Shoot-Yourself-in-the-Foot Diplomacy for Beginners

Last month when Bolivian President Evo Morales declared the U.S. Ambassador, Phillip Goldberg, 'persona non grata', the international media and diplomatic reviews were decidedly negative.

The editors of the New York Times declared, "We understand why the Bush administration and Congress are fed up with Bolivia’s president." A few hours south at the Washington Post, editors there described the ouster of Mr. Goldberg as the expulsion of, "a respected professional, on the spurious grounds of fomenting rebellion."

Meanwhile, the Bush administration reaction was starker still.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormick declared, "President Morales’ action is a grave error that has seriously damaged the bilateral relationship. The United States is the largest single country provider of development assistance to Bolivia, is Bolivia’s largest export market, and is the major provider of counternarcotics assistance."

[He got the export market wrong. Brazil and Argentina are much bigger importers of Bolivian products, including energy.]

Then the Bush administration started swinging some bats of its own. It ousted Bolivia's Ambassador to the U.S., yanked out the Peace Corp, and then pulled out what it thought was its biggest bat of all. In an announcement President Bush made himself, the administration announced that it would remove Bolivia from the ATPDEA trade program responsible for at least 20,000 Bolivian jobs.

The administration's message to President Morales was clear – you mess with us and we mess with you – the diplomatic version of a schoolyard shoving match in which the bigger boy wins. Mr. Morales and his Bolivian cohorts were to be taught a lesson about uneducated diplomacy.

The Art of Shooting Oneself in the Foot

But which country is really losing the diplomatic tussle?

First, let's be clear. Bolivia is not very important to the U.S. It is not a major energy contributor to the U.S., like Venezuela. It is not home to many big U.S. corporations, like Brazil. It isn’t a major source of immigrants, like Mexico. In the scheme of U.S. diplomatic priorities, Bolivia rates somewhere between Paraguay and Palua, i.e. not all that important.

To the extent that the U.S. does care about Bolivia diplomatically, it really has just three goals:

1. Keep Bolivia from establishing even deeper relations with Venezuela and President Hugo Chavez

2. Keep Bolivia from becoming, as it was in the 1980s, a major source of coca for cocaine production (that production has mostly relocated to the U.S. biggest ally on the continent, Colombia).

3. Try to improve the U.S. miserable image in the region (according to surveys, President Bush's popularity in the region now languishes at rock bottom, beside that of Fidel Castro).

So, given those goals, how does the Bush administrations new Bolivia doctrine of economic retaliation stack up?

Well, yesterday President Chavez was back in La Paz again. He and President Morales put pen to a new agreement in which Venezuela will take up some of the slack from the U.S. cancellation of Bolivia's participation in ATPDEA. Chavez pledged to open up Venezuelan markets to a big chunk of the textile exports that the Bush administration now says it doesn't want. So if someone in the State Department thought they were going to undermine the Morales/Chavez bond with the bigger-boy-in-the-schoolyard move, they might want to rethink that.

On coca, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you put 20,000 people out of work in a nation where honest economic opportunity is scarce, some of those people are going to drift in other directions. In Bolivia those 'other directions' often include migrating to the Chapare to grow coca that isn't destined for chewing or tea, but the illegal drug market. It was the destruction of much of Bolivia's mining industry in the 1980s that sent so many ex-miners into the coca-for-cocaine business two decades ago. So while the Bush administration claims that its goal here is to battle increased coca growing for drugs, its actual policies seemed aimed at sending former textile workers right in that direction. Truly intelligent.

Finally, if the Bush administration thinks that its retaliatory moves aimed at Morales have made the U.S. more popular in the region, it might want to take another look there as well. The real mark of declining U.S. influence in the region can be measured by the Chilean summit held by the South American presidents last montn, in response to the Bolivia crisis. The messages from the Presidents was clear – U.S., we do not want you in the room.

On this continent the U.S. is viewed as a contributor to problems, not an ally in finding solutions.

