My Bolivian Commute

2008-04-17T11:49:00.000-07:00

The Democracy Center On-Line

Volume 81 - April 17, 2008

My Bolivian Commute

Dear Readers:

In a few months time it will be ten years since my family and I returned here to live in Bolivia – a fact my mother complains about with some regularity. During this decade I have written a good deal about Bolivia, almost all of it about politics, conflict, and that aspect of the country’s life.

The fact is that life in Bolivia is about much more than its politics. A few weeks ago I posted the article below on The Democracy Center’s popular “Blog from Bolivia,” a small tale about my new commute as a result of my family and I moving out of the city and into the countryside. Because so many people said they enjoyed reading it, I thought I would let it be the April issue of our newsletter.

Jim Shultz
The Democracy Center
______________________________________________

My Bolivian Commute

My trip from home to work this morning began as it usually does, leaving the front door of my house hand-in-hand with my 5-year-old daughter for the walk through the countryside to her school. If I walked it alone I could do it in just over 5 minutes. With my daughter it takes almost 20. There is a lot to see.

"The cows aren't there today," she says to me as soon as we reach the dirt road in front of our house. The cows who eat in the open field next door to us have been a subject of speculation between us of late. For a week they have been there every morning, two of them, chomping on wild plants and grass. We wondered if they actually slept there, or just got dropped off really early. Last night, at least, they slept somewhere else.

Along the way we watch a small bird bathing itself with tiny splashes in a small puddle that remains from the rains. I tell my daughter that I bet the bird's Mom made her take a bath. She agrees that is probably the case. Then she suggests that we try to walk by only stepping on the big rocks. Then we pass the purple morning glories growing along the side of a field where one of our neighbors – a woman in a wide dark skirt and white straw hat – is harvesting the spinach and alfalfa. The flower my daughter picks for me gets planted into my shirt pocket, just peeking out.

Then we spend 5 minutes assessing a very big dump truck full of dirt that is parked by the side of the road. Then we debate if the ancient and beat-up Chevy pick-up parked across the road ever actually goes anywhere.

"At night I think it moves," she tells me, "and then they put it back early in the morning in the same place."

"Maybe so."

By the time we turn the next corner to her school, I can tell by the absence of kids at the entrance that we are very late. I don't mind all that much. Punctuality, I think, is overrated as an organizing principle for the universe, especially if it comes at the expense of observing cows and picking morning glories. I think this belief may make me Bolivian.

When we arrive the gate is locked.

"I know, how about I throw you over and then you flap your arms really, really fast like a bird and just float down on the other side?"

"NOOO!"

"Okay, maybe we can just open the gate and let you in."

She disappears into a tiny sea of small children, who are kind enough to greet me by name as I wave goodbye. I spent yesterday morning, Father's Day in Bolivia, in their class reading them (in poor translation) The Lorax by Dr. Seuss, teaching them to make paper airplanes, and engaging in finger puppet warfare in which Superman is challenged by a pig – "Chancho-man!" With small children, I find it best to make things up as you go along.

Now I am alone, walking up a narrow dirt road that eventually takes me to the Tiquipaya-Apote Super Highway. Okay, it isn’t a super highway, but it is paved. It is also where I catch the Taxi Trufi #106 that takes me into the city.

A minute or so goes by and along comes a white 1980s vintage Toyota Corolla station wagon, that shows its age along with a plastic sign "106" fastened to its roof. It pulls over to pick me up and I squeeze my body carefully into the front seat next to the driver and an enormous Bolivian man sitting in between us.

"Que bien que es flaco!" booms a voice from the back seat. "That's great, he's thin!"

I look back and three more enormous Bolivian men, looking like large sardines, are squeezed into the Toyota's back seat. Soon the largest of them, the man in the middle, is engaged in a full-on conversation with the driver.

"It's the Japanese, they are all skinny. So there cars are made for skinny people."

"Of course they are skinny, they eat nothing but fish and rice, fish and rice."

Images of Sumo wrestlers come to mind, but I decide I am better off just listening.

"So that's what you need to do, starting tomorrow, fish and rice, fish and rice," says the driver. The large man in the back seat laughs.

By this time we are making our way south down what is called Avenida Ecologica. My friend Ismael pointed out to me the absurdity of the name a few months ago. "Look what there is all along 'Avenida Ecologica' – field after field of cut logs. 'Avenida Ecologica is a cemetery for trees!"

During the taxi-trufi ride into town my seatmates in front change three times. The round man next to me leaves and is replaced by a well-dressed young woman in remarkably pointy shoes. A few blocks later she leaves and a father and young son pile in next to me, each wearing baseball caps. The boy's is on backwards. They are headed to the bus terminal to travel for Easter.

On the radio two voices discuss the steep recent rise in inflation, a topic on everyone's lips here. They announce the good news that Piromani brand milk remains priced at three liters for 11 Bolivianos.

Entering the center of the city we pass the statue erected in the middle of a large fountain at the edge of El Prado. It is an abstract pair of faces looking upward, but I agree with the local reviewer who said it looks more like a big concrete salteña [a meat dumpling served for breakfast here]. I think a statue of an actual salteña would have been even cooler. But what do I know about art?

I get off along El Prado to walk the last few blocks to my office. In Plaza Colon Doña Elsa sits, like clockwork, with her trademark wide-brimmed bright red hat, changing dollars into Bolivianos and visa-versa. Through rain, civil uprising and falling currency rates, Doña Elsa is always there.

On Calle 25 de Mayo I pass the young mothers from Potosi, who sit with their children asking for change, and give some coins to the one I know by name.

I stop at a newspaper stand where all the local papers are pinned up, unfolded, letting anyone who wants, to read the front-page stories. Both Los Tiempos and Opinion lead with the latest criticisms of the Morales government. Setting politics and news aside I wander into a store where I go to buy my morning bananas. I walk past some new graffiti (translated): Neither God, nor love, nor country – Liberty!

On the corner I stop at the nut cart operated by a short man named Gusto and buy some almonds. From there I walk up the stairs to my office, where one of our youthful staff is practicing her Quechua homework on a blackboard. I fight open a balcony door that has been swelled shut by the recent rains. In the distance I hear the sound of exploding fireworks, the telltale signal that a protest is underway somewhere in Cochabamba's center.

I push the "on" switch on my computer and sit down.

"You know," I think to myself, "All of that wouldn’t make a bad thing to write about." And I start to type.

________________________________________________________________

Want More? Check out The Democracy Center's "Blog from Bolivia" here:

http://democracyctr.org/blog/

THE DEMOCRACY CENTER ON-LINE is an electronic publication of The Democracy Center, distributed on an occasional basis to more than 4,500 organizations, policy makers, journalists and others, throughout the U.S. and worldwide. Please consider forwarding it along to those who might be interested. People can request to be added to the distribution list by sending an e-mail note to: contact@democracyctr.org. Newspapers and periodicals interested in reprinting or excerpting material in the newsletter should contact The Democracy Center at contact@democracyctr.org. Suggestions and comments are welcome. Past issues are available on The Democracy Center Web site.

THE DEMOCRACY CENTER

SAN FRANCISCO: P.O. Box 22157 San Francisco, CA 94122
BOLIVIA: Casilla 5283, Cochabamba, Bolivia
TEL: (415) 564-4767

WEB: http://www.democracyctr.org
E-MAIL: contact@democracyctr.org

The UN Wants to Put me in Jail for my Morning Cup of Tea

2008-03-11T15:54:00.000-07:00

The Democracy Center On-Line

Volume 80 - March 11, 2008

The UN Wants to Put me in Jail for my Morning Cup of Tea

Dear Readers:

Over the course of the coming year I'll be writing about some of the issues we cover in our forthcoming book: Dignity and Defiance: Stories from Bolivia's Challenge to Globalization (University of California Press). I'll be doing this for two reasons. First, these are all important and interesting stories. Second, this is shameless promotion for the book, to get you interested in reading it when it comes out in January 2009.

This newsletter looks at the issue of coca, the small green leaf at the center of the U.S. War on Drugs, and at a recommendation last week from the UN that I (and a lot of other people) be prosecuted for drinking our morning cup of tea. Enjoy!

Jim Shultz
The Democracy Center

The UN Wants to Put me in Jail for my Morning Cup of Tea

A funny thing happened in Vienna last week. A United Nations special panel on narcotics called on the governments of Bolivia and Peru to make drinking a popular and traditional herbal tea a criminal offense.

The target of the International Narcotics Control Board is the tea made with coca leaves. Known here as "mate de coca" the tea can be made directly from the leaves or from commercially produced little tea bags (a la Lipton). It is served, among other places, in the U.S. Embassy in La Paz and to all arriving guests at the five-star Radisson Hotel. In fact, the U.S. State Department formally recommends the tea to visitors from the U.S. to help with the effects of high altitude.

So, why does the UN think that people who drink the tea should be prosecuted? Because it is the product of a small green leaf, coca, which through heavy chemical alteration can be morphed into cocaine. This is the story of how bureaucratic blindness results in stupid public policy.

The "Coca" in Coca-Cola

Coca has been a part of Andean culture for more than 4,000 years. It was used by Incan religious leaders as a sacrament. The small green leaf acts as a mild stimulant, and eases the effects of living and working at high altitude. It also diminishes the appetite, making the chewing of the leaves popular with miners, construction workers, farmers and others who toil long hours.

