Global shifts
The United Nations meeting this week in New York offered a glimpse into shifting global relationships. The President of the United States continued his campaign against the basic principles of international cooperation. He positioned the U.S.A. as a violent, outlaw state, threatening the annihilation of Iran, affirming continuing lethal strikes on small boats, and threatening the government of Cuba. He effectively announced to the world that he is willing to commit war crimes, and he doesn’t care what the world thinks. The President said he was "reasserting American power" with "unmatched military might" and promoting “America First”.
The Cuban and Iranian delegations walked out on the speech. Most delegates remained impassive. The Guardian offered a sober assessment of the brutish nature of Trump’s perspective:
It was just raw power; and a power that is likely to diminish in the years ahead. The power of persuasion has always been critical to presidents coming into the United Nations. But the United States is now at historically low levels of approval around the world, as measured by the Pew Global Attitudes project, with only 23% of people (across 36 nations) expressing confidence in Trump’s leadership. The number is unlikely to go up after today’s performance.
In spite of all of the President’s efforts to belittle and bully other nations, people are refusing to bend to his will.
Rather than marking America's power, this gathering indicates the increased isolation and diminished influence of the US. This was most obvious in the reaction to the appearance of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Protesters gathered outside of the UN building, and several delegations walked out as Netanyahu began speaking. Netanyahu is the subject of an international arrest warrant, issued by the International Criminal Court in 2024 after it accused him of war crimes in Gaza.
The disdain for both the US and Israel turned the belligerent speeches by these presidents into hollow messages, dangerous because of the destructive power at their command, but incapable of energizing people toward any prospect of a better future.
For all its shortcomings, the United Nations has been a forum where the opinions of the world are called forward. More than sixty years ago, African American leaders petitioned the United Nations to intervene in US racial policies. The 1951 document “We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against the Negro People” was signed by almost 100 intellectuals and activists, including Paul Robeson, William Patterson, and W.E.B. Du Bois. The petition documented hundreds of lynchings and detailed daily acts of discrimination and repression. After identifying more than 10,000 deaths in the 85 years since the end of slavery, the petition concluded:
. . .the oppressed Negro citizens of the United States, segregated, discriminated against, and long the target of violence, suffer from genocide as the result of the consistent, conscious, unified policies of every branch of government. If the General Assembly acts as the conscience of mankind and therefore acts favorably on our petition, it will have served the cause of peace.
The US government used its considerable power in those days to preclude any effort to seriously take up the petition. Mainstream media barely commented on it. Officials called it “communist.” The US delegation to the UN criticized Patterson for “attacking your government.” This provoked Patterson’s important distinction, saying, “It’s your government. It’s my country. I am fighting to save my country’s democratic principles.”
It was that spirit that animated our efforts in Detroit more than a decade ago to invite the UN in to observe the water shutoffs in 2014. Catarina de Albuquerque, the Special Rapporteur on the human right to water and sanitation, and Leilani Farha, the Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, denounced the “unprecedented scale” of water shutoffs in our city, saying “It is contrary to human rights to disconnect water from people who simply do not have the means to pay their bills.” This affirmation of the barbarism of the water shutoffs served as an important moral victory for our efforts to ensure water as a human right and sacred trust.
Struggles for freedom and liberation have never been small or isolated. They have been supported and enlarged as people around the globe affirm the basic desires of human beings to live in dignity and peace. That desire still burns in the hearts and minds of people longing to create a better world.