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Global Justice Oxford

Campaigning for justice for the world's poor in Oxfordshire

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Stop the transatlantic trade deals! Public meeting.

5 November 2015 by kate Leave a Comment

flyer advertising the eventCETA, TTIP, TiSA. The boring-sounding abbreviations hide a sinister reality: these are a set of trade deals designed to take rights away from citizens while making it easier for corporations to exploit people and resources. We’re holding a big public speaker meeting to address the issue.

Friday 6th November

Wesley Memorial Church, New Inn Hall Street, Oxford, OX1 2DH

Speakers include

  • Maude Barlow, chair of citizens’ group the Council of Canadians
  • Yash Tandon, Ugandan trade expert and author of Trade is War
  • Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now

The event is free – please do come along!

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Filed Under: News Tagged With: CETA, nick dearden, trade, TTIP

Global Justice Oxford relaunch event

11 March 2015 by kate Leave a Comment

Nick Dearden speakingClimate change, capitalism and citizen power were just a few of the things discussed at last night’s Global Justice Oxford relaunch. Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, travelled from London to help us celebrate.

Why the relaunch? We used to be known as WDM (World Development Movement) but in recent years it’s become clear that the meaning of the word “development” has changed to the point where it actually describes the kind of approach we’re fighting against.

So WDM polled members around the country, consulted all the local groups (like ours) which form such an important part of the organisation, then took a democratic decision to change the organisation’s name to Global Justice Now in January 2015. Local groups have renamed themselves on the same pattern and have been holding relaunch events up and down the country to celebrate the change.

It was cheering to see a healthy turnout for our event – surely they weren’t all motivated by the delicious cake on offer! – and so much engagement with the issues. We talked about corporate takeover of global resources, alternative models for energy generation, higher education, the Greek economy and more.

We showed three films to give some context about our campaigns. If you missed the event, you can watch the (short) fims on YouTube..

How our banks finance climate change (4mins)

The story we’re told is that there’s no money to fight climate change… but apparently there’s plenty of money spare for causing climate change?

Naomi Klein Says Climate Activists Need to Get Comfortable Attacking Capitalism (8 mins)

Interview with the author and activist, whose Oxford book launch sold out the Sheldonian Theatre last autumn.

IBEKA, micro hydro power in Indonesia

Energy doesn’t have to be corporate-owned, environmentally damaging and expensive. The IBEKA story presents a positive alternative to the “Big Energy” model.

A consistent theme in everything we talked about was the idea of challenging the narrative: not accepting the stories we’re told about how the world does and should work, but coming up with our own stories. One great example is the dreaded Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (better known as TTIP) which might have been accepted as a broadly positive trade deal if there hadn’t been such a well-orchestrated campaign against it. Global Justice Now has been working in collaboration with other organisations to expose the truth of TTIP at national and European level; meanwhile, at a local level, several of the campaigners from Global Justice Oxford have been working with Oxfordshire campaigners from other groups such as 38 Degrees.

We had to bring the fruitful discussion to an end when time ran out, but we hope to see some of the people who came last night at our next “regular” meeting on Tuesday 14th April.

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Filed Under: News, Recent events Tagged With: climate change, nick dearden, TTIP, video

Global Justice Oxford relaunch event!

1 March 2015 by kate Leave a Comment

Global Justice Oxford is relaunching! To celebrate our name change from Oxford WDM, we are holding a relaunch event in Oxford. It’s one of many Global Justice Now relaunches happening all over the country as local groups look forward to campaigning with a new identity. Entry is free and everybody is welcome – you don’t have to be a supporter of our organisation.

picture of Global Justice Now director Nick DeardenDirector of Global Justice Now comes to Oxford

Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, is coming to Oxford to speak at our event. If you don’t know much about Global Justice Now – or perhaps you’ve never even heard of us – Nick’s talk will be an accessible introduction to who we are, what we do and why it matters.

Three super-short films

To give a bit of context about our campaigns, we’ll be showing three very short but thought-provoking films.

  • How our banks finance climate change
  • Interview with Naomi Klein
  • Micro-hydro: a positive alternative to Big Energy

Please tell your friends!

The Long Room at Oxford Town Hall holds up to 50 people. We’d like to get as many people along as possible on the night. Please share this blog post far and wide so people know about our event!

When? Tuesday 10th March, 7:30pm

Where? The Long Room, Oxford Town Hall

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Filed Under: News Tagged With: meet WDM, nick dearden

Attac European summer university – are you interested?

24 April 2014 by kate Leave a Comment

The global activist network Attac organises a European “summer university” every two years where activists from different groups can meet for learning, debate and sharing knowledge. This year’s event is in Paris from Tuesday 19th August to Saturday 23rd August.

The Attac summer university is mainly aimed at volunteer activists rather than professional campaigners, and WDM is prepared to cover some of the costs of regular members attending. Head office are currently trying to gauge levels of interest in this.  If you are interested in going, please email james@wdm.org.uk or phone 020 7820 4900.

