Zapatistas!

Subcommandante Marcos is making waves in Mexico again. Here's the Zapatista plan:

Well, then, in Mexico what we want to create is an agreement with people and organizations that are decidedly of the left, because we believe that it is on the political left where the idea of resisting against neoliberal globalization really lives, and the struggle to make justice, democracy, and freedom in any country wherever it would be, where there is only freedom for big business and there is only democracy to put up election campaign signs. And because we believe that only the left can come up with a combat plan so that our country, Mexico, does not die.

And, then, what we believe is that, with these people and organizations of the left, we will chart a course to go to every corner or Mexico where there are humble and simple people like ourselves.

And we don’t come to you to tell you what you should do nor to give you orders.

Nor are we going to ask you to vote for a candidate, since we already know that the only candidates are neoliberals.

Nor are we going to tell you to do what we do, nor that you should rise up in arms.

What we are going to do is ask you how your lives are going, your fight, your thoughts about how our country is doing and about what we can do so that they don’t defeat us.

Lots of things make me mad these days, and one of the main things is the widespread acceptance of the idea that "free trade" and "globalization" are good things, despite abundant evidence to the contrary. American manufacturing workers know what "free trade" has done to their jobs, and the Zapatistas know that "free trade" is a disaster for the vast majority of the people in Mexico and the other neoliberal colonies. But many Americans don't realize that George Bush and John Kerry and Bill Clinton and Dick Cheney are all on the same WRONG side of this issue--they work for the corporations, NOT for the vast majority of the people in any country.

So I'm pulling for the Zapatistas and all of the other groups in Latin America and elsewhere who are rising up to stop the neoliberal "free trade" agenda, because if they wait for norteamericanos to finally wake up and put a stop to this crime, it will almost certainly be too late.