To those (including, evidently, a good number of global policy makers) who think that drinking coca tea or chewing coca leaves will offer up something akin to an excursion on LSD or magic mushrooms, think again. It's "kick" is almost unnoticeable, nothing in comparison to a "Grande" (Spanish for "big", Starbucks for "small", go figure) cappuccino. In this regard, as both a drinker of coca tea and an addict to afternoon caffeine, I speak with authority.

In 1860, a German chemist figured out that the coca leaf also contained a very small trace of an alkaloid that could be leached out of the plant with chemicals such as kerosene and bleach, and concentrated into a white powder, cocaine. Soon after the powder became considered a medical marvel, embraced by everyone from the Pope to Sigmund Freud to President Ulysses Grant. Coca-Cola followed, in the 1880s, as an elixir of cocaine and caffeine.

By the early 1900s policy makers in the U.S. decided that maybe mass use of cocaine wasn't such a good idea, and approved a law banning it. Coca-Cola followed suit in 1929, keeping the coca leaf in for flavor, but taking out the cocaine.

But in the effort to sweep cocaine under the carpet, global policy makers went overboard and tossed the unaltered coca leaf in with it. In 1961 the UN developed a formal list of "narcotics" banned from international export, such as heroin and cocaine. Based on a 1950 report, long on old school racism and short on actual science, the UN added the coca leaf to the list as well.

That is roughly akin to banning corn because it might be used to make moonshine. Nevertheless, a study penned in the day when modernity was still defined by the weight of chrome car bumpers is the basis for global drug policy in 2008. Alcohol and nicotine, both far more damaging than coca tea, to be sure, are not on the list.

The "ban coca tea" recommendation from the UN last week is not, by the panel's own admittance, based on any science or finding that drinking coca tea or chewing coca leaves is harmful. In fact, studies by the World Health Organization have found that the use of coca leaves is neither harmful or addictive. Nope, the UN panel's action was an act of simple bureaucratic consistency. If the coca leaf is on the international narcotics list, the panel argued, then governments ought to prosecute any use of it in any form. Dumb follows stupid.

Coca in Bolivia

Don Pio was a friend of mine, a small and aging house builder who I never saw without his felt hat on his head and a wad of green coca leaves in his mouth. Boasting coca's ability to suppress his appetite, Don Pio once told me, "Ayyy, if it weren't for coca I'd be running to the refrigerator every half an hour and I'd never get any work done. And I'd be fat too."

When he died of old age two years ago I looked into the grave where he had just been lowered and realized that no one had remembered to toss in a bag of green coca leaves to accompany him on his trip to the next world. We held up the filling of the grave until someone among the bereaved could come up with coca to toss in after him.

You will not find a construction site in Cochabamba where the workers do not have a wad of green leaves in their mouths. You will be hard pressed to find a farmer working in his or her field without chewing those same leaves. Coca is, in these parts of Bolivian culture, exactly what a morning cup of coffee is in the U.S., though again, with a far less narcotic kick than well-prepared caffeine.

To be sure, not all of the coca grown in Bolivia is benignly brewed into herbal tea or stashed between the cheek and gum. In the 1980s a good deal of Bolivian coca was destined for the cocaine market, making the country a key target in the U.S. War on Drugs. Through a combination of forced eradication (including a massive trampling on Bolivian civil rights) and the move of the cocaine industry to Colombia, Bolivia's participation in the cocaine trade was reduced to a trickle. But the war on the coca leaf continued.

So Much for Alternatives

Today, with a former coca grower, Evo Morales, in the Presidency, it is unclear how much of the green leaf grown here ends up headed for processing into narcotics, but it may still be as much as half. Morales has mandated a new approach, "coca si, cocaina no" based on two basic ideas. First, commit coca growing communities to voluntary limits on how much they grow, instead of sending in troops and U.S. advisors to burn their crops. Second, build up markets for non-narcotic coca products, from tea to toothpaste, to give the subsistence farmers who grow coca a chance to make a living in an honest way.

And that is where a UN list set in stone 47 years ago puts up a ridiculous and damaging roadblock. As long as the coca leaf, separate from cocaine, remains on the list, Bolivia can't export coca tea to any of its potentially lucrative foreign buyers – from health food stores in California to mass markets in China. Selling Bolivian coca to foreign markets would help an economy that badly needs a boost and would create a far happier end use of those leaves than having them turned into crack a hemisphere away.

But again, bureaucratic silliness, allied by a lack of general public understanding, stands in the way. Coca is to cocaine what grapes are to wine. So, now if they come for me you'll know why. Bottoms up.

Note: This article borrows from the book chapter, "Coca: The Leaf at the Center of the War on Drugs," written by Caroline Conzelman, Coletta Youngers, Linda Farthing, Caitlin Esch, Leny Olivera, and myself. For more information on coca visit the Web site of the Coca Museum in La Paz, Bolivia: http://www.cocamuseum.com/

Want More? Check out The Democracy Center's "Blog from Bolivia" here:

http://democracyctr.org/blog/

Also, please consider making a donation to support The Democracy Center’s work. Checks can be mailed to the US address below, or donations can be made by credit card here:

http://www.cifunds.org/store/democracyctr.shtml

THE DEMOCRACY CENTER ON-LINE is an electronic publication of The Democracy Center, distributed on an occasional basis to more than 4,500 organizations, policy makers, journalists and others, throughout the U.S. and worldwide. Please consider forwarding it along to those who might be interested. People can request to be added to the distribution list by sending an e-mail note to: contact@democracyctr.org. Newspapers and periodicals interested in reprinting or excerpting material in the newsletter should contact The Democracy Center at contact@democracyctr.org. Suggestions and comments are welcome. Past issues are available on The Democracy Center Web site.

THE DEMOCRACY CENTER

SAN FRANCISCO: P.O. Box 22157 San Francisco, CA 94122
BOLIVIA: Casilla 5283, Cochabamba, BoliviaTEL: (415) 564-4767
WEB: http://www.democracyctr.org
E-MAIL: contact@democracyctr.org

Newsletter From Kosovo

2008-02-03T14:00:00.000-08:00

The Democracy Center On-Line

Volume 79 - February 3, 2008

NEWSLETTER FROM KOSOVO

Dear Readers:

I am in the middle of a two-week work visit to the Balkans, asked here by two agencies of the United Nations to provide advocacy training to the local members of their staff dealing with children's rights and environmental issues. Over the course of the next few weeks this region of the world will reclaim global headlines again, as Kosovo declares its official independence from Serbia, amidst denunciations from Serbia, Russia and others. Here is an offering from what will, sometime in the next few weeks, become the world's newest nation.

Jim Shultz
The Democracy Center

NEWSLETTER FROM KOSOVO

Kosovo, The Balkans

I had to take a detour this morning on the snowy mountain road through the Balkan mountains that leads from Kosovo to Montenegro. The UN driver that escorted me to the border explained that the problem wasn't road conditions, but political ones.

The direct route between the two Balkan enclaves cuts through a small corner of Serbia, the nation from which Kosovo intends to declare its independence in the next few weeks. Because the flight that brought me here a week ago landed directly in Kosovo – no stop in Belgrade, no Serbian stamp in my blue passport – Serbian policy says that I arrived in the country illegally. Making border crossings a hassle is just one part of the pressure leaders in Belgrade seeks to bring on what they consider a runaway province.

This is Kosovo ten years down the road from a war with still open wounds, and weeks before it declares itself the world's newest nation. It is a country waiting to be a country, a place where 17,000 NATO troops still patrol the streets in giant green personnel carriers, and where Serbia to the north still considers it not only a part of that country but its ancient homeland.

"It will happen at anytime," people here tell me, maybe weeks, maybe months, but independence, they assure me, will happen.

"They sell every kind of firework here you can imagine," another UN employee tells me. "Independence Day, when it comes, will be very, very loud. There will also be gunfire, he warns. The guns will not be aimed at people, but up in the sky, in celebration. He lives on the top floor of his building and worries about some of those celebration bullets raining down onto his roof – or his living room floor.

Ten years after the war, and the NATO bombing that helped end it, the motivations for Kosovo independence are still easy to see here. On the road over the mountains there are still shattered skeletons of brick houses destroyed by Serbian mortar fire. There are also shattered Christian Orthodox churches destroyed in retaliation, by members of Kosovo's Muslim majority.

"First a Serbian neighbor of mine came to my apartment and warned me to leave," another of my new acquaintances remembered. "He said, 'Soon others will come and they will not speak so nicely as I am.' Then others came, shooting guns into the air in the street and ordering us to leave Kosovo. So we left." By the tens of thousands Albanian-speaking Kosovars fled, most of them to Macedonia. The fortunate ones took up residence with relatives. Many others ended up in UN refugee camps.

It is not surprising that the UN, NATO, and the US are considered heroes by many here who fled. They recite by heart the exact number of days that NATO dropped bombs on Belgrade and other targets to end the Kosovo expulsions – seventy-two. As we drove the mountain road this morning the UN driver recounted how he traveled the opposite direction a decade ago, home from Macedonia, "in a NATO motorcade." He waited three months more to bring his family home, wanting to be sure that a fragile peace would hold.

Today in Serbia, voters go to the polls in national elections, picking between two candidates dubbed by the foreign press as "moderate and Europe-leaning" on one side, and "radical nationalist and Russia-leaning" on the other. On Kosovo, however, their position is the same – it must remain a part of Serbia. The imminent declaration of independence is regarded in Serbia akin to how Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declaring California a sovereign nation might be received in Washington. But 17,000 NATO troops, including a large US military base, seems to assure that hot rhetoric and border crossing hassles are likely as far as Serbia will go.

