As delegates convene in Washington, DC for the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank join us in Edward R. Murrow Park, in the shadows of the World Bank Headquarters for a teach in on the neoliberal policies of these international financial institutions, the vested interests that are propping them up, and the heroic work that social movements around the world are doing to fight back.
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Part One: The Vested Interests of the Bretton Woods System
From their creation, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have been used as tools of neoliberalism to maintain a global status quo. How did the world’s wealthiest countries come to exercise control of these financial institutions to maintain their global power and status? Looking back at past organizing against the Bretton Woods system shows that these institutions have been at the center of discussions of global reformism. The inherent flaws in our international finance system have led to insurmountable amounts of debt for Global South countries, making it even harder to address climate change. Join us as we historically contextualize the most current iteration of protests against the IMF and World Bank!
Presenters
Dr. Paul Adler is a professor of 20th century US and world history at Colorado College and currently completing a book on the history of U.S. left internationalism.
Dr. Jake Werner is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Global Development Policy Center as well as a historian and writer specializing in international relations and labor history.
Fehintola Agboola is a global climate justice organizer at Justice is Global, an organization building a grassroots movement to win structural reform to create an equitable and sustainable global economy.
Part Two: Protecting Our Climate Justice Wins
Legal challenges through the World Trade Organization and other trade and investment agreements (often under the jurisdiction of the World Bank) are weakening environmental protections worldwide and preventing countries from adopting the industrial policies needed to transform our energy systems away from fossil fuels. How does this happen, and what can we do to stop it? Public Citizen is helping launch a campaign calling on the world’s largest economies to make a binding commitment to not use trade and investment rules to attack other countries’ climate policies.
Presenter:
Ryan Harvey is a musician and journalist currently serving as the National Field Director for Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, an organization with deep roots in the fight against corporate trade and investment deals.