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Our Vision
We envision societies which explore and implement alternatives to the unjust domination of governments, global financial institutions and multinational corporations which denigrate the world’s peoples and devastate ecosystems. We envision the development of a unified domestic and international movement of transformational grassroots organizations that promote a socially, ecologically and economically just world.
Our Mission
It is the mission of the Alliance for Global Justice to achieve social change and economic justice by helping to build a stronger more unified grassroots movement. We recognize that the concentration of wealth and power is the root cause of oppression requiring us to work together across ideologies, issues and communities. The Alliance nurtures organizations seeking fundamental change in international and national conditions that disempower people, create disparities in access to wealth and power, poison the earth, and plunder its resources.
We support locally-based grassroots organizing by sharing political analysis, mobilizing for direct action, monitoring the centers of corporate and government power, expanding channels of communication, and sharing skills and infrastructure. Our commitment to solidarity and to non-hierarchical democratic process enables us to respectfully listen and respond to each other within the movement.
Four Areas of Struggle
We identify four main areas of interwoven struggle for liberation from Empire and for a better, more beautiful world. These are the struggles:
For Economic Justice–We stand in favor of community-based development versus corporate globalization and privatization. We believe a just society is oriented toward meeting the needs and supporting the sufficiency of its own people, not toward creating vast inequality and mega-profits for those at the top at the expense of the many. We oppose neoliberal economics and its manifestations as Free Trade Agreements and austerity programs imposed on other countries via “aid” programs that encourage privatization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and various other institutions.
Against US Militarism–We recognize that at their roots, militarism and modern wars result from coercive force and violent oppression waged in favor of economic and political systems that seek to concentrate wealth, power and resources in the hands of a privileged few. Spending about as much as the rest of the world combined on military expenditures, the US war machine has become global Capital’s “insurance company”, fighting to open, secure, protect and guard the interests of transnational corporations via US military dominance around the world.
For Real Democracy–We work for participatory democracy and against false democratic forms that reinforce inequality and undermine communities. We denounce electoral processes that give enormous and undue influence to wealthy corporations while marginalizing the decision-making capabilities of our own communities. We consider to be a major part of our international solidarity work the task of exposing and opposing US interference in other countries via the mis-named National Endowment for Democracy and other components of US democracy manipulation efforts.
For Ecological Integrity–We advocate for ecological sustainability, threatened worldwide because of the consumptive excesses of wealthy nations and their constant search for new resources to exploit. Global warming is a direct result of this excess and the drive to put profits before the planet’s own health. Another result is the ongoing effort by private, multinational corporations to gain control over natural resources. The communities that live in and are part of an ecosystem should have a direct voice in deciding how its resources will be used and managed, over and above corporate and foreign interests.
Our History
The Alliance for Global Justice was incorporated in 1998. Its role in the US grassroots progressive movement actually dates to nearly two decades earlier in February 1979 when solidarity activists from across the country formed the Nicaragua Network. Nicaragua Network was the leading Nicaragua solidarity organization in the 1980s after the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution over the US-backed Somoza dictatorship. Tens of thousands of current and former activists throughout the progressive movement cut their activist teeth on coffee or cotton picking brigades to Nicaragua or by building schools, health clinics and houses in Nicaragua and witnessing directly the consequences of US imperialism, but also the courage of ordinary people who were fighting back.
Sandinistas always told the Nicaragua Network, “What you can do to most help us is to change your own government.”
We took that instruction to heart in 1990 when the Sandinistas lost an election due to overwhelming US interference and funding as well as the Nicaraguan peoples’ exhaustion from nine years of the US-sponsored Contra terrorist war.
In 1993 we joined many other groups to form the 50 Years Is Enough campaign to create an “unhappy” birthday for the World Bank and International Monetary Fund whose policies were burying the Global South in unsustainable debt. We later became the first grassroots group on the 50 Years Steering Committee and in 1996, when the large environmental and development groups were ready to fold it up, we took over financial and staffing responsibility for the campaign. In 1994 we founded the Campaign for Labor Rights to organize against sweatshop labor violations in Central America and world-wide.
By 1998 it was becoming confusing for activists and donors alike that a group called Nicaragua Network was the “parent” organization for two projects with global reach. We had a contest for a new name and Alliance for Global Justice was the name selected. We incorporated under the new name and when we received IRS designation as a tax-exempt, non-profit, the Nicaragua Network gave up its own legal existence and transferred its assets to AfGJ, becoming a project of the Alliance.
As you can read in our Vision and Mission Statements, the goal of the AfGJ is to build a strong, grassroots movement capable of challenging the economic and foreign policies of our government and corporations. One of our early activities was to act as fiscal sponsor and one of the primary organizers of the April 2000 IMF/WB demonstration in Washington, DC, one of the three major actions of what was then called the anti-globalization movement. That same weekend, we organized a meeting of Latin America solidarity organizations that became the Latin America Solidarity Coalition.
In the intervening years we have participated in the formation of many coalitions including the Stop CAFTA coalition and the Act Now to Stop War & End Racism (ANSWER) Coalition. We also act as fiscal sponsor to over 90 economic, social justice and human rights projects around the world that do not have their own tax-exempt status.
Nicaragua solidarity continues to be one of our own core projects. We are also one of the primary organizations in the Honduras Solidarity Network.
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