The challenges ahead for the 2 million people who inhabit this nation-to-be are rooted much more in economics than in political aggression (though there is concern about whether large numbers of Serbs in the nation's north will leave). Kosovo, when it declares independence, will not only be the world's newest nation, it will also be among the youngest. Half its people are under 25-years-old and adult unemployment soars near 40%.

"Right now what we mainly produce is trash," another Kosovar told me. The roads are littered with plastic bags and gutted automobile carcasses. Organized crime is rampant and growing here. Idleness, especially among the young, is worrisome. And everything, everything is essentially dictated by foreigners. The UN is the official government here. The International Monetary Fund, so notorious for its economic dictates tied to aid, wields orders here even before it has provided a dime.

Kosovo, like South Africa, Bolivia, Eastern Europe and other corners of the world in the last two decades, is headed down the exhilarating path of transforming its national identity. And as in those other places, popular expectations are high, unrealistically high, about what rebirth will bring.

It is only after the echoes of the fireworks fade and after the bullets shot into the sky (hopefully) roll off of rooftops that the not-so-romantic work of nation building will begin.

________________________________________________________________

Please consider making a donation to support The Democracy Center’s work. Checks can be mailed to the US address below, or donations can be made by credit card here.

THE DEMOCRACY CENTER ON-LINE is an electronic publication of The Democracy Center, distributed on an occasional basis to more than 4,500 organizations, policy makers, journalists and others, throughout the U.S. and worldwide. Please consider forwarding it along to those who might be interested. People can request to be added to the distribution list by sending an e-mail note to: contact@democracyctr.org. Newspapers and periodicals interested in reprinting or excerpting material in the newsletter should contact The Democracy Center at contact@democracyctr.org. Suggestions and comments are welcome. Past issues are available on The Democracy Center Web site.

THE DEMOCRACY CENTER

SAN FRANCISCO: P.O. Box 22157 San Francisco, CA 94122
BOLIVIA: Casilla 5283, Cochabamba, Bolivia
TEL: (415) 564-4767
FAX: (978) 383-1269
WEB: http://www.democracyctr.org
E-MAIL: contact@democracyctr.org

THE NEW ISSUE OF THE DEMOCRACY CENTER’S ANNUAL MAGAZINE

2008-02-01T13:06:00.000-08:00

The Democracy Center On-Line
Volume 78 - January 24, 2008

THE NEW ISSUE OF THE DEMOCRACY CENTER’S ANNUAL MAGAZINE

Dear Readers:

Happy New Year to one and all! I hope that each one of you has had a great start to 2008. Here at The Democracy Center we begin 2008 by publishing the second annual issue of our magazine, Jallalla! (an indigenous word here in Bolivia for Live!). The full issue – dedicated to ‘citizen power’ around the world – is freshly posted on our Web site and I hope that you will take a look here.

Below is an introduction to the magazine and a summary of what you’ll find. Happy reading and thank you, as always, for your interest and support!

Jim Shultz
The Democracy Center

The New Democracy Center Magazine: The Power of Citizens

In the United States, 2008 promises to be ‘the year of the politician.’ Candidates for the Presidency alone will spend more than $1 billion this year trying to convince voters to go their way. That's enough money to take every person in Bolivia out to lunch every day for four months, or to finance the War in Iraq for 36 hours.

Yet, with so much focus on politicians and what they do, it is easy forget that what really makes a difference, from California to Cochabamba, is what citizens do. From peacemaking to battling global warming, it is citizens, not politicians, who are taking the lead.

This issue of Jallalla is dedicated to the power of citizens, the ability of each of us to make a difference. As before, a main focus of this magazine is Bolivia. In this issue we look at the current state of things in this country we call home, including political battles, environmental struggles, what 'feminism' means here, and some updates on issues that have put Bolivia in the global news.

But just as The Democracy Center's work reaches out globally, so this second issue of our annual magazine goes global too. We spotlight some of the work we have been doing with citizen groups around the world – from Uganda to the Balkans. We also spotlight an important new Democracy Center campaign, Voices from Latin America, which aims to bring a very different perspective into that big election-fest scheduled up north in 2008.

Here’s a look at what you’ll find in the new issue of Jallalla, at this link (and also information on how to order the glorious print version).

FOCUS ON BOLIVIA

2007: A Nation at a Difficult Crossroads

The year 2007 in Bolivia showed us just how difficult a road it is when a country begins to move in a new political direction. The first year of President Evo Morales was marked by big beginnings that symbolized hope and long-sought change. In Morales' second year in office, however, deep fault lines – divisions drawn by ethnicity, ideology, politics, socioeconomic differences, and regional interests– kept the country in constant conflict.

The Struggle for a New Constitution

The demand for a new Constitution finds its seeds among the nation’s indigenous majority. From the start, Bolivia's Constituent Assembly saw its task as looking far beyond traditional constitutional issues of how government should be organized. The Assembly declared that it had a mandate to make dramatic changes on an array of issues, including indigenous rights, autonomy, and land reform.

Focus on the Environment

The Chacaltaya glacier is a thick layer of ice that stretches across the rugged scalp of a mountain that rises more than 17,000 feet above sea level. The glacier dates back tens of thousands of years to the last ice age. For as long as people have lived in Bolivia's capital, La Paz, Chacaltaya glacier has been a source of water and life. But if geologists are right, by 2015 the last of the glacier will melt into a final drop of water and disappear. This is what global climate change, set in motion by energy use a hemisphere away, means for Bolivia's highlands and its people.

La Q’owa: A Taste of Bolivian Culture

Walking through the streets of Cochabamba on the first Friday of any month, one is struck by a pungent aroma wafting through the air and trails of smoke sneaking out the doors of small stores. This is the scent of the Bolivian ritual of the Q’owa (koh-wah), and a reminder of one of the ways in which many Bolivians still hold fast to ancient traditions.

Feminism from the Ground Up

Machismo is a phenomenon that runs deep in many cultures around the world, including in Bolivia. Feminism, however, is another powerful current that has its place in Bolivia’s history, one whose story is rarely told and often misunderstood.

Bolivia In Brief: An Update On Issues in The News

Coca: Bolivia Tries a New Approach: With a cocalero leader in the nation’s Presidency, Bolivia has taken a different approach to the green leaf that is simultaneously an ancient part of the nation’s culture, and also the base ingredient for cocaine.

A Former President Faces New Legal Challenges: Former Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada was ousted by popular protests in October 2003 and living in self-imposed exile in suburban Maryland, now faces serious legal assaults on two fronts – one criminal and one civil.

ACTIVISM GONE GLOBAL

Road Trips: A Look at The Democracy Center’s Work Around the World

In Uganda, community organizers gather under a sprawling mango tree, plotting strategy as they monitor how the local government spends public funds. In the new Balkan republic of Montenegro, environmental advocates working with the United Nations debate the best way to protect a river from devastating development. In Santa Fe, New Mexico, a workshop brings together environmental activists, Pueblo tribal leaders and others to compare notes on how to wage effective lobbying campaigns in their state legislature. These are a few of the places and people that have been a part of The Democracy Center’s work recently, providing advocacy training and support to communities all over the world.

Seeds of Change: Social Entrepreneurs Across the Globe

Usually, the word “entrepreneur” conjures up the idea of a person who sees a demand in the economic marketplace. In that demand, the marketplace entrepreneur finds opportunity for profit and assembles the resources, capital, and market know how to take the risk of making that vision real. Not all demands, however, can be met by the marketplace. Not all opportunities are defined as a return on investment.

Voices from Latin America: Bringing Perspectives from Abroad into the U.S. Elections

The U.S. War in Iraq teaches us again that U.S. foreign policy is not something that we can leave solely in the hands of our politicians. Citizens have to take a strong and direct interest in what our nation does abroad, which includes understanding what people in other countries have to say about the impact of our policies on them. Voices from Latin America is an effort by The Democracy Center and our friends both north and south to bring Latin American perspectives directly into the U.S. election debate in 2008.

The Peacemaker: An American Woman's Journey With the Iraqi People

Cathy Breen served as a Maryknoll lay missionary in Bolivia for a decade. Later, in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Cathy traveled to Baghdad to bear witness and report what she saw back home. She was on the ground and under the bombs during "Shock and Awe" and for the toppling of Saddam and the chaos and violence that followed. She now works with the huge community of more than 700,000 Iraqi refugees. These are her words from an interview in November 2007 from Amman, Jordan.

Beyond Violence

Last May Democracy Center staff member Leny Olivera traveled to Vermont to gather with 80 people from more than 20 countries for a global meeting on nonviolence. For three weeks they lived together, and shared their experiences of violence and ways to work beyond it.

Read any or all of these articles by visiting the on-line version of the magazine here.

Also: Please consider making a donation to support The Democracy Center’s work. Checks can be mailed to the US address below, or donations can be made by credit card here.
________________________________________________________________

THE DEMOCRACY CENTER ON-LINE is an electronic publication of The Democracy Center, distributed on an occasional basis to more than 4,500 organizations, policy makers, journalists and others, throughout the U.S. and worldwide. Please consider forwarding it along to those who might be interested. People can request to be added to the distribution list by sending an e-mail note to: contact@democracyctr.org. Newspapers and periodicals interested in reprinting or excerpting material in the newsletter should contact The Democracy Center at contact@democracyctr.org. Suggestions and comments are welcome. Past issues are available on The Democracy Center Web site.

