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United for a Fair Economy:
Building Binational Consciousness
website: http://www.faireconomy.org/
United for a Fair Economy, based in Boston, Massachusetts, is a research and resource organization devoted to increasing ‘economic literacy’. UFE distributes publications and materials that deconstruct the inaccessible terminology of economics into a vernacular that people can react to and understand.They have designed several workshops used widely by organizations around the country which illustrate the ‘growing divide’ between rich and poor in the U.S.
After playing a significant role in the organizing and educating that led to the landmark WTO protests in Seattle in 1999, UFE built a program that brought into focus some of the trends and contradictions of the global economy.Their initial approach to global justice was solidarity-driven, demonstrating the negative impacts of corporate-driven globalization on the poor in the developing world. In recent years, however, UFE has framed a domestic critique that communicates how low-income people of color are bearing the effects of a structural adjustment program at home.
"There are a lot of global justice activists that think
they are the experts because they can speak the language,
because they know terminologies, but you're not going to
the base where people can really make connections with the
personal experiences, with the reality that they are living.
What the global justice movement does not have is the human
faces, is concrete cases. They have theory, but they don’t
have practice." -JEANETTE HUEZO
Building from their mandate to advance economic literacy, UFE has used popular education methodologies to engage immigrant constituencies in the Boston Area to take leadership in global justice campaigns. Beyond passing along information about global issues,UFE’s staff has been instrumental in motivating immigrant organizations to use popular education to expand their members' capacity to participate in and lead campaigns.
The following profile is composed of four interviews with staff from UFE and partner organizations. Jeanette Huezo, a popular educator from UFE whose roots are in the revolution in El Salvador in the 1970s and 80s, has been instrumental in reaching out to the Central American community and invigorating popular education as a means to organizing at both the global and local level. In the profile below, she discusses her technique and process of conducting workshops that lead immediately to action. A former colleague of Jeanette’s, Mike Prokosch,shares some insight on the importance of popular education to leadership development, and the challenges of expanding popular education within U.S. social movements.
Two organizers from immigrant-based organizations in the area, Carlos Rosales and Edwin Argueta,discuss how they have applied the knowledge and training gathered from UFE’s workshops in two initiatives, one confronting the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), and the other to hold money transfer companies accountable for their heavy take on remittances sent back to Central America. Both of these campaigns are strong examples of how immigrant communities are identifying binational strategies that confront corporations and governments in the U.S. and at home.