Luke Combs’ rendition of Tracy Chapman’s ‘Fast Car’ a revelation

This morning I heard Luke Combs’ version of Tracy Chapman’s song ‘Fast Car.’ It was a revelation. The song starts out with the same guitar cords but then there’s a slight country twang underneath- and a man’s voice. 

All of a sudden the teenagers aren’t in the inner city - they’re in a tiny town in Texas that is just as desolate and left behind. They aren’t a young couple - they’re two teenage boys. One of them has freckles - and suddenly they are my dad and his brother Mike and their friends driving across the US in a Studebaker in Jack Kerouac’s 1950s. Back to Texas and the boys are unemployed, he’s taking care of his alcoholic and violent father. In the next stanza, he’s singing about his girl who is never home while he’s working and taking care of the kids. “I was working as the checkout girl” becomes “I was working at the checkout, girl.”

Even me, driving around Taos with my friend Alicia the summer after high school when I left work early after being burned with boiling water. We sat on the hood of my 1968 Volvo on a dirt road near the gorge watching the lightning and a spectacular thunderstorm in the mountains to the east. Listening to Tracy Chapman full blast in my dorm room - over - and over - and over.

My mother and her lifetime struggle for escape velocity. 

It brought home a few things to me. 

Tracy Chapman’s song is a classic. The longing and the hopelessness of being stuck, that youthful freedom and desire to escape - even a youthful cynicism that it probably won’t happen. Because being young does not always mean you don’t know how the world works. And being old doesn’t mean you don’t want to escape.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a black girl in the projects, a white boy on the poor side of Canton, Texas, a freckled boy in southern Vermont who wants to play classical guitar, a 16-year-old girl in Tucson redoing the 11th grade for the 3rd time after being uprooted by her bipolar mother - a young mother or dad in the mountains of Guatemala or streets of San Salvador. A Nigerian boy on the rudder of a ship to Brazil. A Syrian mom and dad and sons and daughters crossing the mountains into Greece to get to Europe.

We can all find something in the song  that speaks to us.

We are all the same.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2oHOQ8ETU3I

World Bank Inspection Panel applies gender-sensitive analysis in report on Nachtigal Power Project in Cameroon

My recent commentary in the International Labor Rights Case Law Journal focuses on the September 2022 report issued by the World Bank Inspection Panel in response to complaints made by local community groups about harm caused by the Nachtigal Power Project and Sanaga River Technical Assistance Project. The commentary is accompanied by text excerpted for the Inspection Panel’s report.

The case arose out of the damming of the Sanaga River to create a hydroelectric power plant. The Inspection Panel’s report stands out because of the Panel’s holistic review of the harms caused by the Nachtigal Power Project, its application of a gender sensitive analysis to the facts outlined in the complaint and uncovered during the Panel’s on-site visit, and the Panel’s validation of the harms alleged by the community members. On November 4, 2022, the parties agreed to dispute resolution under the auspices of the World Bank accountability mechanism. The collaborative dispute resolution process commenced in December 2022. If the parties are unable to come to an acceptable resolution, the case will proceed to the formal investigatory process.

The report in the Nachtigal Power Project case is one of a new generation of reports issued by the World Bank Inspection Panel after the World Bank reformed its accountability mechanism in 2020. The reforms strengthened rules governing the social effects of World Bank-funded projects. In December 2022, the World Bank Accountability Mechanism Secretary issued updated operating procedures for the accountability mechanism.

In its report on the Nachtigal Power Project, the Inspection Panel drew a complex picture of intertwining environmental, social, and workplace harms affecting the local community. Short- and long-term impacts of damming the river affected fish populations, which in turn affecting the ability of fisherfolk to earn a living, which in turn affected the resources available to families to keep children and young people in school and university, which in turn had a deleterious effect on the local community in the form of increased crime, domestic violence, and prostitution.

By applying a gender sensitive analysis to the facts detailed in the complaint and uncovered during its on-site review, the Inspection Panel was able to shed light on how the project had affected women – and how women were excluded from livelihood restoration and other plans adopted to mitigate the harms of the project. Women in the community tended to earn their livelihoods from informal tasks like fish mongering and operating restaurants that catered to fishermen and sand miners. The informality of their means of making a living served as a barrier to women’s participation in livelihood programs. A gendered focus highlighting informal businesses is also beneficial to men who operate informal businesses in agriculture and sand mining. The Inspection Panel also noted that sexual harassment of women seeking work at the power plant was another barrier to the restoration of livelihoods lost as a result of the Nachtigal Power Project.

Importantly, the Inspection Panel affirmed the credibility of the complainants and community members – and uncovered additional facts showing that project mitigation plans had not been effective in restoring livelihoods and mitigating against the harms caused by the hydropower project.

As a financier of the project with the ability to withdraw or stop funding, the World Bank has a considerable amount of leverage at its disposal to persuade project management to effectively address issues raised by complainants. It remains to be seen whether community members, project representatives, financiers, and policy makers at the national and international levels will be able to develop solutions that match the complex and intertwining harms caused by the project. Regardless of the outcome, the report in the Nachtigal Power Project case is an example of how international institutions can effectively apply a gender sensitive analysis to reveal and hopefully address adverse impacts of globalization and development not only on women, but on men as well.

This blog was originally published in IntLawGrrls. Please reach out to me privately to request a copy of my commentary.