Wallach's war: Making the difference

Wallach's war: Making the difference

Emmy Fitri, The Jakarta PostJakarta

Trade is obviously good, but when it massively favors only certain nations at the expense of others, global trade will eventually become globalized devastation.

Lobbyist and activist Lori Wallach of U.S.-based Public Citizen -- a nonprofit research and litigation institution founded by Ralph Nader in 1971 -- makes clear her unwavering support for fair trade.

A graduate of Wellesley College and Harvard Law School, Wallach clearly has the intelligence and training to back up her position.

Of course, she did not suddenly plunge into the war against unfair trade. Wallach has, according to the activist, always been sensitive to her surroundings, people and their livelihoods.

Being neutral is not in her nature, as Wallach prefers to pick a side and stand up for her beliefs. Growing up, she was sometimes called the "child lawyer" because of the frequency with which she came to the defense of her friends and even a teacher.

Born on Jan. 19, 1964, in northern Wisconsin, Wallach was in the first generation on her father's side to be born in the U.S. Her father's family came to the U.S. in 1938 after fleeing Nazi Germany.

"My parents were not political but they had a very strong sense of what is right and what's wrong and they wanted us to understand the world. So even when we were little kids we would go to places where we could see how things were different.

"Basically, our parents used to say if you believe something is right you have to stand up for it. That you just don't want people to love you or to disagree with you, but you should not just be neutral."

Wallach also saw her father work very hard in his small business to provide for his family. Her Jewish faith also shaped her belief that hell and heaven is what people make for themselves in this world. "We don't recognize life after death, so here we are with our deeds."

With her educational background and experience -- working in a public law firm for food safety and in other firms -- Wallach could have landed a cushier job with a much nicer paycheck, but these jobs did not provide her happiness, "nothing for my soul".

"I want to do work that not only provides me enough money, but also makes me happy. And it has to be something where I can make a difference."

So she worked in a public law firm, fighting for public interests. It was there that she was confronted with corporations that eluded responsibility for public safety, environmental damage and many other wrongdoings in the name of NAFTA, GATT and numerous other sophisticated trade agreements.

"Trade agreements are not merely about trade. They are linked to food inspection, taxes, environmental issues, jobs, livelihoods and wages, public health and safety, and democratically accountable governance," she said during a recent interview in Jakarta.

At the invitation of the Jakarta-based Institute for Global Justice, Wallach was here to meet with activists to discuss how to promote public awareness of the unmet promises of global trade agreements.

As a citizen of the United States, she understands that for many people in Asia, her country is seen as the source of many troublesome trade agreements and pressure in the name of the war on terrorism.

"One reason I wanted to come here is for people to understand that there is a different America. That's me, my family and my friends, and the people who live there. Because for many people in Asia, what they know of America is the corporations, and they should know corporations do not care about people in the U.S. and they do not care about people here. And they know the military.

"Many people ask me if I support the war (in Iraq)? Of course not, it just outrages me and the majority of people in the U.S. do not support the war.

"We have a president who is a fundamentalist; a different kind of fundamentalist but equally as dangerous as any fundamentalist because he's not thinking. It doesn't matter whether its fundamentalism of capitalism, fundamentalism of communism or Christian or Islamic fundamentalism," Wallach said.

She said U.S. corporations and the military were two faces of the United States that gave a bad impression of who Americans were.

"Our people were once promised that globalization would be good for them; better jobs, more democracy, development, the number of poor reduced. These have been lies. In our country poverty is increasing as it is in other countries. This is an experiment, a human experiment, very cruel, and if we are to change it we must work together.

"The reason we protested in Seattle in late 1999 in part was to tell the people in the rest of the world, 'OK, we're slow to understand. People in developing worlds, you already knew about the IMF and the World Bank. It took us a long time to understand and now we understand too and together we can fight these rules.'"

It will be a difficult fight, but the resourceful Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch Division, believes it can be won. With coauthor Michelle Sforza, in 1999 she wrote Whose Trade Organizations? Corporate Globalization and the Erosion of Democracy. She is on a tour to promote the book, which has been translated into numerous languages.

"This will give people a understanding of what's really inside these trade agreements," she said.

With the U.S. presidential elections approaching, Wallach said she had prepared strategies and tactics to continue her fight if Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry replaced Bush.

"We have organized civil society and the unions. People all across the country have been asking of all of the candidates -- what is their position on the WTO, on NAFTA. It has become the top issue in the campaign and during the end of the Democratic primary.

"So Kerry has been forced to say he's against NAFTA or NAFTA expansion, and has promised to review, in his first 120 days in office, all trade agreements."

Does that signal a light at the end of a tunnel?

"No, because it's not a war just for citizens of the U.S. It's a global war and people around the world must fight together and make the difference."