About Francis Calpoutra |
Awakening the collective interests of this economic giant is the new frontier for economic justice in the age of globalization. The Transnational Institute for Grassroots Research and Action (TIGRA) seeks to meet this historic challenge. Historical Context The last thirty years has seen the biggest movement of people in our history. Internally, cities have absorbed two-thirds of the global population since 1950 and are currently growing by a million babies and migrants each week. Externally, 200 million people live outside of their country of birth, almost three percent of the total world population. Under globalization, we hear the thunder of footsteps of people moving in order to provide for their families. Conventional theory suggests that trade liberalization and the integration of economies should have benefited countries of the global South (i.e. the developing world which some statisticians define as all countries but the 29 wealthiest) more than it benefited leading industrial countries. The reality suggests the contrary. According to the United Nations, in 2006 the net transfer of capital from poor countries to rich ones was $784 billion, up from $229 billion in 2002. In addition, wage gaps widened when six Latin American countries (Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Uruguay) liberalized after the late 1970s. The same phenomena is true for China, India, Indonesia and Russia which accounts for more than a third of the world’s population. Globalization favored all industrial countries that liberalized and penalized those (pre-industrial) who did not. The human consequence of failed economic policies is mass migration. And mass migration begets remittances—the cash that immigrants who have searched for work outside their place of birth send back home. Mass migration has spawned an underground economy of staggering proportions:
Although relatively little systematic attention has been paid to the effects of remittances on poverty and income distribution in developing countries, new research by the World Bank’s International Migration and Development Research Program shows that international remittances can reduce both the level of poverty (the number of people living below the poverty line) and the depth of poverty (how far the income is below the poverty line). According to this research, if there were a 10% increase in remittances from each individual migrant, there would be a resulting 3.5 percent decline in the segment of people living in poverty, affecting at least 35 million children. There is a multi-billion dollar industry devoted to money transfers, with profit margins as high as 30 percent, and generates more than $15 billion in revenues. The price of a remittance transaction includes a fee charged by a sending agent, and a currency conversion fee for delivery of local currency to the beneficiary. In a scathing report on the industry, the World Bank concluded that the “Remittance fees are high, regressive, and non-transparent…and reducing remittance fees will increase remittance flows to developing countries.” The study suggests that decreasing the cost of each transaction by as much as 33% will still produce profits for these companies. This reduction can result in a 5% increase in remittance flows that can pull 17.5 million children out of poverty. Sending a remittance is an individual act of love from the sender to the receiver. But if seen as a collective practice, it can be transformed into economic power that can be of service to family and community. If these remitters incorporated as a company, they would rank No. 3 on the Fortune 500 list, trailing only Wal-Mart and Exxon Mobil in annual revenue. Consolidating this new economic force on the world stage, giving definition to their aspirations with an agenda that addresses root causes of displacement and poverty, and creating a new global culture forged by a common historical experience is the challenge of our generation. The experiences of being economically displaced, striking roots in new soil, shaping and being shaped by new realities, engaging in transnational practices that link lives across borders—these are the conditions that can transform and reinvent the course of human development under globalization. And this is the challenge that TIGRA has taken on. During its short three-year history, TIGRA has been able to lay the groundwork for consolidating this important constituency, involving communities in cross-racial partnerships, and codifying an organizing practice that links local action to a global purpose, yet remaining rooted in love of family and community. This strong foundation is the ground from which a new future can emerge. Our goals for 2008 include: • Consolidating a global association of remitters and their families through the formation of La Liga de Sustentadores de la Comunidad Mundial, or the Global Association of Community Sustainers; • Launching the Transnational Community Reinvestment Fund (TCRF) as a grantmaking, convening, and capacity-building institution to strengthen and promote initiatives that address root causes of displacement in communities of origin and destination; and In 2008, we will work to live up to what one blogger called: "one of the best developments in the U.S. pro-immigrant movement, yet ... This initiative has the potential to truly address the root causes of migration."
Francis Calpotura has spent the past twenty years as a community organizer, trainer, administrator, and writer. He worked at the Center for Third World Organizing (CTWO) from 1984 to 1999, founding innovative training and organizing projects such as the Minority Activist Apprenticeship Program (MAAP), and People United for a Better Oakland (PUEBLO). He was a Co-Director of CTWO from 1990-1999, managing a staff of 20+ people with offices in Oakland, Portland, Denver and Sacramento. In his work at CTWO, Francis was the key liaison to other community organizing networks including Grassroots Leadership, ACORN, Industrial Areas Foundation, National People’s Action, SNEEJ, and the Midwest Academy. He is a founding member of numerous organizing initiatives including the National Organizers’ Alliance (NOA), Californians for Justice, and the Asian Pacific Environmental Network. Francis is a frequent contributor to and Guest Editor of ColorLines Magazine, published by the Applied Research Center, which looks at culture and action from a racial justice perspective. He has written numerous articles on challenges confronting the practice of organizing in the development of social movements. Most notably, the article entitled Square Pegs Find Their Groove: Re-Thinking the Organizing Circle, co-authored with Kim Fellner of NOA, has been widely circulated in the community organizing community and is used as text in university classrooms. Francis was a visiting lecturer at San Francisco State University’s Masters in Social Work (MSW) program in the Spring of 2000. In 2003, he completed a Ford Foundation-funded study entitled Bi-National Research Project on Social Change Initiatives in the Philippines and the United States. Francis is a native of the Philippines, and immigrated to the U.S. in 1977. In 2004 Francis started a new project, the Transnational Institute for Grassroots Research and Action (TIGRA) which seeks to develop a model of global organizing based on the experiences of immigrants in the United States. Francis has received numerous recognitions for his work, including the Bannerman Fellowship, Gerbode Foundation Fellowship, Fellow at the California Wellness Foundation, and a Koshland Fellowship from the San Francisco Foundation. |
