Join activists, researchers and policymakers from the U.S., Canada and Mexico in Minneapolis, MN, to review how NAFTA has affected all three countries, learn about efforts to expand NAFTA, and exchange ideas on a new fair trade agenda.
"A few days a week, foul-smelling black mud comes out of the plant," Javier told us as he sat a short distance downstream from the Coca-Cola plant in Apizaco, Mexico. Javier, a small farmer getting on in years, has been tending his cows along the Apizquito River for decades. "The spring is about four kilometers up to the east. The water comes out sweet and clean there, but by the time it gets here it's polluted."
Javier, a small farmer near the Coke plant
Reports about a backroom deal between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Charles Rangel and the White House on "fast track" -- the authorization the President sought to extend that gives him power to practically bypass Congress on free trade deals because it can only vote on and cannot amend the deals President makes -- in return for concessions in other areas were floating around Washington for some time. The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's Dennis Olson and Alexandra Spieldoch report on what this means for agriculture, here in the U.S. and in the global South.
Christine Ahn of the Korean Americans for Fair Trade sent us this statement opposing the KorUS FTA (the free trade agreement signed between South Korea and the United States) that was reached today. Through organizations like the Korean Peasant League, a member of the Via Campesina, South Korean farmers and workers have been global leaders in the opposition to free trade agreements like KorUS FTA and the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Agriculture. KPL and its allies continue to struggle for food sovereignty and fair trade in the face of this assault on human and resource rights.
Meanwhile, last week, Grassroots International and 712 other human rights, development, environmental, farm, labor, faith-based and other organizations signed a letter initiated by Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch to Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid opposing Fast Track Authority for the President for such free trade agreements.
In the wake of President Bush's visit to Guatemala as part of his 5 nation Latin America tour, the National Labor Committee (NLC, New York) and the Center for Studies and Support for Local Development (CEADEL, Guatemala) just released a joint report "Harvest of Shame" that details the exploitation and human rights violations of children in Guatemala.
Foreign Policy in Focus (a joint project of the Institute for Policy Studies and the International Relations Center) recently invited Anuradha Mittal (of the Oakland Institute) and Gawain Kripke (of Oxfam America) to debate free trade. Anuradha was also on a recent panel with Colin Rajah (of the National Netowrk on Immigrant and Refugee Rights) titled, "A Perfect Storm: U.S. Trade, Agriculture and Immigration Policies Undermining Human Rights" that Grassroots International organized at the International Human Rights Funders Group conference in January 2007.
The recent news about rising corn prices in Mexico (and here in the US), in part a result of growing demand for "clean biofuels" such as ethanol, warrants focusing on a variety of act
Editor's note: As debate over Mexico’s economic policies is happening at the highest levels of the government, peasants took to the streets over the price of tortillas. Even the New York Times is taking notice. Today, the Times reported:“Tens of thousands of workers and farmers filled this city’s central square on Wednesday to protest spiraling food prices, ratcheting up the volume over a problem that has dogged President Felipe Calderón in his first weeks in office.”And for what might be the first time ever, the NYT explained that what protesters are asking for is food sovereignty. We are thrilled that a national newspaper is taking notice of this growing fight for policies that do not undermine local, national and global food systems.Two close Grassroots International advisors, Marie Kennedy and Chris Tilly, are on the ground in Mexico. They have sent us this first of many reports to come, and we are excited to be able to share them with you here.
The Via Campesina, a global movement of family farmers, agricultural workers, landless, fisherfolk and indigenous peoples, brought their message of food sovereignty to Pascal Lamy, Director General of the World Trade Organization. The very fact that Lamy agreed to meet with them demonstrates that their members have hugely affected the outcome of the WTO negotiations. Among social movements, including labor and environmental circles, there is a growing sentiment that the global food system should serve the needs of the producers, workers and communities most connected to it.
While the Via Campesina is making global leaders hear this message of food sovereignty, Grassroots International is bringing this message, in conjunction with the National Family Farm Coalition, to the U.S. where movement building for rights to land, water, food and seeds are sorely needed. Today, we are lifted by this new global political opportunity.
In this piece written July 26, 2006, Dr. Shiva points out that while there is certainly cause to celebrate the collapse of the WTO's Doha Round, the underlying logic of free (as opposed to fair) trade and its harmful effects on the world's impoverished majority are alive and well in bilateral agreements between the U.S. and individual Third World countries; and that multinational corporations in fact don't need the WTO and multilateral free trade agreements and rules as they can get much of what they want in bilateral deals. Citing the case of the US-India Knowledge Initiative in Agriculture, Dr. Shiva shows that even formal bilateral trade agreements are in and of themselves not required and that ostensibly scientific cooperation and knowledge sharing frameworks can advance the agenda of multinational corporations and their political backers.
The WTO "compromise" being pushed by the industrialized countries and the WTO director would have dealt a double-whammy to Third World countries --devastating their agricultural and industrial sectors in one blow. As Carin Smaller of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy notes, "The current system hasn't worked for U.S. farmers or West African farmers. It has failed workers in Europe as well as those in Bangladesh."
La Via Campesina (a Grassroots International partner and grantee) jointly released a press statement with major Via allies, including Marche mondiale des femmes, Friends of the Earth, and World Forum of Fish Harvesters and Fishworkers after the World Trade Organization (WTO) announced the collapse of the Doha Round of global trade talks.
Migrante eschucha!
El FAT esta en su lucha!
(Migrants, hear us!
The FAT is with you in your struggle!)
Free coffee and chocolate while being entertained and informed...all during a late lunch hour! Who could ask for anything more? I'll be away or else I'd be there.
In spite of the WTO's announcement of new compromises and "progress" on the agreement on agriculture (which would deepen the damage done to agricultural systems, food sovereignty and rural economies around the world by years of neo-liberal policies), many observers doubt that negotiators will be able to meet the deadlines and goals of the proposed deal.
Yesterday, the US released its trade position for the upcoming World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Meeting in Hong Kong in December. The US plan calls for deep subsidy cuts for the US and the European Union. Yet, the cuts rest on the promise that developing countries will significantly reduce industrial tariffs--a compromise that the world's least developed countries say threaten their development and livelihood security rights.
The majority of Grassroots International's partners rely on agriculture for income, food security and sustaining healthy communities. The US's trade position is intricately linked to the parameters of the US Farm Bill, the major legislation that ultimately controls US and global agricultural markets. Our partners' livelihoods are affected by a US agricultural policy process that they have no control over. Their greatest hope is through social movements like the Via Campesina, an international movement of small farmers, indigenous communities, community fisher people, agricultural workers and rural women working to stop global agriculture from being regulated through the WTO.
Supporters of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) narrowly won a 217 to 215 victory in the House this week. While this was a loss, the narrow margin is a sure sign of hope (see the Institute for Policy Studies' John Cavanagh's piece that talks about the backroom pork-barreling involved).
The leaders of the G-8 nations are touting their planned debt forgiveness for Africa as a giant step forward for democracy and development, but if you read between the lines it begins to seem like just another push for neo-liberal market "reforms" and global economic integration.
Grassroots' Executive Director, Nikhil Aziz has written an analysis of Bush and Blair's rhetoric and aid plan. You can read it here.
Bringing GRI's message and the work of our partners to a public high school audience in Providence, Rhode Island is one of those things I wish we could be doing more of. So on Monday morning at the crack of dawn I got up, to lead an assembly or "Pick Me Up" as they called it, at one of the schools of the Met (Metropolitan Regional and Technical Center)–a unique state-funded public school K-12, that is structured around students individualized projects and skills development.
