Unsure of what the appropriate forum is for what was essentially a personal political error, I thought I should put it here in my blog, as sort of a public apology. The error I made has to do with this petition:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/no_way_us-colombia_fta/
A very good group of activists from Colombia and the US put this together to try to build support against the terrible Colombia-US-FTA. As a member of Pueblos en Camino, I sometimes send bulletins of information about Colombia or what we’re doing or our counterparts in Colombia. In this case, my co-collective member Manuel had already circulated the petition and wanted me to circulate it again along with various other pieces of info about Colombian President Uribe’s visit to the US.
The error comes here. There were a couple of paragraphs in the petition that one of our readers pointed out to me the first time we circulated it, and when I read them I also didn’t like them:
The FTA would result, like other treaties with Mexico and Central America, in increased unauthorized migration to the United States. NAFTA has been a disaster for Mexican farmers. It has driven many of them off the land, into the cities and northward to the United States in search of employment and income. If the Colombia FTA passes, we can expect more undocumented migrants.
The FTA would result in more unemployment among U.S. workers and pressure to lower wages in this country. Our workers would be exposed to competition with a labor market that is notorious for its extensive labor and human rights violations. U.S. workers are struggling for a living wage, and this would be a setback in that struggle.
What I should have done was sent the petition around, and afterwards, made some comment or reaction available to its authors. Instead, when I sent the petition, I added the following text before it:
“The petition for the US Congress – a flawed petition, as some of our readers have noted, making various concessions to US politics
– but one that makes some good points and had participation from Colombian activists in its preparation.”
I should not have done this. Manuel’s summary of this error was as follows, and I think he was completely right.
“What I think is a mistake is to qualify the petition-letter as flawed without presenting the reasons for this qualification as an opinion of two people, particularly when this letter is the product of a long and participatory process by many people who are part of the Mingas effort. From my perspective, the letter should have been circulated and included without comments, quoting the source, and the opinions and reactions to it signed and circulated as reactions to the letter. I am afraid that the comment “flawed” qualifies the letter from the editorial perspective of En Camino, which is, in fact not real and unfair to it.”
What were my reasons? Here is what I wrote when asked:
“[The other reader] pointed out that describing “unauthorized migration to the US” as a problem is a kind of concession to anti-immigrant sentiment that views migrants as a “problem” rather than a part of the US economy that serves elite interests. Similarly the argument that FTA would result in a setback for labor rights in the US could be viewed as a concession to privileging US workers, and to the notion that Colombian workers and US workers are intrinsically in competition (I’m not actually sure they are, if you did a sector-based economic analysis).”
But those reasons should have been offered to the authors first, without publicly calling the petition “flawed”. That was unfair and it did allow me to trump the views of all of the activists who worked hard to put this petition together. To them, I apologize.
