Activists and communities gathered in Manila, Philippines to build people's power in the fight against inequality. Credit: Jilson Tiu / Greenpeace

By Jenny Ricks
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Jan 31 2019 (IPS)

They said they cared about climate change but they flew in on private jets in record numbers. They said they cared about inequality but laughed off the idea of higher taxes for the rich. They spoke about democracy and human rights but they dined with a far-right populist. If there was ever any doubt about Davos representing the epitome of duplicity, then 2019 has firmly laid that to rest.

The billionaires and politicians that clinked champagne glasses at the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) charade in Davos tried, as usual, to project concern about the world and those outside of their bubble.

The WEF public relations machinery ensured that the event was slick and that there were panels on climate change and inequality. But the hypocrisy of elites was clear for all to see.

Not only that, this year even some of their usual supporters in the mainstream media said that the global elite is currently out of enthusiasm and ideas.

Opening the conference, David Attenborough urged world leaders to take serious action on climate change, but the attendees broke the record for the number of private jet flights that ferried them in to the luxurious Swiss ski resort.

This, despite WEF’s own report on global risks for 2019 showing that environmental threats are seen as the biggest danger to the world. The disconnect is quite staggering, and further proof that Davos generates nothing more than empty rhetoric and bloated media coverage.

Another disconnect moment, now rightly gaining infamy on social media, saw our Fight Inequality ally Winnie Byanyima of Oxfam, alongside historian Rutger Bregman, tell some badly needed home truths to billionaires – that they need to be taxed more, and about the reality of work without dignity that so many people endure around the world. A reality check that Davos Man was unwilling and unable to face up to.

Whilst Davos played itself out for another year, the leadership required to face up to multiple, urgent challenges that we desperately have to address was coming from elsewhere, including from a sixteen-year-old climate activist.

Greta Thunberg provided a direct challenge to the elites at Davos that put profit before people and planet: “Some people, some companies, some decision-makers in particular, have known exactly what priceless values they have been sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money. I think many of you here today belong to that group of people.”

Thunberg is part of a growing global movement of students demanding urgent change from their governments. Their protests are exciting and vital.

In India, residents of Delhi put forward their demands to end inequality. Credit: Oxfam India

In the face of urgent social problems not being addressed, other grassroots movements too have emerged during the last few years. From students demanding ‘fees must fall‘ in South Africa, to the global me too movement demanding an end to sexual assault and violence against women.

These are examples and reminders of an important historical lesson: that all social progress, from the fight against apartheid to securing women’s right to vote, came about by the power of the people challenging the people in power.

And so it is with inequality, ironically also identified by the Davos elite for several years as one of the greatest risks facing the world, and a subject that remains on the WEF agenda. Unsurprisingly, nothing has been done about it by Davos. The policy prescriptions and solutions are thoroughly researched and well-known but rejected by the plutocrats and politicians in order to maintain the status quo and the economic system that benefits them.

As leading inequality economist Branko Milanovic says about the elites: “Not surprisingly, nothing has been done since the Global Financial Crisis to address inequality. Rather, the opposite has happened.”

Of course, the idea of elites ‘solving’ inequality is absurd – given that the problem is of their making and its perpetuation in their interests. The statistics on inequality bear testament to this.

Wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated – last year 26 people owned the same wealth as the 3.8 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity.

Currently the wealth of the world’s 2208 dollar billionaires is now five times the GDP of the whole of Africa. In the UK, the average FTSE 100 CEO takes home 133 times the salary of the average worker.

We are dealing with a worldwide inequality crisis that is reaching new extremes and undermining global efforts to end poverty and marginalisation, advance women’s rights, defend the environment, protect human rights and democracy, prevent conflict, and promote fair and dignified employment.

Even Davos Man knows this. But what the elites at Davos again made clear, through their rhetoric and inaction, is that only a grassroots movement will fix this.

A growing global movement called the Fight Inequality Alliance – comprised of trade unions, social movements and leading international and national non-profit organisations – is busy organising while those at Davos eat canapés and mouth platitudes.

