As part of the Ms. Delegation, Cathleen McGuire attended the NGO
Forum on Women which was held in conjunction with the
United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women
in China in 1995.
She wrote
this article shortly after her return in October
1995. It provides a unique ecofeminist perspective
not widely publicized in post-conference reports. Her
report was first published in The FAR Newsletter.
By Cathleen McGuire
I was exhilarated to be among the 40,000 women from around
the world who convened in China to network, organize, and
return to their home countries with reinvigorated agendas.
The event was perhaps the largest gathering of women in
history. Since I was not a credentialed NGO delegate, I was
unable to participate in the negotiation meetings which
produced the "Platform for Action," the official
U.N. Conference document. My report is limited to my
experience at the NGO Forum on Women. It took place from
August 31, 1995 to September 8, 1995 in the town of Huairou
(pronounced why row), an hours drive from
Beijing where the U.N. Conference was convened.
I secured a hotel room in a relaxed rural setting not far
from Huairou. When I realized that the Forum activities were
spread out over a two- to three-mile radius, I wasted no time
in purchasing a spunky Chinese bicycle for forty-five
dollarsan expensive commodity for the average worker.
Unlike many Forum participants who endured long bus treks in
from Beijing, I relished my daily thirty minute bicycle
commute. When the conference was over, I bequeathed my bike
to the market woman who sold me fruit each morning. She was
stunned and insisted on giving me two bagfuls of apples.
Most women at the Forum were jubilant to be in a milieu
teeming with so much feminist energy. Yet overall, I was a
bit disappointed that the Forum was so narrowly focused on
pure politics--U.N. objectives notwithstanding. As a veteran
of womyn's festivals, I have become accustomed to female
environments where the creative, artistic, and spiritual are
given equal weight to the political. The Forum lacked
this more balanced approach. I felt that most of the
participants had but a glimmer of the transformative
possibilities that open up when masses of women explore
together the nonlinear sides of our consciousness as well.
Choosing which workshops to attend from among the
3,000-plus options was a daunting task. The politics were
hard hitting with especial attention spotlighting issues of
violence against women. Dozens of workshops such as the
selling of Nepalese girl childs, Zambian battered women
shelters, and female genital mutilation in the Arab world
explored the harrowing pervasiveness of violence in
womens lives. The global network of activists opposed
to trafficking in women likewise constituted a strong vocal
presence at the conference.
Conspicuously absent were
proponents of that drivel from Camille Paglia et al who
characterize prostitution as a viable career
"choice" for women and pornography as a liberatory
expression of female sexual "agency." Non-Western
women at the conference had little use for these theoretical,
abstract notions of womens liberation which are
impervious to the sexual exploitation hundreds of thousands
of women throughout the world experience on a daily basis.
Much of the coverage of the conference by the mainstream
U.S. press was reserved for the events two main
spoilers: the Chinese governments "security"
measures and the incessant rains. Although the media
persisted in spotlighting the authorities strong arm
tactics (all too often at the expense of covering our actual
work), I personally witnessed few infractions, although I
heard about a good many. As for the rains, which I dubbed a
Chinese water torture, they helped cleanse the air from a
suffocating combination of muggy weather and hovering smog.
The latter stems from Chinas tepid ecological policies
in the face of a blitzkrieg of economic development.
In a powerful indictment of violations by governments and
multinational corporations against women, indigenous peoples,
and the environment, Winona LaDuke's keynote
address brought the house down. An Anishinabeg from
Minnesota and co-chair of the Indigenous Women's Network,LaDuke
stood tall and proud, and courageously named
names. In my opinion, her presentation was one of the most
important speeches of the entire conference. From a Western
perspective, her analysis was classic ecofeminism at its very
best.
LaDuke pinpointed the origins of today's problems in the
predator/prey relationship industrial society (the predator)
has developed with the prey: nature, women, and indigenous
peoples. What law, she challenged, gives corporations like
Conoco, Shell, Exxon, Diashawa, ITT, Rio Tinto Zinc, and the
World Bank the right to decide how land is to be used?
