The Exploiter Harms—But Look At What Happens to the Exploiter, Too

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Hundreds of mostly women gathered at Catholic University’s Maloney Hall during the first weekend of March to convene the first U.S.-based conference of a worldwide grassroots women’s network called the International Women’s Alliance, as well as help strengthen its fledgling U.S. chapter.

The conference kicked off early Saturday morning with speeches by Washington, D.C., “situationers,” Jacqueline Luqman and Madhvi Bahl.

Luqman, a member of the Black Alliance for Peace as well as IWA member organization Pan-African Community Action, gave an overview of how the U.S. government has oppressed Africans, starting from the late 1800s, when former slaves migrated from the U.S. South to Washington, D.C.. The U.S. Congress must approve all legislation passed by the district council and it controls the district’s budget. The U.S. President appoints the district’s judges, while it has no voting representation in Congress.

“It is because we are still a majority Black city, just barely. Forty percent Black with a 30 percent white population that is growing rapidly, due to continued rapacious gentrification,” Luqman told the crowd, which responded throughout her 18-minute presentation with hoots, hollers and applause. Luqman, also Toward Freedom‘s Board Secretary, left the mic to a standing ovation. Her talk can be found 28 minutes into this livestream playback.

Meanwhile, Bahl of the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network described how migrants’ human rights are being violated as they are used in a political tug of war.

IWA Chairperson Azra Talat Sayeed represents Roots of Equity, a Pakistan-based group that organizes peasants, women and religious minorities in Pakistan. She described the poverty in her country, which she connected to U.S. interference. In Pakistan, 44 percent of children under the age of five are experiencing stunted growth due to lack of food.

“My country is bleeding,” Sayeed said. “It’s a massacre.”

Later, Monisha Rios, a U.S. military veteran and psychologist who lives in Puerto Rico, described the impact of U.S. militarization on women around the world and the effect of U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico.

Then a panel discussion featured women on the front lines of the working-class movement in the United States.

Edith Saldano of Starbucks Workers United spoke of workplace harassment that led to her radicalization. “Y’all are going to cry with me today,” the Santa Cruz, California-based worker said as her face grew red. She said it is normal for customers to physically attack workers. Saldano described one incident where someone threw a banana at a barista.

The Starbucks worker identified three issues that threaten employed women: Harassment, unstable working conditions (including schedules) and workplace injuries.

“It’s consistently putting working women in survival mode.”

Saldano said already about 100 workers who have been organizing unions in Starbucks coffee shops have been fired and subsequently blacklisted from working at other company stores.

“How do we give the working class a solution?” Saldano asked.

The panel discussion also featured Christina Brown, the sister of 39-year-old Poushawn Brown, a Virginia-based Amazon employee who had no medical training, but was switched to a role that involved testing workers for COVID-19 on a daily basis. However, Christina said her sister was not provided with the proper protective gear nor with hazard pay. A few months after she began testing workers, Poushawn returned home on January 7, 2021, not feeling well. The shock came the next morning.

“She did not wake up,” Christina told conference attendees.

Now, Christina raises her sister’s 14-year-old daughter and is engaged in a legal battle with Amazon.

“I’m up against a trillion-dollar company all by myself. It’s just me doing it. I can’t stop.”

Panel moderator Monica Moorehead, who helped found the IWA, remarked on the recent U.S. federal government’s move to eliminate the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides food to poor households. The majority of recipients are people of color.

“This is a slow genocide,” Moorehead remarked.

The International Women’s Alliance also introduced a proposed campaign, “Meet Women’s Needs; Stop Corporate Greed!” This campaign is designed to address the failings of the U.S. government to meet the needs of women and their families, and demand change. This comes in addition to previously launched ongoing campaigns, “War and Militarism” and “Women Over Profit.”

The alliance kicked off in 2010 in Montreal in response to the International League of People’s Struggle’s 2008 call for a women’s conference to be held. 2010 was the centennial year International Toiling Women’s Day.

