 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news round up. Okay, we will lean in. Lean in. Hello. Welcome to Give the People. Wait a minute. What? We're all together in the same place? Or we've done something fantastic to our screen. No, for the first time ever, historical, look at our own selfie. Give the people what they want. Brought to you from People's Dispatch. That's Zoe and Prashant. Your weekly... Oh, sorry. Your every day, every hour movement news. Best place to go. People's Dispatch.org. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. Super happy to be with you and it's amazing to be together. Again, this is show 91. Nine shows from now. We'll be at 100. We really expect you a delightful audience to do something special for us. Treat 100 shows like a better than birthday kind of thing. So you better rattle, bang the pants, rattle the chains, make a lot of noise out there. 100 shows coming up. We're with you just outside Sao Paulo, Brazil. Happy to be together. Happy to be with you. Lots of difficult shows, stories to come to you with. This has been a tough period for the international left. Prashant, you have a particularly sad story to recount partly because you're going to talk about somebody who we all knew personally, who was an avid reader of People's Dispatch. Prashant. Right. Of course, we are referring to Indakul Emguni, the activist leader of Abhalali Basse Majandolo, the South African Shagdwellers movement. And he was assassinated very recently, very brutal murder. Part of a series of murders of activists of that movement that have been taking place. We know of two very similar murders this year that took place. At the level of us. So, and I and Angela, which took place over the past few months. And it's unfortunate. It's depressing. It's tragic that we keep coming back to these stories again and again, because what we have seen is very clearly a systematic effort, a systematic attempt to target members of this movement. But at the same time, there is no effort by the state to offer them the kind of protection they require, despite the fact that these sets up patently obvious for members of the movement for anybody who observes the situation right now. And this also brings, I think, every time something like this happens, we talk about this. But the reason these activists, these militants are targeted so systematically is because Abhalali Basse Majandolo is today probably one of the most unique movements around the globe. The fact that it is a movement which tells its members that the people who are homeless are not just recipients of aid, or they're not just, you know, passive people who are to be, who are to receive patronage or anything. But they're active subjects who take up political agency, who struggle for dignity, who continuously fight, you know, not only for their livelihood, but also to be recognized as political actors. And that is at the base of Abhalali Basse Majandolo's work. So for instance, if you look at the Ekhanana settlement with whom Anguni was so powerfully engaged with, they basically built shacks out of nothing with no support at all. They set up a poultry farm, they set up agricultural produce, you know, farms, they set up a political school. And they built this entire movement which was really clearly not to the liking of the overlords of the political party in that area. And there have been continuous attacks on them over the past, you know, past many years. In fact, in fact, Anguni is the 24th leader of this movement to have been assassinated since it was founded in 2005. And that itself is testimony to the fact that this movement is clearly upsetting a lot of powerful people. This movement is clearly seeking to overturn the established order that is there. So a very tragic moment for, I think, leftists across the world. In fact, if you read Abhalali Basse Majandolo's statement on the assassination of the activists, it talks about someone who was so constructively and so passionately engaged not only with the realities of his commune, of his occupation, but with the realities of people across the world. We know for a fact, for instance, that even when he was in prison on unfounded charges, he was twice in prison on unfounded charges. He organized a reading circle inside prison for that matter. If you also look at the fact that he went to Swaziland as part of the solidarity mission. So keeping all these things in mind, a very tragic moment. But the comrades of Abhalali Basse Majandolo determined that they'll continue the struggle. Determined to continue the struggle because these are people who are part of the one billion people on the planet who live in shacks of this kind, one billion people. Everything that they've been asking for, of course, is established in the sustainable development goal. I mean, it's not present like they're asking for something that's outside the liberal consensus, which is the right to a house. Well, you ask for a right to a house, you get assassinated. That's the state of the world in which we are. Well, you know, Zoe and I have done this show before in the same location. I must admit that at one point we were on our knees and I, being an older person, found my knees cramping up. This time, I'm happy to say we're sitting in chairs, Zoe. Well, there's somebody sitting in a chair who's been under enormous attack. It's not that Christina Kirschner's never been attacked before, but this seems to be a particularly vicious attack against her. What's happening in Argentina? So hard to understand all the ins and outs of what's going on. It is definitely hard to understand. And also it's a little terrifying. So, Christina Fernandez Kirschner, she's currently the vice president of Argentina. As you said, she's been under attack before. She was president of the