A Wiser Course

It is not a big surprise that the Bush administration would be ticked off, as it clearly was, by the ousting of its Ambassador to Bolivia. In another post we'll get into the question of what role Mr. Goldberg did or did not play in helping promoting civil unrest here last month – the Bolivian government's justification for sending Goldberg home.

But diplomacy is not about blowing off steam, it is about knowing national interests and using clear-eyed strategy as a vehicle for promoting those national interests.

Time and time again, not just in Latin America but globally, the Bush administration has shown itself to be tone-deaf to that basic fact. Now, in its closing days, the administration is not only repeating that mistake in Bolivia but also working hard to force the next President down the same path.

Congress made it clear that while it thought the threat of cutting Bolivia out of APTDEA might be a useful move at this time, actually doing so is the wrong thing to do right now. That's why, on a bipartisan basis, the Congress last month voted to extend Bolivia's participation until June 30, 2009, and leave it in the hands of the new administration to use the deadline as diplomatic leverage.

President Bush is using his executive powers to overrule that law.

Even that well-known Morales/Chavez/Castro radical, Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, knows that the Bush administration's APTDEA move is a diplomatic mistake. He declared so publicly last week, as he was traveling in Mexico with Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

At the same hour that the Bush administration was holding the public hearings required by law on its axe-Bolivia plan, in Mexico Rice declared, in effect, that the hearings and supposed process of public input was irrelevant. She announced again the administration's intent to end Bolivia's participation as soon as the required 30-day waiting period was over.

Senator Lugar quickly disagreed. "When Bolivia stands at the cusp of a new era, with a new constitution, U.S. assistance should be forthcoming as an effort to help Bolivia, and not to be an impediment to its progress," said the former Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Both Senator Obama and Senator McCain have made a good deal the past few months about how they are different that President Bush. Senator Obama, in particular, has repeated over and over again his intention to establish a different kind of diplomacy if he is President, one based on more dialogue and less retribution.

Reversing President Bush's certain removal of Bolivia from the APTDEA trade program may give him his first test to do that. And to show that, unlike his predecessor, during Diplomacy 101 he wasn't sleeping in class.

Name that Photo

A reader of ours sent us this photo last week and swears it is not the product of someone with a strong sense of humor and facility with Photoshop.

Nope, it is apparently the real deal, a shot taken just after the last presidential debate between Senators Obama and McCain.

So once again, as we have in the past, we call on the creative juices of our fine Blog readers. Please tell us your best pick for a title for this photo. And lets do try to keep us a good sense of humor in the last week of the longest U.S. presidential campaign in history.

I do sort of like:

"Hey Barak, how do you like my Lizzard Man imitation?"

Morales and Opposition Agree to a January 25 Vote on New Constitution

Readers:

Thank you for so much support for our action campaign to stop the Bush administration from putting more than 20,000 Bolivians out of work by removing Bolivia from the ATPDEA trade program. At this writing more than 400 people have viewed or video testimony and signed the petition in support of these workers.

For those who haven't gotten involved yet but would like to, you can have a look at the video here, and you can add your name to the petition here. We also have a version now in Spanish here.

Jim Shultz
The Democracy Center

Morales and Opposition Agree to a January 25 Vote on New Constitution

Just before 1pm – before a crowd 100,000 strong, that packed Plaza Murillo so tightly that even elbow room was scarce – President Evo Morales signed into law a measure setting a January vote on his party's embattled proposal for a new constitution.

Approval of the law caps a process that began more than two years ago with election of delegates to a constitution-writing Constituent Assembly. That process ran through a national battle over how many votes should be required to approve it; violence over demands by Sucre that it be named the country's capital; a political showdown in a voter referendum last August; and finally a week of violence in September in Pando and Santa Cruz that left more than 30 people dead.

The vote by Congress today was supported by more than 2/3 of its members and by Morales' MAS party along with the three major parties of the opposition, PODEMOS, UN, and MNR. The vote on the constitution is set for January 25, 2009.

