We at the Grove have been tracking the progress of the globalization movement since our organization first formed. Over the years, we have seen GATT, NAFTA, MAI, WTO, and a number of other creepy acronyms come into existence. At the expense of worker's rights, sustainable development, national sovereignty, and environmental protections, the corporate powers of the world have continually pushed for a 100% globalized economy.

World trade is not our enemy. Actually, a world economy may be, in the (very) long run, our best opportunity to improve the quality of life for people everywhere. An equitable distribution of wealth in Brazil will not be achieved through American isolationism - we realize this.

However, globalization must be carried out with the strictest ethical compass, lest disasters of heretofore unknown proportions occur in the future. Global changes carry global risks. So it is that man has an unprecedented ability to do good as well as evil to the world and to his brother. We feel, therefore, that world trade could be a great thing - we only worry about those who seek to implement it at present. Heart surgery itself is not a terrible thing, but one ought to be concerned if Dr. Evil is the one performing the operation.

As a Nation correspondent recently said, the World Trade Organization represents a sort of "world government with no popular accountability." The leadership of the WTO has less to do with electoral processes than with multinational corporate representation. As the socialist complaint has always run, the decision-making is privatized while the costs are socialized. Those people who are most affected are the least involved in deciding their own fates.

One solution would be to advocate a real, formal world government, through which the masses could influence global policymaking - whereby decisions could be made in the public arena, rather than backrooms in Geneva or the Hague. This is one possibility, though it carries its own share of pitfalls. However, there may be another, less dangerous way to keep the unbridled greed of corporate money men in check - to help steer the course of world development in a more humanitarian direction.

We advocate a popular movement of global proportions, representing the concerns of the workers, farmers, and other common people throughout the world. To further their interests, the corporate leaders are more than willing to think in global terms. We must be willing to follow their example, sounding our own needs and conerns as loudly as they sound theirs.

Coalitions are in order. Greens in Europe will have to join with peasant farm leaders in southern Mexico. The union leaders in America cannot forget the poor and starving elsewhere, or they will be easily foiled. The socialists, leftwingers, populists, Greens, radical Christians, and revolutionaries of every other stripe must bind together, to counter the united strength of the world's multinational corporations. We must network with each other as well as they do - across languages, national borders and oceans - or we will die.

Amazingly, we live in a time when the tools for this fight lie near at hand. Via software and xerox machines, Praxis is in your hand at this very moment. The Internet offers an opportunity for networking and communication that the organizers of old would marvel at. The Institute for Global Communications, for instance, pulls together activists from all corners of the world, tying in feminist, ecological, pacifist, and other causes into one powerful network at www.igc.org. Idealist, the Ruckus Society, and other groups are hard at work organizing this global movement.

So to Seattle, the Grove gives hearty applause. They say a butterfly flapping its wings in Asia can affect weather patterns halfway around the world; with high hopes, we see that sea turtles and union card carriers in Seattle can shake up the forecast for the rest of the world. The future's weather is up to our decision.

There is dissatisfaction running rampant in this country. If you have not experienced it firsthand, then you are probably the cause of it. (I would put myself in that category.) In our attempts to right the wrongs of society we have given our dysfunction many names: racism, sexism, etc. In doing so we have also placed the blame at the feet of many different villains.

Most often, the white man has said that it is the uneducated, lazy, African American community, which is to blame. In turn the African American has said it is the white community, which gets all the breaks, and schemes, in its inability to do away with racism, to starve the children of poor black mothers. Meanwhile the voice of the feminist declares that it is the men, black, white, and every other color, who, because of chauvinistic male ego assertion, seek to keep the woman who tries to work shackled to the supporting man in her life.

Let us stop here for a moment, and ask ourselves, who, if anyone, is right. Since all people are either male or female, black, white, Hispanic, or are part of some such ethnic distinction, it stands to reason that the true villain behind our dysfunction has some of these attributes, but is there not a better way to draw a distinction between those who are suffering and those who cause the suffering? Well, the establishment hopes you don’t think that there is. In fact it is the villain himself who has given us all these distinctions of race, sex and religion, and said, "See that’s the problem, that guy over there with the strange skin." So we fight, black against white, white against Hispanic, Hispanic against Asian, oh and let us not forget man against woman. And we chant the capitalist mantra, "This is mine, get your own." That’s what we’ve been doing for years. Socialism has become a dirty word in our system. How could one think of following the great words of Marx, "From the excess of many to the needs of the few," but where have we gotten with our constant fighting and finger pointing?