country, a very divisive figure. She attacked, she attracted a lot of hate from the right wing in the country because she was fighting for land, housing, and dignity for the people of Argentina. She became president after Néstor Kirschner passed on and then was reelected. And she really tried to speak with the people and have this dialogue. She echoed a lot of Eva Perón, someone who was a leader that was embedded in the masses and responding to the masses and their needs. The Argentinian people emerging from the worst economic crisis in history. And Christina speaks to them and asks what they need, what they want. And right now she's been vice president for a couple of years with Alberto Fernandez. The government is in an extreme crisis. It's dealing with the debt crisis. It's dealing with a split within the ruling coalition. There's been political challenge after political challenge. You know, at the same time people in her front are attempting to bring Macri to justice for having stolen the money from the IMF. This is the whole context. But because, as you mentioned, that there's so many attacks against Christina, she's been one of the foremost victims of lawfare, which is a process that we've seen across Latin America. We're in Brazil right now. Luda da Silva was one of the victims of this lawfare campaign. Happened in Ecuador as well, Rafael Correa, Jorge Glas. Many, many people from this progressive wave were hit with corruption allegations with a series of different accusations because the judiciary has largely been controlled by the right wing under their governments. They weren't able to really shift this and this right wing judiciary that has deep connections to the media, has deep connections to the right wing, established power, economic power, launched these campaigns against them. Christina has dozens, even hundreds of accusations against her for different charges of corruption. There's been many times where there's been threats of is she going to go to prison? Will she not be able to exercise political roles? And this time, essentially in this context of great instability of a lot of divisions within the government, in one of the cases that she's being investigated for, a judge made a ruling that she should be sent to prison for 12 years and be suspended from all political positions. And in response to this, there's been a mass wave of support. There's been for the past five days, members of movements in Argentina, mass movements who are extremely in support of Christina have been mobilizing outside of her house in a permanent vigil. Christina herself made a three hour speech to the Congress in outlining how not only is the judge that was calling for her, sorry, the prosecutor that was calling her to be investigated, has links to Mauricio Macri, but also the judge and that they're friends and they've played soccer together at the house of Macri. These are important political connections that exist. There's no, there's no accident that these people are in cahoots and at the same time that people that she's politically affiliated with are trying to investigate Macri for the crimes that he committed against the Argentinian people, stealing this money, stealing the money of the Argentinian people to save them from this, you know, economic crisis. And so this is happening. There is an imminent threat that she could be arrested. The possibility does exist of of course the presidential immunity. She is a vice president. She does have this level of immunity. Many say though she wants to take this route to show that she's innocent. Similar to what Lula da Silva did when he was investigated for corruption crimes and eventually absolved a lot of different investigations showing that this was a fabricated accusation. This judge, for example, the prosecutors allegedly found evidence and she's actually uncovered herself, her and her team. A lot of this evidence was planted that it wasn't real, that it was, you know, manipulated. And so she is very firm in proving her innocence and maintaining that this is attack, a coordinated attack from the right wing and that she will be, that she will prove her innocence and be victorious in this case. And as you earlier talked about Argentina of course is in the more, in the mouth of the IMF and there's a lot of pressure on, on Argentina to in fact deepen those ties with the International Monetary Fund to return to Western capital markets and in a way the debate inside the ruling coalition has been led by Christina Kirchner and the attack on her in fact, weakens the left inside the coalition because Argentina like much of the world is dealing with inflation. We just saw this week in Dhaka scenes that resembled what was seen in Colombo, Colombo in Sri Lanka, Ganeshakti, Andolan for instance led by Zunaid Saki on the street there getting hammered by the police. What were they on the street for? They want to put on the table the fact that inflation rates have gone up. Now, global inflation according to a new study that's out from UNTAD, the UN Congress Conference on Trade and Development UNTAD shows that global inflation is just about around 2%, 1.8 something percent but this is a number that makes no sense because it's awfully uneven. I mean you have Armenia where the inflation rate is about almost 8% and climbing. Well, what is this inflation based upon? I just want to share with you some data points from the UNTAD report. The most stunning data point of course is food price rise. Since December 2019 food prices have gone up globally 37%. Now again, it's great unevenness in some places what are considered to be staples are no longer within the ability of people to buy them in Pakistan for instance there have been protests upon protests against tax authorities because as staple prices rise people are just unable to