THE DEMOCRACY CENTER

SAN FRANCISCO: P.O. Box 22157 San Francisco, CA 94122
BOLIVIA: Casilla 5283, Cochabamba, Bolivia
TEL: (415) 564-4767
FAX: (978) 383-1269
WEB: http://www.democracyctr.org
E-MAIL: contact@democracyctr.org

The New Issue of the Democracy Center's Annual Magazine

2008-01-27T12:38:00.001-08:00

The Democracy Center On-Line
Volume 78 - January 24, 2008

Dear Readers:

Happy New Year to one and all! I hope that each one of you has had a great start to 2008. Here at The Democracy Center we begin 2008 by publishing the second annual issue of our magazine, Jallalla! (an indigenous word here in Bolivia for Live!). The full issue – dedicated to ‘citizen power’ around the world – is freshly posted on our Web site and I hope that you will take a look here.

Below is an introduction to the magazine and a summary of what you’ll find. Happy reading and thank you, as always, for your interest and support!

Jim Shultz
The Democracy Center

The New Democracy Center Magazine: The Power of Citizens

In the United States, 2008 promises to be ‘the year of the politician.’ Candidates for the Presidency alone will spend more than $1 billion this year trying to convince voters to go their way. That's enough money to take every person in Bolivia out to lunch every day for four months, or to finance the War in Iraq for 36 hours.

Yet, with so much focus on politicians and what they do, it is easy forget that what really makes a difference, from California to Cochabamba, is what citizens do. From peacemaking to battling global warming, it is citizens, not politicians, who are taking the lead.

This issue of Jallalla is dedicated to the power of citizens, the ability of each of us to make a difference. As before, a main focus of this magazine is Bolivia. In this issue we look at the current state of things in this country we call home, including political battles, environmental struggles, what 'feminism' means here, and some updates on issues that have put Bolivia in the global news.

But just as The Democracy Center's work reaches out globally, so this second issue of our annual magazine goes global too. We spotlight some of the work we have been doing with citizen groups around the world – from Uganda to the Balkans. We also spotlight an important new Democracy Center campaign, Voices from Latin America, which aims to bring a very different perspective into that big election-fest scheduled up north in 2008.

Here’s a look at what you’ll find in the new issue of Jallalla, at this link (and also information on how to order the glorious print version).

FOCUS ON BOLIVIA

2007: A Nation at a Difficult Crossroads

The year 2007 in Bolivia showed us just how difficult a road it is when a country begins to move in a new political direction. The first year of President Evo Morales was marked by big beginnings that symbolized hope and long-sought change. In Morales' second year in office, however, deep fault lines – divisions drawn by ethnicity, ideology, politics, socioeconomic differences, and regional interests– kept the country in constant conflict.

The Struggle for a New Constitution

The demand for a new Constitution finds its seeds among the nation’s indigenous majority. From the start, Bolivia's Constituent Assembly saw its task as looking far beyond traditional constitutional issues of how government should be organized. The Assembly declared that it had a mandate to make dramatic changes on an array of issues, including indigenous rights, autonomy, and land reform.

Focus on the Environment

The Chacaltaya glacier is a thick layer of ice that stretches across the rugged scalp of a mountain that rises more than 17,000 feet above sea level. The glacier dates back tens of thousands of years to the last ice age. For as long as people have lived in Bolivia's capital, La Paz, Chacaltaya glacier has been a source of water and life. But if geologists are right, by 2015 the last of the glacier will melt into a final drop of water and disappear. This is what global climate change, set in motion by energy use a hemisphere away, means for Bolivia's highlands and its people.

La Q’owa: A Taste of Bolivian Culture

Walking through the streets of Cochabamba on the first Friday of any month, one is struck by a pungent aroma wafting through the air and trails of smoke sneaking out the doors of small stores. This is the scent of the Bolivian ritual of the Q’owa (koh-wah), and a reminder of one of the ways in which many Bolivians still hold fast to ancient traditions.

Feminism from the Ground Up

Machismo is a phenomenon that runs deep in many cultures around the world, including in Bolivia. Feminism, however, is another powerful current that has its place in Bolivia’s history, one whose story is rarely told and often misunderstood.

Bolivia In Brief: An Update On Issues in The News

Coca: Bolivia Tries a New Approach: With a cocalero leader in the nation’s Presidency, Bolivia has taken a different approach to the green leaf that is simultaneously an ancient part of the nation’s culture, and also the base ingredient for cocaine.

A Former President Faces New Legal Challenges: Former Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada was ousted by popular protests in October 2003 and living in self-imposed exile in suburban Maryland, now faces serious legal assaults on two fronts – one criminal and one civil.

ACTIVISM GONE GLOBAL

Road Trips: A Look at The Democracy Center’s Work Around the World

In Uganda, community organizers gather under a sprawling mango tree, plotting strategy as they monitor how the local government spends public funds. In the new Balkan republic of Montenegro, environmental advocates working with the United Nations debate the best way to protect a river from devastating development. In Santa Fe, New Mexico, a workshop brings together environmental activists, Pueblo tribal leaders and others to compare notes on how to wage effective lobbying campaigns in their state legislature. These are a few of the places and people that have been a part of The Democracy Center’s work recently, providing advocacy training and support to communities all over the world.

Seeds of Change: Social Entrepreneurs Across the Globe

Usually, the word “entrepreneur” conjures up the idea of a person who sees a demand in the economic marketplace. In that demand, the marketplace entrepreneur finds opportunity for profit and assembles the resources, capital, and market know how to take the risk of making that vision real. Not all demands, however, can be met by the marketplace. Not all opportunities are defined as a return on investment.

Voices from Latin America: Bringing Perspectives from Abroad into the U.S. Elections

The U.S. War in Iraq teaches us again that U.S. foreign policy is not something that we can leave solely in the hands of our politicians. Citizens have to take a strong and direct interest in what our nation does abroad, which includes understanding what people in other countries have to say about the impact of our policies on them. Voices from Latin America is an effort by The Democracy Center and our friends both north and south to bring Latin American perspectives directly into the U.S. election debate in 2008.

The Peacemaker: An American Woman's Journey With the Iraqi People

Cathy Breen served as a Maryknoll lay missionary in Bolivia for a decade. Later, in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Cathy traveled to Baghdad to bear witness and report what she saw back home. She was on the ground and under the bombs during "Shock and Awe" and for the toppling of Saddam and the chaos and violence that followed. She now works with the huge community of more than 700,000 Iraqi refugees. These are her words from an interview in November 2007 from Amman, Jordan.

Beyond Violence

Last May Democracy Center staff member Leny Olivera traveled to Vermont to gather with 80 people from more than 20 countries for a global meeting on nonviolence. For three weeks they lived together, and shared their experiences of violence and ways to work beyond it.

Read any or all of these articles by visiting the on-line version of the magazine here.

Also: Please consider making a donation to support The Democracy Center’s work. Checks can be mailed to the US address below, or donations can be made by credit card here.

________________________________________________________________

THE DEMOCRACY CENTER ON-LINE is an electronic publication of The Democracy Center, distributed on an occasional basis to more than 4,500 organizations, policy makers, journalists and others, throughout the U.S. and worldwide. Please consider forwarding it along to those who might be interested. People can request to be added to the distribution list by sending an e-mail note to: contact@democracyctr.org. Newspapers and periodicals interested in reprinting or excerpting material in the newsletter should contact The Democracy Center at contact@democracyctr.org. Suggestions and comments are welcome. Past issues are available on The Democracy Center Web site.

THE DEMOCRACY CENTER

SAN FRANCISCO: P.O. Box 22157 San Francisco, CA 94122
BOLIVIA: Casilla 5283, Cochabamba, Bolivia
TEL: (415) 564-4767
FAX: (978) 383-1269
WEB: http://www.democracyctr.org
E-MAIL: contact@democracyctr.org

2008-01-27T12:38:00.000-08:00

The Democracy Center On-Line
Volume 78 - January 24, 2008

THE NEW ISSUE OF THE DEMOCRACY CENTER’S ANNUAL MAGAZINE

Dear Readers:

Happy New Year to one and all! I hope that each one of you has had a great start to 2008. Here at The Democracy Center we begin 2008 by publishing the second annual issue of our magazine, Jallalla! (an indigenous word here in Bolivia for Live!). The full issue – dedicated to ‘citizen power’ around the world – is freshly posted on our Web site and I hope that you will take a look here.

Below is an introduction to the magazine and a summary of what you’ll find. Happy reading and thank you, as always, for your interest and support!

Jim Shultz
The Democracy Center

The New Democracy Center Magazine: The Power of Citizens

In the United States, 2008 promises to be ‘the year of the politician.’ Candidates for the Presidency alone will spend more than $1 billion this year trying to convince voters to go their way. That's enough money to take every person in Bolivia out to lunch every day for four months, or to finance the War in Iraq for 36 hours.

Yet, with so much focus on politicians and what they do, it is easy forget that what really makes a difference, from California to Cochabamba, is what citizens do. From peacemaking to battling global warming, it is citizens, not politicians, who are taking the lead.

This issue of Jallalla is dedicated to the power of citizens, the ability of each of us to make a difference. As before, a main focus of this magazine is Bolivia. In this issue we look at the current state of things in this country we call home, including political battles, environmental struggles, what 'feminism' means here, and some updates on issues that have put Bolivia in the global news.

But just as The Democracy Center's work reaches out globally, so this second issue of our annual magazine goes global too. We spotlight some of the work we have been doing with citizen groups around the world – from Uganda to the Balkans. We also spotlight an important new Democracy Center campaign, Voices from Latin America, which aims to bring a very different perspective into that big election-fest scheduled up north in 2008.