"Is that right," she asked, "contained within
their wealth, that which was historically acquired immorally,
unethically, through colonialism, imperialism and paid for
with the lives of millions of people, species of plants and
entire ecosystems?"
LaDuke cogently pointed out that, environmentally
speaking, "the analysis of North versus South is an
erroneous analysis." Uranium mining in the First World
presents the same dire consequences for indigenous peoples
and Mother Earth as clear cutting rainforests does in the
Third World. Along with rampant development, LaDuke also
blamed profligate consumerism for much of the degradation of
the environment. "Consumption," she declared,
"causes the commodification of the sacred, the natural
world, cultures, and the commodification of children and
women."
LaDuke was one of the few speakers to call the hosts of
the conference to task for their reckless disregard of the
environment. The audience gasped (and cheered) when she
directly criticized the Chinese for their Three Gorges dam
project along the Yangtze River. Eclipsing James Bay in
Canada, it is the largest hydroelectric construction project
in history, destined to uproot over a million people and
destroy countless ecosystems.
My biggest disappointment at the conference was the lack
of an environmental consciousness on the part of the Forum
organizers. Why was this not a "green" conference?
Thousands of plastic water bottles were just tossed away with
the regular trash, and it didn't seem like any of the vast
reams of waste paper were destined for recycling. Was I the
only one appalledrather than awedwhen over 20,000
caged doves were released at the opening ceremonies?
Equally
disturbing were the hundreds of balloons sent aloft. Weren't
the Forum organizers aware that many animals mistake the
deflated balloons for food and often choke to death? Also,
there were tents galore for special constituencies such as a
disabled tent, a peace/anti-nuclear tent, a youth tent, an
indigenous tent, a lesbian tent. Why was there no
environmental tent?
The most flagrant act of eco-suppression was the treatment
of the thoroughly ecofeminist contingent, "Daughters of
the Earth: The Environment and Development Collaborative
Web." Known as the Web, this coalition of 78 global
organizations presented an extraordinary two-day tribunal
entitled the Second World Womens Congress for a Healthy
Planet. The Web grew out of the First World Womens
Congress held in Miami in November, 1991. This unique event
was spearheaded by the Womens
Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) under the
indefatigable leadership of Bella Abzug.
The 1991 Miami Congress marked a watershed in grassroots
feminist politics as women from around the world networked,
organized, and collectively devised a strategic plan of
action. The resulting document, the "Womens Action
Agenda 21," is a paragon of ecofeminist politics. Its
presentation at the United Nations Conference on Environment
and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 was a
historic step forward in solidifying NGOs and
womens ability to influence United Nations
policymaking.
The Web's tribunal in Huairou was followed by six days of
intense plenaries focusing on issues critical to women's
empowerment: Trade and the Global Economy, Technology and
Communications, Health and Healing, Peace and Militarism,
Resistance Strategies and Sustainable Alternatives, and
Indigenous Perspectives on Biodiversity. Unlike the official
NGO Forum English-only program books, the Webs program
book was printed in five languages. A whos who of
predominantly women of color activists such as Wangari
Maathai, Dessima Williams, Miliani Trask, and Urvashi Vaid
addressed the panels. The Web's agenda represented a model of
international multilateral organizing. So why was it
seemingly sabotaged by the Forum organizers?
From the beginning, attending the Web's activities was an
exercise in persistence. The Forum planning committee
assigned the Web a space that was almost a half-hour walk
from the conference grounds. To add insult to injury, the
official Forum map misrepresented the Webs location by
several blocks. Then, midway through the conference, their
space was yanked out from under them. Instead of one
convenient locale, the panels were splintered into several
sites.