[Here is a link to The Democracy Center's November 2007 briefing paper: Re-Founding Bolivia: A Nation's Struggle Over Constitutional Reform and other articles we've published on the constitutional reform process.]

How did Bolivia Get Here?

How did Bolivia – a nation so polarized that serious analysts spoke of 'civil war' – arrive at a place of such startling agreement (at least on the decision to hold a vote)? Three events were key.

The first was the August 10 elections. Before then the political duel between Morales and his opponents, most notably the renegade governors, seemed roughly balanced. It was an election launched by one of Morales' fiercest opponents among the governors, Cochabamba's Manfred Reyes Villa. But when the votes were counted, 67% of Bolivia's electorate sided with the President and both Reyes Villa and the governor of La Paz, another Morales adversary, were trounced out of office.

After months of the opposition talking tough it turned out that all their bluster had only solidified Morales' base more broadly behind him.

The second event that led to today's agreement was Bolivia's own version of 9/11, the massacre on that date in Pando that left more than 30 campesino backers of Morales dead. Coming on the heels of opposition mobs in Santa Cruz torching and looting public buildings there, the opposition combined its loss at the polls with a loss of whatever moral authority it might have had up until then. The balance of political clout tilted quickly and heavily toward Morales.

Finally, there is the intervention just after the Pando massacre of the other South American Presidents. Led by the two women, Cristina Fernandez of Argentina and Michelle Bachalet of Chile, the continent's leaders wasted no time in weighing in diplomatically. At a summit held in Chile with Morales at the center the Presidents made clear that he had their support, told opposition leaders to forget any dreams they might have had about independent deals to sell gas and oil from their departments, and called on all sides to negotiate.

Those negotiations began in Cochabamba nearly a month ago and stretched into La Paz this week, given added urgency by a 200 kilometer march to the capital of tens of thousands of Morales supporters demanding a national vote on the constitution. Opponents had criticized the march as it headed toward La Paz, deeming it a violent mob.

But as the multitudes camped overnight in the historic plaza at the steps of Congress, the sounds were not of smashing windows, but of music and song. A starker contrast could not be found between that scene and the one hosted by Morales opponents just over a year ago in Sucre, when they used violence to shut down the Constituent Assembly.

What Did Evo Give Away?

It will take a while to get the details on exactly what was negotiated in the last days in La Paz. At first glance it seems like plenty.

Of the 411 articles in the proposed constitution, more than 100 were modified in some way according to Bolivian news reports. Opposition leader Jorge Quiroga of PODEMOS, Morales' chief opponent in the 2005 election, was boasting on CNN mid-afternoon that his party had secured more than 200 different changes. Among them are significant concessions from MAS on provisions dealing with the media and establishment of mechanisms for "social control" of public agencies, something that had been a key demand from Morales backers.

Bolivian news reports also say that Morales has agreed to recognize and support the autonomy statutes approved in four departments. One newspaper, Los Tiempos, also reported that the key issue of land reform had been delegated to "future action." What that means precisely is more than unclear. The devil is in the details and the details have yet to be fully analyzed.

The issue, however, that leapt to the forefront in the final negotiations was one simple to understand and close to the heart of the politicians on both sides – presidential re-election. Under Bolivia's current constitution presidents may not serve consecutive terms. It is five years than out, though they can seek to return to office five years later, as Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada did in 2002.

Originally Morales and MAS wanted unlimited opportunities for re-election. That eventually got negotiated, in the document approved by the Constituent Assembly, down to letting the President seek just one additional term. But since it was not to include the five-year span Morales is currently serving, the chance at two additional terms translated out to the possibility of a Morales presidency through 2019, a poison scenario for the opposition.

The compromise worked out this week, and the basis for Congress' approval, is a concession by Morales that the term Morales would seek would count. If approved in January, the new constitution would allow Morales to campaign for just one more consecutive term, in elections that would be held in December 2009. That limits Morales' potential presidential horizon to 2014, a substantial concession.

