Washington, DC — TransAfrica, the Washington,DC-based lobby group, is to undergo major changes in its leadership. Danny Glover, the well-known actor and activist, is becoming the organization's board chair. Randall Robinson is stepping down as president, the position he has held since the organization's founding in 1976. Long-lime labor union activist Bill Fletcher Jr., one of the organizers of the Black Radical Congress, is considered the front-runner to take over as his replacement.
To mark the transition, TransAfrica is hosting a tribute tonight to Robinson and outgoing chairman Edward Lewis, founder and chief executive of the board of Essence Communications. Here are excerpts from Glover's interview with allAfrica.com's Charles Cobb Jr
Just where is TransAfrica now? The question that people in Washington ask as they walk by the TransAfrica building is "what's going to happen with that? What kind of programs will TransAfrica be doing?"
I think some of the programs will deal with what's on the agenda now for Africa. One,the HIV/Aids crisis, the issue of connecting reparations to debt relief or canceling the debt. Certainly, particularly for countries in the Caribbean, would be an analysis of this neo-liberal model which promotes tourism in the absence of real development. We have to look at that in relationship to Africa as well. Globalization and its impact; its social cost to countries on the continent. Those are some of the kinds of issues that TransAfrica needs to focus on, should focus on.
And what about Randall Robinson? Will he maintain a relationship with TransAfrica?
He'll be on the board; he'll be one of the board members. Right now it looks as if Johnnie Cochran will be a board member. We plan to expand the board. I'm chairing the Board of Directors and I have several ideas for people I would like to be on the board. It would be wonderful to bring someone who is actually from the continent and someone who is actually from the Caribbean and have them on the board. Certainly I think that advocating policy or monitoring policy around Africa and the Caribbean is still a necessity. Even now as we look at the issues around security and certainly around the U.S.'s national objectives and international objectives I think more than ever we have to be out there.
This opens a way to segue into the Racism Conference in Durban and all the issues that cropped up there that seem to have been lost since September 11. You were there and I'm just wondering, where are we with that?
Anytime you have a conference like that, certainly there is a large fallout, enormous ramifications in a conference like that. And, I believe, with those ramifications an extended dialogue that happens. And all that dialogue has been pushed aside because of events surrounding this war on terrorism. There are critical issues connected to whatever stability that we are talking about. If we're talking about stability in the real sense of the word - in a real sense not just the arbitrariness of military conquest - then we have to talk about development, we have talk health; we have to talk about supporting civil society in various countries and allowing the real flow of democratic participation in various countries. But there is an inherent contradiction in that to some degree. Because if we look at globalization in the form that it is taking now, it's been more friendly to those who have capital and money and the ability to expand their capital and money. Those without this ability, become non-voices in this process. What you saw at Durban was those people who were most victimized by globalization, civil society and NGOs, those people who are on the ground and who have no voice in this [globalization] process. Whether it's through the WTO, whether it's through ratification of agreements like NAFTA, or whatever, you see that all of these have had an enormous impact of people on the ground.
An example of the kind of globalization issues that Randall and TransAfrica have been in the forefront on are these small Caribbean countries whose economies are based on the growing and exporting of bananas. Before the new arrangements that have been made with the European Union they had a "set-aside," where the EU would buy a certain amount of their production, so they could count on some foreign exchange and some money coming in as a result of that. And the Clinton administration fought to eliminate those set-asides because of its relationship with a particular banana grower. Those are the kinds of issues that I think TransAfrica has to face. This particular issue [with bananas], though Caribbean, is a reflection of what is happening in the rest of the world as we move forward with those very glorious, seemingly all-encompassing, terms of globalalization or whatever.
Even if we look at "the war on drugs" - we have a "war on terrorism", certainly there is a war on drugs as well - there always has to be a "war on" something. One of the main countries involved in this war on drugs is Colombia. Afro-Colombians have been most victimized by this war as have African-Americans in this country - look at the Rockefeller drug laws, the incarceration rates of African-Americans. All of that this is connected, in relationship to each other. Even when we talked about the civil rights movement it was in some sense connected to liberation movements around the world.
Did that discussion actually happen in Durban? From the outside it seemed the conference was hijacked by this Middle East issue
Well, part of it was hijacked. There were two parts of this Durban conference -- two stages, let's say. The first stage which very few people have talked about was a youth convention. It took place before the 28th of August. On the 28th, the NGO portion of the conference began and that lasted for three days. The NGO portion dealt with the Dalaks or so-called "untouchables" in India, issues around race, gender and development. There was a panel on borders and the militarization of borders around the world. All of this was conducted by NGOs. One of the panels on race, gender and development was sponsored by the United Nations Development Program - UNDP. There were a number of groups attending that conference at various workshops around those issues. And simultaneously another section of the conference basically involved heads of states and government officials.
At that conference Jesse Jackson said he'd now seen the light and was now going to pick up the reparations issue. What do you think about that?
There was a large contingent of African-Americans who came to the conference and came at their own expense. They often were not really part of the agenda in some ways, I believe, although I'm not sure. But they positioned themselves to talk about reparations. One of the phenomenal things about that was that not only were they able to talk about reparations, but they were able to do so in the same kind of context that Afro-Brazilians or Afro-Colombians were talking about reparations, or Africans were talking about debt relief. When you begin to take all this into consideration, we each can play a role in supporting each other's agenda. What I saw was this enormous possibility to reconfigure alliances -- part of what made this conference special. You can have people talking about all poverty, health, gender, and at the same time connect all those issues to race as well.
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Do you think there will be another conference? Is another conference needed?
Yes. I thought that given the fact that people came together and were there - they may have disagreed or agreed on things - the fact that it happened was extraordinary. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus came and vowed at that time that they were going to put together another conference on American soil. I don't know if it will happen in the U.S. but as we move past September 11, these issues that were discussed at Durban will need to be reinvigorated. You cannot talk about security without talking about what is happening to people most affected by the historic and present situation in terms of the distribution of wealth. And you cannot talk about security - and "security" is the key word, for the world, for the planet - unless everybody is at the table.
If citizens here are willing at some point to move past the pain, past the anger and past the confusion and fear exacerbated by the September 11 event, then you can talk about security in a different way. If we're capable of doing that, then we'll make certain demands on those who pretend to represent us, that when we talk about security, everybody is at the table. Now is the time to talk about and have empathy for everyone else's situation and not just our own situation. If that comes about, the next time there is a conference or when there is a conference on race, or when there is a conference on development, we will not push it aside. We will not be absent from it. And we will not dismiss it.