Amidst the general barrage of posted announcements, it
was serendipitous that I spotted one of their hastily made
flyers indicating the new locations. The Web's spectacular
plenaries should have been a centerpiece of the Forum. The
fact that logistics legerdemain undermined the Webs
agenda borders on the scandalous, and speaks volumes about
the organizers level of eco-consciousness.
Another prime example of their lack of an ecological
consciousness pertained to food. This was definitely not a
vegetarian conference. Long lines queued before too few
stands, most offering some variation of processed food, much
of it meat-based. Unless one had a bike (and a surprising
number of people did!), the vast distances made it difficult
to zip over to Huairou restaurants for a quick, healthy
lunch. Worst of all, the Forum organizers saw fit to consign
valuable booth space to the granddaddy of junk food,
McDonald's.
I smelled that unmistakable odor of charred flesh and
congealing grease before I actually saw the tent bearing
those notorious golden arches. The Forum organizers were
obviously in the dark on this one. Lets face it: If you're gonna install a
McDonald's booth at
an international gathering of women, and seat a life-size,
plastic Ronald McDonald out front on a bench, you're asking to be zapped!
Two women from Earth Island
Institute in San Francisco, Emily Miggins and Sarah
Chamberlain, initiated a spontaneous protest. They upturned
Ronald, smeared him with blood (catsup), and endeavored to
educate the gawking customers and passers-by about the evils
of Big Mac consumption.
Meanwhile, Vandana Shiva, the renown ecofeminist activist
and scientist from India, was conducting a workshop entitled
"Globalization, Food Security, Patents and
Pesticides." At its conclusion, she rallied women to a
march culminating at the McDonald's tent. Her contingent
joined a large crowd of spirited protesters who were already
at the scene chanting "McDonald's is not an NGO,"
"Support the Local Economy," and "Monoculture
is Bad Food." One placard said it all:
Stop Poisoning Our Bodies!
Stop Clearcutting Our Forests!
Stop Polluting Our Environment!
Stop Concentration Camps for Animals
Stop Cultural Imperialism!
Before an army of cameras, a group of us picked up Ronald
McDonald and hurled him in the mud. (A friend in the U.S. saw
this fabulous footage on CNN.) The Ronald statue was molded
in a seated pose such that when he was face-down his behind
stuck ignobly in the air. Vandana Shiva couldn't resist
jabbing her umbrella point into his obnoxiously bright yellow
buttocks. The crowd cackled uproariously while we high fived
each other in glorious triumph. Eventually, three shaken
Chinese McDonald's employees rescued Ronald, hauling his
battered body away never to surface again for the rest of the
conference. [For some first rate McDonald's bashing, check
out the folks at McSpotlight.]
McDonald's was not the only representative of
transnational capitalism at the Forum. Apple and Hewlett
Packard logged maximum advertising mileage in exchange for
providing Forum participants unlimited access to hundreds of
computers as well as free Internet training. Esprit's donation of thousands
of tote bags bearing the official NGO logo, however, created
uncomfortable public relations problems for Irene Santiago,
Executive Director of the Forum.
Activists involved in
campaigns against international sweatshops distributed flyers
indicting Esprit's custom of underpaying and overworking
primarily female laborers. In a puff piece in the Forum's free daily newspaper, Forum
95, Santiago "strongly refuted the allegations
[against Esprit]," claiming the Forum Secretariat
"had taken every precaution to ensure that all its
sponsors were socially responsible." Her statement had
about as much credibility as if she had announced that Ronald
McDonald is a card-carrying member of Greenpeace!
Notwithstanding the organizers lack of
eco-consciousness, Beijing 95 was a powerful summit
that will impact society for years to come. When the next
United Nations Conference on Women convenes in 2005, it is
imperative that ecofeminist politics be accorded premier
status. The domination of women is intricately bound up with
the domination of nature. To discount the symbiosis of
womens issues and environmental issues is to handicap
sound strategies for global harmony and planetary survival.
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