Two Long Roads

Bolivia's constitutional story is one of two long roads.

The first is the one that led to today. The demand for a constituent assembly, which goes back decades in many indigenous communities in Bolivia, was envisioned originally as a process that excluded politicians and political parties. The idea was to create, at a national level, a process akin to community decision making at the local level. The people would be sovereign and the politicians and parties would have to sit on the sidelines and watch.

That vision of things went out the window fast and early when, shortly after taking office in 2006, Morales and MAS had to negotiate with their opponents in Congress to win approval of a law convening the vote for delegates to that Assembly. In a deal mutually beneficial to politicians of all parties, they were not only let back into the process but put in charge of it. Candidates had to be affiliated with a political party to run, and the Assembly ended up looking pretty much like Congress, but with another name and a less-decorated meeting venue.

The scrambled negotiations this month between Morales and the Congress put the political icing on a political cake. In the end it was not an Assembly of the people or a process of long deliberation that did the final sculpting of Bolivia's likely new Magna Carta. It was politicians acting in haste to cut a deal.

The other long road is the one that comes next. In any nation, but in Bolivia especially, the distance between words on paper and actual changes in people's day-to-day lives is measured not in weeks or months but in years and decades. What difference a new constitution will make in terms of broader economic opportunity, deeper accountability of government, or greater social justice is unclear.

Nevertheless, for those who have invested great hope and emotion in the fight for a constitution they want to call their own, today is a historic day in Bolivia. Given Morales' strong backing in August, it seems unlikely that he and his supporters will have trouble securing the simple majority support they will need in January. So the constitution approved by the Congress seems clearly headed for enactment.

It is also a historic day for those who favor peace over conflict. Once again, after having looked over into the abyss, the nation has inched itself back onto the ledge. In Bolivia the "most dangerous road in the world" is not the one that foreigners dare on mountain bikes that stretches from La Paz to Coroico. The most dangerous road in Bolivia is the one that marks the route for political change. Today that road looks both a little more hopeful, and a little safer as well.

President Bush's Plan to Put 20,000 Bolivians Out of Work

For a month, since the U.S. and Bolivia took turns expelling one another's ambassadors (Bolivia went first), the diplomatic war between Washington and La Paz has continued unabated.

Now President Bush, in his efforts to strike out against Bolivian President Evo Morales, has decided to take economic hostages. Last month, and again in Washington yesterday, Mr. Bush declared his intention to destroy the jobs of more than 20,000 innocent Bolivian workers, by axing Bolivia out of a trade plan originally developed under his father. To do so would be a mistake – morally, diplomatically and economically.

Some Background

Nearly two decades ago, under the first President Bush, the U.S. began the Andean Trade Preference Act (ATPDEA). That program offers Bolivia and a handful of other Latin American nations reduced U.S. tarriffs, allowing them to develop new industries and jobs exporting products such as textiles and handmade furniture. For the U.S., the aim is to create opportunities for employment as an to alternative to growing coca for the illegal drug market.

In September, as part of the Bush administration's diplomatic battles with Bolivian President Evo Morales, President Bush announced that he will use his executive authority eliminate Bolivia's participation in those trade preferences.

The actual victims of President Bush’s move, however, won't be President Morales, but women and men who eke out modest livings as weavers, jewelry-makers and carpenters, creating products for U.S. markets. The U.S. Congress knows that, and just two weeks ago approved a six-month extension for Bolivia. But yesterday in Washington President Bush repeated his intent to sidestep Congress and use his powers to cut Bolivian workers out of the program.

Listen to the Voices of the People who Will be Affected by Bush's Plan

We profiled some of these workers for our new book, Dignity and Defiance, and after President Bush’s announcement last month we traveled out across Bolivia to ask them how his threat would affect their lives.

Today we have posted a five-minute video of their own words here on the Blog. Take a moment now and hear what they have to say by clicking on the screen above.

