There are a lot of compelling reasons to come to Washington for the 50 Years Is Enough Network's conference at the end of September.

No Debt, No Sweat: Organizing for Global Justice will be our fourth national activists' conference. We hold them every year the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have the Annual General Meetings in Washington -- which is to say two of every three years. Which brings us to the first reason to make sure you're here between September 23rd and 26th --

1. There won't be a 50 Years Is Enough Network conference next year, since the annual meetings will be in Prague. (Prague is a great place to spend a few days, however, so if you have the means, consider the trip in the fall of 2000.)

And there are more --

2. Last year's "Sado-Monetarism" conference drew a record 400 participants and generated an enormous amount of positive energy, useful education, and satisfied participants.

3. This year's conference is at a different location -- the University of the District of Columbia (UDC), the city's public university -- which has more convenient access by public transportation, and is closer to a wide selection of restaurants (not that we're complaining about the accommodations American University offered for our three previous conferences!).

4. We're ending a century in which the means of economic exploitation have shifted from outright colonialism to more subtle forms of imperialism and corporate domination. We should see the century out by dedicating ourselves to a new era of economic justice and sustainable living for all. Toward that end, our conference will be focusing on successful organizing strategies and viable, equitable economic models that can be adapted to many different circumstances. We intend to enter the 21st century optimistic that the people will be able to chart a course where economic co-operation will overtake exploitation.

5. As 2000 looms, the day of reckoning for the challenge posed by the international Jubilee 2000 movement -- cancelling the crushing debt burden carried by the most impoverished countries of the South -- is upon us. The debt plan put forward by the G-7 at June's Cologne (Köln) Summit will be submitted to the boards of the World Bank and IMF for formal approval. Debt activists from around the world will be joining us at what promises to be our biggest and most energizing demonstration yet, as we greet Finance Ministers from around the world at IMF headquarters on Sunday, September 26 as they gather for the meeting of the institution's Interim Committee to consider that woefully inadequate debt scheme. We will be challenging the ministers to stand up to the inch-by-inch improvements to the status quo offered by the G-7 and declare that the time to end the gross injustice of forcing the world's most impoverished people to continue paying their most valuable resources to the world's riches is now.

6. More or less simultaneously with our conference, and also at UDC, the Mexico Solidarity Network will be holding its second national conference. Many of our workshops will overlap, and their participants will join us for the demonstration on Sunday. This will allow an in-depth look at the successful resistance to neo-liberal economics in Chiapas, the labor movement throughout Mexico, and the human rights crises as the Mexican government continues its low-intensity warfare against the organized movements, particularly of indigenous people, in the southern part of the country. Those who register for one conference will be considered registered for both. The Fair Trade Federation, an association of marketers of products produced in the South and traded in non-exploitative circumstances, will also be going on at the same time.

As in the past, the 50 Years Is Enough conference will offer a variety of plenary sessions and workshops. This year the plenaries -- and the workshops -- will look at the following:

1) Laying out the problems. We'll consider questions like: What are current debt relief plans? What is the current status of IMF structural adjustment programs? How do labor and the environment fit into the current picture?

2) Economic Models for a Sustainable Future. What kind of world do we want to create? How would a world with no use for the IMF or World Bank look? Hundreds of progressive ideas about how economies can be structured more fairly have been floated; dozens have been put into action. We'll consider local currency experiments, the nature of communities established by the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil, the history of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, and labor movements that bring workers, environmentalists, and communities together.

3) Organizing Strategies That Work. Members and partners of the 50 Years Is Enough Network have been successfully resisting neo-liberalism in a variety of ways for years. Those we expect to share their experiences and knowledge will include organizers of the rural sector in El Salvador; organizers of welfare recipients (and those denied benefits under welfare reform) here in the U.S.; labor organizers who took part in the transition to democracy in Indonesia; Zapatista community leaders from Mexico; Jubilee 2000 organizers from Africa, Europe, and elsewhere around the world; campaigners resisting the construction of a destructive World-Bank-supported pipeline in central Africa.

4) Campaigns for Reform and Transformation. What campaigns should we be supporting right now? How do they fit into overall strategies for transforming the global economy? We will look at anti-sweatshop campaigns on campuses and elsewhere, similar support movements for agricultural workers, the "Tobin tax" on speculative financial transactions, microcredit initiatives, proposals for overhauling the "global financial architecture" and components of it, such as the IMF, and progressive legislative agendas for real debt cancellation and weakening the power of the international financial institutions.