WDM director Nick Dearden has been invited as a speaker for the event and there may be workshops from WDM staff.

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Capitalism and the commons: Nick Dearden speaks to Oxford WDM

9 December 2013 by kate Leave a Comment

Nick Dearden with three Oxford WDM activists sitting downHow can mediaeval England give us a perspective on modern global capitalism? For Nick Dearden, new WDM director, the ancient concept of the commons still has resonance today. At the November meeting of Oxford WDM, he said that the commons is “a way of looking at our world”. So what did he mean by that?

In the Middle Ages the term “commons” was applied to land that local people had a right to use. The “enclosures” of Tudor times put an end to these traditional rights, turning commons land into land that was solely for the use of the owner. There were riots in response, with a corresponding crackdown – and Nick believes that “the violent process of enclosures is important for understanding today.”

Clean air. Water. Forests. Wildlife. All things we have a right to enjoy, without necessarily owning them. In other words, they’re part of a global commons. But like the mediaeval commons, they’re under threat. The argument from many governments goes something like this:

We’re not looking after the planet properly… (True)
and this is because we don’t value it enough… (Well, maybe)
so we need to put an actual financial price on it. (Whoa there!).

The idea appeared in reports of the the Rio+20 Earth Summit last year; and has gained ground (excuse the pun) since then. The first ever World Forum on Natural Capital took place a few weeks ago, with the starting point that resources such as soil, fresh air, disease resistance and water quality are “natural capital”, ripe for being priced up. It was attended by such well-known nature-lovers as Nestle, Scottish Power and Rio Tinto. A full corporate pass for the event was £800 (including dinner) or £700 (excluding dinner). In other words, we’re having our natural resources priced up by people who think £100 is a reasonable price for an evening meal.

Nick Dearden argues that this mindset is becoming pervasive. One of the more damaging effects of tuition fees has been to give students a different view of education. “People are encouraged to think of life as an investment account. The enclosures are happening inside our heads.” Ditto NHS patients being encouraged to think of themselves as customers, food growers being encouraged to think of their crop as a commodity. It’s an attitude that activists need to challenge, but the first step is becoming aware of it.

Most of those present had something to contribute to a wide-ranging discussion, which also covered growing inequality, an issue sometimes obscured by the smokescreen of debt. Nick notes that 95% of the wealth generated since the financial crash has gone to the wealthiest 1%. Meanwhile, the Red Cross report on Europe warns of “soaring inequality” and trouble being stored up for the future, while NGOs are becoming increasingly conservative, focusing on aid rather than root causes.

So what do we do next? “The idea that there’s no alternative has got deep inside us.” We don’t have to have our ideal world mapped out down to the design of the sewer systems – we just have to challenge the orthodoxy that the current situation is the only possible one. We need to challenge the idea that political involvement is about “tweaking”, making small surface changes. We know there are movements bubbling under the surface in Latin America – could the same be happening in countries such as Greece?

Nick ended his talk on an upbeat note: however grim things might seem, he’s certain that “the world would be a much, much worse place without activists.”

 

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Nov meeting: we meet Nick Dearden

20 October 2013 by kate Leave a Comment

Our guest at the Oxford WDM November meeting (Tuesday 12th Nov) will be Nick Dearden, the new director of WDM. This isn’t a big public speaker meeting; it’s a chance for existing WDM activists to meet our new director and talk about the future in a small, informal setting. It should be an exciting chance to hear about his vision for the organisation.

This meeting will be in a different venue from usual: the Friends Meeting House on St Giles, OX1 3LW. The meeting will take place in the Long Room. We very much regret that this room is not wheelchair-accessible. We will have a short “business” meeting at 7:30pm, then Nick Dearden will speak at 8pm and there will be the opportunity for lots of questions.

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Next meeting

We usually meet on the 2nd Tuesday of the month at 19:30, in-person at the Oxford Town Hall and online on Zoom.

There will be no meeting in August.

Write to your MP

Banbury, Victoria Prentis
Henley, John Howell
Oxford East, Anneliese Dodds
Oxford West and Abingdon, Layla Moran
Wantage, David Johnston
Witney, Robert Courts

Or put in your postcode to find your MP

Local Links
  • Fairtrade at St Michael's
  • Farringdon Fairtrade
  • Friends of the Earth Oxford
  • Greenpeace Oxford
  • Oxfam Oxford Group
  • Wallingford: Just Trading
  • Witney Fair Trade
General links
  • Fairtrade Foundation
  • Focus on the Global South
  • Jubilee Debt Campaign
  • Trade Justice Movement

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We’re part of Global Justice Now, a democratic membership organisation which campaigns against inequality and injustice in the global economy. We want to see a world where ordinary people control the resources they need to live a decent life, rather than corporations and the super rich calling the shots.


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