The Democracy Center also demanded and won the right to have their video testimony from Bolivia played next week in Washington when the Bush administation holds the public hearing required by law before he implements his plan. Administration officials told us that this will be the first time that video testimony like this has been played in such a proceeding.

On October 23 in Washington, those officials will hear directly from people like Joaquín Aquino, a carpenter in his 50s who hand-makes furniture for the U.S. market and Natalia Alanoca Condori, a 28-year-old mother who makes clothing sold in American stores. These are the people, along with thousands others like them, who will be the real victims of President Bush's actions against Bolivia.

What You Can Do to Help

We have an opportunity and an obligation to these workers to take action and help stop President Bush's plan. Here are three simple ways that you can help:

1. Share this request for action with others

All across the United States there are people and organizations that care about making U.S. policy in Latin America more just. Help us spread the word about the need to act on this now, by forwarding this Blog post to others.

2. Sign the Democracy Center's Online Petition

You can directly add your voice to the campaign to stop President Bush's threat against Bolivian workers. In less than sixty seconds right now you can add your name to an online petition that the Democracy Center will be submitting as part of the formal public record against Bush's anti-Bolivia policy. Sign that petition here. If your organization wants to join the petition please send us an email telling us so at: Bolivia@democracyctr.org.

We need your petition endorsements no later than midnight October 30.

3. Submit Formal Comments to the Bush Administration

If you or your organization want to do more, federal law guarantees the right to submit formal comments to the Bush administration's Trade Representative. To do that you must submit your comments by e-mail no later than 5pm on October 31. Those comments must be sent in the form of an attachment and must include the subject line, “Review of Bolivia’s Designation as a Beneficiary Country Under the ATPA and ATPDEA.” The address is: FR0812@ustr.eop.gov. You must also include in the attachment a cover letter with your name, address, telephone number and e-mail address.

Even if we can't make President Bush back down on his plan to put Bolivians out of work, taking action now helps build the case for Congress and the new President to reverse it. Those leaders need to see that people in the U.S. care about this issue.

Raising Up Voices from Latin America

President Bush's move against the Bolivian people is just one more example of how we, as citizens, need to not only change leaders but also change the political winds that drive U.S. policy toward Latin America. To help do that the Democracy Center is launching a new campaign – Voices from Latin America.

Voices from Latin America marries new technology and old-fashioned organizing to build a bridge between citizens in the U.S. and Latin America. It is a platform from which we can work together to help educate one another and take joint action, like the one we are starting today on Bush's assault on Bolivian workers. On the website you will find:

Briefing papers (in English and Spanish) on some of the main issues in U.S./Latin America relations, on topics such as trade, the 'U.S. war on drugs', and immigration.

Video testimonies from across the region in which people tell how U.S. policy affects their lives and their nations.

How to get involved, and real examples from people who have.

As citizens we have to be educated and involved in U.S foreign policy in ways that we never have before. That includes making sure that the people in other countries who are so affected by what the U.S. does have their voices heard in the U.S. Help us do that by visiting the Voices from Latin America web site here.

Walkin´ and Talkin´ Toward a New Constitution

Readers,

I am traveling in Bolivia right now, which on the one hand is a great blessing as always. On the other hand it makes posting here a little more sporadic. Here is an update on the current political Tinku headed toward a national vote on a new constitution. Later this week we´ll be back to announce a Democracy Center action on President Bush´s effort to put 20,000 Bolivians out of work as he heads out of office.

Jim Shultz


Walkin´ and Talkin´ Toward a New Constitution

The good news as this week begins is that the battle over a new Bolivian constitution remains a peaceful one. During the weekend the Morales government and the opposition governors continued to meet in Cochabamba, with arrangements for a national vote on the constitution starting to move to center stage.

Meanwhile, this morning, a march headed toward the capital in La Paz began in the Cochabamba town of Caracollo. That march, by supporters of President Morales and other social movements, aims to reach the Bolivian Congress, a walk of more than 200 miles, a week from today. Expected to number in the tens of thousands by the time it arrives, the mobilization will surround the Congress to pressure legislators – in the opposition-controlled Senate in particular – to approve a national vote on the constitution proposal backed by Morales and MAS.