Here’s a look at what you’ll find in the new issue of Jallalla, at this link (and also information on how to order the glorious print version).

FOCUS ON BOLIVIA

2007: A Nation at a Difficult Crossroads

The year 2007 in Bolivia showed us just how difficult a road it is when a country begins to move in a new political direction. The first year of President Evo Morales was marked by big beginnings that symbolized hope and long-sought change. In Morales' second year in office, however, deep fault lines – divisions drawn by ethnicity, ideology, politics, socioeconomic differences, and regional interests– kept the country in constant conflict.

The Struggle for a New Constitution

The demand for a new Constitution finds its seeds among the nation’s indigenous majority. From the start, Bolivia's Constituent Assembly saw its task as looking far beyond traditional constitutional issues of how government should be organized. The Assembly declared that it had a mandate to make dramatic changes on an array of issues, including indigenous rights, autonomy, and land reform.

Focus on the Environment

The Chacaltaya glacier is a thick layer of ice that stretches across the rugged scalp of a mountain that rises more than 17,000 feet above sea level. The glacier dates back tens of thousands of years to the last ice age. For as long as people have lived in Bolivia's capital, La Paz, Chacaltaya glacier has been a source of water and life. But if geologists are right, by 2015 the last of the glacier will melt into a final drop of water and disappear. This is what global climate change, set in motion by energy use a hemisphere away, means for Bolivia's highlands and its people.

La Q’owa: A Taste of Bolivian Culture

Walking through the streets of Cochabamba on the first Friday of any month, one is struck by a pungent aroma wafting through the air and trails of smoke sneaking out the doors of small stores. This is the scent of the Bolivian ritual of the Q’owa (koh-wah), and a reminder of one of the ways in which many Bolivians still hold fast to ancient traditions.

Feminism from the Ground Up

Machismo is a phenomenon that runs deep in many cultures around the world, including in Bolivia. Feminism, however, is another powerful current that has its place in Bolivia’s history, one whose story is rarely told and often misunderstood.

Bolivia In Brief: An Update On Issues in The News

Coca: Bolivia Tries a New Approach: With a cocalero leader in the nation’s Presidency, Bolivia has taken a different approach to the green leaf that is simultaneously an ancient part of the nation’s culture, and also the base ingredient for cocaine.

A Former President Faces New Legal Challenges: Former Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada was ousted by popular protests in October 2003 and living in self-imposed exile in suburban Maryland, now faces serious legal assaults on two fronts – one criminal and one civil.

ACTIVISM GONE GLOBAL

Road Trips: A Look at The Democracy Center’s Work Around the World

In Uganda, community organizers gather under a sprawling mango tree, plotting strategy as they monitor how the local government spends public funds. In the new Balkan republic of Montenegro, environmental advocates working with the United Nations debate the best way to protect a river from devastating development. In Santa Fe, New Mexico, a workshop brings together environmental activists, Pueblo tribal leaders and others to compare notes on how to wage effective lobbying campaigns in their state legislature. These are a few of the places and people that have been a part of The Democracy Center’s work recently, providing advocacy training and support to communities all over the world.

Seeds of Change: Social Entrepreneurs Across the Globe

Usually, the word “entrepreneur” conjures up the idea of a person who sees a demand in the economic marketplace. In that demand, the marketplace entrepreneur finds opportunity for profit and assembles the resources, capital, and market know how to take the risk of making that vision real. Not all demands, however, can be met by the marketplace. Not all opportunities are defined as a return on investment.

Voices from Latin America: Bringing Perspectives from Abroad into the U.S. Elections

The U.S. War in Iraq teaches us again that U.S. foreign policy is not something that we can leave solely in the hands of our politicians. Citizens have to take a strong and direct interest in what our nation does abroad, which includes understanding what people in other countries have to say about the impact of our policies on them. Voices from Latin America is an effort by The Democracy Center and our friends both north and south to bring Latin American perspectives directly into the U.S. election debate in 2008.

The Peacemaker: An American Woman's Journey With the Iraqi People

Cathy Breen served as a Maryknoll lay missionary in Bolivia for a decade. Later, in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Cathy traveled to Baghdad to bear witness and report what she saw back home. She was on the ground and under the bombs during "Shock and Awe" and for the toppling of Saddam and the chaos and violence that followed. She now works with the huge community of more than 700,000 Iraqi refugees. These are her words from an interview in November 2007 from Amman, Jordan.

Beyond Violence

Last May Democracy Center staff member Leny Olivera traveled to Vermont to gather with 80 people from more than 20 countries for a global meeting on nonviolence. For three weeks they lived together, and shared their experiences of violence and ways to work beyond it.

Read any or all of these articles by visiting the on-line version of the magazine here.

Also: Please consider making a donation to support The Democracy Center’s work. Checks can be mailed to the US address below, or donations can be made by credit card here.

________________________________________________________________

THE DEMOCRACY CENTER ON-LINE is an electronic publication of The Democracy Center, distributed on an occasional basis to more than 4,500 organizations, policy makers, journalists and others, throughout the U.S. and worldwide. Please consider forwarding it along to those who might be interested. People can request to be added to the distribution list by sending an e-mail note to: contact@democracyctr.org. Newspapers and periodicals interested in reprinting or excerpting material in the newsletter should contact The Democracy Center at contact@democracyctr.org. Suggestions and comments are welcome. Past issues are available on The Democracy Center Web site.

THE DEMOCRACY CENTER

SAN FRANCISCO: P.O. Box 22157 San Francisco, CA 94122
BOLIVIA: Casilla 5283, Cochabamba, Bolivia
TEL: (415) 564-4767
FAX: (978) 383-1269
WEB: http://www.democracyctr.org
E-MAIL: contact@democracyctr.org

THE NEW ISSUE OF THE DEMOCRACY CENTER’S ANNUAL MAGAZINE

2008-01-25T09:22:00.000-08:00

Updates From Bolivia and Three New Publications

2007-11-05T17:30:00.000-08:00

The Democracy Center On-Line
Volume 77 - November 5, 2007

Dear Readers:

I apologize for the long delay since our last issue. The past few months have been eaten up by a few things, including putting the final touches on our new book, Dignity and Defiance: Stories from Bolivia's Challenge to Globalization (coming in 2008 from University of California Press)!

These have also been busy months in Bolivia, so we dedicate this newsletter to a few updates. We begin with a look at the roller coaster of recent events in Bolivia/U.S. relations, including an appearance by President Evo Morales on The Daily Show with John Stewart on Comedy Central. We offer an introduction and link to The Democracy Center's new briefing paper on the embattled process to write a new Bolivian constitution. We offer you an invitation – to receive The Center's new bi-weekly bulletin focusing specifically on topics Bolivian and Latin American (see below). Then we wrap up with an announcement about the new issue of our popular annual magazine.

Read on and best wishes to all!

Jim Shultz and The Democracy Center staff

1. BOLIVIA/U.S. RELATIONS: THE ROLLER COASTER CONTINUES!

Bolivia/U.S. relations, always a source of amazing developments, did not disappoint these past few months – featuring everything from a U.S. Army Colonel nailed for bringing in rounds of ammunition via a relative's suitcase to a spat over whether Bolivia's President coveted moving Disney World from its home in Orlando Florida. Some highlights:

'Ammogate' at the La Paz Airport

The fragile state of U.S./Bolivia relations took a tumble on a winter's evening here last June when a 20-year-old woman from the U.S. got off her American Airlines flight in La Paz, with 500 rounds of 45 caliber ammunition in her suitcase. It also turned out that she was the daughter-in-law-to-be of the U.S. Army Colonel who serves as the chief military officer at the U.S. Embassy here – setting off a full-scale international incident. U.S. Ambassador Phillip Goldberg tried to pass off the suitcase of ammo as an innocent mistake, with the bullets aimed at nothing more than the Colonel's target practice. Bolivians and U.S. citizens alike wondered what would have happened if Homeland Security in Miami had found a young Bolivian woman equally loaded with ammo en route to the Bolivian Embassy in Washington. The lack of a serious Embassy apology kept the story alive for weeks. Here's our Blog post on the incident, which we titled, Next Time Just Ask for Bagels.

Evo Visits the U.N., and John Stewart

September is the month when heads of state head to New York to give speeches before he U.N. There always seems to be one world leader that robs the most news at the annual President-fest, usually by saying the most outrageous thing in public. Last year it was Venezuela's Hugo Chavez declaring that George W. Bush was the devil ("I still smell sulfur"). This year it was Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declaring at Columbia University that Iran has not a single gay person living within its borders. Bolivia usually receives little notice at such gatherings, but this year President Evo Morales found an unlikely forum that gained him millions of viewers, and a good number of new fans. Bolivia's first indigenous President made a guest appearance on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with John Stewart. While other heads of state in N.Y. ranted, Bolivia's President walked away as "Evo the likeable." Leaving the stage he joked to Stewart, "Just please don't call me part of the Axis of Evil." Here's our Blog post with a link to a video of the show.

"Next He'll Want to Move Disney World"

While in New York at the U.N., President Morales also commented about the difficulties his aides endured to get visas to enter the U.S., a chronic problem for Bolivia and other poorer countries. He then suggested that maybe it was time to look into whether the U.N. should be in the U.S. at all. The U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia, Mr. Goldberg, proved again that he wasn't quite ready for prime time duty. A wiser diplomat might have sought to smooth things over by offering to assist the Bolivian government with the visa problem. Instead Mr. Goldberg, declared publicly, "I wouldn't be surprised if he [Morales] would also want to move Disney World." This set off a silly war of words between the two governments that lasted weeks. Here's our Blog post.

