Washington, DC — While the Free South Africa Movement, and the fight to change U.S. policy toward Haiti gave TransAfrica Forum much of its visibility in the 1990s, the African-American organization faces a more difficult task now, says the group's board chairman, actor and activist Danny Glover.
When TransAfrica was formed in 1977, Glover told a National Press Club luncheon, Tuesday, "the enemy was obvious and indisputable... We could train a spotlight on the South African apartheid regime and galvanize a movement. The goals seemed clear and straightforward; the results easy to measure."
Now, however, he said: "TransAfrica Forum has huge new challenges... The goal is to create a just, safe, and sustainable planet, not only for us, but also for people around the world. This is not charity or altruism. Peace, security, and justice are in our collective self-interest."
Glover declared that the organization considers the fight for "global justice" as its mandate and is committed to a set of "interconnected core principles" that represent a "multi-prong agenda" labeled DARAS by TransAfrica president Bill Fletcher. "It spells nothing but means a great deal."
The five-letter acronym stands for Debt relief, Aids, Reparations, Agricultural subsidies and Sovereignty.
Glover acknowledged that some of the elements may be more easily understood than others. Domestic reparations for U.S. descendants of enslaved Africans may be understood, for example, but "TransAfrica Forum takes a global stand on reparations that goes back 500 years to the African continent."
"Sovereignty," Glover explained, "is a fundamental right of all nations to determine their own economies - not dictated by the genius of the International Monetary Fund or George W. Bush - based on their own needs and democratic aspirations."
Although Africa and the Caribbean remain areas of key concern to TransAfrica, said Glover, "We are determined to inject an informed African-American perspective into [foreign] policy discussions and to challenge prevailing assumptions about the world and our place in it. Part of TransAfrica Forum's mission is to bring more people and more ideas to the table of U.S. foreign policy."
One of TransAfrica's immediate priorities, said the organization's president Bill Fletcher, speaking to allAfrica.com afterward, centers on sweatshop labor, particularly in Africa. TransAfrica is working with the New York-based Union of Needle Trades, Industrial and Technical Employees to support sweatshop workers in Lesotho.
"I just came back from Southern Africa where I was in Lesotho for a couple of days; particularly since Agoa [Africa Growth and Opportunity Act] passed you have this proliferation of sweatshops. You wouldn't belive how bad conditions are. I went to one place called 'The Valley of Death' in the capital. Right in the back of two factories there's this blue water that's going into this field. It's what they dye jeans with - a steady stream, like ink."
Fletcher is a Harvard University-trained specialist in international labor issues. He was formerly AFL-CIO Vice-President for international trade union development programs.
Part of TransAfrica's task, said Fletcher, "is to challenge this path of economic development. There needs to be an approach toward Africa which encourages respect for worker rights, which encourages respect for the environment and which really does elevate the continent."
TransAfrica is also "beginning work" on developing a Southern African Trade Union Leadership Academy, said Fletcher. "Although TransAfrica is not going to be mainly about delivering services overseas, capacity building work to support people on the ground is a contribution I think we can make."
TransAfrica is also trying to build a "student network" said Fletcher. "We want to talk with them about these programs that we want to push and encourage them around issues in foreign policy."
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Echoing Glover's press club remarks, Fletcher said "building a more organized constituency on foreign affairs within Black America," is crucial. "This is not just about the African world. we should have as much to say about the stupid, arrogant and illegal war against Iraq as we do about Agoa. There's Nato expansion. Venezuela. I'm not interested in building a cheering squad that applauds me when I talk, or Danny when he talks. I'm really looking to mobilize regular people who are concerned about these issues. I think we need Black voices speaking out on all of these issues."
Fletcher, who became TransAfrica President a year ago, encountered a deep budget deficit. "People don't realize what difficulty we were in when I took over, but we are stable right now, in the black," he said. Not that money isn't still a great need, Fletcher hastened to add. "We need a major, major infusion of money for our long-term projects. There's been a lot of good will, but that hasn't necessarily translated into dollars. That's probably our biggest single challenge."