Re-Election at Center Stage

While the proposed MAS-backed constitution covers a wide variety of topics, from indigenous autonomy to land reform, it has become increasingly clear that the centerpiece issue for Morales and MAS is the one that most directly effects their ability to stay in power beyond the scheduled end of Evo´s term in January 2011. Under the current constitution Morales is ineligible to run for re-election in 2010. The new constitution allows for a single re-election, a compromise from MAS original desire for multiple opportunities to be returned to office.

Under the Morales-MAS plan, a national constitutional vote would be scheduled for January 25, 2009, and if approved would trigger new national elections, for President, Congress, and Governors, in June 2009. If Morales is elected again in June, as seems almost certain, that new term would be considered his first under the new system. That would make him eligible to be voted in once again in 2014 and potentially extending his presidency until 2019. Interviewed on radio Sunday, Morales declared that five years is simply not long enough for he and his party to guide the process of change they are seeking for the nation.

Last week, Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linera announced that MAS was willing to entertain some revisions in the MAS constitution, in the name of seeking some form of consensus with its opponents, particularly the governors. What those changes would be remains more than unclear.

A Weakened Opposition

The political opposition is now clearly much weaker than what it was even two months ago. The 67% support received by Morales in the August referendum originally called for by the opposition has made it clear how narrow a national base the anti-MAS governors are operating with. In Tarija and Santa Cruz the August vote showed MAS support gaining, and running especially strong in the rural areas there. Three of the original anti-MAS governors have also disappeared from the scene – two of them by losing in landslides August 10th and another now jailed for his accused role in the Pando massacre.

Those governors also used to invoke some moral authority, claiming that they were the genuine protectors of Bolivian democracy while MAS was filled with political street hoodlums. But the torching of Santa Cruz with support from those leaders, and the massacre in Pando, eliminated whatever moral authority opposition leaders may have had.

Tarija Governor Mario Cossio, who has emerged as the more moderate among them, declared last week that the tool of opposition is ¨the vote¨ and announced a unified opposition effort to defeat the MAS constitution if it comes to a vote, as seems inevitable.

Is Marching Democracy?

MAS opponents have charged that the march headed for La Paz starting this morning is a threat to Bolivian democracy, an effort to force the Congress to act under pressure.

Is marching on Congress a democratic act or an undemocratic one? It sort of depends on what happens when they get there.

On the one hand, there is an undeniable national majority behind the changes being backed by MAS and Morales, even if it is less than the 67% that voted in August to keep Morales in the Presidency. The demand being made to the Congress is not that the new constitution be approved, but that the Bolivian people be given the right to decide the issue´s fate at the ballot. By definition, giving the people such a choice is profoundly democratic, as is a peaceful assemblage aimed at pressuring the Congress to let that vote go forward.

On the other hand, if the Congressional vote takes place amidst tossed dynamite and physical threats against lawmakers, it is hard to call that ¨democratic¨. Which scenario will arrive in Plaza Murillo a week from today is unclear.

My bet: By the time the march arrives the Congress will already have approved the January vote, with or without some minor changes demanded by the opposition. The march, rather than being a violent action, will be the kick-off of MAS campaign for the January vote, one it will win easily. And Evo will win the presidential vote just as easily in June.
Is it important that MAS have an opposition that can hold it accountable? Yes. It needs a responsible and capable opposition from both the right and the left, to keep it honest and to hold it to the larger principles and policies it is supposedly in office to promote.

But so far those who would hold MAS accountable from the right have proven inept and narrow-minded at every turn and those who would hold it accountable from the left have never been able to find their footing as so many of their allies have joined MAS´ranks with full loyalty.

