Globalization of Justice

I speak as a white, feminist, anti-war U.S. citizen the day after the President of my country jetted onto an aircraft carrier to declare an unjust war over, with all the triumphalism and false consciousness that has accompanied this economically driven war from the beginning. Despite the hideous regime of Saddam Hussein, nary a weapon of mass destruction was found, several hundred US and British troops were killed, but thus far no effort has been expended to reconstruct how many thousands of Iraqis died, including many women and children. To this I can only express my moral repugnance. As a feminist from the Roman Catholic tradition I found myself for the first time in recent memory in agreement with the Pope who said wisely, "War is a failure for humanity."

On this panel I am tempted to say simply, "I’m sorry. We did the best we could, honestly" and then be seated. I am painfully aware that the US is in worldwide disgrace among people who seek to work collectively, cooperatively through international agencies to solve common problems. Like many US residents, I abhor the hegemonic economic dominance of this "super stupid power" as I have come to think of the Bush Administration. Vermont’s Howard Dean, a democratic presidential hopeful, was right when he observed that history is the record of the eventual demise of all such regimes, no less Washington than Rome.

There is a certain absurdity about a time when we can send people to the moon, invent and use the Internet, complete the first map of the Human Genome, and still not have the first clue about justice. But absurd or not, globalization, or what my Latin American friends prefer to call "gobbleization" given the voracious appetite of the US corporate and military elites, has touched most dimensions of human life—communication and travel as well as HIV/AIDS and now SARS, Coca Cola and Nike. But there is still a frontier to be globalized. It is the moral sphere of justice. Globalized justice might provide another model of globalization, one that respects difference, values variety and encourages participation, as justice will have it no other way.

Americans who live in the belly of this growing beast but refuse to wrap ourselves in the flag and cheer the troops are allegedly a minority. But this is a country in which the President was not elected but appointed, and where the press is so permanently embedded with the powers that be that it is impossible to gauge public opinion. I suspect underneath it all we may be a majority who deplore the use of bunker buster bombs paid for by our taxes, who resent even more being lied to by the government as to what evidence they had to justify this war in the first place.

Even more of us are outraged to see the transparent greedy economic thread that runs through this whole sorry chapter. Vice President Dick Chaney’s Halliburton chums were granted contracts without competitive bidding to tend oil wells and clean up after the battles they caused. George Schultz’s pals at Bechtel gained mega-million dollar contracts to rebuild infrastructure the US helped to destroy. It is enough to make even the naïve cynical, enough to push the most committed of us to despair. With other religious feminists, I find in "the renewable moral energy of religion" (Daniel C. Maguire), in our case the feministization of our respective traditions, resources to continue working against growing odds.

Feminist justice work over the last twenty years, especially the religiously rooted work our colleagues around the world have been about, is part of the globalization of justice. If any good has come from this difficult period of world history, it is that the tools of technology and the networks of committed people can be used for the common good as evidenced by peace-making efforts. I received offers of asylum from Cuban and Uruguayan friends who worried that US peace activists were in danger. They knew more than I did as we come to realize the degree to which government surveillance and the suspension of human rights, especially for immigrants, in this country are justified under the rubric of Homeland Security. Indeed many small non-profits like the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER) where I work are now feeling the economic pinch exacerbated by the war. Nonetheless, there is much to learn and critique in our efforts.

The overall lessons of our last two decades of feminist religious work stood us in good stead. I would summarize them as follows:

1. Feminist religious justice work is best conducted in multi-religious ways and can make a difference.

One example of feminist religious justice work was the prayer breakfast held by the Global Peace Initiative of Women in Washington, DC. Hundreds of women representing dozens of faith traditions gathered in the shadow of the White House for a morning of spirituality and networking. As the chair of the event, the Rev. Joan Campbell put it, "Never let it be said that women were too busy to pray for peace at a time of impending war." Buddhist nuns with shaved heads sat next to Muslim women in headscarves to chant and pray. A Jewish cantor intoned her holy words while Catholic nuns led rounds of "Dona nobis pacem."