2. OUR NEW REPORT ON BOLIVIA'S STRUGGLE TO WRITE A NEW CONSTITUTION

For more than a year, Bolivia has been in the midst of a historic struggle to write a new Constitution. While the work of writing the new national 'magna carta' has taken place in a Constituent Assembly, elected by the people to undertake the historic task, conflicts over it have spilled out into the streets in every major city in the nation, including here in Cochabamba where three men were left dead in street battles last January. To help interested readers more fully understand what the Constituent Assembly and the process of Constitutional reform means for Bolivia, The Democracy Center assigned a special team (a mix of Bolivians and people from the U.S.) to assemble the story. Our new briefing paper, Re-Founding Bolivia: A Nation's Struggle Over Constitutional Reform, is the product of their work. You can read the paper here.

3. ANNOUNCING OUR NEW BI-WEEKLY BULLETIN!

"Your Blog posts are great, but I wish they would come to my email box so I would remember to take a look at them." That is what a friend of ours who works on Latin American issues in Washington told us recently, and we have heard it from many others as well. So, The Democracy Center is now proud to offer our friends and readers a new bi-weekly bulletin: Democracy Center Updates. Every two weeks we'll take the most popular of our Blog posts and other articles and reports and send short summaries and links to the full versions directly to our readers who are most interested in following what we write and what we are up to. We'll still be here with this regular newsletter every month or two, but if you are interested in more, subscribe today, for free, to Democracy Center Updates. Just visit the link here to subscribe now.

4. …AND FINALLY, THE DEMOCRACY CENTER ANNUAL MAGAZINE RETURNS

Back by popular demand, The Democracy Center team is finalizing the production of our annual magazine that we launched last year. Once again, the magazine will feature a collection of articles and photos featuring Bolivian politics and culture. This year, however, we'll be taking the magazine even farther, looking at some of the other 'citizen power' projects and campaigns that The Democracy Center and our global friends are involved in worldwide – from environmental activism in the Balkans to work with Iraqi refugees in Jordan. Last year, with the help of many friends, we distributed more than 1500 copies of The Center's magazine in the U.S. For those who would like to join in the distribution effort this year (we charge $1 a copy to help with printing and postage), please send a note along to: magazine@democracyctr.org no later than November 19.

________________________________________________________________

THE DEMOCRACY CENTER ON-LINE is an electronic publication of The Democracy Center, distributed on an occasional basis to more than 4,500 organizations, policy makers, journalists and others, throughout the U.S. and worldwide. Please consider forwarding it along to those who might be interested. People can request to be added to the distribution list by sending an e-mail note to: contact@democracyctr.org. Newspapers and periodicals interested in reprinting or excerpting material in the newsletter should contact The Democracy Center at contact@democracyctr.org. Suggestions and comments are welcome. Past issues are available on The Democracy Center Web site.

THE DEMOCRACY CENTER

SAN FRANCISCO: P.O. Box 22157 San Francisco, CA 94122
BOLIVIA: Casilla 5283, Cochabamba, Bolivia
TEL: (415) 564-4767
FAX: (978) 383-1269
WEB: http://www.democracyctr.org
E-MAIL: contact@democracyctr.org

A Book Every American Should Read

2007-07-02T13:04:00.000-07:00

The Democracy Center On-Line

Volume 76 - July 2, 2007

A BOOK EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD READ

Dear Readers:

In this newsletter, on the eve of the U.S. Fourth of July, we turn our attention to the topic with which the U.S. is most identified in the world today – the War in Iraq. We offer readers a short review of a book on the War, written largely from the U.S. military's point of view. All of us, whether we live in the U.S. or away from it, have an obligation to deepen our understanding of this War. After that we introduce a new feature: On the Democracy Center Web Site! With each newsletter we will highlight some useful resource many readers didn’t know was there.

A happy Fourth to all!

Jim Shultz
The Democracy Center

A BOOK EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD READ

Unless things have changed a good deal since I moved from the U.S. in 1998, the nation's birthday on July 4th will be marked by a splash of fireworks, backyard barbeques, an odd day off in the middle of the week, and some sporadic mentions of 'patriotism' in certain corners.

I would like to suggest that Americans add something else to their Independence Day plans this week – a book. With the nation at war and the number of war dead past the 3,500 mark for U.S. soldiers and a minimum estimate of 70,000 Iraqis, it seems to me that patriotism this July 4 involves deepening our understanding of that quagmire and how we got into it. This year, amidst the sparklers and apple pie, I strongly encourage our readers to pick up a copy of Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas E. Ricks and start reading.

Ricks is the chief Pentagon correspondent for the Washington Post and before that covered military issues for the Wall Street Journal. Fiasco is an account of the U.S. war in Iraq from the military's point of view, drawn from extensive interviews with officers and soldiers, access to military communications, and first hand accounts from Iraq. As the title suggests, the book's conclusions aren’t happy ones. These three broad points, not news to anyone paying attention, are essential for all of us to understand.

1. A War Based Knowingly on Misinformation

We should never forget the way in which this war was waged based on a lethal mix of fantasy peddled by the Bush administration and the ease with which members of Congress in both parties bought it.

In March 2003 President Bush declared, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraqi regime continues to posses and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." In fact, not only was the President’s declaration false, it was known to be false when he declared it.

A September 2002 National Intelligence Estimate offered ample evidence that the 'weapons of mass destruction' claim was always more muddy than clear. Nevertheless, according to Ricks, neither President Bush, nor Condoleezza Rice, nor most members of the Congress could be bothered to read the 91-page report before taking the nation to war. A recent New York Times Magazine article reported that the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham, who had read the full report, implored his colleagues to do so but they declined, relying instead on a short five-page executive summary that had filtered out the doubts. Among those who couldn’t be bothered to read the full report, says the Times, was Senator Hillary Clinton, a leading Democratic hawk on the war at the time.

2. An Invasion Without Planning for Afterwards

In February 2003, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, famously assured Americans, "You're going to find Iraqis out cheering American troops," and added, "I think the ethnic differences in Iraq are there, but they're exaggerated." When an administration official told the Washington Post that the War and its aftermath could cost as much as $95 billion, Wolfowitz announced, "I don't think he or she knows what he is talking about." To date, the total financial cost of the War in Iraq is $440 billion, enough to pay for more than 21 million four-year U.S. college scholarships. President Bush later rewarded Mr. Wolfowitz by making him the head of the World Bank. That move didn't turn out too well either.

Ricks writes that military leaders told the White House, over and over again, that bringing security and stability to Iraq in the aftermath of the war would require even more troops than the invasion itself. Nevertheless, an administration full of people who managed to avoid service in Vietnam was sure it knew better. A four-star general recounts that the military's strong concerns about the post-invasion were “blown off” by a cocky and arrogant White House. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld memorably dismissed post-invasion looting as a byproduct of Iraqis’ new freedom.

When the fiasco on the ground in Iraq became obvious, Wolfowitz blamed the media for misreporting. “Frankly, part of our problem is [that] a lot of the press are afraid to travel very much, so they sit in Baghdad and they publish rumors.” Three important journalists who have served time in Iraq, for the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the Nation, have visited with us here in Bolivia afterwards, and their stories have common features – reporting under fire and hassles from the U.S. government whenever they reported anything critical about the administration's execution of the war.

3. A Terrific Knack for Creating an Anti-U.S. Insurgency

Most interesting and less reported is the scathing case Fiasco makes about the Bush Administration’s amazing knack for creating an anti-U.S. insurgency where one did not exist before. Ricks lays out the recipe of errors:

a. Make the bulk of the Iraqi population viciously resentful toward the U.S. by invading their homes at night, humiliating their men in front of their families, shooting innocents, taking family members as hostages, and engaging in torture of prisoners.

b. Leaving both the borders and vast caches of weapons totally unguarded throughout the country, paving the way for the formation of insurgent arming and support.

c. Forget that in counter-insurgency warfare, victory goes to the side that wins the population, something U.S. abuse of Iraqi civilians made impossible.

Numerous military commanders tell Ricks that the Bush administration seemed to completely forget every lesson learned the hard way in the war of their youth in Southeast Asia. Marine General Anthony Zinni, a critic of the war from its start, is quoted, “I have seen this movie. It is called Vietnam." Today an Iraq once devoid of an Al Qaeda presence is now an entrenched home for the terrorist group – with the U.S. in its sights.

Some Things We Can Do

In hawk vs. dove debates of the past, those who advocated an end to the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 70s, or who criticized the U.S. nuclear weapons build up in the 1980s, were dismissed as naïve and ill-informed. In the case of Iraq it was our leaders – Democrats and Republicans alike – who were naïve and knowingly misinformed.

Our political system is based on a balance of not three powers – the President, the Congress, and the Courts – but four. The fourth is the people, and it seems clear that on Iraq it is time for the people to set the course. We can do that first by educating ourselves and second by taking action. Here are two good places to begin:

Cathy Breen in Jordan: One of my true heroes in this world is a humble woman named Cathy Breen, a friend who lived a decade here in Bolivia as a Maryknoll missionary. In the run up to the War in Iraq she moved to Baghdad, writing fearless and human dispatches about the people whose lives would be taken over by the pending invasion. For much of the past two years Cathy has been living in Amman Jordan, where nearly one million desperate Iraqi refugees have fled. You can read her dispatches here via Voices for Creative Nonviolence.

