Panel #2: 2022 GPAM People’s Intervention
Specific Topics: Workers, Food Injustice and Sovereignty, Popular Culture, Youth, Neoliberal policies
Panel Chair: Mario Nisbett, GPAM
Panelists:
- Julialynne Walker, GPAM North America
- Ousseina Alidou, President, African Studies Association
- Imani Countess, Building Bridges Africa
Watch the panel:
Panel Summary
Speaker 1: Julialynne Walker, GPAM
Sister Julialynne Walker began by reminding us that our alternate summit was being held on December 10th, International Human Rights Day and the question of what is human rights leads to a necessary discussion of food as a fundamental human right. Historically, a distinction was made between human rights and socio-economic or political rights by the League of Nations and then the United Nations, which unfortunately left health and food outside the scope of human rights. Yet we are aware that basic rights, such as the right to health and life, encompass elements that cut across these categories. The intersectionality of rights, especially food rights, with other areas like civil and labor rights is crucial. Sister Julialynne reminded us that during the 1968 Black Sanitation workers strike in Memphis, a discussion of whether it was appropriate that a civil rights organization should champion labor rights, Martin Luther King Jr’s rightfully supported labor rights, in recognition of the intersection of labor, human rights, and civil rights.
Intersectionality, a term put forth by Kimberly Crenshaw in 1989, encompasses the interconnectedness of all social justice issues, including racial inequality and environmental justice. The adverse impacts of environmental injustice, often resulting from factors like air pollution and exposure, disproportionately affect people of color and low-income communities, sometimes even before birth. In talking about environmental justice, Sister Julialynne emphasized that we need to strive for fair treatment and meaningful involvement of everyone in environmental decision-making processes. Achieving equity in decision-making is vital to combat environmental injustice and the escalating climate crisis, as the most affected people tend to be the least represented. Equal access to decision-making processes is of particular significance when considering food rights.
In the journey towards food justice, food security plays a critical role as a stepping stone. Food justice aims to ensure communities have access to healthy food, which for people of African descent in the United States, has been undermined by the historical ties between redlining, food insecurity, and environmental degradation. Here, again, Sister Julialynne reminds us of the intersectionality of the burdens and populations that are most affected by issues such us the climate crisis:
“We recognize that for many areas, particularly in the United States…we look at historical issues around red lining, which has been the systematic placement of African people, poor people in specific communities around the United States. Then when [those] people have been denied funding to be able to purchase homes, or even to rent other areas of the city, [and] we look specifically, there’s a thread of areas that have been red lined, and the areas that are now suffering food insecurities, to areas that are also called heat islands…And so this correlation between the historic redlining to food insecurities to environmentalism becomes very clear to us.”
Urban heat island concept describes the lack of fresh and clean air due to the size, form, and high degree of buildings alongside the lack of tree canopies in neighborhoods that tend to house impoverished and disenfranchised populations, which also tend to be food deserts. Sister Julialynne walked us through how the question for environmental justice/the issue of the climate crisis, i.e., heat islands, cannot be extricated from the question of racial (redlining) or fundamental (food accessibility) justice.
Food insecurity, and food justice can be measured by the accessibility of affordable, nutritious food within a one-mile radius, to which close to 50 % of African American communities would be considered food insecure. Food sovereignty – the succeeding aspect of food justice – can be an empowering concept that advocates for communities to fight injustices through grassroots activism. It acknowledges the exploitative nature of the current globalized food system, which is based on exploitative relations with oppressed communities driven by the capitalist mode of production, distribution, and consumption. Understanding the nature of the system that is not working is especially important when designing solutions in our communities. For instance, Sister Julialynne discussed Free produce programs, which while beneficial, is entwined with the capitalist modes of production and distribution, and does not challenge the current food system. Free produce programs also do not necessarily provide nutritious food, nor do they distribute food effectively, but the programs guarantee benefits to the food banks and the corporations donating to the food banks by providing them with tax breaks.