The answer to that question is dramatically different, depending upon whom you ask. While some will tell you that we live in the most amazing country in the world, during a time of economic success only rivaled by that of the twenties, others will tell you the sad truth that "we got babies dying in South Central as young as they do in Cambodia." The great tragedy is not that one of these answers is true and the other false, but that they are both true, and the country we live in is doing that poor of a job of sharing the wealth. In the words of rap star Busta Rhymes we have a system where "the rich get richer and the poor get fucked over and out."

We have all heard these (varying) statistics, but they are worth repeating. We live in a country where the top 10% owns about 75% of the resources. You can do the math, and you’ll find that that leaves the other 85-90% of us to fight over the remaining 35% of the countries resources. And that’s just what we do. Oh, we may call it racism or sexism, but at its root the hatred in this country is based upon all of us looking at our families, living on less than we feel that they should, and trying to figure out who got our share. Conveniently, about that time, there is always a spokesperson for the top 10% saying, "It’s those lazy blacks" or "It’s those white kids at the upper middle class school", and like the good sheep our religious and political institutions have taught us to be, we say, "Well, OK, I’ll blame her for my problems."

In truth, all of the fighting that the Establishment controlled media documents so well, is lower middle class against lower middle class, and even if one side wins, it has gained nothing, because it has not defected its enemy but it’s ally. The "nigger" and the "cracker" and the "chink" are all partners in the great atrocity that America’s lower middle class suffers from at the hands of the rich. America’s rich are anything but oblivious to all of this. After all, it is the system that keeps them in place. To quote the recent movie Bulworth, "Rich people have always stayed on top by dividing white people from colored people. But white people got more in common with colored people than with rich people."

Similarly, historian Howard Zinn wrote in 1980: "It is important to make sure this artificial unity of highly privileged and slightly privileged is the only unity - that the 99 percent remain split in countless ways, and turn against one another to vent their angers"

During the era of slavery in America, slave owners knew that they could protect them selves against uprisings by following two simple rules: 1) Don’t let your slaves read (have knowledge) because they will gain a more clear understanding of their plight and be more outraged by it. 2) Keep your slaves divided among themselves. One or two slaves could be shot but a whole group of unified slaves is trouble. So the masters carefully rationed out the food, letting the slaves fight among themselves to see who was dominant. Does any of this sound familiar? Is that not exactly what the rich in this country do? You know what that makes us? Slaves, slaves to the CEO's of huge corporations. Men who sit in offices and collect the profits of our labor. More over, the only reason that the rich toss us any bones at all is so we will keep fighting. We’re talking about a system where some one can work a full 40-hour week at minimum wage and still fall below the poverty line. Who worked that one out? And who voted for it?

Now for the bad news: the people who voted for legislation like this got into office largely because they had the best campaign. Campaigns cost money, and once again we find the power in the hands of the top 10% who financed these campaigns. So the power is in the money and the money is happy, why would anything ever change? It won’t! We have established an "As long as you can pay I’ll do it your way" system where the poor have no representation, no power, and very few opportunities. All of a sudden, inner-city kids are faced with an honest life of seemingly inescapable poverty or a quite profitable life of crime.

"How wise to turn the fear and anger of the majority toward a class of criminals bred by economic inequity faster than they can be put away, deflecting attention from the huge thefts of national resources carried out within the law by men in executive offices," says Zinn.

How nice that the Establishment runs cover stories about America’s war on drugs (a bottomless, and quite pointless, pit we throw our money down, which cost taxpayers millions each year), asking why so many inner-city kids have turned to drugs for escape and income. But the moneymen behind the political scene like things like the war on drugs, because while we argue about issues like drugs, affirmative action, or "the decay of family values," we are all totally distracted from the century-long rape that our country is suffering through. So the all-but-bought lawmakers pass legislation that makes the money happy. This is why we see things like the huge upper class tax cut recently proposed by House Republicans, and this is why lawmakers bellyache over our welfare system, which costs our country nearly nothing, compared to upper-class, white-collar crimes like fraud and embezzlement, which are practically never addressed.

