Nattrass’and Mary Altomare’s The Natural Step for Business: Wealth, Ecology and the Evolutionary Corporation, among many others.

These authors contend that up to now, economies were based upon a linear model whereby natural resources were consumed and the remnants discarded. They propose a closed circuit model of reusing or upcycling all resources, mimicking the natural cycles of the earth (one man’s waste is another man’s treasure). In addition, present economic accounting places no value on the environmental extraction cost or the clean up cost of some industries, or the collateral harm that they do to the environment. Classical economics does not place a monetary value on the natural processes that help sustain life on the planet. For example, a recent study suggests that if corporations were to be in charge of producing all the oxygen and absorbing all the carbon that the Amazon forest produces and sequesters respectively, the cost would be over one trillion dollars, and yet we enjoy it for free.

Which brings all of the above mentioned authors to plead for a new way of accounting: Natural Accounting or Green Accounting. Gilbert Rist explained it this way: “Since it is all about counting, why not count everything? If production is to be totaled up, why not include the destruction which is part and parcel of it, and which would challenge the mechanistic paradigm of economics and its blindness to the irreversibility of time? …Processing activities actually involve numerous costs that the market price fails to reflect. It is time to get out – to move from the realization of failure to an act of rejection, from illusion to reality, from reassuring dreams to serious questions, from high-minded utopias to scandalous truths. The first is that ‘development’ will never exist because it presupposes infinite growth that is in reality impossible. Because in any competitive situation the winners cannot fail to realize that their success is also creating losers.” Not to mention the obvious fact that the earth itself is a finite entity. But out of this conundrum, some visionaries have found a way out. This type of thinking has spawned incredible opportunities for new ways of doing business.

And in the larger context of environmental sustainability, “Economic growth alone has been found to be neither necessary nor sufficient for development to take place, and in some cases it actually appears to have been a hindrance to the process.” (Dietz,Economic History of Puerto Rico). So it is the perfect time for a totally new economic reality to take form in Puerto Rico.

Agriculture

Malthus stated in his An Essay on the Principle of Population, (1798) that “It is an obvious truth… that population must always be kept down to the level of the means of subsistence” (http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/malthus/malthus.0.html ) It therefore follows that agriculture is a keystone to a society’s foundation, self-sufficiency and sustainability. The just under 700,000 cuerdas presently under cultivation could feed about 1.8 million people, but a large portion of current production is for export, and 90% of what Puerto Ricans consume is imported. So the island needs to increase agricultural production and focus its agricultural product mix on nutritious staples to be consumed locally. Agricultural incentives, independence from factory farms, and inspired urban planning round out the list of things that need to be done.

And yet, agencies in charge of helping local farmers are themselves under economic siege: in her article The Truth about Agriculture, (El Nuevo Día, 3 junio 2007), Marian González writes: “…the Asociación de Agricultores (ASDA, the Farmers Association) will have to use the $56 million destined to pay subsidies and incentives to fund their payroll” instead of reaching its intended recipients, the local farmers, because their budget has been slashed to 10% of its original amount during the past two years. [italics mine]

There is also the added problem of the finite amount of land suitable for farming on the island. According to Population Action International, the minimum arable land required to feed one person is 0.38 cuerdas, which translates to 1,520, 000 cuerdas needed in order to feed four million inhabitants (4,000,000 x .38). [My original figure of 0.50 cuerdas per person stems from older numbers, so I stand corrected.] Puerto Rico has only 2.1 million cuerdas in toto, divided, according to the Junta de Planificación’s Preliminary Land Use Plan, as follows:
Developed land (in cuerdas): 269,910 13%
Developed at-risk* areas 16,004 0.7%
Agricultural 1,042,975 46% 4% protected
Natural Resource Land** 701,992 31% 10% protected
Rural at-risk* areas 94,581 4%
Total 2,125,462 cuerdas

*at risk means areas known to flood, susceptible to landslides and liquefaction or are polluted (brownfields)
**these include hydrologic resource areas, conservation priority areas, cultural value areas, and Public Domaine areas
(http://jpops02.jp.gobierno.pr/pls/portal/docs/PAGE/PAGINASINICIO/PUTPR/DOCANEJ/JP%20-%20PUTPR%20ENGLISH_0.PDF )

So my original statement holds true: there is not enough land available to feed 4 million people; the 1 million cuerdas available can feed only about 2.5 million people. And if global warming creates the expected sea level rise within the next three or four generations, 110,585 developed and rural at-risk areas will be lost, adding pressure to an already tight land use program.

(Map of Puerto Rico that shows all lands at risk from sea level rise. Produced by Harry Justiniano, UPR)

So emigration will have to play a part in our future survival, as well as conscientious land use planning, and creative ecological adaptations such as “urban farming”, and green-manure and crop-cover rainforest farming, (forest preserve farming), pioneered in the Parana Rainforest of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina (see http://www.guayaki.com/index.php?p=about&id=87 for story and http://www.guayaki.com/index.php?p=about&id=21#deforestation-map for map). The need to conserve all natural resource and agricultural land becomes paramount, as only 10% and 4% respectively are currently protected, and so, the land is potential prey for developers, who are fast running out of land to build on.

In the past 24 years we have lost 30% of our agricultural lands. Of that figure 60% was lost between 1998 and 2002. The most endangered lands, those in most need of protection, include la Reserva Agrícola del Sur (the Southern Agricultural Reserve); la Reserva Agrícola del Llano Sur (the Southern Plain); the Lajas Valley; the Karst region; and the red clay areas between Vega Baja and Manati. It is imperative that what remains of the islands’ agricultural land be preserved if the island is to become self-reliant. It is just as important that the island set aside at least 25% of its remaining lands as forest preserves or nature preserves as well, in order to safeguard biodiversity and put a reasonable cap on developable land, as suggested by a panel of University of Puerto Rico professors during a May 8, 2007 roundtable called Enfrentando las Consecuencias del Cambio Climático en Puerto Rico (Facing the Consequences of Climate Change in Puerto Rico.

Federal Transfers and Social Justice

In 1952, Gov. Luis Muñoz Marin was faced with a population of 2.2 million (http://topuertorico.org/reference/censuscomparison.shtml ), with only 596,000 jobs available (http://www.american-democracy.org/taxes.html ) which means 27% of the population had employment, as opposed to 20% of the population today [800,000 / 4,000,000 = 20%]. In the last 55 years, Puerto Rico has lost ground in terms of percentage of the population employed. As federal transfers increased as a percentage of per capita income, so have jobs declined: in 1952, total transfer payments from the federal and local governments represented 8.2% of personal income. In 2003 federal transfers had increased to 32.8% of personal income (http://www.american-democracy.org/taxes.html).

The good intentions proffered by mainland food, housing, disability and welfare payments had a negative impact on the economy, creating a “Rich Uncle” situation, whereby U.S. based transfers made up a much larger percentage of local income, acting as a disincentive to work, and which has now molded two generations of Puerto Ricans into a staggering non-participation rate of 56% of the population chronically unemployed (1.7 million chronically unemployed divided by 3 million working age population). And because all transfers are controlled by Congress, local government is unable to do anything to change it.

On the surface, it seems impossible to think of cutting back on federal transfers. Half the population of the island is on welfare. 60% receive food subsidies. There is 37% more disability insurance paid out here than in the mainland. 60,000 people are part of the Section 8 home subsidy that would be left homeless without it. Asking Congress to cut down federal spending is political suicide. And yet, until the population is weaned off the federal tit, it will not feel the need to fend for itself. Remember the old saying: Give a man a fish; he will eat for one day. Teach the man to fish; he will eat the rest of his life.