Later on during the first day of the conference, hundreds of women and their supporters started rallying at the Philippine embassy in Washington, D.C.

There, Vivian Flanagan from Terrapin Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines (TerpCHRP) at the University of Maryland College Park, spoke to the impacts of war on women. They focused on one weapons manufacturer found on their campus, Lockheed Martin, and shared how its former executive vice-president, Linda Gooden, is on the Board of Regents that oversees all of Maryland’s public universities.

“Let Linda’s ‘professional success’ at the expense of trafficked, exploited and martyred women affected by Lockheed Martin’s war machine be a reminder of the treachery of liberal feminism,” she said.

After marching to the World Bank, organizations from Palestinian Youth Movement, Katarungan DC, CODEPINK, and spoke about the World Bank’s role in suppressing poor countries through foreign aid that perpetuates indebtedness. Raymond Diaz from Katarungan DC shared about their parents’ migration experience.

“Much like many children of poor immigrants, my Mexican parents left everything they knew when NAFTA came in, driving thousands of laborers out of their homeland and becoming a part of the working class in this country.”

When the march arrived at the White House, speakers from United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), Committee in Solidarity of the People of El Salvador (CISPES), Anti-Imperialist Action at University of Maryland Baltimore County, International League of Peoples Struggles (ILPS), African National Women’s Organization, Resist U.S. Led War, and IWA emphasized the call for international solidarity.

At the White House, Katie Comfort of IWA called for the unity of women and urged for the need to organize.

“Women are uniting around the world against U.S. imperialism and [women in the] the U.S. [have] to be a part of that movement. The International Women’s Alliance takes seriously the call to build IWA Americas not just here in the U.S., but in the Caribbean, in Latin America, to unite women around the world, to understand our common enemy is the U.S., the U.S. state, the U.S. military, who kills and rapes our women. So, we are here today to say the movement has to start now. We are not just here this weekend to speak out about it one time, but to keep speaking out about it until this House belongs to the People. We are here to declare Women over Profit.”

Julie Varughese is editor of Toward Freedom.

Correction: A previous version of this article stated the United States owed a greater amount to the UN’s climate finance program.

If anyone expected ambitious delivery of climate finance given the rhetoric at the United Nations’ 26th Conference of Parties (COP26), they would be disappointed. Ongoing discussions regarding climate funding to help developing countries meet their obligations reveal serious limitations, according to experts Toward Freedom interviewed.

A meeting was held March 8-9 to discuss the next round of funding for the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Trust. The trust was established in 1992 to support developing countries to comply with international environmental conventions and agreements, like those related to climate change, biodiversity, chemicals, and waste and food security. Currently, discussions are on for the eighth round of funding.

Wealthy Countries’ ‘Ambitious Regression’

As of now, it looks like funding for climate action will be around $1 billion. This is only marginally better than the seventh replenishment cycle that allocated $800 million, about $200 million less than the sixth cycle.

“This is what ambitious regression looks like,” said Zaheer Fakir, one of the lead coordinators for the African Group of Negotiators on Climate Change (AGN).

Moreover, certain developed countries like the United States, Japan and Switzerland have proposed smaller allocations toward climate change in the GEF, while prioritizing other items like biodiversity and chemicals. Their argument is that while other entities—like the Green Climate Fund—could mobilize climate funding, GEF is the only grant-based, multilateral financing mechanism for other issues like biodiversity loss and chemical waste.

But developing countries don’t share this view, according to Fakir. Speaking for South Africa, he said the GEF should ideally scale up allocations for all areas—including climate change—because it is an entity through which funding is provided under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), too.

This is in line with an October 2020 COP guidance to the GEF that encourages GEF, as part of its eighth replenishment process, “to duly consider ways to increase the financial resources allocated for climate action” and calls upon developed country parties to “contribute to a robust eighth replenishment… to support developing countries in implementing the Convention…” The guidance note also specifically invites GEF “to duly consider the needs and priorities of developing country Parties when allocating resources to developing country Parties.”