So if, after November passes and two years of election madness in the U.S. is over, you still find yourself hungering for more campaigning – keep your eyes on Bolivia in 2010. We´ll have more elections here next year than salteñas, and they´ll likely be hotter as well.

Coming Soon: The Democracy Center Book Tour

Dignity and Defiance: Stories from Bolivia's Challenge to Globalization

Enraging, unsparing, inspiring.

-- Naomi Klein, Author of "Shock Doctrine"


Globalization – it is a word that inspires many theories, but what does it really mean on the ground, in the lives of real people?

For nearly three years, the main focus of our work at the Democracy Center has been to research and write a serious, in-depth look at how the forces of globalization shape the lives of people in impoverished countries. Now, that book, Dignity and Defiance: Stories from Bolivia's Challenge to Globalization (University of California Press, 2009) is about to be published.

We need the help of our friends and readers to make this book launch a success!

In February 2009, the Democracy Center team that put this book together will be headed to the U.S. for a national tour. What we are cooking up is much more than a book tour. Along with Bolivian co-workers and friends, we'll be traveling from one coast of the U.S. to the other to use the book, videos, music and more as part of an educational tour about the impact of U.S. policy in Latin America.

We'll also be using the tour to get people involved in our new project, Voices from Latin America, aimed at bringing those voices into the U.S. debate. We'll have more to say about that project next week.

Dignity and Defiance is the story of one country, Bolivia, but it is representative of many countries around the world. The book tells the story of Bolivia's famous Water Revolt against Bechtel, and its aftermath. It travels to jungles and jails to trace the human impact of the U.S. war on drugs. It peddles by bike across the Bolivian highlands to document the disaster left behind by an Enron/Shell oil spill. It digs deep to trace how IMF economic policies led to bloodshed on the steps of the Bolivian Presidential Palace.

Dignity and Defiance also tells the story, from the ground up, of how people have fought courageously to keep globalization from swallowing their lives and to make it work to their benefit – as activists, workers, and immigrants. Ultimately the book is a story of inspiration, and it goes to the heart of what has drawn so much global attention to Bolivia.

How can you help?

The Democracy Center is already organizing events in four cities – San Francisco, Washington, New York, and Santa Fe. We are also working to put together events in many more places, including Seattle, Portland, Denver/Boulder, the Twin Cities, Chicago, Boston and more.

And this December we'll also be headed to the U.K. for the launching of the British edition of the book (Merlin Press), with events planned in London and Oxford.

We need groups to help host these events, to find venues, to help spread the word, and to join in with everything from playing music to offering us places to stay. If you are part of a group that can help host an event in one of these cities or another, or help in other ways, let us know!
And, obviously, we need financial support to make this tour possible. If you are faculty or a student at a university or another institution that can offer financial support for speakers or visits, consider inviting the Dignity and Defiance tour to town. Or if you are an individual who just wants to help, you can always make a donation to our work at the link here.

To get involved in the tour send us a note today to: mailto:book@democracyctr.org

To learn more about Dignity and Defiance visit here.

We hope to see many of you soon! Thank you as always for your interest and support.

The Comments Section is on a Break

Dear Readers:

I don't always get a chance to keep current on the comments section but looking it over today it is clear, as many have noted, that it has ceased to be a space of debate. Instead it has been taken over by a set of readers who, hiding behind anonymity, think it is just a place to hurl juvenile insults at one another. These come from all sides of the philosophical spectrum. The issue is not ideology, it’s whether people have the ability to act a notch or two above diaper age.

This is too bad, because in the past the comments section of the Blog has been a place of intelligent debate and most of those who used to engage in it seemed to have been pushed away. Even our long-term commenters from the right, whose challenges and criticism I appreciated, have abandoned ship.

So the comments section is now officially shut down for an indefinite time. At minimum this will send the insult brigade off brooding and looking for a new place on the Web to act foolish. And we’ll look at some alternative ways to reopen, uncensored and unmoderated as we have always been, but perhaps requiring registration or something similar.

Thank you for your continued interest.

Jim Shultz