deal with paying taxes or paying for instance their electric bills and so on. Electric bills well that's important. Crude oil prices since January of this year up 22%. That's a striking number but listen don't take crude oil as a measure of anything. Here's the number that shocked me. Shipping prices up 14%. There's been very little public discussion about this. Why are shipping prices so much higher? Some of it has to do with the fuel price rise. It's not only that in fact the disruptions of the pandemic around the shipping industry have not actually been fully settled so it remains the case that ships are not in a rhythm of carrying goods back and forth. They continue to be an imbalance. There are too many ships in one place too few ships in another. Shipping companies have been having to fly their cruise from port to port to find people to get on board ships and so on. Don't get involved in the details. The base point is if shipping prices are up, if fuel prices are up this means food prices are going to continue to skyrocket. This is a catastrophe for countries like Bangladesh hence the protests. It's a catastrophe for countries like Pakistan hence the protest but it's been an even deeper catastrophe even though hunger rates have not as dramatically in Europe it's a deeper catastrophe for Europe. It's not just a catastrophe actually for the moment for now now Europe might be able to in fact you know weather some of the storms because they have capital surpluses in the country foreign exchange reserves and so on. Here's the problem that Europe is going to face right now as a consequence of the continued conflict in Ukraine as a consequence of that aluminum production has gone to zero. Zinc smelting has gone to zero fertilizer production has collapsed this is going to have an impact not for next year alone not for the following year alone but for several years because to put production back at a regular footing is going to take time to establish it can't just be done you know in a matter of months. Europe is going to actually have a long-term problem many European people retail analysts and so on have been saying things like Europe is entering a quote-unquote winter recession that's not a recession for the coming winter friends that means a long-term recession which Europe may not be able to recover from you're getting a lot of this information at places like people's dispatch and a globetrotter partly because many of you might not be going out and reading the financial press where some of this information is available but I must tell you that the non-financial mainstream press has not been covering the depth of this crisis and it's in one reason why you see the crisis reflected not in the newspapers as such but in popular demonstrations good reason for you to bookmark peoplesdispatch.org follow the globetrotter stories good reason for you to do that because we've been covering the crisis in Sri Lanka which is in a sense one of the first massive popular uprisings against the inflation this was an inflation riot that took place in Sri Lanka it overthrew the government but that new government that came in essentially remains part of the old regime they've been at it again the emergency continues now they're resting students Prashant what's happening in Sri Lanka. Right Vijay so you mentioned the inflation issue and of course very important to note that inflation has been skyrocketing in Sri Lanka the overall inflation is in the 60s food inflation right now I think as opposed to June is around 82% it was 75% in June so what we're seeing is right now definitely an economic crisis that is nowhere close to subsiding in Sri Lanka and the government declared a default some months ago there's some plan of a loan with the IMF it's going to take a long time to work out and even if it does work out the crisis nowhere close to ending because we know what the IMF brings it's more conditions more austerity and more suffering so you would think that the Ranil Vikram Singh government is actually has its hands full with the crisis like this the country you know saw massive protests last week but what it has been doing is basically attacking anybody who is raising their voice against the government and the most latest victims were students who stepped out to protest in the third week of August immediately the day after the emergency that was there for almost a month and after these students protest police repression took place many were detained a lot of them were released on bail after that but three students members the Inter-University Student Federation student leaders including Vasanth have been charged with the prevention of terrorism act now this is really you know it's incredible on many counts because of the one hand what we're seeing is Ranil Vikram Singh came to power in July after people had very thoroughly clearly deposed the Gautabhaya Rajapaksa government both his brother as the Prime Minister and Gautabhaya himself there was this ground with a wave of anger against the government at that point at various points you know members of the government it's really addressing concerns of the protesters etc etc but from the day Ranil Vikram Singh assumed the office of the president formally he has unleashed a wave of repression lot of arrests taking place of people who were involved in the protests you know he's called people who are and now we have the prevention of terrorism act being used against these student leaders now this is important because like in many countries across the world the prevention similar prevention of terrorism acts are basically laws which are so vaguely defined which are so omnibus that anybody who challenges the government in any way can be branded a terrorist and then is put inside jail most of their protections are taken away and