By doing these thing lawmakers are keeping themselves in office and keeping the rich rich. Over time we find that the economic turn over that would ideally happen in a capitalist system does not. And though we like to call our socio-economic classifications classes, they have begun to look more and more like ridged castes.

Before long you may find your self asking a very important question born out of quite necessary alarm, "Is there any hope?" Howard Zinn would say "Yes."

"With all the controls of power and punishment, enticements and concession, diversions and decoys, operating throughout the history of the country," the great historian writes, "the Establishment has been unable to keep itself secure from revolt. Every time it looked as if it had succeeded, the very people it thought seduced or subdued stirred and rose. Blacks, cajoled by Supreme Court decisions, rebelled. Indians, thought dead, reappeared defiant. Young people, despite lures of care and comfort, defected. Working people, thought soothed by reforms, regulated by law, kept within bounds by their own unions, went on strike. Government intellectuals, pledged to secrecy, began giving away secrets. Priests turned from piety to protest. Prisoners, isolated in cages, organized.

"To recall this is to remind people of what the Establishment would like them to forget - the enormous capacity of apparently helpless people to resist, of apparently contented people to demand change. To uncover such history is to find a powerful human impulse to assert one's humanity. It is to hold out, even in times of deep pessimism, the possibility of surprise....

"The unexpected victories - even temporary ones - of insurgents show the vulnerability of the supposedly powerful. In a highly developed society, the Establishment cannot survive without the obedience and loyalty of millions of people who are given small rewards to keep the system going: the soldiers and police, teachers and ministers, administrators and social workers, technicians, doctors, lawyers, nurses, transport and communications workers, garbage men and firemen. These people - the employed, the somewhat privileged - are drawn into alliance with the elite. They become the guards of the system, buffers between the upper and lower classes. If they stop obeying, the system falls.

"That will happen, I think, only when all of us who are slightly privileged and slightly uneasy begin to see that we are like the guards at the prison uprising at Attica - expendable; that the Establishment, despite whatever rewards it may give us, will also, if necessary to maintain it's control, kill us."

Our duty is to make sure that each person is garroted the resources necessary to maintain life. We have on this planet far more than enough resources to comfortable achieve this. In the end all we, the common people, have on our side is our own awareness and each other. If we forfeit these things then we stand no chance!

Sources: A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn; Alex Cummings; Busta Rhymes; Bulworth, dir. by Warren Beatty

JP Morgan. Boss Tweed. Nelson Rockefeller. Henry Kissinger. George Wallace. They're not exactly names we find synonymous with "freedom," "equality," or "liberty." In fact, some of the most powerful and/or visible men in American history have treated the country's theoretical ideology like it was an accident, some embarrassing faux pas they would most like not to think about. From the beginning of the United States' existence, the freedom we're so proud of has been a possibility, not a standard or a given. And at that very beginning, a stew of social and political forces just happened to produce documents - the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution - that exalted freedom and democracy, almost by accident. Accidents happen, and sometimes they don't. America could have turned out very differently very easily.

Like most revolutions, the American one of the 1770's was orchestrated mostly by a radical minority. Though broader-based than the Bolshevik Revolution, it was still initiated by the increasingly wealthy class of merchants and business owners, provoked by unfair British taxes that impeded their commerce. Public school textbooks have made much of the schism between radicals and British-loyal Tories, but both sides naturally represented politically active minorities. Then, as now, politically-active citizens were a somewhat rarefied breed.

Thus, the American Revolution was the product of the insurgency of the colonial commercial classes, moderately wealthy men set off from the scrubby masses. Even George Washington was a thousandaire and one of the wealthiest Virginia landowners. The accomplishment of such a machine, like all machines men build, served the interests of it's makers.

That's not to imply that all of America's founders were haughty aristocrats. There was Thomas Jefferson, the common man's champion who remains fascinating in his ideological dilemmas more than 200 years later. Another Thomas, Mr. Paine, was the crabby and pragmatic author of Common Sense and The Age of Reason, a wonderful critique of organized religion that flew in the face of every conservative notion.

