This is what I just wrote over in the forum about Naomi Klein’s article, Fences of Enclosure, Windows of Possibility. Please don’t leave any comments here on the blog - instead go over to the forum and let’s get a discussion going on a topic that has a lot of people - me included - confused.

Naomi Klein’s essay gets right to the heart of the globalization debate while adding an interesting twist. Her basic thesis is that neo-liberalism -the reduction of import and export taxes (and often less social spending) - creates a larger gap between the rich and the poor. She writes:

After all, the past decade of economic integration has been fuelled by promises of barriers coming down, of increased mobility and greater freedom.

Yet instead we see more and more borders, restrictions, and privatizations. Not only that, but items that were once free for all (like plants) are now the property of corporate patent holders.

NAFTA has ensured United States clothing manufacturers cheap labor south of the border to make shirts that they can sell in US malls for 30x profit, but then nearly doubles the budget of the Border Patrol, to keep Mexicans wanting to earn an equal wage out.

She notes that instead of protests, riots, and revolutions, the victims of globalization, “simply move: from countryside to city, from country to country. And that’s when they come face to face with distinctly unvirtual fences, the ones made of chain link and razor wire, reinforced with concrete and guarded with machine guns.”

They move to places where they are considered illegal to exist and are scared away from standing up for their rights. Neo-liberal rhetoric has managed to convince “illegal” immigrants that they are lucky for receiving a minimum wage job that no one else will work without benefits. And there are few people telling them otherwise.

Even Adam Smith - mister free trade himself - wrote that the free movement of goods cannot function correctly without the free movement of people. The glorified effeciency of free trade comes about not just because products are made where they are best suited, but because they are made by whom they are best suited.

It is time we re-think our ideas about borders, restrictions, nationalism, and property and I hope that this is a place where we can help each other do just that.

Please, please, please. Read Klein’s essay, read the Keep On Crossin manifesto and write your thoughts. And if no thoughts come to your head, you can respond to my contraversial belief:

I believe that all people from all countries should be allowed to travel, live, and work wherever they want. If a person is qualified for a job they should be allowed to work at that job and be afforded the same wage and rights as anyone doing the equivelant work. Anything else will lead to fascism. What do you think?

(the forum … go to the forum!)