March 6, 2002
The Milwaukee city council voted 13-1 yesterday to endorse the World Bank Bonds Boycott, and urged the State of Wisconsin Investment Board, which currently holds $35 million in bonds issued by the World Bank, to do the same.
"With this resolution, we have begun to shed the light on what the World Bank's policies of corporate globalization are doing not only around the world but also in our community," said Milwaukee Alderman Don Richards, the lead sponsor of the boycott resolution. "Our resolution points out that World Bank policies undermine international labor rights and standards, under which business in the United States is conducted. We are asking that the World Bank be scrutinized and fundamentally reformed before any more Wisconsin State Investment funds be entrusted to it."
The Milwaukee vote comes in the context of the World Bank Bonds Boycott campaign, a growing global initiative which is pressuring the World Bank to make fundamental changes. The campaign is based on the fact that the World Bank raises a majority of its operating funds by issuing bonds on the private financial market. Since its launch by civil society groups from more than 30 global South countries and the U.S. in April 2000, the campaign has gotten more than four dozen institutional investors to commit not to buy World Bank bonds, including San Francisco, Oakland, 10 investment firms with more than $16 billion in investments, and dozens of religious institutions and labor unions.
Jim Carpenter, an economics instructor at Milwaukee Area Technical College and member of the Wisconsin Fair Trade Campaign, which led the 9-month campaign to garner public support for the resolution, said, "I am not surprised that this resolution passed. Milwaukee is living proof of failed policies of corporate globalization. Numerous students in my economics class are displaced industrial workers who've seen their jobs leave town because of policies promoted by the World Bank and so-called free trade agreements."
"We are taking the effort the expose the unjust policies of the World Bank and IMF from the streets to the suites of institutional investors with this campaign," said Neil Watkins, the campaign's coordinator at Center for Economic Justice in Washington. "We are thrilled that the Milwaukee city council adopted the boycott but also note that this is just the beginning, as we are expanding our work with local coalitions in cities and among institutional investors across the country."
The World Bank Bonds Boycott calls on the World Bank Group to cancel 100% of debts owed to it by impoverished countries, stop destructive 'structural adjustment' and similar policies, and end all lending for oil, gas, mining, and dam projects.
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