Iraq Moratorium Day: This is a new effort that pledges to lead an “escalating, monthly expression of determination to end the war.” The campaign will begin on Friday, September 21st and continue the third Friday of every month thereafter, encouraging people to break with business as usual through a mix of protest, pressure aimed at politicians, community education events, and more. Here is the Web site for the campaign.

Many readers might ask, what is a newsletter from Bolivia doing talking about the U.S. War in Iraq? I have lived abroad a long time now, and I work regularly with citizen groups in almost every corner of the world. Everywhere I am asked what it will take to get the U.S. to develop a foreign policy based on something other than arrogance. They seem almost hopeless that the U.S. can or will change. I tell them there is hope, and it resides in Americans who have a different vision of our country. Perhaps as an American living abroad, I see that in a special way.

On the Democracy Center Web Site!

Thinking Strategically about Advocacy: One of the first things we work with citizen advocates on, from New Mexico to the Balkans, is to think strategically about their advocacy objectives and actions. One of our most popular handouts features five simple questions advocates can use to plan more strategically. Check it out here.

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THE DEMOCRACY CENTER ON-LINE is an electronic publication of The Democracy Center, distributed on an occasional basis to more than 4,500 organizations, policy makers, journalists and others, throughout the U.S. and worldwide. Please consider forwarding it along to those who might be interested. People can request to be added to the distribution list by sending an e-mail note to: contact@democracyctr.org. Newspapers and periodicals interested in reprinting or excerpting material in the newsletter should contact The Democracy Center at contact@democracyctr.org. Suggestions and comments are welcome. Past issues are available on The Democracy Center Web site.

THE DEMOCRACY CENTER

SAN FRANCISCO: P.O. Box 22157 San Francisco, CA 94122
BOLIVIA: Casilla 5283, Cochabamba, Bolivia
TEL: (415) 564-4767
FAX: (978) 383-1269
WEB: http://www.democracyctr.org
E-MAIL: contact@democracyctr.org

Announcements: A New Web Site and a New Report an Bolivia!

2007-05-07T10:16:00.000-07:00

The Democracy Center On-Line

Volume 75 - May 7, 2007

ANNOUNCEMENTS: A NEW WEB SITE AND A NEW REPORT ON BOLIVIA!

Dear Readers:

This newsletter is a short one dedicated to two important announcements from The Democracy Center.

The first is, that after months of design work by our team in Bolivia and the U.S., we are proud to unveil our brand new Web site. Simpler to use, yet more comprehensive than our previous site, you will find everything from a library of free advocacy resources to multimedia presentations on Bolivia. You will also find constantly updated links to the latest versions of our newsletter and our popular Blog from Bolivia, now read by 2,500 to 3,000 people daily. Have a look at the new site this week!

Visit our new Web site here.

Our second announcement is that today The Democracy Center is releasing a major new report on the state of Bolivian politics: Interpreting Bolivia’s Political Transformation. The Democracy Center wrote the paper as a response to a new report on Bolivia published by the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, that one titled, Bolivia on the Brink. For those readers interested in current events in Bolivia, the two reports, from The Democracy Center and the Council, are good tools for understanding the transformation under way today in South America’s most impoverished and most indigenous country. They also shed light on the important debate underway in Washington over how the U.S. should deal with a changing Bolivia.

The Council on Foreign Relations and The Democracy Center have agreed to post links to each other’s papers on our respective Web sites. To read a short summary of The Democracy Center report, and for links to both papers, visit here.

We’ll have more news and announcements soon. A few weeks ago we wrapped up work on our new full-length book: Dignity and Defiance: Stories from Bolivia’s Challenge to Globalization. The book will be published in 2008 by the University of California Press. We are also getting ready to launch a new newsletter for those who want to get more frequent updates on events in Bolivia and other new Democracy Center tools: Democracy Center Highlights. We’ll announce details on both those soon.

Thanks as always for your support and interest!

Jim Shultz
Executive Director
The Democracy Center

________________________________________________________________

THE DEMOCRACY CENTER ON-LINE is an electronic publication of The Democracy Center, distributed on an occasional basis to more than 4,500 organizations, policy makers, journalists and others, throughout the U.S. and worldwide. Please consider forwarding it along to those who might be interested. People can request to be added to the distribution list by sending an e-mail note to: contact@democracyctr.org. Newspapers and periodicals interested in reprinting or excerpting material in the newsletter should contact The Democracy Center at contact@democracyctr.org. Suggestions and comments are welcome. Past issues are available on The Democracy Center Web site.

THE DEMOCRACY CENTER

SAN FRANCISCO: P.O. Box 22157 San Francisco, CA 94122
BOLIVIA: Casilla 5283, Cochabamba, Bolivia
TEL: (415) 564-4767
FAX: (978) 383-1269
WEB: http://www.democracyctr.org
E-MAIL: contact@democracyctr.org

PRESIDENT BUSH TAKES HIS UNPOPULARITY TO LATIN AMERICA

2007-03-08T17:32:00.000-08:00

The Democracy Center On-LineVolume 74 - March 8, 2007

Dear Readers:

Today US President George W. Bush heads off for a six day visit to a region of the world where his public popularity is even worse than it is at home in the US – Latin America. Alongside the expected red carpets and state parties, the Bush trip will be flanked from start to end with mass public protests and strategically placed sharpshooters to guard against attack. In this issue we take a look at Bush's visit and at the botched landscape of US/Latin American relations. We hope you will pass this issue along to other who might be interested.

Jim Shultz
The Democracy Center

PRESIDENT BUSH TAKES HIS UNPOPULARITY TO LATIN AMERICA

Cochabamba, Bolivia: A January poll of 603 prominent Latin Americans (leading politicians, government officials, academics and journalists) found that 86 percent gave the Bush administration a fair or poor grade for its handling of the region. Poll after poll in the region shows that Bush's resounding unpopularity looks just as deep both on the street and even among self-described conservatives. It is likely that more people believe that professional wrestling is real than believe the Bush Administration is much of a friend south of the border.

To be sure, Bush has launched his trip with rhetoric as sunny as the South American summer into which he is headed. Bush told Colombian TV. "It's nothing more than to say we want to be your friends, and we've got a very strong policy of improving the lives of others. My trip is a chance to tell the people of Colombia, Uruguay and Brazil and Guatemala and Mexico that the United States cares deeply about the human condition."

South Americans aren't buying it.

In Bogotá, Colombia this week, a full three days before Bush was even set to arrive, more than 2,000 people filled the streets to protest his visit. More than 6,000 protested today in Sao Palo Brazil, Bush's first stopover. Similar greetings await him at most every visit ahead. In a region of the world that once named broad avenues after modern US Presidents, Mr. Bush is not even likely to score having a bus bench erected in his name.

THE ROOTS OF U.S. UNPOPULARITY

Why is Bush, and by association the US, so unpopular here? Certainly many Bush backers will argue that his antagonists in the region (and he has many) have made it standard practice to blame the US for every ailment the region suffers – from economic catastrophe to natural disaster. There is some truth to this. It is the nature of politicians to look for ways to blame everyone but themselves. What, for example, hasn't Bush himself blamed on the attacks of 9/11? From the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego, the US has been blamed for all manner of problems, including a good many that are homegrown.

But the tide of anti-US sentiment keeps rising here, not because of false concerns, but real ones. Consider a few:

Economic Policies Rained Down from Above

Latin America, more than any region of the world, has suffered two decades of being used as a test lab for a radical experiment in the ideology of "unfettered capitalism will solve everything." It was an experiment directly sponsored by the US and its economic missionaries, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), and it didn't turn out too well for the lab rats. Countries like Bolivia were coerced into "privatizing" their natural resources into the hands of powerful US corporations such as Bechtel and Enron (close Bush allies, both), in exchange for essential foreign aid.

The people of those nations lost control of their most basic economic decisions and their public treasuries and individual purses suffered damaging losses. If there is a core reason behind the so-called "pink tide" that has swept one left-leaning government after another into office in the region, it is resentment against the forced economics of the so-called "Washington Consensus" that have left people here worse off, not better.

Bush's so-called "free trade" agenda is no more popular. US imports from an economy hundreds of times larger than many here flood out local products generating increasing unemployment, just as the US begins work on a southern wall aimed at keeping the unemployed from looking north for new options.

Human Rights on US Terms

Just this week, the Bush Administration released its global, 193-country, review of everyone else's human rights record but its own. The State Department report proclaims, "Across the globe, men and women are pushing for greater personal and political freedom and for the adoption of democratic institutions. They are striving to secure what President Bush calls 'the non-negotiable demands of human dignity." To many in Latin America this reads more like, "Do what we say, not what we do."

Aside from the obvious comparisons of that rhetoric against US actions in Iraq and in Guantanamo (Latin America) there is the direct hand of the US right here in the region. Again, using Bolivia as an example, for more than ten years (until the Morales Administration suspended the practice last year) Bolivian anti-drug prosecutors received a special salary bonus directly from the US government. To keep their foreign patrons happy, those prosecutors repeatedly mixed the innocent with the guilty to keep arrest figures growing ever-upwards.

More than 37,000 Bolivians were thrown into the government's decrepit jails in the last decade, under a law (also forced onto the Bolivia by the US) that denied each one of them any chance of release for at least a year and a half, innocent or not.