For too long Puerto Ricans have counted on the benefaction and largesse of American federal transfers. Given that there has always been egregiously low employment opportunities, concomitant low wages structures, and a deep pocket blindly trying to help us out of the conundrum, it is time for stocktaking, and deciding to go for the right goal, that of self-sufficiency and sustainability.

Is Puerto Rico Self-sufficient?

As published in Business Puerto Rico

Could Puerto Rico be self-sufficient? What are the facts? Here are some figures to get a feel for the situation.

Puerto Rico is an island of 3,424 square miles on top of a dormant volcano that lies on a seismic fault-line between the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, and between North and South America, that suffers from periodic hurricanes, floods, droughts, and minor earthquakes.

It has 4 million inhabitants, half of which live in the metropolitan San Juan area.

The labor force consists of 1 million people (employed and unemployed). 1.7 million are not in the labor force (the chronically unemployed, or the “underground economy”). 1.3 million are either too young, on disability or too old to work. (www.census.org )

Of the 1 million in the workforce, 200,000 are unemployed and 296,000 work in government jobs (Caribbean Business Jan 11, 2007, pg.6, story by Jose L. Carmona), which leaves roughly 500,000 paying jobs in the private sector.

160,000 receive wages above 25,000 (which is 16% of PR labor force, as opposed to 66% of US labor force making over 25K).

Of these 160,000, about half (80,000) make a living wage commensurate with the cost of living on this island. (see below for cost of living index comparison)

84% of the labor force makes under 25,000 a year.

Therefore 96% of all Puerto Ricans (160,000 in the labor force making more than 25K divided by 4,000,000 total population = 4% of the population are making over 25,000) are either unemployed, underemployed or not in the labor force at any given time and live beneath the US poverty line. (http://www.census.gov/prod/2/gen/96statab/outlying.pdf .)

Socially this creates the necessity of having both parents in the workforce, to the detriment of the nuclear family. Economically local businesses must have clients with disposable income, or else they will fail. Ethically this creates the basis for the underground economy, used as a safety valve by many just to get by, and is the reason why 60% of the population is on welfare and a large proportion of working people do not report all of their income to Hacienda. It also underlines the necessity for federal transfers, which the island has received since the Spanish instituted the “situado” in the 1500’s, and the United States now carries on that tradition as the Puerto Rican government’s principal source of income (12 billion of the 20 billion in transfers goes to pay for government expenses).

Virtually everything consumed on the island is shipped in from abroad, from the United States, Mexico and Asia. So, costs of goods in Puerto Rico (81.4 Cost Of Living index) are comparable to costs in Miami (83.9 COL index) and Boston (76.8 COL index). The COL index lists New York City as having 100 COL, for comparison. (http://www.finfacts.com/costofliving.htm, scroll down to find the table.)

Employment opportunities are low, unemployment is high, and costs are the highest in the Caribbean, if not in all of Latin America (only Brazil is more expensive). Puerto Rico has experienced high inflation during the last year which, together with the new IVU tax and higher electricity costs, means San Juan is more expensive to live in that many cities on the mainland. For an island whose economic base has shifted from manufacturing to tourism, the high cost of living works against it, as savvy travelers choose less expensive destinations. (the Dominican peso is currently at 32 pesos per dollar, for example)

Could Puerto Rico feed itself?

Of the land mass of 3,424 square miles, or 2.1 million cuerdas, 690,000 cuerdas are under cultivation, with a historic high of just over 1 million cuerdas under cultivation. The rest are developed, paved over, or in mountainous, mangrove or semi-arid desert areas not suited for agriculture. Approximately 5% of all the land area of the island (100,000 cuerdas) is set aside for preservation in federal and state parks (PR Senate numbers). For comparison, Costa Rica has 33% of its landmass set aside for conservation, and the U.S. has 27%). (http://www.nass.usda.gov/Census_of_Agriculture/index.asp)

Historically, 5 acres fed a family of ten (grandparents, parents, kids), so let’s say for argument’s sake that ½ an acre per person minimum is needed for subsistence agriculture. If that is the case, 4 million people would need 2 million acres of arable land. But there are less than 1 million acres available, so the island could barely feed 2 million people without any production left over for export and no leeway in the face of a hurricane or drought. The island will have to depend on outside sources of food. And due to the Jones Act, which limits all carriers to US flagged vessels, all goods shipped in are more expensive than if we were in an open market.

Puerto Rico generates thousands of tons of garbage a day, and is running out of landfills. Importing foodstuffs, consumer goods and appliances adds exponentially to the waste disposal problems, with all the additional packaging needed for transport. the Landfills themselves have become a breeding ground for foul smells and toxic breezes.

As for energy production, Puerto Rico uses thermal power plants, run on refined petroleum, to generate most of the islands electricity. Less than 1% of electricity is generated from hydroelectric technology, which flies in the face of common sense, since there are over 1300 rivers and streams on the island.

Oil is the dominant fuel in Puerto Rico. The amount of gasoline consumed is equivalent to 2,550,000 metric tons of coal. Energy consumption is measured at 2,493 kwh per capita. Every rise in oil prices affects the population of the island, as public transportation until recently was non-existent, with the exception of an irregular bus system, and now the Tren Urbano (mass transit system) only covers parts of the metropolitan area, as yet not significantly affecting the 500,000 cars that commute into San Juan every day from outlying towns.

An immediate transformation of the island’s economy has some similarities to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast. Those people that could get away from the oncoming hurricane did so. Those that stayed went through a horrific seven days of anarchy and violence, and they will live with the consequences of Katrina’s devastation for years to come, as the area slowly rebuilds. And two years after the fact, half of the 250,000 people from New Orleans that were shipped to out-of-state recovery centers have not returned. They simply relocated.

Puerto Rico would be facing just such a hard transition and just as prolonged a recovery were it ever to sever its ties with the United States abruptly. Many professionals will inevitably move to the United States until the brunt of the hardship passes, much as the majority of the population of the Gulf states after Katrina will not return until the economic, educational, health, infrastructure and other factors are back in place, simply because life is just too hard under those circumstances.

When asked this question, Sen. Jose Izquierdo (PDP, Ret.) answered: “What if we woke up tomorrow and we were independent? With no funds from the Federal Government? It’s going to be chaos. There will be a mass exodus of people emigrating to the states. Society could simply desintegrate. It’s hard enough as it is now, and we still cannot balance the budget.”

Oreste Ramos (PNP, Ret.) answered by saying that “the economy would collapse. Real estate prices would collapse. Those that could, would leave; there would be a massive migration of professionals and well-educated people to the United States. Puerto Ricans would suffer without the income from welfare (60% of the population would lose their income without hope of getting employment), no medicare/medicaid (those people of retirement age without insurance would have no health coverage), no foodstamps (50% of the families on the island would not be able to feed their children), no Section 8 Housing subsidies (over 60,000 would immediately become homeless).”

“There would be no law enforcement, because there would be no money to pay for it. Druglords would overtake the economy. Schools would lose their funding.Banks would see their mortgage portfolios become worthless. There would be a panic. Realize that of the 20 billion in Federal Transfers, 12 billion goes to fund our government, who is also the biggest employer on the island. One third of the work force would be unemployed” Ramos said.

