Gloria Cope, Chemainus

I think it is fair to say that as 2011 came to a close, one of the most frequent comments from the media was to describe the growing gap between rich and poor resulting in massive inequalities throughout the world. We also witnessed what has become known as the ‘year of the protest movement’ coming from 'occupy groups' in the Western World who claim to represent the 99 percent while in the Middle East we witnessed the ‘Arab Spring’.

I think it is fair to say that as 2011 came to a close, one of the most frequent comments from the media was to describe the growing gap between rich and poor resulting in massive inequalities throughout the world. We also witnessed what has become known as the ‘year of the protest movement’ coming from 'occupy groups' in the Western World who claim to represent the 99 percent while in the Middle East we witnessed the ‘Arab Spring’.
    This didn’t happen overnight… More than 20 years ago I went on a Third World exposure tour to Cuernavaca, Mexico. Two weeks later, I came home a totally different person knowing that my God had much greater expectations of me that would follow through the rest of my life. I would never again look the same way at anything or believe things in the way I used to, without question. While there were many moments that have stayed with me, there was one revealing and prophetic message that I couldn’t shake off.
    One day a journalist spoke to my group about a conference he had attended in Tampa, Florida for the very rich or as many refer to them ‘Captains of Industry’. He described these people as being very upbeat and jolly having been told that governments in the Western World had been busy changing regulations that over the past few decades had kept these ‘captains’ in the passenger seat of cars rather than the driver’s seat – adding that very soon they would find themselves back where they belonged – driving.
    The analogy was perfect because I knew well how prosperous my life had been since my coming of age in the fifties in Canada’s middle class society. I was also vaguely aware that in 1991, global trade deals and deregulation in industry was shaping a new world order, one the politicians promised would be better for all of us. 
    The next year I found myself at a conference in Bahia, Brazil listening to the words from a great prophetic voice. Like the message from the journalist, I knew it was important. Indeed, it is difficult to watch as it is being played out today.
    As he spoke about the first 500 years of colonization and its impact on the Indigenous People of the Americas, Bishop Steven Charleston from Alaska, a member of the Choctaw people and keynote speaker, speaking with conviction and power, outlined a destructive new era of neo-colonialism where a handful of nations, including Canada, would fight to protect their privileged way of life and its standard of gluttony.
    To be sure, he wasn’t talking about the masses as recent history indicates with the shrinking of the middle class but spoke about the dire poverty and hunger the whole would face.
    However, he did leave us with hope that day. His words; “While the light of the world is shrinking and darkness is growing, there is another light that is beginning to grow in the darkness, and that light is coming from the Church. That light is present here today, reflected in every woman here at this meeting. (There were over a thousand from all over the world.)
    At the same time would come a reformation of the Christian Church, like the world has never seen. This reformation will speak the words of liberating hope grounded in and celebrating everything we do in the love and compassion of Jesus.”
    While the language of international instruments has changed, the results are identical between yesterday’s colonialism under foreign oppressor governments and monarchies, and today’s neocolonialism under foreign multinationals and corporations.
    Sadly today, we are forced to watch hundreds of thousands of people die of hunger while many millions go to bed hungry. It isn’t famine anymore that causes hunger and death but systems that are put in place by the powerful. Case in point is the Tobin Tax also known as the Robin Hood Tax. The idea put forward over thirty years ago by Nobel Laureate James Tobin suggested that all international foreign exchange transactions be taxed. The amount suggested was a half of one percent.
    The Tobin Tax was again presented by the European Community at last year’s G8 in Toronto knowing it could be a useful tool in bringing stability to the currency market. It was also determined that the 680 billion dollars raised could then be used to offset hunger and disease in the world today.
    Tragically, it was our own government that convinced other G8 countries to turn it down explaining this would be a tax on corporations. Recalling the mantra coming from corporate governments to cut social services to pay down the deficit, the deficit that in my view, was created primarily by tax cuts to corporations in the first place, this now makes sense.