BY JOANNE HINKEL

    Last month, at a teach-in on globalization sponsored by the SAIC Student Activist Union activists called for a school-wide boycott of World Bank bonds.
    "What you can do?" activist Kelly Vaughn asked the audience. "Do not invest in World Bank bonds and avoid Citibank!" Vaughn, a member of the Economic Justice program of the American Friends Service Committee, gave a presentation on the history of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) to the 60 students and faculty members who had gathered in the Grand Ballroom. "
    Debt is the Achilles heel of this whole new economic world order," Vaughn said. She explained how paying off interest on loans taken out from the World Bank since World War II has forced many Third World countries into debts so extreme they can no longer afford to maintain health care or education systems, and have to resort to creating cheap labor markets for capitalist corporations.
    Major rallies, like the one in Washington D.C. last spring to protest the World Bank, have been the recent norm, but activists are now trying new tactics. The newest strategy, explained at the teach-in, is to get people to stop investing in bonds affiliated with the World Bank. This includes waging a boycott on Citibank, an institution that has invested heavily in World Bank bonds.
    During Vaughn�s presentation, a few students voiced concerns over the SAIC Financial Aid Department�s tendency to refer incoming students to Citibank to open checking accounts. Even though the bank has a branch conveniently located within doors of the 112 S. Michigan building, activists suggested that students steer clear of it and put their money in other institutions. SAU student presenters congratulated SAIC on having no financial ties to World Bank bonds, and suggested that the school use its power in the community to pressure other institutions to also resist such investments.
    Many other topics surrounding globalization were discussed during the three-hour event. Five local artists and activists presented talks on such issues as AIDS and multi-national pharmaceutical corporations, the future of Mexico and NAFTA, Plan Colombia, and bio-engineering and the genetic modification of food.
    Gregg Bordowitz, a faculty member of the Film Department, discussed how globalization is unfolding around AIDS. "These issues are simply about equity and access," Bordowitz declared. He was referring to the reality that although drugs that can keep people with AIDS alive are being manufactured (mainly in the U.S., Germany and England), most of the people suffering from the virus cannot afford to buy them.
    Bordowitz clarified many of the complicated issues surrounding the AIDS crisis, offering information not covered in newspapers or television news reports. Using statistics from recently conducted research into the industry, Bordowitz explained that while pharmaceutical companies claim they cannot afford to sell drugs at discount prices to impoverished people because of exorbitant research costs, the reality is that only 6 percent of profits are funneled into research, while 25 percent gets pocketed.
    To reach the ultimate goal of having the patent control on life-saving drugs relinquished � so that generic versions can be manufactured at affordable prices � people need to become more active on this issue. Bordowitz suggested that students demonstrate outside of major pharmaceutical company offices here in Chicago. "I want to see people with signs [at protests] that say �AIDS Drugs for Everyone Who Needs Them,�" he said.
    The pending Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement marks the next huge step in globalization, said Jason Wallach of the Mexico Solidarity Network. (At the time of the teach-in, these agreements were still under discussion). Wallach asserted that the FTAA undermines our democracy, as does the North American Free Trade Agreement, because the millions of people who will be affected by its policies are not involved in the organization�s decision-making processes. Wallach claimed that the American working class has only suffered and that poverty has substantially worsened in Mexico since NAFTA was implemented. Only the rich (corporate barons) are getting richer; the poor are getting poorer.
    At one point, Kelly Vaughn called out to the audience during her presentation, "What are people at the School of the Art Institute doing in terms of protest?" The crowd was silent. Eventually a girl in the back row shouted out, "There�s not even enough of a community here to even answer that." Other students soon responded that they do things individually, like boycott certain institutions and products and/or participate in local protests, but they do not organize actions communally.
    One student suggested that the lack of community at SAIC could be blamed on a lack of communal spaces in which to hang out and meet one another. The fact that only 60 people showed up out of the more than 2,000 students who attend the school, leaving a majority of the seats in the Grand Ballroom empty, says something about the problem of community that SAIC faces.