In South Africa somebody got this bright idea to charge people for clean water. You put in your coins, hold out your bucket, get some clean water. Unless of course you don'rt have any coins. Then you scoop up water from puddles, creeks, anyplace you see water. It will give you cholera, or something awful, because it's too polluted to drink. But they drink it anyway. And get sick. And die.
Happens the same way in Uganda, India, Peru. Some fabulously rich multinational corporation buys the water rights, and sells it to who can pay. It's called privatization. The bankers love it. It's also called free trade, because the way free trade works is rich people are free to do anything they want to poor people. If you try tp stop them, they can take you to the World Trade Organization. The WTO then can force the poor countries to sell the people's water to rich corporations. So too many people don't get clean water. How can anyone think that's fair? well of course they know it ain't fair. The point is fair or not, it is profitable.
So the next time you see us out marching around and protesting at a WTO meeting, or the World Bank, or those G8 meetings, Maybe you will want to join us. Because we are right to want everyone to have clean water without some big corporation from some other country trying to make them pay for it.
