Community Newspaper for Blaine, Birch Bay and Semiahmoo, Washington

VIEWPOINT

Rally at the Peace Arch: What, and why

By David Sansone

The Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) is a trade deal that has been negotiated in secret by trade ministers from the entire western hemisphere (except Cuba) since 1994. The text, which has been withheld from the U.S. Congress until recently, has been available to the top 500 CEOs of multinational corporations who have been key authors of the agreement. Non-governmental organizations are still denied access to the text. What activists know about the FTAA comes from leaks from trade ministers.

The FTAA is an extension of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to Central and South America. NAFTA has been a disaster for the people of North America. The U.S. has lost over 400,000 jobs that paid decent wages and had benefits and pensions. Free trade advocates like to talk about the hundreds of thousands of jobs created by NAFTA. What they don’t say is that most are in the service sector earning $7 an hour with no benefits. In Mexico, U.S. agribusiness bankrupted millions of small Mexican farms by dumping corn on theirmarket below market prices on their market. These farmers sold their land to U.S. corporations who now farm it using pesticides such as DDT (which is produced in the U.S.) and then export the food to the U.S. Many of the Mexican farmers now work in sweatshops to survive.

The FTAA is aiming to remove the last of the tariffs that countries use to protect local economies and the environment. It also aims to remove “barriers to trade” by allowing corporations to sue governments in an FTAA governed court if sovereign laws interfere with profits.

These laws most often protect people’s jobs, their health and the environment. If laws are found to be barriers to trade, governments would have to pay for lost potential profits and either remove the law from the books or pay sanctions to keep it on the books. This is not a democratic process. This has happened under NAFTA and nations have removed laws from their books and paid millions of dollars in fines. This is what free trade advocates call “harmonization” of laws. In reality it is about lowering standards to the lowest common denominator so corporations can make as much profit as possible. Some U.S. laws that could be attacked are the eight-hour work day, child labor laws, the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts and the Endangered Species act.

Another scary thing the FTAA aims to do is open public services up to competition. These public services include energy, education, water services, health care, libraries, social assistance, transportation and possibly the police force. If we look at the energy crisis we face now, it is largely due to California opening up its energy services to competition. Corporations curtailed power production to drive the price of electricity up. Now Whatcom County faces the loss of high-paying industrial jobs at Intalco, not to mention Georgia-Pacific. What would happen if we deregulate electricity production in the entire western hemisphere? It is a disaster that is inevitable unless there is broad popular resistance to the FTAA. That is why groups are organizing the rally April 21st . The idea is to have a peaceful family event to help people understand what the FTAA is and what they can do about it.

As far the “possible violence” that police mentioned, they were expressing concern originally, but after meeting with organizers, have expressed that they expect it to be a peaceful event.

This is not the WTO protest in Seattle. The myth of “violent anarchists” has been propelled by the mass media, but in reality nearly all protesters there, including anarchists, were peaceful. Nearly all of the violence that occurred that week was aimed at peaceful protesters practicing their first amendment rights to free speech by police officers. There was property destruction aimed at multinational corporations such as Nike with records of human rights abu.s.es such as corporal punishment of employees or firing women when they turn 25 or become pregnant. No personal property was destroyed. There has and will continue to be argument about the appropriateness of the actions of the few people who destroyed property, but in Blaine, we are gathering at the Peace Arch to celebrate what we have in common. Please come join the thousands of visitors to your town to learn more about this trade deal that will hurt our local economy, our public safety, and our national sovereignty.

Dave Sansone is a coordinator of The Colmena Collective, home of several Whatcom County activist groups participating in the April 21 rally protesting the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas. The collective provides meeting space for the Peace Arch Coalition, the umbrella group of labor, political and faith groups organizing the rally.