this law for instance is a long history of being misused against people of the Tamil minority for instance they were attempts to amend the law but it's still not really worked so it's actually very telling that at this point of time at a time when the people of the country are so angry we have basically a government which uses to use a prevention of terrorism act anti-terrorism act against student protesters so that really says everything that you need to know about the Ranil Vikram Singh a government it's basically completely a continuation of what has been happening in the past not so important to know that Ranil Vikram Singh became the president very little to zero legitimacy he was an MP of a party he was the only MP of the party when he was made interim prime minister and then he became interim president so he's not been elected he is one of the most unpopular prime ministers of recent times he's also an equally unpopular president but instead of trying to address this crisis of legitimacy what he's been basically doing is attacking protesters so very tough time for Sri Lankans in the coming weeks and months on the one hand this crisis on the other hand attempts to speak up being crushed brutally this idea of using terrorism terrorist laws against protesters and so on at a time of high inflation not restricted to Sri Lanka in Pakistan it's well I think important to mention that the former prime minister is now facing terrorism charges from the government that overthrew him this is going to happen more and more Pakistan a country that of course for Pakistan had military coups another country that had military coups simultaneous with Pakistan was of course Chile now we're going to have our show next week which will also be before the election where the Chilean people will put their thumb prints on whether they want a new constitution or not but I think it's important to check in on this way because boy Chile politics very interesting and strange definitely so as you said on September 4 the people of Chile around 15 million voters will have the option possibility well voting is actually a mandatory so they most likely will vote in this referendum on the new constitution and we've talked about this new constitution on prior shows how did it come about what's the history I'll just give a brief history so the Chilean constitution is currently in effect was written during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and for many Chileans this constitution really enshrines the unequal neoliberal model which characterizes Chilean society today many of the reasons that people participated in the massive uprising in 2019 was precisely because of these demands to have access to education access to healthcare public pensions access to housing and many other things having to deal with the role of the church you know access to abortion and many other things and this uprising one of the concrete you know products of it one of the concrete victories of the uprising was to demand that there be a possibility to rewrite the constitution and so it's been a very long process from 2019 until now throughout this time we've seen the election of Gavir Abordic who's a progressive leader a former student leader who has you know rose to prominence and really of course his victory has to be seen in the context of this uprising but at the same time the demand of the constitutional convention was also brought forward and so this is a space that was created during the elections and people were nominated to participate in this constitutional convention representing diverse sectors of society so there's certain seats reserved for indigenous people within this constitutional convention and then people really from society Vijay you've met a lot of different people that have participated in this constitutional convention that came together over a hundred people to really discuss what are the pressing needs of the Chilean people and how can they be enshrined in the constitution it is the first ecological constitution that's ever been written it enshrines the access to abortion so many things were not in the other constitution that they were able to come to consensus about and unsurprisingly this draft constitution has been met with a lot of rejection from the right wing there's been a lot of different campaigns taking place in the media in those traditional spheres on social media to really reject this constitution to spread lies about what kind of society that it proposes to create similar what we saw in Colombia in 2016 when the peace agreements were heavily tacked and using ridiculous arguments which people have been constantly on social media on the streets trying to dialogue with people in society to explain really what this constitution demands and is trying to create which is a better just equal society for Chileans preserving nature and promoting a future where people can live in harmony there's going to be voting on this on September 4th and there's been as I said hot debate around this constitution different for example religious groupings have made statements governor of the board in light of these controversies that have been really surrounding this constitution all of the attacks on social media he's called for national unity in the face of the referendum it's a really important moment for Chile it will mark a before and after concrete victory of the uprising that people were actually able to go to the streets demand a constitution write a constitution and then have that enacted is truly something that has to be recognized this is not never happened before but it is definitely something that movement should learn to is that when you put forward these concrete demands there can be concrete results and so it's an exciting moment in Chile exciting moment in the