Interdependence Day 2011 on the 10th Anniversary of 9/11

Today is Interdependence Day: the day after September 11, when, ten years ago, brutal terrorists attacked the United States of America as they have attacked so many other people around the world before and since.

This year, fittingly, we are celebrating Interdependence Day in New York City at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, at Lincoln Center (Sunday) and 3LD Art & Technology Center (Monday) as part of the memorial weekend looking back on the horrific events of 9/11. We are looking not just back, but also forward. Looking not just at how the brute realities of an interdependent world -- terrorism, climate change, epidemic disease, crime, weapons of mass destruction, anarchic markets in labor and capital -- impact and stymie old fashioned sovereign nations states; but also at how new transnational and cross border civic and cultural and political institutions can help us meet the challenges.

In a world of weapons without borders and diseases without borders and warming without borders and terrorism without borders, we must seek to develop citizens without borders, democracy without borders, and justice without borders. Cities need not wait for states to forge cooperative links. The web is not just a social and commercial tool but a potent civic and democratic tool. Interdependence is not just a way of organizing but a way of thinking - seeing the connections, exploiting the links, promoting the relationships across borders, professions, peoples, and generations.

Nine years ago in Philadelphia, a small group met to signal the passage from independence as liberty's traditional guarantor, to interdependence as liberty's new guarantor. Since then, in Rome, Paris, Casablanca, Mexico City, Brussels, Istanbul, and last year Berlin, we have convened in a global city with religious, cultural and civic leaders -- global celebrities and young interdependent pioneers alike. And we have sought solutions to terrorism, inequality and poverty that go beyond a war on terrorism or singular sovereign acts by solitary nations.

For though our realities are stubbornly global, our political consciousness lags behind. Too often, it remains parochial, inward-looking, nationalistic and isolationist. When we do act globally it is often via military or economic force, rarely through cross-border civic and cultural collaboration. The Interdependence Movement works to transform how we think and act.

After eight years of annual forums, we are now ready for a year-round interdependence movement -- not in one city at a time, but across many cities and countries. Along with our New York events this year, we have convened meetings and concerts and happenings in dozens of cities and places from England's House of Lords to Belgium, Australia, Canada, Nepal and Germany.

At our interactive website www.InterdependenceMovement.org it is possible to join with other young people in civic actions; to read and sign our Declaration of Interdependence; to pledge support for interdependence; to share stories; and to plan common cross-border actions.

Near the beginning of his term, President Obama said "given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. Our problems must be dealt with through partnership, our progress must be shared." Yet America today is as parochial and insular in its thinking as ever before and there are populist and reactionary political movements here and around the world dedicated to keeping it that way.

On this ninth Interdependence Day, September 12, 2011, we proclaim it as the aim of the Interdependence Movement as a network of "citizens without borders" to challenge this parochialism and promote cooperation across frontiers; to enlarge our thinking to embrace what connects us, and build on those connections to fix our global problems and heal our fractured world.

Yesterday. we brought together Howard Dean, Josh Fox, Carol Gilligan, Tavis Smiley, Cornel West and others to reflect on 9/11 and debate our way forward toward positive interdependence; I invite you to join us to continue the conversation at 3LD Art & Technology Center in person or watch live on the web later today!

(a version of this statement is being placed in the Congressional Record today by Congressman Dennis Kucinich)

 

Follow Benjamin R. Barber on Twitter: www.twitter.com/BenjaminRBarber

Comments

[Garrett Marino]

11:18 PM on 09/13/2011

It's unfortunate that anyone still takes Benjamin Barber seriously given his history. It is well documented that Barber was an apologist for Quadhafi's tyrannical regime in Libya. This man, who claims to be such a worldly scholar, was so naive as to allow himself to be used by crazy Quadhafi's equally crazy son, Saif, to do paid PR work intended to clean the dirty laundry of that murderous dictatorship so he could get more money out of the western world and maintain his hold on power. Barber wrote in the Washington Post in 2007 that Libya under Quadahfi could become “the first Arab state to transition peacefully and without overt Western intervention to a stable, non-autocratic government.” Guess it didn't work out that way, eh Ben? Barber only resigned from the board of Saif's front group when the tables were turned on Quadahfi and Saif threatened "rivers of blood" in support of daddy dictator. Somehow Barber didn't see this coming. He thought Saif and daddy were just swell. Barber hasn't apologized for taking payment from Quadahfi ("'a $3 million per year contract with a consulting group which promised to “enhance the profile of Libya and Muammar Quadhafi” in Britain and the US'".) or taken any responsibility for his supporting role. If this is what this so-called “interdependence movement” is about, no one should want any part of it. The Nation - http://www.thenation.com/blog/159046/professors-paid-qaddafi-providing-positive-public-relations

[shylove2]

09:19 PM on 09/12/2011

Sorry Interdependence means seeing the damage an illegal war against Iraq for lies can do just as in the war in Vietnam for lies is. Not the world without borders, it is power without limits for multi-nationalism of the rich and powrrful superpowers in the interests of themselves first and everybody else never... death and destruction of a nation for at best paranoia and at worst dilberate lies in order to control a region of scarce resources as our world comes up against it's finite limits which will be happening more and more and it appears the military police state will be for the rich nations of the hypocritical west. Meanwhile the ral 21st Centur is not about 20th centurg dieologuy buyt about learning how to live within the means of our planet without the waste of wars of destruction and reconstruction profiteering, iwthout the popualtion growth economic model and without the massive accumulation of wealth for a few. And with reduncnacy fo critical survival systems for the possible survvivl of human civilization under climate change doomsday..

[cadsuch]

02:02 PM on 09/12/2011

Once upon a time, not very long ago, some of our neighbors had the audacity to have a labor movement. Everybody wore the same kind of hat. Whenever it became time to speak collectively to management, everybody just sat down. Well, a military from another country other then the one practicing this labor movement, came to the rescue of the companies in negotiation in the country that was our neighbor and killed the leftist rebels in the labor movement with all the same kind of hat. Please don't forget this fact of history, whenever someone make a post of a utopian nature like this one from brother Barber.

[AbstractionAction]

10:56 AM on 09/12/2011

"Near the beginning of his term, President Obama said "given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. Our problems must be dealt with through partnership, our progress must be shared." "

JUST WORDS, like most of the rest of what Obama has said. Once he got in power and gathered his adviser corps of Washington elites, he figured out pretty quickly that the US is in the business of supporting Israel to the detriment of other countries.

[seanny53]

02:49 PM on 09/12/2011

Washington elites support Israel because they use Israel as a pit bull in the Middle East.