Meanwhile, over coffee, the activists among us plotted how to respond to the macho peace efforts of highly placed religious men with whom we agree in principle about the end, but with whom we differ markedly on the means. I refer in the main to progressive Christian men, who, when the chips are down, resort to the same default assumptions: if only they could meet with George Bush as they met with Tony Blair; if only their god, father, lord, ruler king could hold sway all would be well. It is tough to critique the folks who are on your side, but it is even tougher to see women in religious institutions ground down by the relentless sexism that remains unchanged while male religious leaders, including the Pope, were all but ignored in their peace work. So our interreligious feminist efforts become more urgent still, especially as we prioritize dialogue over conclusion, inclusivity over name recognition in the work of peace. If we are to globalize justice then we need our feminist interreligious work to have a deeper input on the progressive religious community and beyond.

2. A second lesson of the last twenty years that helped orient my work during these difficult times was that while religions may be useful for providing vision and values, they are impotent to make social change without solid so-called secular partners, especially feminists. Starhawk, a pagan writer and activist, reported brilliantly in her periodic posts during this time on the work of coalitions of pagans and Goddess worshippers in concert with some of the most effective peace action groups. The use of the Internet to organize and spread the word was phenomenal with religious groups learning from young people how to utilize cell phones, pagers and the web to network and get press. I only hope they received something equally useful from us.

Code Pink, a creative grassroots women’s group, spread its shocking pink signature around the country, beginning with a daily vigil, 9 AM-5 PM in front of the White House, for more than four months. WATER folks spent a day being that presence and joined others frequently during the months; other women’s religious and secular groups in DC provided reinforcements. I noted that the Code Pink women were savvy enough to work with religious women like Grove Harris and others who bring creative ritual and spirituality to the fray, adding a dimension instead of platitudes as patriarchal religions usually do. Globalized justice requires this sort of cooperation and it makes sense so we do not duplicate efforts.

3. A third lesson from the last twenty years of feminist religious work is that globalized justice will require new organizational and institutional forms that will challenge and perhaps even replace existing ones. One welcome outcome of this post September 11 period that I believe history will record as a turning point is the unprecedented conversation all over the world about what it means to be a global community. While the Bush government and the corporations that undergird it may not realize it, they have unleashed a public torrent of expectation for the future that will, I think, become increasingly hard to ignore.

This round may be over and Saddam Hussein may have "gone to ground" as the briefers say, but we are no safer, indeed more in danger than ever with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, economic sanctions and human rights abuses at the hands of rogue states like this one. Trusting the world’s well-being to the US government is simply folly as demonstrated by the colossal diplomatic, cultural, commercial and military blunders that resulted in the decimation of a country, its cultural treasures and its national pride in the name of democracy it takes in vane. Moreover, the US domestic situation cries out for justice with health care, jobs, housing and education for our poor - mostly women and children - in peril.

Globalized justice requires that the United Nations, the World Court and other such agencies be given the respect, resources and autonomy they need to function. It requires the replacement of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank with agencies that will see that Basic Human Needs are met, and that greedy, overfed, over consuming nations like the US are subject to limits. This is, of course, heresy for those who worship at the corporate altar, but it is necessary if we are to avoid future wars that Vandana Shiva predicts will be fought over water rights, a basic human right now denied to millions of people.

These three lessons that I take from our common work,

feminist religious justice work is conducted in multi-religious ways and makes a difference

religions may be useful for providing vision and values, but they are impotent to make social change without solid so-called secular partners
globalized justice will require new organizational and institutional forms that will challenge existing ones

begin to provide some hints about globalized justice. Of course I am all too aware of the downside of globalization so I do not want to replicate its universalizing, essentializing tendencies when it comes to justice. The ways in which we bring it about are as important as the goal itself.

Our work as religious feminists, while not perfect and sometimes painful, proves that participatory, culturally diverse, ideologically mixed efforts can bear fruit. At the very least, they keep the bellicose actions confined to the verbal realm and the bombs and missiles remain unused. At best, dare we hope, they add to the justice quotient and more people live long enough to enjoy it.

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