STATEMENT ON APRIL 21 FTAA PROTESTS

by Leone Sandra Hankey, Southern California Fair Trade Network and Stop the FTAA! Border Action Coalition

This weekend tens of thousands of people will take to the streets from Quebec City to San Diego to protest FTAA -- the Free Trade Area of the Americas -- or as we call it, NAFTA on steroids.

FTAA will expand NAFTA to 34 countries and 800 million people of our hemisphere. It will create a giant free trade zone from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego.

NAFTA has been a disaster for working people, for the environment, and for democracy, as a number of recent studies have shown. 100s of thousands of good jobs have been lost -- at least 766,000 jobs in the US -- while hundreds of sweatshops with miserable conditions have taken their place. Pollution and poverty have grown dramatically; wages have fallen. Our rights to protect our health and safety have been taken away by corporate dominated NAFTA panels. Our right to public services from energy to water to education are threatened by coerced privatization. We need to undo NAFTA, not expand it.

Because the majority of the public opposes so-called free trade, the FTAA agreement has been negotiated in secret. Our fundemental rights are being traded away behind closed doors. There are hundreds of corporate advisors behind those doors -- but representatives of the public are not allowed. Furthermore, the President is seeking Fast Track authority in order to circumvent a public discussion and democratic decision on FTAA. We say Fast Track must be defeated.

Here in California, we have chosen the San Diego/Tijuana border as the site of our protest. Thousands will gather for a peaceful rally and cultural festival of solidarity and resistance on both sides of the border. To us, the border is a symbol of hatred, dehumanization, exclusion, and exploitation. Why is capital, why is trade, why are products free to move across the border, but human beings are not free to do so, are in fact considered criminals and harassed, jailed, sometimes even shot if they cross the border in an effort to find work to feed their families?

We prioritize freedom for people over freedom for corporations. We want products, trade and capital to be regulated in the interests of people, and for people themselves to be free and to be able to make democratic decisions, instead of having those decisions overruled by corporate interests seeking to maximize profit at the expense of all other human and environmental interests. Thank You.



For info on the FTAA protests, see: www.stopftaa.org or www.indymedia.org

For info on job and wage losses resulting from NAFTA, see www.policyalternatives.ca