While the 1% gathered in the Swiss Alps, activists and campaigners held a week of action calling on governments to curb the murky influence of the super-rich who they blame for the Age of Greed, where billionaires are buying not just yachts but laws.

Community groups’ ideas, which elites don’t mention, include minimum living wages, an end to corporate tax breaks, higher taxes on wealth, capital and profits of the richest companies and individuals to enable quality public services for all, and a limit to how many times more a boss can earn than a worker.

From Nairobi to Manila to Guadalajara, to Delhi to London and many countries beyond, tens of thousands gathered in slums and towns across the world in contrast to the opulence of Davos, putting forward their solutions to inequality and celebrating their resilience through music, theatre and cultural expression.

Ultimately, the solutions to inequality will come from those who are at the frontlines of it, not the 1% that caused it and continues to benefit from it. And as anger about shocking levels of inequality continues to grow, so will the movement to fight inequality.

Deflated by its own duplicity and by the movements mobilising people power outside of it, Davos is a gathering in search of a purpose. The real power for the radical and systemic change we need is with ordinary people coming together and organising to demand it. It’s what has worked in the past and it’s the only thing that will work now.

Follow the alliance on Twitter at https://twitter.com/FightInequalit1

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Eva sitting near the Dandora dumpsite. Credit: Joy Obuya / Fight Inequality Alliance

By Jenny Ricks
JOHANNESBURG, Dec 20 2018 (IPS)

The world’s political and economic elites, that will once again gather at the Swiss mountain resort of Davos for the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) 22-25 January, have become all too predictable. It’s not difficult to predict what they will say, because they always say what’s in their interests.

They will again say that they understand why people in so many parts of the world are angry about inequality and once again they will promise to fix the enormous gap between the elite few and the rest of us. But they will not fix the inequality crisis because inequality isn’t a flaw in the system, it’s in the design, and those at the top intend to keep it that way.

But what history has taught us is that all major equalising change, from fighting against slavery to fighting for women’s rights, comes about when people outside the elites organize and challenge those in power.

The solutions to tackling inequality therefore rests instead with a very different group of people from those in Davos, those who will be holding protests and events on mountains of a very different sort – the mountains of garbage and of open pit mines that millions of the world’s people call home.

And the number is growing. In cities from Manila to Guadalajara, ordinary people will mobilise and gather in their thousands to demand and present solutions to rising inequality. They are demanding an end to the age of greed that has seen extreme wealth and power skyrocket to epidemic proportions.

Tackling inequality will take a step forward during that week, but it will happen because people are not waiting for answers, they are organising for change – in spite of Davos, not because of it.

Their solutions will include jobs, minimum living wages, decent public services, fair taxes, land rights for women and much more.

The people leading the change are part of an emerging global grassroots movement, the Fight Inequality Alliance, that aims to counter the excessive concentration of power and wealth in the hands of elites, and advance a more just, equal and sustainable world.

Beth speaking with children on the streets of Dandora, Nairobi. Credit: Joy Obuya / Fight Inequality Alliance

The alliance unites social movements, environmental groups, women’s rights groups, trade unions and NGOs across the world.

In Mexico, the city of Guadalajara will host a walk called ‘From el Colli to Davos’. It starts from a hill where rural and indigenous migrants settle informally, expelled from the city and deprived of opportunities and services for a better life. It will culminate with a number of cultural activities, including a hip-hop and art contest and gathering people’s demands for change.

Speaking from Guadalajara, Fight Inequality campaigner Hector Castanon says: “Guadalajara has the second richest municipality in Mexico and is home to Central American migrants and displaced rural and indigenous communities that have left everything behind due to a lack of opportunities and organised crime.

Salaries are under the poverty line, there is limited access to basic resources, poor public services and high crime rates. All of this has moved people to organise to solve their needs and exercise their rights.”

In Zambia, there will be a festival in Shang’ombo, one of the poorest and most neglected districts of Zambia. The festival will highlight how politicians and elites make promises here during election campaigns and then forget the people, as well as people’s stories of inequality and their solutions.

It will feature music stars Petersen Zagaze, BFlow and Maiko Zulu. In explaining why she will be part of the event, Zambian youth activist, Mzezeti Mwanza, says that despite the country’s natural resources, the majority of Zambians live below the poverty line and that “none of us are equal until all of us are equal”.

