I strongly suspect that our world is bifurcating into a global gated community where the folks in the first world/ global north will have access to:
Fruits and vegetables
Water
The internet
Physical Books
Information Economy Jobs
Jobs that provide direct support to the information economy
Whereas the folks in the third world/global south will:
Be the nannies, nurses and factory workers of the world
Be without adequate water
Subsist of off Mud Patties/ Fast + Junk food
Have limited or no meaningful access to the internet, outside of that for entertainment purposes
How did I get here?
Food.
Or more precisely vegetables.
Tom Philpott, a thinker, writer, environmental dude who? understands race, history, structural forces and labor, is the person that put me on to food deserts, which are basically neighborhoods with hella junk food but no fruits, vegetables and good grocery stores.
Perhaps most importantly he is the person who said outloud that cheap food requires cheap labor. I have never seen a White man with a public platform connect food, to labor and essentially globalization and race.
Reflecting on food and social justice on Martin Luther King Jr. Day last month Philpott writes,
In our society, there?s a strong focus on individual solutions to the problems I?m laying out here. Commentators focus on personal choice; we are urged to ?transform our food system one bite at a time? by exercising our consumer power to buy fresh, local, sustainably raised food.
But the choices we have are limited by structural forces. Yes, people need to take responsibility for their food choices, but if we?re really going to throw off the dead hand of industrial food, we need to transform the conditions under which people make their food choices.
Last week during the fourth day of the great blizzard, the Giant ran out of vegetables, so I schlepped a subway station and 5 more blocks south to Whole Foods for carrots and mushrooms to make baked ziti, and paid 25% more for the groceries than I would have at the Giant. I spent my pedicure money.? Its been eight weeks. Arrrg.
It was then that I realized that given our conversation’s about food, access to fresh foods, to fruits and vegetables is a privilege for the middle class and the elite.
I thought it was ironic that this was also the day in which Mrs. Obama launched her Let’s Move child obesity initiative I was hunting down vegetables for a weeks worth of dinner.
I had a twitter conversation about this issue with @Rafikam and he asked why don’t low income hoods?raise hell when they don’t have access to fresh fruits, vegetables and good grocery stores? He stated that if fresh fruits and vegetables weren’t available on the upper east side, there would be a ruckus.
I responded asking him:
Can folks in the hood can’t get d-boys off of their corners?
Can folks in the hood also stop the police from shooting them in cold blood?
We went back and forth and we both concluded? that the issue is both systemic and personal, simultaneously.
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So,? how do I tie this into global gated communities.
Ultimately there are a few things that have me thinking about society
bifurcating into two communities.
As I discussed above, the first thing is food.
The second issue that the Supreme court allowing the corporations
to classified as persons for the purposes of spending money
in elections. For me that is akin to a dope boy moving from the corner,
hustling, to moving to my living room to hustle. And daring me to say something about it.
What happens to a democracy when corporations can spend unlimited amounts on campaigns without having to disclose that they have?
The second is the Ipad/Amazon/MacMillan fall out. The gist of it is
that MacMillan and a few other publishers pulled their books from Amazon.com a couple of weeks ago. ALL their print and digital titles, while they tried figure out how much to charge for e-books, $9.99-$14.99.
The first thing I thought was, if books go digital, whats to stop them from being bootlegged like albums?
If books go digital, how will people in the global south have access to books that can help free them? Liberate them?
Let me put it this way. If the global south is being touted as the nanny/sexworker/factory zone of the world, why would the elites who run the global north give the internet to folks in the global south?
When you play chess do you help the other team win?
The fourth, I was reading Field Guide to the Global Economy for class and learning that when GM moved jobs from Detroit in 1996, they paid $18.96 an hour, when they moved to Mexico they paid workers $1.54. But the cost of a GM Suburban didn’t go down. In 1994 it was $21-24K, in 1996 they were $23,500-$31K
Funny, whenever we hear about jobs being moved, the actual dollar amounts are never mentioned. Puts things into perspective no?
The fifth issue that has influenced my thinking about global gated communities is the slow motion implosion of California, the worlds 8th largest economy and the privatization of the UC System. What happens to a state when working class and middle class parents can no longer send their children to a public institution for an education?
The sixth and last issue that has influenced my thinking is learning that that the igeneration expects to be connected digitally 24 hours per day. Sharon Jayson writes in USA Today,
Kathryn Montgomery, a communication professor at American University in Washington, D.C., and author of the 2007 book Generation Digital, hears similar stories from her students. “They tell me their younger siblings have different relationships with these technologies,” she says.
The difference is that these younger kids “don’t remember a time without the constant connectivity to the world that these technologies bring,” she says. “They’re growing up with expectations of always being present in a social way ? always being available to peers wherever you are.”