Neftali Garcia (PIP, ex-gubernatorial candidate) thought that “there are certain responsibilities that the United Status cannot ignore, and for which they must be held accountable. Under Spanish rule, our economy was propped up by “mesadas” from Mexico. After the Spanish-American War, the Americans introduced better infrastructure, better health, and better education to the island, but did so in order to serve the US corporations that came to the island to do business and furnish them with easy transport and a healthy and educated labor force.”

Then after the Commonwealth was created, the plan was to attract businesses to the island by giving them federal and local tax breaks. “But you must realize that any society that imports capital must by definition export profits, which means that money does not stay in the local economy.” Garcia also explained that part of the transfers were in fact money owed. “Our economic dependency on the United States is very real; but a large portion of the transfers are payments into military pay and retirement and social security - that is, for services rendered, and already paid for. And that does not take into account the 32 billion dollars net outflow of funds to American companies that repatriate their profits” said Garcia.

“The net result? Puerto Rico’s government is severely in debt, and the island has a poor, underemployed and unemployed population with low salaries and a high cost of living. 4% of the population makes a living wage; the middle class is heavily in debt, and a sizeable underground economy is used as an escape valve. Real unemployment runs in the 20 to 25 percent range right now. With its policy of “Exención Contributiva” (tax exemptions) and foreign investment repatriating their profits, the government has little income and paradoxically is also the largest employer on the island” added Garcia.

One might add that as a business plan, inviting foreign investment in exchange for a handful of low wage salaries as a way to self-sufficiency is a plan doomed to failure from the beginning. Under these circumstances, the island cannot hope to keep its educated and skilled workforce. “When a society exports its brightest citizens, there comes a point when it simply is no longer viable” said Garcia.

And lastly, Garcia predicted that “environmentally this will not bode well for Puerto Rico. If the government has no money to cover health and education needs, and the economy does not have adequate salaries (which range from 20% to 35% less than the salaries of the poorest State of the Union, Mississippi), how can it have any money to preserve and protect our natural resources? If a family has no way to feed its children, how can they be expected to save the environment?”

Many mainland Americans were perplexed or vaguely insulted when, during the last plebiscite regarding the political status of Puerto Rico vis á vis the United States, a majority of Puerto Ricans voted for the “none of the above” option instead of Statehood, Independence or two kinds of Commonwealth status. One reason for that vote may be that there were too many confusing alternatives on the ballot, each carrying unclear economic outcomes. Another reason they could be confused is that many Americans don’t really know much about Puerto Rico, other than it’s a tropical island in the Caribbean. Many do not realize that Puerto Rico is a US territory and that Puerto Ricans are American citizens living in substandard conditions without representation in Congress or the right to vote for the President. But another very real possibility is that Puerto Rico is a third world country historically showcased as a triumph of American largesse, and the population finally rejected this hypocrisy.

It could be said that Puerto Rico was the United States’ first experiment in exporting the American ideals of capitalism and democracy to an interested group of people (unlike other places today – Iraq, Afghanistan - that are not at all willing to accept the change). Unfortunately, democracy and capitalism was imposed from above (the Treaty of Paris), without island representation, and at less than optimal economic conditions for the locals, which is a roundabout way of imposing liberty without self-sufficiency, a contradiction in terms, for how can you be free if you are dependent? The first fifty years of American rule were strictly geared towards allowing big-money interests to buy cheap land, use cheap labor and exploit a small island’s vulnerability, without any serious thought to helping the island become economically autonomous. In 1952, Puerto Rico elected it's first local governor, who promised to address all the iniquities.

But today, after over five decades of self-government, it is up to the individual Puerto Rican to forge his or her own way in a political system awash in partisanship and cronyism, in a market saturated in competition with multinational corporations, in an economy bogged down by debt, and a real estate market with stratospheric prices, without much help from the local government for the small businessman. Not unlike what is happening in many capital cities in America and the world at large as well.

Could Puerto Rico survive an abrupt change in status? Yes. Would the transition be hard and unforgiving? Yes. Would it create a second Diaspora of displaced Puerto Ricans immigrating to the States? Yes, and this time it will not be day laborers leaving, but skilled professionals as well. Would islanders see a rise in crime and violence? Yes. Would recovery and economic stabilization take a long time? Yes, one or two generations at least. Are there alternatives that should be considered or better options that could be put in place? Absolutely. And the faster Puerto Rico comes closer to being self-sufficient, the better chance it will have to survive. With such a large population, with so few jobs, such a high percentage of second-generation families on welfare, no possiblility of agricultural self-sufficiency, and no natural resources to speak of, the island will face a large demographic movement to the mainland, and those who stay will face a very hard and insecure transition period.

Next month: A Plan towards self- sufficiency

email Monica at guayaba@rocketmail.com with any comments.

GuardaMar de Puerto Rico Links page

Well, I've had such wonderful responses to my phone calls and emailings that I just have to put up this links page to all the GuardaMar pages. Enjoy! And Join us!



Bueno, he tenido tan calurosas respuestas a mis llamadas y emails, que decidí poner esta pagina de links de páginas de GuardaMar de Puerto Rico. Espero que las disfruten! Y que se unan a nosotros!

http://claridadgala.blogspot.com/ to see my pictures of the Claridad Environmental gala. Para aquellos que quieran ver mis retratos de la Gala Ambiental de Claridad.

http://guardamarmembership.blogspot.com/ for those seeking membership, go to this page, cut and paste onto word, and fill out and send it to me. Easier membership options (like Paypal) are currently being explored to make the whole process easier for you.


http://guardamarmembership.blogspot.com/ Para aquellas personas interesadas en hacerse miembro de GuardaMar. Vayan a esta página, la copian a Word, la llenan y me la mandan. No se preocupen, que estamos investigando maneras de hacer este proceso mas facil (con Paypal).


http://guardamarprofile.blogspot.com/ for a short profile of who we are, what we do, and what our goals and priorities are.


http://guardamarprofile.blogspot.com/ Para ver un corto perfil de nosotros, quien somos, que hacemos y cuales son niestras metas y prioridades.


http://jungle-rules.blogspot.com/ to see a short photographic haiku of La Selva, a part of the Northeastern Ecological Corridor we are trying to save.



http://jungle-rules.blogspot.com/ Este blog es una corta poesia fotográfica de La Selva, un lugar precioso que se encuentra dentro del Corredor Ecologico del Noreste, el cual estamos tratando de salvar. Ayudanos a salvarlo!





http://livefromclubnautico.blogspot.com/ for a summing up of a radio WOSO interview Ricardo and I had last November with Ryan Christiansen.


http://livefromclubnautico.blogspot.com/ Este es un blog de la entrevista que nos hizo Ryan Christiansen en Noviembre en radio WOSO.


http://guardamarpr.blogspot.com/ for a work-in-progress site that answers these two questions: What can I do now, today, to help? and secondly: How can I learn more about this? (I'm currently compiling a bibliography of must-read books, so if you have any you want to add, email me!!)


http://guardamarpr.blogspot.com/ Este es otro blog que estoy trabajando todavia que contesta estas dos preguntas: Que puedo hacer yo hoy, ahora, para mejorar el ambiente? y segundo: Como puedo aprender más sobre este tema? (Ahorita estoy compilando una bibliografia de los libros mas importantes, asi es que si alguien quiere añadir su favorito, por favor mándeme un email!)



So come and join us!! We can do great things together!



Asi es que únete a nosotros!! Podemos hacer gran cosas juntos!