Of course, for every Paine and Jefferson there was a James Madison and Alexander Hamilton pair, Latin-educated blue-bloods that really didn't have that much against the British system, just particular British policies. Their role in the making of the nation was to advocate preservation of the British social order. In a sense, this was necessary in forging our Constitution, as the radical spirit needed to be tempered with some tradition for the sake of stability. As a result, America's legal and political systems were born out of common law and Parliament, uniquely English innovations. By the same token, radical spirit was necessary to keep the founders from crafting a clone of Britain - Hamilton even entertained the idea of America having a king for its chief executive!*

One should also remember that, although their personalities offset each other, it was Hamilton, not Jefferson, who actually attended the Constitutional Convention. Consequently, the aristocratic temper guided the making of our nation's founding document. James Madison, known as the "father of the Constitution" for his meticulous recording of the Convention's sessions, admitted that he feared a "majority faction" taking power in America - in other words, that the masses might grab the reins of power from the upper-class. Many of the delegates were rich business men who had made loans during the war, and feared that poor debtors would gain control of the Congress and issue huge sums of worthless paper money to cover themselves. The absent Jefferson might have lent his mixed feelings on slavery, and pushed for abolition. This could have happened, since slavery was on the decline during the late 1700's, before the invention of the cotton gin. Unfortunately, the issue wasn't pushed hard enough - though sincerely wanting to believe in Enlightenment ideals, most of the Convention delegates owned some slaves - and the issue was officially put off until 1808.

It is a well-known fact that only wealthy, propertied white men could vote in the early days of our nation. This is not, as some might suspect, an isolated peculiarity in American history. Despite the clearly stated Constitution, it had been necessary for most rights to be won by the people, one by one, over the course of our history. Women had to gain the right to vote (1920). Blacks had to gain the rights of economic freedom from slavery. Native Americans had to gain suffrage (1925!). Mormons had to gain the right to religion. Workers had to fight for the right to unionize. Blacks had to fight for 8^th amendment rights - freedom from cruel and unusual punishment in southern jails.

Aside from the fight for rights, the reverse has occurred just as frequently. Blatant abuses of liberty in America have been publicly allowed, such as the Japanese internment camps, and many more have occurred without even the slightest popular attention. Americans taught to be proud of their country's ideals are usually shocked at such incidents. There was the Ludlow Massacre, which culminated in the government burning women and children alive for striking against their dictatorial employer, Rockefeller; Ruby Ridge, another police state maneuver that left women and children dead; and the Espionage and Smith Acts, which jailed thousands for criticizing the government. The average American citizen is shocked by events such as these, but in large part due to their unfamiliarity with those parts of history.

My contention is this: if the mass of the people could be kept in the dark about so much abuse of freedom, then history could have very easily produced a U.S. founded on ideals of oppression and classism, rather than liberty and equality. Who would notice if their whole lives had been taken up with such a regime? All the framers of our nation would have done is word things differently.

What if they had written what they really thought? That men aren't created equal. That property and economic power should by law (rather than by habit, as we have it) form the foundation of political power.

I dare say that Americans would have objected no less to that sort of government any more than they do ours. When our government behaves that way, the masses say nothing more than heaving a collective sigh. Even Great Britain, a nation with a measure of parliamentary democracy, has a deeply ingrained class system. It has been said that the nearest American equivalent to growing up "under-class" in Britain is to come out of the worst New York slum. However, there has been no revolution against modern British classism; aside from the occasional outcry (e.g. the rock band Pulp's brilliant satire Different Class), it is an accepted fact of life. If America was much the same way, most citizens would carry on their day-to-day lives as they normally would. Or, as a pop song from the Reagan Eighties says, "That's just the way it is, something's will never change." And all the people nod their heads at once.

In our world of mainstream media, Americans are often unaware of the everyday injustices that the government hands out. One of the main objectives of Praxis is to point out these incidents and sort of remove the Establishment-imposed blinders from the public eye. On Tuesday June 29th, there was an incident off of the coast of Miami that is one of the best and most recent examples of the power of protest, the power of people to undo a wrong.

The story ends with celebration of justice, but it begins with a shady piece of legislation. This legislation is the Cuba Adjustment Act. Under this policy, Cuban refugees who make it onto American soil are permitted to stay, while those picked up by the Coast Guard, even a few yards away from the shore, are to be returned to Cuba.

This policy sounds harmless enough - until you consider that it encourages refugees to jump overboard into dangerous coastal waters. In effect, it is a good way for our government to weed out some of the people that it would have to provide care for if they were to survive. This is a not-so-messy way for our legislators to kill off Cubans who are seeking refuge in America without having to put their names on the crime. Innocent human beings are being forced to choose between life with Castro or possible death in American waters. Meanwhile, the government tauntingly says, "Come on. Give it a try. You can outswim our boats, and our sharks for that matter."