After I read this, I thought, what happens to a society where the young people expect to be connected digitally, 24 hours per day? How will this impact their ability to interact with other human beings without a layer of technology acting as a median?
Global Gated Communities?
Thoughts?
Am I wrong for nannies/sexworkers/factoryworkers?
what about the urban farming movement? http://www.urbanfarming.org/ I think that we have a natural avenue to dealing with this issue through sports. Athletes should partner with these movements to promote the idea of healthy eating. Communities of color (at least in the U.S.) This could also be promoted through churches. As to the technology divide, there are telecom companies working to turn cellphones into debit cards in places like Haiti. (This was being discussed before the quake.) If this works, it will help these places leapfrog over traditional technological barriers. There are ways to deal with the global gated communities. We just have to use what we have to the best of our abilities.
Hi Ralph,
Thank you for stopping by and for sharng.
What incentive does an athlete have to act?
When was the last time an athlete cared about someone other then themselves, Muhammad Ali?
There are ways to deal with the global gated communities. We just have to use what we have to the best of our abilities.
==========
What interest do the Global elites have in sharing their power with people that they only expect to work for them?
Another way of saying it is:
If I am playing chess with you, why would I help you win?
I look forward to your response.
~R
Back at the turn of the LAST century they asked a bunch of New Yorker’s what would be the big problems the city would be facing in the 2000’s.
People thought that the big problem of our time would be how to get rid of all the shit. Literally.
There were no cars 100 years ago so a big concern for a growing city and it’s citizens, was how to handle all the horse shit from the thousands of horses that would no doubt be clogging the streets in the future.
I find the idea of global gated communities kind of like that. It ignores the big changes going on all around you and assumes that the way things were are the way they will be.
The idea that folks in the ‘Global South’ will :
Be the nannies, nurses and factory workers of the world
Be without adequate water
Subsist of off Mud Patties/ Fast + Junk food
Have limited or no meaningful access to the internet, outside of that for entertainment purposes.
is ridiculous.
The reason work can be moved to ‘the global south’ so cheaply in the first place is because of internet access. It’s why call centers are being moved to Africa faster than any other part of the world. The Information Economy Jobs isn’t a first world thing. It’s a smart/cheap thing. It’s why the most Information Economy Jobs can be found in India. Not exactly a first world country, yet.
In a world as interconnected as ours gated communities lead to failures like N. Korea and Cuba.
There is nothing wrong (IMHO) with being a nanny/factoryworker/sexworker IF that’s what you want to be. But what we ‘first world’ folks need to be concerned about is making sure that everyone has the opportunity to pursue what they want. Anything else is horseshit.
[oh, and the ‘first world’ isn’t an information economy anymore. It’s a design based economy.)
Samuel Dalembert (76ers Center) has been active in the Haitian community for some time. You could also look into San Pedro de Macoris and the Dominican ballplayers. There are athletes that are involved in their communities. In the U.S. Shaq has been involved in activities and I think Jerry Rice as well but I think working the plan first to see if it fails is better than just concluding failure. Let’s force them to say no every time before giving up on them immediately. One Ali makes a huge difference.
As far as the question of the Global Elites, I think that your analysis may be a bit static. Today Brazil is unquestionably an emerging power with a whole different set of views than France. (I would much rather invest in Brazilian bonds over the long term than in France.) The Elites are constantly changing and shifting. South Korea wants every Brazilian and Jamaican to buy Hyundais not Toyotas. India wants Haitians to use Indian computers not dells. Emerging Economies are fighting for new markets and they are prepared to go fight over the new spaces. In Haiti there were two foreign companies, Digicel and Voila fighting over the Haitian wireless market. Today in Haiti I can bbm my contact to find out if the medical supplies we sent arrived at their destination. (they did)
We are playing multi-level chess and we have to be prepared to move on a multiple levels.
This is a great website by the way!!!!!
@Prince Campbell I think your point about about internet access is worth repeating. I those of us in the inner cities,poc, or whatever term is appropriate need to see how to use these new lines of communication to our benefit. (Tourism and Timeshares to Ghana, Math Tutors from Senegal, Financial advice to Kenyan elites?) We need to stop being the group that wonders what just happened.
Hi Ralph,
Thank you for taking the time to respond. I have a few questions for you.
I am familiar with the movements of global capital and of human beings, one of my research
interests is Globalization and the City.
What do you based your notion of the elites constantly changing on?
Who are the elites? When I say it, I mean:
1. Madison Avenue Executives
2. Fortune 500 corporation Heads
3. Millionaire politicians
4. Millionaire members of Corporate Boards
The nature of elite power is that it works to serve its own interests, and to further consolidate its own power
at all costs.