Monica Perez Nevarez
Directora Ejecutiva
GuardaMar de Puerto Rico
787-863-5189
561-449-3525

We Give Corporations the Power and the Money

For decades, the U.S. mainstream environmental movement has used a strategy of regulatory and administrative law remedies to address the litany of environmental harms caused by industrial agriculture. Environmental organizations have focused campaign attention on arguments with corporations over how many parts per billion of a particular pesticide can be put in our rivers, how much of our public lands can be exploited, or how many individuals of a particular species it is acceptable to kill. The arenas of these struggles have been the courts and regulatory agencies, with occasional passage of legislation that restricts corporate harms.

What have we won? Indeed, the environmental movement has won some major legislative victories: the National Environmental Protection Act, an Endangered Species Act, a Clean Water Act, a Clean Air Act, and dozens of other laws that limit the damage that corporate agriculture and industrial society in general can do to nature and to people. In addition, the movement has created hundreds of national and state regulations and administrative rules that limit pesticide use, restrict farming near riparian corridors, require soil conservation efforts by farmers, and so on.
However, an honest assessment of the overall effectiveness of this strategy of regulating corporate harms must conclude that it is a limited strategy and that it has ultimately licensed an unsustainable and unacceptable level of ecological destruction and marginalized our most fundamental concerns. We have been fighting corporate assaults against nature timber harvest plan by timber harvest plan; factory farm by factory farm; dying stream by dying stream. We are constantly being called to fight against new and more virulent crises. If we win one, there is little time to celebrate because there are many more crises created by corporate agribusiness every day. Corporations have grown and become far more powerful in this regulatory environment. In short, corporations have successfully framed both the arena of struggle and the terms of the debate, and have limited us to incremental compromises.

Consider the national struggle around the new federal organic standards at the end of the 1990s. Congress appointed a blue-ribbon panel — a diverse committee of organic farmers, nutritionists, scientists, product manufacturers, and retailers — to propose a new law. After several years of research and hearings, the panel presented a carefully considered, comprehensive set of recommendations to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). In 1997, however, the USDA, on Democratic President Bill Clinton’s watch, rejected those recommendations and instead issued to the nation draft organic standards obviously heavily influenced by corporate agribusiness and “life science” corporations. This proposal potentially allowed into the “organic” definition products with genetically engineered ingredients, food grown with toxic sewage sludge used as fertilizer, and products that had been irradiated. It was a slap in the face to the organic movement’s hard work and to the trust it had placed in the regulatory system.

It then took almost two years of mass mobilization, including organizing the writing of a record 275,000 letters to the USDA, to fight industrial agriculture’s attempted takeover of organic. We finally exposed the hypocrisy and shamed the USDA into retreating from the worst aspects of their industrial agriculture agenda for organics. Did we “win”? What might we have done for those two years of struggle if we had not had to fight that corporate takeover? What could we have done with 275,000 people mobilized proactively to further the sustainable agriculture agenda instead of having to drop everything and react to the attack on organics?

CORPORATE VS. DEMOCRATIC DECISION MAKING

The real struggle around the national organic standards was not over the federal definition of organic, important as that is. The real struggle was about public, democratic decision making versus private, corporate decision making on issues of food and agriculture.

This is one major case — and there are hundreds like it — where private capital, amassed as the wealth of multinational corporations, exerted much more decision-making authority than the people of this country.

Another example of corporate decision making usurping the public democratic process can be seen in the current struggle over genetically engineered foods. In the United States, the life sciences corporations have succeeded in setting the terms of the debate. The corporate media have framed the struggle as one of “right to know” and of bad science versus good science. We are told that we are in a grand battle over whether or not to label genetically engineered foods. In fact, if we “win” labeling — just another regulatory “fix” — we are actually giving license to the ongoing harm.
The real issue we should be fighting around genetic engineering is the patenting of life and the consolidation of the ownership of all the major food and medicinal crop genomes into the hands of a few multinational corporations. The real issue with genetic engineering is: Who is making this fundamental decision? Who is going to decide what we ought to do with the most consequential and potentially dangerous technology since the splitting of the atom: corporations and “the free market” or people and democratic process?

These are not just cases of putting profit over people and ecosystems, but of governments and courts legally defending corporate decisions over democratic decision making, and of corporate private-property rights being ruled as supreme over individual or communal property, human and environmental rights.

The big questions here are (1) what the appropriate role of institutions of economic enterprise in a democratic society is; and (2) what economic and cultural decision making should be public and what should be private.

CORPORATE PERSONHOOD AND CORPORATE “RIGHTS”

What happens when we try to reassert democratic, public control over major economic decisions? What happens when we seek to halt corporate abuses or insist upon the “precautionary principle,” the “polluter pays principle,” or even the “right to know”? Corporate attorneys (and they are plentiful) respond with legal defenses based on the fiction that a corporation is a legal “person” in terms of constitutional protections. They use the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution to assert that states, counties, and cities have no authority to restrict interstate and transnational commerce. They assert for the corporation the property rights, due process, and equal protection guarantees meant in the Constitution for real, human persons.

They have used Fourth Amendment constitutional protections (intended to safeguard
natural persons against unreasonable search and seizure by the state) to limit environmental, health, and safety inspectors from investigating conditions in industrial farms and factories.

They have claimed, and legally achieved, First Amendment free speech protection as a way to overturn public initiatives and legislation aimed at limiting billboards, banning advertising in schools, and controlling the information agenda of our public airwaves. They have won major U.S. Supreme Court rulings equating financial contributions to political campaigns and political ads with political free speech, disabling “we the people” from keeping corporate money out of our elections. Once the corporations strategically acquired personhood status, Philip Morris (Corporation) and your grandmother, for example, are both treated as people, with the same constitutionally protected rights.

While real people die, their wealth is subject to estate and inheritance taxes; “corporate persons” live forever. Corporations also receive extensive limited liability, making it nearly impossible to imprison individual corporate managers, board members, or shareholders for far worse crimes than those that often result in incarceration of real human persons. If a real person steals a motorcycle for his/her third felony (“third strike”), California mandates a sentence of 25 years to life in prison. But if, for example, the UNOCAL Corporation, based in California, is convicted for the 15th time for breaking the law (as it has been), it suffers a very small fine and goes on with business as usual.

Under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, this logic of corporate personhood is extended to its grandest illogical conclusion. Multinational corporations can sue nations for “lost future profits” if a country limits that corporation’s “right” to extract, exploit, and pollute more than the lowest common denominator, or “harmonization” of international WTO deregulation.

It is very important to remember that nearly all of the rights of natural persons, which corporations now enjoy, were handed to them by courts, not legislatures. Most of these rights were neither granted in the U.S. Constitution nor ever voted on by the people.

HOW DID CORPORATIONS ACQUIRE SO MUCH AUTHORITY?

The first giant U.S. corporations were the banks and railroads that emerged after the Civil War. They set out for a decades-long court shopping spree, biding their time to find the right court, packed with the right elite judges, to give them the rulings that they needed to continue the march toward full legal personhood. They followed with a strategy of rewriting state constitutions and state corporate codes to further set themselves apart from the direct control of the people.

