Darrell G. Moen, Ph.D.

Transborder Citizens’ Movements: Challenging Pax Americana
Fall Semester
Tsuda College: Thursday 1:00-2:30,
English 3 Seminar in International Relations Faculty

Hitotsubashi University: Thursday 10:40-12:10,
Oral Skills 3 in Social Sciences Faculty

With increasing U.S. military interventions and continuing U.S. support for military/authoritarian regimes and opposition to democracy in the Third World, many American citizens began questioning the legitimacy of the postwar U.S. role as the world’s policeman, and started forming grassroots-based organizations in the 1960s as innovative responses to the frequently asked question, “What can I do?” This proliferation of citizens’ movements has recently coalesced in a mutual search for world peace, and an end to poverty and social injustice. Connections are being made by activists worldwide between local and international struggles as well as between the movements themselves, with a focus of attention on the interdependence of states and the power of people united at the grassroots to effect structural changes. We will see that these new social movements and grassroots-based organizations, with a transborder perspective, are one of the most promising developments of the current era. They recognize that the interests of the majority of people living in the Third World coincide with the interests of the majority of First World inhabitants. (more…)