In fact, the Memorandum of Understanding between COP and GEF explicitly states GEF policies, program priorities and eligibility criteria related to UNFCCC shall be decided by the COP.

“All developing countries, be it in Africa or Asia or Latin America are calling for an increase in overall GEF funding because there are legitimate needs for climate action and also other areas like biodiversity,” said Kamal Djemouai, an independent climate consultant from Algeria and former AGN chair. “We need new and additional finance for all areas from climate change to biodiversity to land management.”

The United States has pushed to keep current funding low, despite owing $102.4 million to the GEF for previous replenishment cycles.

The other issue is donor-dictated policies. Fakir explained that GEF policies, country allocations and focal area programming are dictated by developed country contributors that are donors to the trust. Djemouai agreed, saying allocations to the GEF “do not reflect the needs of developing countries or even the guidance given by COPs.”

GEF Chief Executive Officer and Chairperson Carlos Manuel Rodriguez declined to reply to this reporter’s questions.

The United States Disappoints

The other recent blow to expectations of increased climate finance delivery came last week when the United States allocated $1 billion toward international climate finance for fiscal year 2022. U.S. President Joe Biden had promised to deliver $11.4 billion each year by 2024.

“Hopes were raised quite high, but the allocation fell severely short. So yes, it is disappointing,” said Joe Thwaites, an associate of the Sustainable Finance Center at the World Resources Institute. He pointed out that, at this rate, it would take up to the year 2050 for the United States to meet its target of $11.4 billion per year unless the 2023 U.S. spending bill allocates substantially more toward international climate finance.

The United States also has not set aside money for the Green Climate Fund (GCF). GCF mobilizes funding to enable developing countries to adapt to a rapidly warming world. This comes as the United States still owes $2 billion to GCF out of U.S. President Barack Obama’s pledge of $3 billion.

An Unfair Advantage for Some Island Nations?

Policy recommendations from the February 2-4 GEF meeting suggest support for introducing a “Vulnerability Index” to replace the GDP index used as the criteria to access climate finance. This has given rise to concerns among certain developing countries that climate funding for poorer nations could instead go to richer ones.

On March 18, Brazil, India, Mexico, South Africa, China and Latin American countries released a joint statement raising concerns about the Vulnerability Index. The term “vulnerable countries” is not part of any multilateral environmental agreements for which GEF is the financing mechanism. Currently, the only categorization is “developed” and “developing.”

The GEF must “continue to treat all developing recipient countries equally and, in this regard, must not introduce new categories of countries or to provide for any differentiation or graduation among developing countries for accessing its financial resources or financial terms,” the statement argued.

This policy recommendation follows a previously made demand at UNGA to use a Multidimensional Vulnerability Index (MVI) for small island developing states (SIDS) to access concessional financing, or grant funding.

Small islands are vulnerable to climate change impacts. But it could be considered unfair to rank SIDS that are high-income or even upper-middle-income countries, like Mauritius and St. Lucia, higher than least developed countries, like Mozambique, Yemen and Afghanistan. A higher ranking would open the path to lower interest-rate loans.

The United Kingdom, too, favors reworking the criteria. Geopolitical considerations like accommodating Caribbean islands post-Brexit to offer the Commonwealth as an alternative to the European Union might play a role.

The GEF is holding another meeting for discussions on the eighth replenishment in the first week of April.

Rishika Pardikar is a freelance journalist in Bangalore, India. She had reported for Toward Freedom from COP26 in Glasgow.

Kastura Chougule couldn’t sleep despite having worked 15 hours in the field.

“I was exhausted, but something didn’t feel right,” she recollected. It was half past midnight. Small, shriveled and in her early 70s, Chougule managed to muster enough strength to stretch her muscles and quickly walk toward the adjoining tin shanty.

Her son, Vijay, was sitting on the floor, covering his entire forehead with his hands.