In the 135 years since the Civil War, the corporate class has succeeded in constructing a corporate form, empowered with the rights of natural persons, that is essentially outside the control of the sovereign people. While they have been strategically molding law and culture to favor their control of economic and governmental decision making, “we the people” have been struggling to ensure that all real people are legal persons, fully protected by the U.S. Constitution. In a nation that was founded with only white, land-owning males defined as “persons,” people of conscience have struggled mightily to bring African Americans, women, Native Americans, Asians, debtors, men without property, and all other classes of human beings to full personhood at the roundtable of democratic sovereignty. We are still struggling to insure that gays and lesbians, and new immigrants, have full rights. And we are working for the day when the flora and fauna, ecosystems, and the very natural processes that insure life for all will be fully represented at the decision-making table as we steward our common wealth.

Corporations, on the other hand, have no business being present at that decision-making table. Or rather, they only have business. A corporation has concern for only growth and profit. That is what it is set up to do. When “we the people” sit down to discuss how we can develop a sustainable agriculture that strengthens local, diverse culture and restores, not degrades, our Mother Earth, the corporations should be out of the room. It is our duty to set the parameters for economic activity. If a corporation does not like our terms, it can disappear — there will be plenty of others willing to do good business on the terms we have defined.

Does this seem too idealistic? It was not so long ago, in nearly every state in the Union that corporations were all given limited charters of incorporation (as opposed to today’s general charters that grant corporations perpetual life). Typically, a manufacturing charter would be limited to 40 years, a mining charter to 50 years, and other corporate charters to 30 years. After that, the corporation was dissolved, or the corporate officers could reapply for a new charter but would then receive public scrutiny of their past actions. The question would be: “Have they served the interests of the people of our state?” If not, why would we give them a new charter to continue to harm the land or the people?

Under the Wisconsin State constitution until 1954, for example, a corporation could not own excess property outside the direct use for the purpose of their charter. The corporation could not own another corporation. The corporation existed for a limited life span, written into the charter. And it was a felony for a corporation to give money to a political campaign.

Corporations are chartered, given the basic license to do business, by the states. A typical early attitude toward charter incorporation was stated in 1834 by the Pennsylvania legislature: “A corporation in law is just what the incorporating act makes it. It is the creature of the law and may be molded to any shape or for any purpose that the Legislature may deem most conducive for the general good.”
Private banking corporations were banned in many states until the Civil War era. That makes great sense. Think about it: Why would we allow a few private individuals through private banks to amass unprecedented wealth from the interest on the collective capital of all of us? Why would we turn over the decision-making authority on where to invest our collective wealth to the self-interests of the industrial elites? Further, banks in those days were forbidden to engage in trade and could not merge.

IS “CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY” AN OXYMORON?

When we speak of corporations, we must make a distinction between private corporations and public corporations; between small, community-based corporations and multinational corporations; and between for-profit corporations and not-for-profit corporations. Small, family, or community-scale corporations are most often privately held and have much more flexibility in how they do business (for example, not being forced to yield high quarterly profits — no matter the environmental or social cost — for shareholders). The corporate owners and managers most often live locally, where the company does its work, and the surrounding community can more easily hold them accountable to local democratic decision making.

These corporations are more likely to be of a human scale at which each worker can have a personal stake in the business and a relationship with the owner and with the community. Conversely, the largest of the multinational corporations have gross net income greater than many nation states and are at such an inhuman scale that “enlightened” managers can rarely temper the giant organization’s insatiable urge toward growth and short-term economic returns.

For decades, many environmentalists, ecological farming advocates, and other social movement activists have focused on campaigns for “corporate responsibility” — trying to convince the leaders of huge, polluting companies to be “better corporate citizens.” But trying to change the hearts of CEOs very rarely works. Courts often rule that “shareholder rights” to maximum profits limit management’s prerogative to do the “right thing,” like stopping the factory farm from polluting the river, or pulling the business out of Burma, or building a child-care center for employees.
When a multinational corporation signs some “voluntary code of conduct” it usually results in the movement’s stopping a boycott campaign and celebrating the corporation as a “model good citizen.” Yet there often comes the day come when the corporation’s managers decide they can no longer afford to abide by the codes. They were only voluntary codes, after all. We then have to start the campaign all over again.

Corporate public relations departments long ago learned that it pays well to use a small fraction of the surplus wealth earned from overcharging us on whatever product or service they sell to blast us with propaganda. They tell us that Chevron “cares,” that Weyerhauser is “the tree planting company,” and that Archer Daniels Midland will “feed a hungry world.” Further, some of the worst criminal corporations and corporate officers win local or national “good citizen” awards for donating small fragments of our surplus wealth (that they hoard) to the symphony or the Girl Scouts, or by donating their corporate logo–laden goods to our public schools. Corporate foundations also fund many of the largest environmental, civil rights, arts, and other groups in the nation.

The result of this “corporate philanthropy” is that it gives control of much of our national culture and social movement agenda to these corporations through their decisions on which groups receive grants (and thus have their campaigns reach the public) and which groups die on the vine for lack of funding.

CORPORATE CONTROL OF FOOD AND AGRICULTURE

With regard to food and agriculture, the multinational corporations’ strategy has been to establish the unchallengeable right to their control over the food system. They have done this through monopolization by strategic underpricing of smaller-scale competition and by developing a revolving door of corruption between corporate management and the very government agencies charged with enforcing regulations. Through vertical integration — from financing to seed patents to value-added products to distribution — they have cultivated farmer dependency on credit, seed, chemical input, and farmgate pricing worldwide.

They have successfully appropriated much of our public educational and research resources, crafting “private-public partnerships” with universities, governments, and even the United Nations. Through TRIPS (the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) and the WTO, multinational corporations have successfully gained control of intellectual property rights, international trade regulation, and dispute resolution.

To fully control the global food system, the global corporations must continue to colonize and homogenize the remaining independent and resistant cultures around the world. Over many decades of trial and error, they have developed enough institutional memory to utilize — even create — regulatory structures that insure that the economic bottom will not drop so low on any potentially resisting people that they will, as Marx put it, “have nothing to lose but their chains” and rise up in revolt.

DEVELOPING AN EFFECTIVE COUNTERSTRATEGY

The fight against corporate chemical-industrial agriculture, against corporate
control of the global food system, against corporate ownership of life, and against corporate control of economic decision making is the fight on this planet. All the cultures of the world, and all ecosystems, have a common interest in replacing corporate rule with democratic rule in service of diversity, cooperation, sustainability, and the common wealth.

To win this fight — much of it needing to be fought in the United States, which is the source of so much of the corporate problem — our movements must rapidly evolve new strategies. Specifically, we must do three kinds of activism at once.

1. Fight Fires
For the past 30 years, our conservation and environmental movements have been focused on “fighting fires.” We have built ten thousand local or national groups to fight ten thousand corporate assaults on nature and people. David Brower often said that “there are few real environmental victories, only holding actions.” He meant that, for example, after a five-year campaign using much of our local movement time and resources, we may stop a clear-cut or new dam, but the corporation will be back to take the trees or the river as soon as it can maneuver a change of judge or politician, or a lull in our vigilance. We have to fight them off forever. They just have to win once.

Of course, we have to fight fires. When the “Hogs ‘R’ Us Corporation” comes to put a 2,500-hog farm on the banks of our “Salmon River,” we must mobilize and put our all into the campaign. We have no choice. But this form of struggle alone will rarely have an effect on corporate destruction everywhere else in the world and may just chase the corporation (and the problem) to another community.

2. Create Alternatives

The ecological farming movement has grown steadily for the past 30 years, but we are being far outpaced by the multinational corporations’ destruction of small-scale and traditional farming in the United States and around the world. We must, however, provide an articulated, accessible platform of specific vision and practices that reflect the values of ecological, economic, and cultural sustainability. We have many examples of how to do agriculture right; they are just dwarfed by the number and scale of the corporate wrongs.