At the end of the day, we need fundamental changes that lead to transforming the current food systems, but we also need to move towards food justice within the existing mechanisms. Giving an important example, Sister Julialynne talked about the Justice for Black Farmers bill recently passed by Congress. The bill acknowledges the U.S. government’s role in denying Black people access to land and resources, and provides pathways to land ownership, education, and technical assistance that can promote self-sufficiency. Sister Julialynne explained why such solutions are important in the context of reparative justice:
“And it [Justice for Black Farmers Act] said very specifically, that there will be a fund within the Department of Agriculture that would allow any individual of African descent up to 120 acres, and the federal government would pay for that land, once the individual has identified it. Then the HBCUs, as well as other selected universities, tertiary institutions would also provide a curriculum to allow for people to learn farming. And then thirdly, there was the context for technical assistance, and this is important for in the context of reparative justice, because it really talks about transforming society”
Speaker 2: Ousseina Alidou, President, ASA
Sister Ousseina Alidou began by sharing her work as linguist, which focuses on African youth, in communities that have been dispossessed from their land and whose children has been subject to a life of precarity with some choosing treacherous routes of migrations, and others choosing to make due with what they have. For those that stay behind, they have chosen popular culture, specifically hip-hop, to express the realities of their lives in Africa. This is partly why we need to underscore the importance of considering alternative communicative methods and media platforms to capture African and Black voices and responses to social justice issues. Sister Ousseina demonstrated the use of popular culture (global vernacular) and African vernacular strategies by African youth to articulate the plight of many Africans suffering from limited public health access, food shortages, and the recent impact of COVID-19 vaccine shortages induced by the global north.
In any discussion of the deteriorating public health structure (incapable of effectively responding to COVID-19), we must consider the decades of neoliberal policies imposed on African countries and the relations of production that have since evolved:
“Although health care is considered a basic human right by the World Health Organization’s constitution of 2017, African countries have been led by neoliberal institutions to adopt reforms in the health sector that have caused the deterioration of a basic public healthcare system, [while] pushing for privatization, which has produced health inequalities under stratification of healthcare services. Neoliberal policies…have therefore produced a category of disempowered people whose health needs are subordinated to the market. The imposition of out of pocket payment policies have systematically excluded the majority of the underprivileged population, unemployed and low income classes without the financial means to access privatized health care, controlled by multinational predatory insurance companies.”
The aftermath of neoliberal reforms on African public health care systems must be characterized as violence against the common good. As some have argued, neoliberal reform and the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP) imposed on much of Africa are cases of structural violence that affects the most vulnerable societies and limits human rights. Public health crises were further instigated by COVID 19 and vaccine apartheid, but neoliberal policies had already dismantled public health services and ability to respond to pandemics. Even before the pandemic, Africa was not set to reach any healthcare millennium development goals, and the majority of the population did not have access to a functional public health care system, with 48% of Africans indicated as having no access to essential medicine. Sister Ousseina also doubled down on Sister Julialynne’s explanation on how the question of health rights cannot be extricated from questions of land and food rights.
Sister Ousseina also touched on the consequences of government-imposed lockdowns, which failed to consider intersections between health, well-being (nutrition), and economic resources. Much like economic policies, governments that implemented lock-down policies, did not consider the material availability and accessibilities of the people whose lives the lockdown most impacted. The most impacted included those who did not have food security or those whose livelihood depended on access to the streets during lockdown hours. She shared incidents of violent confrontations between the Nigerian state security forces and people who lacked resources to feed their families during lockdowns. She cited songs and performances by young African artists that deconstruct these conditions of economic violations and social violations that essentially violate human dignity. The political satires highlighted how COVID-19 cut across class, and could not be escaped by those who could not only afford local privatized healthcare but also going abroad to countries with better healthcare systems. In this way, African youth have expressed how the lockdown has served as a check on the political elite who previously used national resources for personal healthcare needs. Much like the concerns of African Americans shared by Sister Julialynne, Sister Ousseina cited the lyrics of a song, to show access to land and water remain in the political expressions of youth in Africa.