The War in Iraq

Only three Latin American nations were a part of President Bush's original 49 member "Coalition of the Willing" when the Iraqi invasion was launched four years ago (El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, all of which were led by close Bush allies at the time), committing a total of less than 1,000 troops. Two of them – Honduras and Guatemala – pulled their soldiers out little more than a year later. The Iraq war is deeply unpopular in Latin America. Latin American countries register some of the strongest public opinion against the war anywhere in the world. The percentage of people in favor of US withdrawal is 80% in Argentina, 67% in Brazil, 63% in Mexico and 62% in Chile.

The war, even though it is far away and only a tiny handful of solders from the region remain in it, is a region-wide symbol that the Bush Administration cares a good deal less deeply "about the human condition" than the President's pre-trip rhetoric seeks to claim.

THE CHAVEZ FACTOR

Much has been made in the US press that Bush's trip to Latin America is really aimed at countering the growing regional influence of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. There is certainly no doubt that Bush and Chavez like one another about as much as a snail likes to be showered with salt. In his speech to the UN last fall, Chavez called Bush "the devil" and claimed that he could "still smell sulfur" behind the UN podium where Bush had spoken earlier. Bush administration officials, including then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, eagerly liken Chavez to Adolph Hitler.

Chavez does carry increasing weight in Latin America and he uses it without disguise to challenge US policy in the region. For example, Venezuela recently made huge loans to Argentina allowing it to payoff its debts to the IMF and divorce itself from the unpopular Washington-based lender. From the US perspective, Chavez is the new Fidel Castro, but with billions of dollars in national income to spread around as a result of being one of the world's leading oil suppliers in a time of spiked global oil prices. US aid to the region is quickly being surpassed by cash flowing from Caracas.

All of which brings me to my final point. If the Bush Administration thinks that a weeklong tour of Latin America by the most unpopular President in recent memory is a formula for challenging Chavez, then it has planned poorly. There are certainly some more moderate heads in the State Department than US policy would suggest and the trip may well be their brainchild. But this is not John Kennedy four and a half decades ago, who was mobbed by well-wishers and who proclaimed in Bogotá, "We must prove that free institutions can best answer their implacable demand for social justice, for food, for material welfare and, above all, for a new hope—hope for themselves and for their children."

Bush's visit will not be marked by well-wishers but by burning US flags and burning Bushes, torched in effigy. It will be up to the next US President to pick up the pieces of the tattered relations and broken trust between the US and its southern neighbors. There are many US citizens, both at home and abroad, who are eager to see that happen.

________________________________________________________________

THE DEMOCRACY CENTER ON-LINE is an electronic publication of The Democracy Center, distributed on an occasional basis to more than 4,000 organizations, policy makers, journalists and others, throughout the US and worldwide. Please consider forwarding it along to those who might be interested. People can request to be added to the distribution list by sending an e-mail note to: contact@democracyctr.org. Newspapers and periodicals interested in reprinting or excerpting material in the newsletter should contact The Democracy Center at contact@democracyctr.org. Suggestions and comments are welcome. Past issues are available on The Democracy Center Web site.

THE DEMOCRACY CENTER

SAN FRANCISCO: P.O. Box 22157 San Francisco, CA 94122

BOLIVIA: Casilla 5283, Cochabamba, Bolivia

TEL: (415) 564-4767FAX: (978) 383-1269

WEB: http://www.democracyctr.org

E-MAIL: contact@democracyctr.org

THE DEMOCRACY CENTER TURNS 15!

2007-01-26T13:48:00.000-08:00

The Democracy Center On-Line

Volume 73 - January 26, 2007

Dear Readers:

The Democracy Center is now fifteen years old!

This new year, 2007, marks our anniversary, and so as we start I want to dedicate this issue of our newsletter to remember how we began, where we've been, and to acknowledge some of the many great organizations that have worked by our side – from California to Bolivia and beyond. All year we will unveil a series of new surprises including today, the on-line version of our new Democracy Center magazine (see below)!

Many, many thanks to all of you who have been with us these fifteen years. I think we're ready for at least fifteen more!

All best wishes,

Jim Shultz
The Democracy Center

THE DEMOCRACY CENTER TURNS 15!

It began with an unexpected letter from Washington. My wife and I were living in Bolivia, taking a year off from political work in California to be volunteers in an orphanage in Cochabamba. Friends at the Advocacy Institute wrote and asked if I would put together an advocacy training program for health activists in South Africa, then still governed under white apartheid rule. That February (1992) I arrived in Johannesburg and, without my really knowing it, The Democracy Center was born.

California

That fall, back in the US, my friends at the Advocacy Institute asked me to open a California office, "AI West" (which we took independent as The Democracy Center in 1997). We set up offices on Mission St. in San Francisco, with my old cohorts at Consumers Union and took on our first new work in California – helping progressive groups address the state's deep budget crisis. We produced a report, "State of Deadlock", that laid out a strategy. Then we pulled our advocacy allies together and led the founding of a new group that could provide serious progressive analysis on budget issues, The California Budget Project, which continues to flourish today.

When immigrants in California came under political attack – culminating in a right-wing ballot measure to keep undocumented immigrant children out of the public schools (Proposition 187) – we joined with our immigrant allies and jumped into the fight. The Center trained immigrant day laborers how to work with the media and helped rights groups plot their strategy. Later we published our popular guide to waging ballot campaigns, "The Initiative Cookbook", and dedicated it to California's immigrants.

Bolivia

In 1998 my family and I left California for Bolivia once again, for what was supposed to be a one-year break to write The Center's citizen advocacy guide, "The Democracy Owners' Manual" (Rutgers University Press). The book got written and published and sold enough to be reprinted twice. But as it turned out, my family and I never went back to California.

I was finishing up the manuscript for "The Democracy Owners' Manual" in early 2000 when here in Cochabamba the streets were exploding in protest in what came to be known as the Cochabamba Water Revolt. The Bechtel Corporation had come to Bolivia from San Francisco, just like I had and at about the same time, though with very different intentions. The Corporate giant from Beale St. had been handed control of the city's public water system and promptly raised rates an average of 50% for the city's poorest families, who in turn took to the streets to kick Bechtel out. The Democracy Center was reborn – outing Bechtel as the hidden owner and writing news dispatches that helped make the water revolt a worldwide story.

The Center's role in the Water Revolt drew a lot of attention and in the years afterwards a parade of wonderful young people from the US began showing up at my door and offering to help. We wrote more studies on Bolivia's experience with globalization. We led a successful global campaign to block Bechtel's $50 million lawsuit against Bolivia. We integrated ourselves with Bolivian social movements and tried to share with the world the lessons about democracy that this humble country in the Andes has to offer.

The World

Every year since that first flight to South Africa, the work of The Democracy Center has also become more and more global. We have done advocacy trainings for clean election campaigners in Mexico, women's groups in Tanzania, health advocates in the former USSR, and activists on a variety of other social justice issues in Thailand, the Balkans, Paraguay, and in other countries all over the world.

We have been especially involved in the effort to engage citizens in monitoring and advocating on how their governments raise and spend public budgets and have written three major studies: on budgets and human rights; tracking gas and oil revenue; and the influence of global institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Helping People Build Democracy from the Ground Up

I have been especially struck recently how in much of the world "democracy" has become a dirty word. People ask if The Democracy Center is funded by the US government and associate the word with the Bush administration's war in Iraq. "Democracy' is an ancient word, a noble one that we can't allow to be hijacked or diminished.

Here at The Democracy Center that word means something much more than elections. It means the right of all people to understand the public issues that affect their lives and to influence public decisions. All over the world – from California to Cochabamba – we have learned powerful and inspiring lessons from people practicing democracy day to day, often at great risk. That includes many of you reading this, with whom it has been our honor to work these fifteen years.

So what's next for The Democracy Center? Here's a glimpse of what we're up to:

Our New Magazine: This month The Democracy Center unveiled our new magazine about Bolivia, "Jallalla" an indigenous word which means, Live! Full of stories, photos and art that crosses politics and culture, you can read the on-line version here.

"Blog from Bolivia": Our popular Blog is now read by more than 3,000 people per day –by US journalists, Bolivian presidents, activists from around the world, and many old friends. Have a look at it here.

A New Book!: The Democracy Center team (eight strong now and a mix of people from Bolivia and the US) is wrapping up work on a major new book: "Dignity and Defiance: Stories from Bolivia's Challenge to Globalization". You can see a preview of it on the back cover of the magazine.

That is just some of what we are up to now – fifteen years and going strong!

We'd Love to Hear from You!

Finally, for our anniversary we'd like to hear from the people we have worked with over the years. We'll be setting up a page on our Web site of comments and memories from old friends (You know who you are!). If you'd like to join in take a moment and write something brief and send it either as a reply to this newsletter or email it to: JimShultz@democracyctr.org.

We look forward to hearing from you and we are grateful for all your support, interest and friendship over the years!

________________________________________________________________

THE DEMOCRACY CENTER ON-LINE is an electronic publication of The Democracy Center, distributed on an occasional basis to more than 4,000 organizations, policy makers, journalists and others, throughout the US and worldwide. Please consider forwarding it along to those who might be interested. People can request to be added to the distribution list by sending an e-mail note to: contact@democracyctr.org. Newspapers and periodicals interested in reprinting or excerpting material in the newsletter should contact The Democracy Center at contact@democracyctr.org. Suggestions and comments are welcome. Past issues are available on The Democracy Center Web site.

THE DEMOCRACY CENTER

SAN FRANCISCO: P.O. Box 22157 San Francisco, CA 94122
BOLIVIA: Casilla 5283, Cochabamba, Bolivia
TEL: (415) 564-4767
FAX: (978) 383-1269
WEB: http://www.democracyctr.org
E-MAIL: contact@democracyctr.org