Sojourner Truth: Tuesday September 27, 2022

Today on Sojourner Truth, the yearly UN General Assembly Meetings were held at the UN headquarters in NYC from September 21-23, 2022. It is a time when heads of state or their representatives address the world. The occasion is used to promote, chastise, make proposals on vital issues facing their respective nation and the world. Quite often there is a disparity in focus and priorities when one contrasts the speeches from governments of the Global North to most of those from governments of the Global South. The Global North speeches tend to justify their form of government and their economic and social policies, while the Global South speeches often tend to point to the disparity in wealth and resources and the fact that it is the Global North that causes more of man-made climate change, the environmental crisis, and it is countries of the Global South that bears the brunt of climate. RE the term Global South, on the movement front, Fridays for Future, the movement founded by environmental justice campaigner and Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, is popularizing the term MAPA which stands for: Most Affected People and Areas, they define MAPA as those communities that suffer the most from the effects of Climate Change. For todays show, we have selected two speeches from heads of state given at the 2022 UNGA to share with you. One is the speech given by Barbados PM Mia Mottley who gave a pragmatic speech calling out the Bretton Woods Institution, for changing the makeup of the UN security council and the veto power on the council, challenging the IMF and those who prioritize war over ending poverty, to highlighting the plight of Haiti. It is clearly the voice of a head of state of a small island emerging economy. Her comments range from ending the embargo on Cuba to ending poverty, to the reality of the impact of climate change to the challenges of small islands having still to rely on natural gas, to ending poverty and the imperialistic order. The other speech is from the newly elected President of Columbia Gustavo Petro who makes a strong case for ending the war on drugs which he says has killed a million Latin Americans and is poisoning the forests in his country by spraying pesticides aimed at killing the cocoa plant but does much more damage. He describes a war on the cocoa plant which was sacred to the Aztecs and the imprisonment of those who have few options to make a living other than growing the plant. He poses the question what is more dangerous he cocoa plant or oil and war and addition to greed? He said world powers are becoming irrational. It is important to move beyond our usual bubble and listen to other voices and points of views, so stay tuned as there is much to learn from these leaders of from countries of the Global South.