Our alternatives must be based on farmland and watershed protection and restoration.
Our vision includes restoring polycultural diversity in farming systems and appropriate scale in agriculture. We seek local, national, and international economic policies that reward and subsidize sustainable farming and business practices, and punish, tax, and disallow unsustainable farming and business practices. We must integrate and reward economically and socially just farm-labor practices. Our vision for agriculture must highlight the enhancement of wildlife habitat and wildlife corridors, and we must work quickly toward the elimination of synthetic insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides.

But as we work to build alternatives and as we become effective at modeling “how it
might be,” we must be clear that the corporations can be and always are ruthless in buying out, making illegal, marginalizing, or destroying people’s most successful efforts at getting off their treadmill.

3. Dismantle the Mechanisms of Corporate Rule

A group of people was bathing by a river. One saw a baby floating by and yelled for the others to help pull it out. As they were giving resuscitation to the baby on the riverside, they spotted another floating downstream, then another, then another . . . They were all working feverishly to rescue each new baby that floated by. This went on for some time, until someone thought to go upstream and stop the people who were throwing babies into the river. While we must fight the fires (save the babies) that get forced upon us, we cannot confuse reaction to a problem with proactive strategy. And while we must build sustainable alternatives, we will create a safe and open space for sustainable practices to become the norm only if we dismantle the mechanisms of corporate rule that stand in our way. We need to focus on defining the authority — and the legal limits to that authority — that corporations are allowed. We need to stop yielding to them the rights of personhood while we try to regulate their harms from the edges.

Our movement is full of activists who know all about the legal maximum for chemical pesticide applications, the details of timber harvest plans, and how to file injunctions to stop a polluting factory farm. But how many of us have read our state constitution or corporations code, or know the last time the corporations rewrote key clauses of either of those documents? While we have become experts at the game of fighting to regulate corporate destruction, the corporations have been writing and rewriting the rules of the game.

We must focus on new strategies that change the ground rules on who is in charge, to reclaim our constitutional right to sovereignty over economic activity. We must choose appropriate arenas of struggle. The really meaningful fights that will win a reality of sustainable agriculture everywhere are over what we put in our state constitutions, corporate codes, and corporate charters.

Part of developing new strategies is to pay closer attention to the language we use. The language of our struggle is important because it is how we cultivate literacy among the population: ecological literacy, watershed literacy, economic literacy, global literacy, and democratic literacy.

It took us a decade in the antinuclear movement to move from talking about “safer nukes” to calling clearly for “no nukes.” The civil rights movement evolved its language from calling for “desegregation” to demanding “equal rights.” Importantly, our current movement language has been changing from talking about “corporate responsibility” to “anti-corporate” and “anti-globalization.” Further, we now hear in the streets the call for “dismantling corporate rule.” Our new language juxtaposes corporate grabs for “intellectual property patent rights” for seeds and plant genomes with our clarity about “collective heritage,” “traditional, communal property rights,” and “the rights of nature.”

BY WHAT AUTHORITY? DIRECTLY CHALLENGING CORPORATE RULE

We can get considerable mileage by asking the refrain, “By what authority?” By what authority do large corporations wield so much power over nature, our lives, cultures, and economies? “By what authority?” or “Quo warranto?” is also a legal writ. In state constitutional law, when a corporation is acting outside of its charter, we can file a motion in court that demands to know by what authority this corporation poisons our rivers or steals our seeds. We demand a ruling of Ultra vires — or “beyond its authority” — and the revocation of that corporation’s charter.

In 1998, such a charter revocation was initiated in New York State, under Republican Attorney General Dennis Vacco. The state sought to revoke the charters of two nonprofit public relations and lobbying groups for the tobacco industry — the Tobacco Institute and the Council for Tobacco Research. Before the court could rule, and as a part of the Master Settlement Agreement against tobacco companies, the lobby groups voluntarily forfeited their charters. Their assets were distributed to the state’s antismoking education fund, and their documents and files to the School of Public Health at the State University of New York.

In the 1870s to 1890s, American farmers built an anti-corporate movement that was
clear about what it wanted. The Populists, Knights of Labor, Greenbacks, Alliance, and even the Grange worked to oppose the monopolizing consolidation of the banks and railroads. They understood that what was at stake was the control of their independence, their culture, and their decision making power around prices and distribution. While not an overtly conservation-minded movement, these groups struggled to maintain control of their direct relationship to and stewardship of the land. They also understood the importance of who controls currency policy and access to credit. They fought to keep farming as the foundation of rural culture and local democracy — much like the agrarian democracy that Thomas Jefferson had envisioned.
We need to revive the passion and clear anti-corporate, pro-democratic focus of that populist movement. Times have certainly changed, but the fundamental struggle against rule by large corporations is much the same. Any successful national and international movement will have to be based in strong local movements that have a clear sense of strategy and the courage to stay strong and focused as the corporations fight back.

In the United States it can often seem that we have no chance to turn back corporate rule. To get perspective and develop strategies, we must have the wisdom to learn from the still intact cultures and movements of resistance in many other parts of the world, where communities have not yet succumbed to monoculture and corporatization. Huge, radical anti-corporate movements in Mexico, India, France, and many other countries can give us inspiration and ideas. The fact is, however, that we in the United States have the responsibility to take the lead in new campaigns to dismantle the mechanisms of corporate rule, for it is in our nation that so many of the world’s most criminal and destructive corporations are incorporated and headquartered.

Our best strategy is to act at the local and state levels, at the scale where we can
possibly win initial campaigns. We need to pass local and state laws that declare our sovereignty over economic decision making in our communities and in our states. To do this, we will need to choose the fights that can organize a voting majority to democratically declare our decision. There is no shortcut to get this done. This is about community organizing, about motivating people to take history into their own hands and create their own destiny.

However, when we pass a local or state law that bans or restricts corporate control of our land and culture, we will certainly face intense opposition from the corporations we seek to contain. The corporate lawyers will argue in courts that we are violating their “corporate free speech,” their “private property rights,” their “intellectual property rights,” their “right to do business,” and their “right to future profits.” They will say our new laws in favor of local culture and sustainable agriculture violate the commerce, the equal protection, and the due process clauses of the U.S. Constitution, and they will seek a federal court injunction against our democratic decision. They will say our local laws restricting corporate exploitation of soil, water, air, people, and culture are “unfair trade barriers,” and they will seek a ruling from the secret WTO panel so they can threaten to crush us with trade sanctions.

Well, let’s bring on those fights! We need to create crises of jurisdiction: direct clashes between laws that people of a local or state jurisdiction have just democratically debated and passed and the ruling of some international tribunal of corporate attorneys who tell us, “You don’t have authority to decide on matters of the market — that’s for the corporations to decide.” It will be these crises of jurisdiction that will mobilize people to resist such tyranny.