On June 29th, six Cuban refugees faced such a decision when they realized that their fourteen foot rowboat was about to be intercepted by the US Coast Guard about 150 yards from the shore. After the long, courageous journey from Cuba, all six decided to take a chance and dive overboard. Two of the six made it to the shore, and the othe four were picked up by the Coast Guard. After being blasted with a high pressure water house and doused with pepper spray, they were pulled onto the boat where they were cursed and mocked. Two refugees, Duviel Rodriguez and Carlos Cordova, said they were forced to pose for pictures with a photo of Castro.

As soon as word of the struggle at sea reached the mainland, Cuban-Americans erupted with outrage. Between 1,000 and 3,000 people (estimates vary) gathered at the Coast Guard's station, blocking access between South Beach and downtown Miami. The protesters carried Cuban flags and signs with messages such as "US Coast Guard: Pigs Like Castro" and "Fidel Castro - don't feel bad, we are as bad as you are!" After hours of angry chants like "Liberty," "Justice," "You almost killed them," and "Free them!" (all in Spanish), officials began feeling the weight of the freedom of speech. Just as incidents all through our history books tell us, when governments feel their people are out of control fearful leaders result to violence. One shocking video clip actually captured Miami's mayor pounding a protestor in the head repeatedly.

It quickly becomes clear that the protestors weren't going away. In a few hours, the government bowed to the people and all of the refugees were released. A monumental event for "Government for the People," but a back page story for most newspapers.

Marguerite Rece is an American woman who has worked with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and the American Friends Service Committee, both renowned humanitarian organizations. (The League was the "Featured Member" spotlighted recently on the Institute for Global Communication's website.) I met Ms. Rece several months ago at a Quaker service and shared Praxis with her. She soon revealed her cosmopolitan experience, and I asked her to write an informational piece for our readers about her international ventures, especially in Cuba. This was her response:

I went to Cuba with a delegation of women - and a few men - with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom -- begun in 1917, at the invitation of the Cuban Women's Federation - for 10 days in April 1998. This was a follow-up to the Beijing Women's Conference in China (1995) and was held in Cuba for a number of reasons, among which were to end the blockade and to bring in much needed tourist finances to a tiny country struggling to provide the basics for its population. The US Blockade... means that any countries that trade with Cuba cannot come and trade with the US. Just before I left for Cuba, Bill Clinton and Madeline Albright did announce an opening up of restrictions to Cuba which would allow medicine, medical supplies, food, agricultural supplies, and people (travelers, especially for educational purposes)... These bills are still in the US Congress with, by no means, guaranteed passage.

Our delegation from the US entered by way of Canada, Mexico, and the Bahamas, with or without State Department visas - depending on our willingness to comply with restrictions that we were all conscientiously opposed to and our willingness to take on possible hassles for non-compliance. I did not request a visa and I was not hassled - some were - belongings thoroughly searched, souvenirs confiscated or threatened with destruction to make sure they held no contraband. One family gave up bongo drums rather than seeing them destroyed. Some were threatened with legal action in subsequent weeks.

The people were delighted to have us there - over three thousand women from Asia, Africa, Europe, North and South America, including many indigenous peoples in native dress. When we met at the Karl Marx Convention Center, Cubans, not delegates, gathered outside and treated us as honorees, so grateful for our having come to give voice in song, chant, banners, slogans, addresses - one even by a 10 year old Mexican girl -- to the need to end the blockade.

We toured clinics where their very adequate staff of physicians -- trained in natural, scientific and alternative medicine - provide universal healthcare to the population in spite of inability to get much needed medicine and medical supplies. Pastors for Peace has been running the blockade - sometimes successfully, sometimes not able for a number of years to take in medical, educational, and technological necessities. Our delegation took as much of that as we possibly could, plus clothing and toiletries to give out of our abundance.

I had one woman stop me on the street to beg me to take her prescription and get it filled - it was an antibiotic that was not available in Cuba.

We went to neighborhood physicians' offices/homes, many staffed by women physicians where they spend half of their day out on house calls, half in the office/house. I have since been reading about situations in which Cuba has sent her physicians and medical personnel to other countries, like South Africa after apartheid and Angola, to train their people and offer medical attention. When the refugees from Kosovo were going to be housed at Guatanomo, Castro offered to send medical people there to see to their health - but then it was decided by our government to send them to Fort Dix instead.

