Group Takes Over World Bank Lobby for Party

JULY 1, 2004 Washington, DC—A group calling themselves the Party Liberation Front (PLF) took over the lobby of the World Bank Headquarters this morning and threw a party to “celebrate” the 60th birthday of the World Bank and the success of its global capitalist agenda.
60 years ago finance leaders from the major world powers met in Bretton Woods, NH to establish the World Bank and IMF. Since then wealthy elites in the US and elsewhere have reaped billions of dollars from countries forced to abide by World Bank policies.

The group brought with them a cake, champagne, party hats and horns, and a large card to present to Bank President James D. Wolfensohn, thanking the Bank for their excellent work in helping replace colonial rule with free market exploitation to ensure the wealthy stay on top.

“The Bank is a wonderful institution. Since 1944, we can see that the Bank truly has helped thousands of global corporations and wealthy elites to realize their potential for profit in peace,” said Matthew Kavanagh, one of the organizers with the PLF.

The party organizers distributed champagne to Bank employees on their way into work, toasting the Bank’s excellent record promoting global domination by corporations based in the US and other wealthy nations. Each year, the World Bank awards some 40,000 contracts to private firms. The US Treasury Department calculates that for every US $1 Washington contributes to international development banks, US corporations receive at least twice that amount in bank-financed procurement contracts.

Party goes were questioned about the Bank’s rather poor record of accomplishing its stated goal of eliminating poverty—people from nations that have followed IMF & World Bank prescriptions generally face incredibly poor education and health systems, environmental disasters, and widespread poverty. But the organizers of the party challenged that view.

“We love the Bank,” said, Rachel Moshman, another party organizer. “It may have devastated the lives of millions in the Global South, but the Bank's special brand of global capitalism has helped the wealthy and corporate few in unprecedented ways—and they get away with calling it all poverty reduction!”

Party goers were encouraged to make toasts celebrating aspects of the Bank’s work. Some of the especially impressive accomplishments that were celebrated today were:

§ The promotion of privatization of basic services—even water! In places like Argentina, the Bank has pushed governments into selling off public water rights to private corporations who make millions. The population then ends up getting more polluted water and paying more for it (almost double in Argentina).

§ The Bank’s ability to put billions of dollars into the pockets of oil and mining corporations for projects that have destroyed the environment, displaced whole communities, and resulted in violent repression and human rights violations. The Chad-Camaroon pipeline, for example, will make billions for Exxon-Mobil and Chevron-Texaco, but even the World Bank's own reports question whether it will do anything to alleviate poverty.

§ How the Bank has lined the pockets of corporations while failing to even approach the stated goals of poverty reduction. The Bank watched as the absolute number of people living in poverty rose through the 1990's in Eastern Europe, South Asia, Latin America the Caribbean, and sub-Saharan Africa—all areas that came under the sway of the Bank and Fund's adjustment programs.

§ The Bank’s excellent idea of charging of the poorest people in the world a user fee for basic services like going to school or getting healthcare! Though it meant millions didn't go to school (according to UNICEF) and people died after being turned away from hospitals because they couldn't afford the services (according to the WHO), it surely saved lots of money (though some studies have showed it saved almost nothing).

§ The impressive policy of forcing the people of the countries where the World Bank works to pay for their own exploitation! Tanzania, half of whose population is illiterate, spends a third of its budget on debt payments and spends four times more on debt than it does primary education. Niger, where life expectancy is only 47 years, spends more on debt payments than it does on health and education combined. Altogether sub-Saharan Africa spends four times as much on debt repayment as she does on healthcare.

The Party Liberation Front, a group of activists from Washington, DC, said they threw the party to call attention to the excellent record of the World Bank in generating profit through encouraging exploitation of people poorer than they are.

The Party ended when the PLF formed a conga line to lead employees out of the Bank. Strangely, none of them followed.

The PLF plans to return to the Bank in the near future, suggesting that the Bank truly does not receive enough attention for its impressive work.

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