Let me ask you this. Have you read David Harvey’s work Neoliberalism? He is able to sum up the way global capital
and human beings have been moving over the last 20 years, fascinating stuff.
With regard to athletes, I have learned the hard way that expecting people to do something that they have
no incentive to do, is a time suck. While athletes may be useful, the people toiling day to day in factories,
as sex workers and sordid subsistence labor will be the ones who liberate themselves, not an athlete.
My understanding of this comes out of Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
Looking forward to your comments.
~R
Let me take your questions in order:
1. Who are the elites and why do I say that they are constantly changing?
People in their 70’s remember when China was a joke. People in their thirties remember when Hyundai was a 4995.00 car brand new. Today China is our banker. Last year the Hyundai Genesis was the North American car of the year. There are numerous examples but the point is that there are new movers and shakers at the table and the days when the English and the Americans could determine the direction of the world are over. (The English had a fit when Jaguar was purchased by Tata, an Indian company.) The elites are always changing. Don’t underestimate the power of such varied things as Hip Hop and Urban media. Records companies have to listen to Jay Z and 50 in a way that they didn’t have to to LL and KRS.
The real question is how do the oppressed react to the changing reality? How are African Americans going to fare under a China centered economy? How are latinos in the States going to do with entrenched black mayors. (When Mumia got arrested there was no thought of a black mayor if philly. It would take a while longer. As to David Harvey’s work, how does he address the role of successful “nomadic” ethnic groups in globalization?
To put a point on it:
-The Indian auto industry and Movies are growing exponentially. They have to be dealt with.
-Blacks and other ethnic have almost completed dominated cool. The question now is what are we going to do with it. (Just because you waste it doesn’t mean you don’t have it)
-Jesse Jackson is a millionaire now. (Malcolm was evicted from his home before he was assassinated.)
-See my previous comments about Indian,Chinese,Brazilian and yes, African corporations.
2. Athletes are just like everybody else. Most of them are children of the day laborers, sex workers and permanently unemployed. Both groups behave the same. My point was just to get them to promote healthy eating and the urban farming. I’m not suggesting it will solve everything but it will help move the ball forward.
3. Pedagogy of the Oppressed is a wonderful book but I would be curious to imagine a conversation between Paulo Friere and Nelson Mandela. What would Friere have advised Mandela to do upon assumption of power. Lastly, what would Friere say to the guys running the Kip Academy or the introduction of a a $100.00 laptop?
I think the american people have to step up and demand better! It has been our history as African Americans to eat unhealthy aleast since being aquired by the white man lol. That same way of eating has continued generations since the end of slavery. Alot of the food is even the same some dishes are still made the same. How do you changed intrenched mindsets on nutrition and daily eating habits. Soul food was a perfect example of how alot of blacks lot at food and the quality of our food we consume. Getting the black community as a whole to not only accept eating healthy but eating healthy will be a ordeal on its own. Those especially in poverty stricken areas. Cause for a while I was going to a broke fase and I had to make the choice eat healthy or eat a meal at CHURCH’s chicken I chose CHURH’s chicken. Why would I spend $5 on some fruit which is what a bag of grapes these days, when I can have a meal for $5. I might not be healthy but I was full. And I respect you walking those blocks to get the fresh veggies lol cause like I stated up above I would not have. But I don’t neccessarily think the movement has to start with anyone famous but within our own communities to promote a healthier lifestyle for those communities to have a uproar when the selves are low of fresh veggies and fruit. Our community should be tired and upset by the diabetes rate we are dying at not to mention all the other health risk we are predisposed to by the comsuption of the quality of food we comsume. I don’ feel that outsourcing will stop until a better profit can be made here in america, why stop when I can make more money abroad and still get you to purchase my product but I think companies are failing (and maybe not) to see that soon some of the very things we call luxuries and that are staples of the American way of life will not belong to America as those land and companies already. And then we will be forced to submit to a foriegn power and have our economy and way of life changed forever.
I think your thought about giving the internet to these subordinated regions raises the issue of the contradictions of capitalism. Capitalism needs more consumers and cheap workers – the internet is exported to promote consumption of computers, iPhones, etc. and also to arm cheap labourers – many of the technology jobs moved to “developing” countries after NAFTA.
I guess my question is how to we move away from being reduced to workers and consumers…how do people across regions develop a class consciousness and way to work together…
Ummm.
I am not so sure that a class consciousness is the issue.
I am attracted to the issue of Food as a framework for talking about reorganizing society
because it cuts across race and class and it gets at the heart of global capitalism.
What do you think?