Some of us toured the large encampment just outside of Havana where 1500 victims of Chernobyl and their families were brought for needed x-rays and medications for exposure to radiation - the only country in the world that offered this.

We toured the Martin Luther King Center at Ebeneezer Baptist Church in Havana, which offers cultural education for the population where Pastors for Peace bring their supplies. We toured the neighborhood with the Center director, went through housing renovations which people in the neighborhood are doing themselves and were told that 95% of the population owns their own homes - the few that rent are usually those that travel elsewhere in Cuba on temporary jobs. When young families start to outgrow their space, they look for families who are downsizing and they trade, sometimes including furniture or art items if the trade seems very uneven. Housing is not extravagant, it is adequate - there are no homeless.

We toured an elegant new hotel in downtown Havana where the Spanish have invested their development money. Profits will be spent 50-50 between Cuba and Spain for the first ten years, with Cubans being used in the construction and, of course, the staffing. At the end of the ten years, all the ownership and profits revert back to Cuba.

They are developing a largely vegetarian agriculture, because they can more adequately feed their people that way. Beans and grains have always been a big source of protein and many have gotten used to the poor availability of meat anyway. They call the time since the Soviet Union pulled out "the special times," which have certainly been a belt-tightening time for all. They are all together. There are no great disparities between rich and poor. There is much emphasis on sharing.

Old cars from the 1950's which many have turned into taxi services and public "camel" buses (reconditioned trucks/buses put back to back and motorized) provide the majority of transportation. Lots of people walk long distance or wait for long periods of time to get whatever transportation necessary to get where they are going.

Our wonderful hotel accommodations, with extensive menu choices for 2 meals in the dining room and chartered buses, are all part of the tourist trade which is bringing much needed money into the country and are not available to Cubans except as possible places of employment.

Some of us got together and rented a car to drive in the area away from Havana, to the west. We had to pay cash for the rental - once again, a newer, decent car for the tourist trade - because, whereas Cubans would be willing to take credit cards, US Banks are not permitted to pay to Cuba. Another effect of the embargo. We saw beautiful countryside, small towns, and an accident where other cars and neighbors immediately moved in to provide necessary care. We heard of "the people who watch the sea" - those who watch to the north to give warning of possible invasion from the US. Given their history with our country, this does not sound unrealistic. We were also told in our car that we could be pulled over and our car confiscated or be asked to take on different passengers in case of a national emergency. Understandable, and thankfully it didn't happen.

We saw wonderful musical presentations - singers, dancers, and instrumentalists in the "playa" - a regular noontime event. Thinking as an American, I was shocked and felt affronted for performers where some in the crowd got up to dance or join in singing onstage. This too is a shared experience in Cuba - whether Mexicans, Afro-Cuban performers or whoever, celebrityhood is not known or practiced. The performers danced with whoever - it became not we/they but us celebrating - so exciting and fun!

There were wonderful classical music productions, very exciting sounds of Cuban music - orchestra, guitar...

We had many workshops on justice, violence toward women, oppression, exploitation, racism, changing government priorities to meet human needs - many of which are the reason for the call to end the blockade.

We gathered one evening to hear Castro, who spoke very slowly and was immediately translated in all the languages represented - thus was available for all our sessions. He spoke pretty much on the dangers of globalization and neo-liberalism, which you also have written on in Praxis. He said the power these days is not in the hands of governments and politicians but in the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the business tycoons. One evidence of this to me was that, in spite of the blockade, US cigarettes and Coca-Cola were very common. As we were reminded there, a lot of us at the conference were Americans - not only United States of America Americans. We too easily write off Canadians, Brazilians, Mexicans, etc. etc. when they too are Americans!

One last thing I want to say. It was hard to see what our policies had wrought there, hard to see my country as greedy, wanting always to be right and wanting other nations to see and do things "our way" - which is always to our advantage, whether we can admit that or not, whether they want it or not. It was particularly hard for me to see what I call the new prostitution - those who are willing to sell themselves, often through stealing, to gain the things (technology, fashions of the US) and to not realize what richness they have in sharing, working together. Violent crime, drugs, prostitution as it used to be practiced are not big in Cuba. Crimes of individuality - getting ahead, having things - are the big ones.