There are dozens of ways we can begin dismantling the mechanisms of corporate rule from the local level on up. Some of these strategies have been tried and are holding up against corporate counterattack; others are ideas waiting to be tried for the first time. Among them: (1) Amend state constitutions by inserting defining language that will declare, for example, that a corporation does not have the constitutional rights of a person, that patents on life are not allowed, and that the polluter pays. (2) Amend state constitutions and state corporation codes to revive restrictions on corporate charters, declaring (among other things) that it is a felony for corporate officers of a corporation to finance political campaigns or try to influence elections; that corporate charters are for a limited number of years; that corporations cannot own property outside the specific needs of the business they are chartered to do; and that corporations cannot own other corporations. (3) Ban corporate ownership of farmland, as has been done at the state level through constitutional amendment or legislation in Nebraska, South Dakota, and seven other U.S. states. (4) Attack so-called “corporate free speech” head-on at the local level — at school boards, ban the use of corporate logos on campus; at city or county council, ban billboards and ban corporations from running political ads. (5) Disallow criminal corporations from doing business with a jurisdiction: prohibit “repeat offender” corporations, those with multiple criminal convictions, from conducting business within a city or county jurisdiction (i.e., corporate “three strikes” laws); and initiate Quo warranto charter revocation proceedings against the worst criminal corporations.

All of these practical strategies require substantial campaigns and a lot of strategic forethought. When we move to disable the global corporate system, we had better have a well thought-out strategy! In this corporatized culture that steers all radical thought toward short-term compromises, we need to revive a sense of long-term struggle. We are not going to “win” in a few years. As every branch of our environmental and social justice movements must continue to “fight fires” and create sustainable alternatives, we each must also dedicate a substantial part of our day-to-day and long-term work to these new strategies that aim to dismantle the mechanisms of corporate rule. We do this for our ancestors and our descendants, and we do this for our Mother Earth.

[I wish I had written the above paper by Dave Henson, Director of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center. But since I didn't, the second best thing to do is publish it on my blog. Every person in the world should read this. Pass it on!]

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Dave Henson is the Director of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (OAEC), an 80-acre farm, ecology education center and intentional community in Northern California. OAEC’s programs work in support of ecological agriculture, sustainable food systems, and democratic communities. The Agricultural Biodiversity Program at OAEC maintains and propagates a collection of some 3000 varieties of heirloom annual vegetables, as well as edible, medicinal and ornamental perennials.
An environmental and social justice activist for over 20 years, Dave has held staff positions with the Highlander Research and Education Center, the National Toxics Campaign, Greenpeace, and the Earth Island Institute. Dave is also a principal member of the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy; serves on the steering committees of the national Wild Farm Alliance and the Sonoma County No Spray Action Network; and is active regionally organizing against genetically engineered crops. Dave also serves as an organizer trainer and organizational development and strategic planning consultant to community-based environmental, social justice, and farm groups.

Many of the ideas expressed in this paper have germinated through the research and analysis of the members of the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD). More information on POCLAD, including subscribing to POCLAD’s regular publication By What Authority can be seen at www.poclad.org or by calling the POCLAD office at (508) 398-1145.

For more information on the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (OAEC) , including securing a copy of OAEC’s beautiful annual catalogue, see www.oaec.org, or call the OAEC office at (707) 874-1557. Dave Henson can be reached at dhenson@oaec.org, or at (707) 874-1557 x204.

The book Fatal Harvest will be available in May, 2002. An education and organizing project called Organic and Beyond Campaign is involving the organizations of the several dozen authors represented in the book from around the U.S. and abroad. For more information on the Organic and Beyond Campaign, contact the Center for Food Safety at 800-600-6664.

A life in Pictures

The Perez Clan is getting together this New Years Eve, something it has not done in many many years. So each of us was asked to get a couple of photos of themselves through the years, to catch eveyone up. Here are mine.

My home in Fajardo

Yes, that's right folks, I'm putting my beautiful apartment on the market.


As you walk in, the living room is to your left, the dinning room and kitchen to your right. There is also a laundry room off the kitchen.


Then as you walk down the center hall, to the right is my office and a guest bedroom, at the end of the hall the guest bathroom, and on the left the master bedroom, with ensuite bath and walk in closet.
You can see from the picture that the master bedroom has floor to ceiling sliding glass doors, and with the same view as from the living room, and you can walk out to the porch directly. This is a cool apartment, as it has the constant breezes from the ocean and there is nice cross-ventilation. Up a private set of stairs, you reach the roof terrace, where I have a hammock, to better see the both the eastward view of the ocean and the westward view of El Yunque.

Capitalism and Lies. It's not the oil, it's the business!

Operation Open Eyes: FREE SCREENING OF THE MOVIE IRAQ FOR SALE

Invite your friends to attend the event!
Event Information

Event Title: Operation Open Eyes
Event Type: Iraq for Sale Screening

Get a group of friends together to see Iraq for Sale movie to open our eyes as to what is really happening in the world.

Event Date: Friday, October 6, 2006,
Event Time: 7:00 PM Eastern

Venue Name: Home of Monica Perez Nevarez
Address: Cond. Vista Real
400 Ave. A, box 129, Apt. 9-3
City: Fajardo
State: PR Zip Code: 00738
Handicapped Accessible: no

Google Maps
Phone Number:
787-863-5189
Website: guayaba.blogspot.com

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Letter to Bill Maher

Dear Bill:

First let me say I’m a great fan and I missed you. Glad to have you back!

Regarding the show that aired Friday Sept.1, 2006. For the last ten years I’ve worked as a Disaster Loan Officer for the Small Business Administration. I worked 9/11 and Katrina. So I’ve seen the disasters up close. Nagin, while not politically correct, spoke the truth when he pointed out that NYC (possibly the richest town in the US) had not recovered in five years, and Katrina had a much larger area to cover (Louisiana and Mississippi coasts, from the water to a mile inland totally destroyed; and to a lesser extent, parts of the Alabama and Texas coasts as well as inland through all those states for 30 miles, most with depressed economies).

Harry Anderson was also right when he said that he could not stay because he just had not expected this inaction on the part of the government: streets are still lined with debris. We all know what a total cluster %#*& the rescue response was (with the exception of the Coast Guard), the sluggish pace of the clean up; the national amnesia that set in after the first charity drives were exhausted; and the collective gasp when we all realized not only that America had a poor, abandoned underclass, but that America was not prepared to save it. Harry was right to leave. It’s going to take a long time for things to get back to normal in New Orleans and the Gulf.

I make my home, when not working disasters, in Puerto Rico, which is not only the last American colony on the planet, but also a third poorer than the poorest state of the Union, Mississippi. So I know what it’s like to live in a floundering regional economy of the US that gets battered both by weather and by the growing pains of the world becoming a global economy, with real unemployment running in the 20% range.

America lives in an economic society that prizes financial self-sufficiency. While it is facile to say that Washington does not care, or that insurance will not cover, or that FEMA was woefully inadequate, (all true), those things do not address the reality that none of those entities, even if you put them all together, can pay for the rebuilding of such a vast area, and make whole such a large population. And they should never be expected to.

Yes, expect the local, state and federal government to rebuild infrastructure, education and health facilities (in fits and starts). Yes, expect insurance to pay for those people that were fully covered (most people don’t have the coverage to cover a total loss, because it is too expensive, believe me, I know), but insurance is a business like any other, and if you pay to replace half the cost of your home for thirty years and at the end of thirty years you lose the whole home, you will only get half of the value, minus deductions, unless you paid the premium to get replacement value. Yes, the insurance companies are pigs about paying out money, but they run the numbers and cover their asses, and you get what you pay for. I’m not saying they’re right, I’m saying buyer beware when you buy insurance, and don’t make them the scapegoat when you are not fully insured.

Lastly, FEMA. FEMA is there to see that initially people are safe, and have food and shelter for about six months, and they ask the SBA to decide who can repay a loan and rebuild, and who gets grants. They are not set up to do anything else. Now, they didn’t even do that well in Katrina, but they should not be excoriated for failing to fulfill any other expectations. Other nations that suffer disasters don’t even have those basic services.