“What’s wrong, son? What’s bothering you?” she asked in the vernacular Marathi language.

Vijay, in his mid-30s, didn’t reply, nor was he aware she had entered the room. After she asked multiple times, he replied, “Go to sleep. It’s too late.” It was the last his mother would see him. By nine in the morning, family members wondered why Vijay hadn’t woken up yet. By the time they had rushed to the house, Vijay, a stone cutter from the western Indian state of Maharashtra’s Jambhali village, was found hanging inside his shanty.

Economy Grows, While Poor Left Behind

Vijay was one of 153,052 people who died by suicide in 2020. A year later, this number increased by 7 percent to 164,033 suicides, as per India’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) which releases suicide figures every year. This marked the highest annual count since 1967, the year the NCRB began recording. India also witnessed a 10 percent increase in suicides between 2019 and 2020.

Last month, however, India became the fifth-largest economy, overtaking the United Kingdom. However, a United Nations Development Program (UNDP) report released in the same week found India ranked 132nd out of 191 countries on the Human Development Index. It has slipped to two spots since 2020.

Moreover, for the first time, daily wage laborers comprised more than 25 percent of suicide cases. In 2014, they made up only 12 percent of suicides, which means this portion of the Indian population’s suicides has increased by 113 percent.

Within the first month of India’s nationwide lockdown starting March 2020, 122 million people lost their jobs, estimated the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, a private company. Daily wage laborers and small traders comprised roughly 75 percent. A report found that a year of the lockdown pushed 230 million Indians into poverty. By the end of 2020, 15 million workers were still out of jobs, including Vijay.

‘We Never Imagined Life Would Break Him So Much’

“Ever since the lockdown, he was home most of the time. Moreover, construction work came to a halt in most places, which further affected his work,” says his father, Shrirang, who’s in his early 80s now.

Vijay left behind his sledge hammer, which weighs much more than what Kastura can lift.

“This is my son’s last sign,” she says tearfully. She spends most of the time staring at the ten kilograms (22 pounds) hammer.

“Suicide was the last thing he would contemplate,” she says. “For all of us, he was a support system, and we never imagined life would break him so much.”

What Drove Vijay to Suicide?

A daily wage earner, he earned roughly 300 Indian Rupees ($3.50) for 10 hours of work breaking stones and boulders. He would hoist his hammer at least 4,000 times a day.

“For 6 to 7 months, he didn’t get enough work, which stressed him tremendously,” said his niece, Manisha, 22. When India lifted its nationwide lockdown after 67 days, Vijay found a few days’ work. “While using a tile cutter machine, he met with an accident and lost one of his fingers,” Manisha said.

This was a major blow as he found it extremely difficult to work now. “The task of breaking boulders using a mere hammer comes with no security, and he ended up permanently injuring one of his fingers a year before,” Shrirang said.

Still, Vijay tried breaking stones but couldn’t work with his previous intensity. Further, local lockdowns brought an end to whatever bare minimum work he got.

To undergo surgery for his fingers, he took out a medical loan of 200,000 Rupees ($2,500). “After this surgery, he wasn’t the same. He rarely spoke,” Manisha said. Two months later, he was diagnosed with severe dengue which permanently broke him.

“A few days before the suicide, he told me, ‘What’s the point of living now?’” Shrirang recounted, adding he tried every possible way to convince Vijay not to give up. “I even told him I would help him start a new business.”

‘A Much Larger Problem’

The World Inequality Report 2022 mentioned the top 10 percent in India hold 57 percent of the national wealth, while the bottom 50 percent merely own 13 percent. “India stands out as a poor and very unequal country, with an affluent elite,” the report remarked.

“The stark inequality talks of a much larger problem,” says Amol Naik, a lawyer who is a member of All India Kisan Sabha, the farmers’ wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). “With the rapid increase in privatization, many public schools, hospitals and other important institutions that serve the poor have been completely destroyed. Moreover, with the rising inflation, the daily wage earners are caught in a tremendous debt cycle, with no support system.”