continent and we're definitely going to be following the vote hearing from other people I'm sure we're going to be publishing some reports on people's dispass leading up to this there's been international campaigns and solidarity with the Chilean people in light of this vote so it's definitely something to keep watch on. I mean it's important to consider even just as an idea the fact that a country needs to have a constitution that it can believe in you know we are joining you from Brazil which in fact after the dictatorship very quickly wrote a new constitution they didn't wait for decades you know as the Chileans in a way have they wrote a new constitution well this election campaign is very interesting and it should be said it's not merely a presidential election campaign it's very important in fact to say that it's also a legislative campaign the reason it's important to say that is one of the candidates in the race you know former president Lula was in a sense removed through a legislative coup his then successor in fact was removed through a real legislative coup that's Dilma Rousseff so building an impeachment you know barrier inside the congress is very important in this election it's not just about who gets elected president it's how many people of each party are able to secure an impeachment block block to prevent impeachment in the legislator also you know it's important to look at who's going to be the governor who's going to be winning in local elections and so on because Brazil is such a vast country and in fact it's constitution we began with constitutions establishes a country which is not actually a presidential rule country in fact the legislator has more powers in the constitution than the president but as a consequence of a history of dictatorships and so on as a consequence of what was done in the immediate aftermath of the dictatorship president was able to secure a lot of powers and indeed Yair Bolsonaro the incumbent president has secured even more powers including preventing investigations of corruption against his own government corruption the issue in this election is two fold one hand these in terms of the campaign between Mr. Bolsonaro and Mr. Lula the campaign revolves around two axes number one Mr. Lula alleges that Bolsonaro is in fact not only incompetent but criminally incompetent and has led a government which you know needlessly allowed for very large numbers of people to die during the pandemic and in fact has allowed for a genocidal policy to take place against indigenous people and the Amazon and so on by freeing up mining that's the argument that Mr. Lula makes also of course saying that he in two years two terms of office previously in the 2000s you know advanced the cause of poor people and so on that's the case Mr. Lula is making Mr. Bolsonaro is making the case that no wait a minute Mr. Lula is a corrupt man in fact he was imprisoned for a while and so on in order to establish that Mr. Bolsonaro is pointing to cases that have been largely dismissed by the judicial authorities but in fact because Mr. Bolsonaro has sealed investigations of people in his own administration there are quote-unquote no corruption charges against Mr. Bolsonaro because he is in fact shut down the possibility of these investigations so the debate the axis of the debate around corruption and in fact you know the possibilities of restarting a social democratic agenda in Brazil it's a heated debate around these axes and people I spoke to close to the Lula campaign say that it's a very risky election it's not a slam dunk the polls are misleading the polls suggest that Mr. Lula might in fact win on October 2nd which happens to be the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi but it's not likely that that might happen they may go to a second round so the Lula camp is saying it's quite risky look I've covered a lot of elections I know that managing expectations is the key part of electioneering when you're waiting for people to go to the polls so somehow it's not adequate to say well we've got this in the bag you say we've got this in the bag your people might not come out to vote so they are in fact managing expectations also there's a hint of reality here very difficult to deal with somebody like Mr. Bolsonaro and let me quickly give you a reason why there was a national interview with him Mr. Lula did the national interview last night where he was defending his record and so on but Mr. Bolsonaro did this national interview anytime there was criticism made of him by the journalist he said no you are aware of fake news he would go to right wing websites and say awfully offensive things about you know LGBT community women and so on passed by the national news media about those comments he said I never said that it's fake news very hard to confront you know with sincerity and reason a candidate like that it's a tough election there's a lot the journalists like us have to learn in covering these elections it's really not enough to say that well he's lying because we have to go under the screen of a society and see how people are taking it and whether they are believing it I just want to caution if you be coming back and Zoe will be in Brazil covering the election you know till and after I suppose it's not going to be easy friends I really think that it's going to be a tough thing to cover I'm not talking about the election it's going to be difficult to cover but you want reasonable discussion and debate about how difficult it is to cover things come back and join us we'll be here next Friday give the people what they want that's you the people we are the ones who try to give you what you want I don't know if you wanted us all to be together one day but here we are but we wanted it yes Zoe yes Prashanta and Vijay see you next week