In the smaller disasters I worked before 9/11, such as floods or smaller hurricanes, the displacement was not even close to the massive migration that Katrina has forced upon the Gulf coast, and things were usually back to normal in a year. Victims of earlier disasters could stay with family members in the next county. Businesses could rebuild and rehire most people within a six month period. This is not the case with Katrina. All along the coast places are leveled to the ground. I have the pictures I took while there. You can see them at http://guayaba.blogspot.com/2005/10/mississippi-coast.html, but they don’t do justice to what I saw. Half a million hurricane victims had to be bussed to the surroundings states, not to nearby counties. No one can expect them to come back any time soon. What do they have to come home to? Particularly since many are finding more job opportunities in their new communities? Realistically, it will take at least a generation to rebuild the coast. And those that stick it out will have a rough few years before things get better.

Just as Europe and Japan needed the Marshall Plan to rebuild after WWII, the Gulf needs a Marshall Plan, 1) because the victims will not be able to pay two mortgages (hell, without a job they won’t be able to pay the mortgage on their destroyed homes much less building new ones! Think of the domino effect on bank foreclosures!). 2) Because the elderly will not be able to get a loan to rebuild. 3) Because (I’m willing to bet) 90% of the victims have maxed out whatever credit they had and are now desperately looking for ways to pay it down, and there are no jobs there, 4) I don’t care how many initiatives the government has, bringing in new businesses takes time, and businesses don’t do well in areas with 40% electricity or with 50% of the population still missing (those percentages are my approximation). In fact, the whole US needs a Marshall plan for all of its displaced, dispossessed, and disenfranchised. Why don’t you propose a Maher Plan?

In the SBA we historically have given loans to about 33% of all the loan applications we receive. The rest either had bad credit or were already carrying too much debt. So those people were only eligible for grants, which while free, ranged from 10,000 to 25,000. That’s it. Not enough to build a house. As we know, insurance covers some of the damage, some of the time, but in a case like Katrina, the insurance companies either fight the claims or go bankrupt, so they’re fighting. And States are fighting back with class action suits, but that just makes the lawyers rich.

While it is heart wrenching to know that inevitably, many victims will have to sell their properties just to avoid losing them in bankruptcy, or worse; and that big and small landgrabbers and present-day carpetbaggers will swoop in and take advantage of their plight for their own gain; our economic system is working just as it was set up to work. Ethical decisions are not included on the bottom line. Corporate ethics and capitalism need an infusion of humanity, a new master plan; one that includes more sharing and less grabbing.

And charity, well, charity can only go so far. I was so proud to see the hundreds of millions donated to various causes to help. I also went to sleep with the bittersweet knowledge that while appreciated, it would only serve as a stop gap. How is a single mother of three going to survive for the next two years without a home, a job, an income? On charity? The funds will run out. There are just too many people in her same situation.

Here is one piece of not-politically correct thought that I have experienced repeatedly while working disasters. Don’t put yourself in harm’s way. And if you do, prepare yourself. You cannot fight Mother Nature. She’ll batter you once, and then come at you again a few years later and do it again. And again. I’ve been to the same places over and over because in places where a flood has struck, it’s likely that there will be another flood. In some places, floods come every year. In some places, hurricanes are to be expected. Why are people caught so unawares?

I saw Spike Lees’ documentary, When the Levees Failed, and was struck by a comment made by a victim that the flooding of New Orleans should not have happened. As a disaster worker, I have to say that most everyone knew that New Orleans was a tragedy waiting to happen. There’s no “should” about it… there was only certainty. But people chose to live there. And the Army Corps of Engineers did the best they could forty years ago, and have been busy with the Mississippi since. And some people chose not to evacuate, and there was no system in place for those that wanted to but did not have the means. We have got to both protect low-lying areas and divert flood plains like the Netherlands do, or simply not let people live there, build there, and die there.

It takes six months to build a house. In New Orleans alone there are over 250,000 homes that have to be rebuilt. The existing infrastructure can house only so many construction crews, and they can only build so many houses at a time. Even for the small percentage of victims that have the money to rebuild, there will be competition for construction crews and materials. If a planned community of 150 homes takes two years to build excluding permits and financing and weather, how long will it take for the whole coast? The famous Levittowns in the fifties built only 17,000 homes in 20 years. And the developers that do come in, while happy to help, cannot carry a financial burden without making a profit, and in the process, price most victims out of their neighborhoods. That’s the housing part. The lousy part of the housing part.

Planning and constructing and funding infrastructure projects will not only take enlightened leadership within the community and the local, state and federal government, it will take the few civilians who do have homes and incomes to step forward and lead their communities back to health. I lost everything during the banking shakeup of the mid-nineties, and spent five years getting back up, but I learned that whining does no one any good. By all means ask for as much help as you possibly can, and explore every possible avenue for survival. But also face reality, pick yourself up, and persevere. You’re in a hole, not of your making, but you have to get out of it. The situation is going to be bad for many years to come. And not only does the government at every level have to get their act together, every individual has to also. And that is never an easy or comfortable thing to do. I’ve seen the faces of the people. Some in despair, some just worn out, some plain disgusted. But they are all there, fighting, and intend to stay there. And live again. They are truly inspiring.

But most of all, we need a national will to set priorities straight, to decide that we must survive together; that we need not be the world’s policeman, in fact that we should be building coalitions and sharing power; that we must take care of things at home before we do anything else; that we must face the reality that in 100 years there might not be any oil at all, and we have to start living “as if” right NOW in order to be ready; that global warming is here to stay and we have to adapt quickly; and finally we must give government a mandate to stop acting like the neighborhood bully, and start acting like a benevolent coach; and relegate the military-industrial-congressional complex to an agency subjugated to the people, not vice versa. If I spent 50% of my income on security measures I’d be a basket case too. And if I had to worry about being attacked all the time, I wouldn’t have the clearness of vision needed to take care of all the other stuff I have to take care of. Playing world dominator just because we have the money, a Texan President and a weak Congress does not make us right.

Whew!! Sorry to lay this on you, but I just had to get it off my chest. I know from listening to you that your jokes are based on your understanding of the ironies of our world. So I thought I’d let you know your listeners are grateful. And that a complex situation sometimes can’t be reduced to a witty one-liner. But it sure is entertaining to hear you discuss it.

Mónica Pérez Nevárez
guayaba@rocketmail.com

Christmas Party

The view from my bedroom

My Office and Living Room

Mari's party

My sister Maria Elena and I share a birth date (Dec. 16) even though I am two years older than she is. I have always liked celebrating my birthday and she has pointedly declined to consider that such a date exists. Ahem. Until this year. This year she gave a non-birthday party birthday at a lovely restaurant called Urdin, a trendy watering hole in San Juan, on Condado's Restaurant Row. Here she is with Jose Juan.
My brother Manuel was in attendance, as were many of Mari's friends.

Here we have the famed chef, Wilo Benet, and Vivi Tous, and on the next picture, Wilo, Vivi, Mari and Wilo's wife.

My Dad, Dr. Manuel Perez, and his wife, Lic. Yvonne Vergne, with Mari, as well as Vivi and Jose Juan.

Manuel, Jerry Quiros, and Johnny Piza were having a blast, as well as some local lovelies.


My other brother Mario and his wife Maru celebrated heartily, here with Jerry and a date.