Further, in 2021, climate change impacts such as floods, heat waves, cyclones, landslides and other disasters have made more than 5 million hectares of land (12.3 million acres) unusable, pushing more people into poverty.

Inadequate Mental Healthcare

In September 2021, Vishal Ugale told his sister that he wanted to rest for a while, so that he could leave for work in the evening. However, he never went to work.

The Ugale family had gathered to celebrate an auspicious occasion at 5:30 p.m.

“We were all dialing Vishal to start the auspicious ceremony, but he wouldn’t take our calls,” recalled his mother, Vimal Ugale. No one knew what exactly had happened.

“A few hours later, it was found that Vishal died by suicide in a public veterinary hospital,” said his sister, Savita Khondre.

A resident of Jambhali village in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district, Vishal tended furnaces in factories and textile mills. “This work often affected him so much that he drank alcohol occasionally to forget his stress,” said Savita. “But since COVID, he started drinking quite frequently.”

Ugale, a farmworker in her early 70s, said she never knew the reason behind his suicide.

“Every few weeks, he would frustratingly say, ‘Why was I born in this household? I don’t want to live anymore,’” she recounted.

Ugale often spent hours talking to Vishal, asking what help he needed. But he wouldn’t say a word.

The Taboo of Mental-Health Care

Vishal became more stressed after COVID induced lockdowns, said Khondre. Jambhali, which has a population of roughly 5,000 people, reported more than seven suicides in 2021, as per official records from the village sub-center. A sub-center is the first point of public healthcare for community members.

“Mostly people talk to us about physical illnesses,” said medical officer Dr. Vasanti Patil, under whose care this village falls. “They never mention mental-health problems because it is still considered a taboo in the villages.”

During the lockdown, she observed deteriorating mental health among several villagers, especially the ones who owed loans. “There are so many cases of rising debt, and with dwindling work during COVID, many people were stressed, which further affected them,” she said.

For a population of 1.3 billion people, India has 9,000 psychiatrists and 1,000 psychologists, as per research published in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry. That comes to 1 mental-health professional for every 130,000 Indians.

“Many villages don’t have adequate mental healthcare facilities, leaving people alone, further pushing them [to] the brink of suicide,” shared Naik, who has organized several protests in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district and also accompanied many protests that marched to Mumbai, the country’s financial capital, to draw attention to the plight of farm workers and daily-wage laborers. “During these protests, almost everyone talks of the rising stress and the rapidly increasing cost of living.”

During the first wave of COVID, India witnessed a large-scale reverse migration, whereby workers returned to villages because they either had lost jobs or had no work. Many daily-wage laborers walked hundreds of miles to reach their villages.

“However, there wasn’t much work in the fields, and many people had no option to earn enough, further stressing them. During this time, the cases of substance abuse increased rapidly,” says community healthcare worker Bharti Kamble.

In her Bolakewadi village of Maharashtra, over half of the villagers migrate to India’s financial capital—Mumbai, working as daily-wage laborers. “All of these factors impacted almost everyone’s mental health.”

Ugale still thinks about what affected her son so much. She has spent several hours talking to Vishal’s friends. But, so far, she hasn’t found anything concrete.

“He left us with many questions, to which we won’t be able to find answers in an entire lifetime.”

If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts or know someone who needs help, please call India’s 24-hour, toll-free national mental-health helpline dubbed “Kiran” at 1 (800) 599-0019 or any of these helplines near you. For the United States, dial 988.

Sanket Jain is an independent journalist based in the Kolhapur district of the western Indian state of Maharashtra. He was a 2019 People’s Archive of Rural India fellow, for which he documented vanishing art forms in the Indian countryside. He has written for Baffler, Progressive Magazine, Counterpunch, Byline Times, The National, Popula, Media Co-op, Indian Express and several other publications.