Speaker 3: Imani Countess, Building Bridges Africa
Sister Imani Countess discussed the impact of illicit financial flows (IFF) from Africa, the debt crisis, and unfair tax systems, which directly impact African workers. Sister Imani shared how
“illicit financial flows cost the continent an estimated $88 billion per year, money that would have boosted government revenue for sustainable development; tax structures that make it easy for multinationals, particularly those in the extractive sector [to] pay little to no tax while demanding tax breaks from governments and local communities. The debt crisis that along with tax and illicit financial flows, contributes to Africa’s under development. In this context of deep structural economic inequality workers, all workers are deeply impacted.”
In this respect, structural economic inequalities embedded in the global economic architecture are deeply impacting workers, and undermining the ability of governments to fund social protection measures, public health, social security, and social welfare programs.
Although African governments seem committed to social protection on paper, coverage remains limited. The International Labor Organization (ILO) reports that only 17% of the total population in Africa receives at least one social protection benefit, as opposed to the global average of 47%. There has been some movement to develop strategies by the ILO and the African Union, but these strategies fall short of the comprehensive solution necessary. In order for African governments to increase social protection coverage, there needs to be a “focus on industrialization, gender equality, and changing the global economic architecture that facilitates the exploitation of African resources.”
Based on the distinction between ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ workers in Africa, Sister Imani indicated how the latter group makes up the majority of workers in Africa. The ‘informality’ of African workers is better understood in the precarity of their working conditions rather than their contribution to global economic structure, and the ‘formality’ of workers is best understood in the contractual nature of their exploitation. Sister Imani added that it is important for labor organizers to understand the terrain in Africa:
“when we travel to the continent, we see the informal economy everywhere. Yes, in the markets and street vendors and cross border traders, but it’s not just the markets that the construction workers are mainly informal. There are small businesses that are informal, [like] repair shops. If I for example, go to Zimbabwe and I even if I’m living there, and I need a table or whatever, I can go to a retail store, or I can go to an area in Harare, where carpenters congregate. and work, I can buy a table there from the workers themselves or go to a retail store that sources materials from those workers, right…”
Precarious workers in particular sectors, such as gold and diamond mining, often skirt the edge of legality, function under horrible working conditions, which is why strong labor organizing remains important.
Africa has a history of trade unionism, which played significant roles in decolonization and national liberation efforts, with perhaps South Africa’s COSATU as the most well known. Today’s weakened post-colonial economies and deindustrialization have marginalized unions, but “African unions exist” and are expanding their understanding of who is a worker and recognizing their responsibility to advocate for unaffiliated workers and protections that advance all workers. Sister Imani reiterated the need to understand the nature of the worker and the conditions of working peoples in Africa, which
“requires setting aside or expanding the basic foundations of the global labor movement. Foundational concepts historically have been based upon industrial relationships with a focus on working conditions, wages and representation structures that are based upon a shared position within the organization of production approaches that in Africa are insufficiently grounded, and that have lost ground to the reality of precarious and informal employment…Unions here in the United States are facing similar questions in relation to what we call, you know, we might call the the gig economy right, which is the economy in most of Africa.”
In this respect, there’s a strong need to address gender inequality within unions and society at large. Not only because a Pan African Social Reproduction framework would place women’s house and care work as central to other forms of work, but also because women face more precarity and lower wages in the work sector, and continue to bear the brunt of gender-based violence in the workplace and society. Studies and efforts to achieve gender equality within unions have shown some progress, but the results often fall short of full equality. Unions typically accept only token representation of women’s leadership, often in posts dealing with gender issues. Despite efforts to shift power relationships in unions, desired changes leading to increased power for women within unions, and control over union resources, policies and priorities have not been reached. As we aggressively work towards eliminating internal inequalities within our own structures, Sister Imani emphasized that the global economic architecture must remain “front and center.”