In Kenya, Dandora slum in Nairobi will play host to the Usawa Festival (or Equality Festival), where hip hop star Juliani will perform, and alliance members will create a space for people to bring forward their solutions to inequality.

Njoki Njehu, Africa Co-ordinator for Fight Inequality said, “Kenyans living the realities of inequality are organising together – rural and urban, young and old, women and men. We understand the problems and have concrete proposals to end inequality. The solutions start with us. We have the answers.”

In the Philippines, there’ll be a festival between two adjoining communities, Baseco and Parola in Manila, that contrast starkly with the high-rise landscape of the city centre. Through music, cultural activities and discussion, people will raise their experiences of inequality and their demands for change.

The Fight Inequality Alliance’s third global week of action, takes place from 18-25 January 2019, with events like these in more than thirty countries across the globe. For solutions to inequality, adjust your gaze from Davos to the other mountains.

Follow the alliance on Twitter at https://twitter.com/FightInequalit1

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By Jenny Ricks
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 20 2016 (IPS)

With New Year’s resolutions already fading fast for most people, attention turns to what 2016 will really hold. And so it is for those wanting to tackle the world’s biggest problems.

This week in Davos politicians and business leaders meet at the World Economic Forum, where inequality is once again on the agenda. By common consensus we are living through an inequality crisis, with the gap between the richest and the rest at levels not seen for a century. So what will be different in 2016?

Well, inequality is already recognised as socially and economic harmful by a whole range of influential people such as the Pope, and institutions like the IMF and OECD. We have no shortage of acknowledgement of at least part of the problem. And all countries have pledged to tackle it through the Sustainable Development Goals (Agenda 2030) and the Climate Accord agreed in Paris in December.

But the problem is far from being resolved. The stark reality in contrast to those commitments is that inequality isn’t being tackled and the status quo approaches that exacerbate inequality are still being followed by the countries and institutions that claim to be tackling it.

So what to do? The challenge now is to go from acknowledging the problem to fixing it. To do that we need three things: a shift in polices, a shift in power, and a shift in mind set and ideas about how change will happen.

Civil society is clear on the contradiction between rhetoric and the reality, as are poor people themselves facing the brunt of these inequalities that ActionAid works with around the world. They are not waiting for world leaders to change their ways, they are busy tackling inequality from its roots and creating a new reality.

Today, leaders from a range of environment, women’s rights, human rights, faith based and development groups and trade unions will spell out what it will really take to tackle inequality and commit to stepping up the fight. This is exciting news.

Why does this agenda matter to such a diverse range of groups? As the joint statement says: “Struggles for a better world are all threatened by the inequality crisis. Workers across the world are seeing their wages and conditions eroded as inequality increases. The rights of women are systematically worse in situations of greater economic inequality.”

The vast majority of the world’s richest people are men; those in the most precarious and poorly paid work are women. Young people are facing a crisis of unemployment. Other groups such as migrants, ethnic minorities, LGBTQI people, people with disability and indigenous people continue to be pushed to the margins, suffering systematic discrimination. The struggle to realise the human rights of the majority are continually undercut in the face of such disparities of wealth and power.

Extreme inequality is also frequently linked to rising restrictions on civic space and democratic rights as political and economic elites collude to protect their interests. The right to peaceful protest and the ability of citizens to challenge the prevailing economic discourse is being curtailed almost everywhere, for elites know that extreme inequality and participatory democracy cannot co-exist for long.

Even the future of our planet is dependent on ending this great divide, with the carbon consumption of the 1% as much as 175 times that of the poorest.”

Though it is going to be a difficult road, we know that change to forge a new economic system that puts people and the planet first will only be created by a people powered movement. 2016 is not a year of high profile summits and commitments. It’s a year of building power from below, of building a movement in many countries amongst these constituencies and others including social movements and young people.

There is reason for hope and experience to build on. We know this is possible because of what we see in our work with communities around the world, because of some positive current examples and past periods of reducing inequality in countries such as Brazil, and because people have won great struggles before. This new struggle against inequality has started in earnest.

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