| COLUMBUS, OH - September 22 - One week after the collapse of World Trade Organization negotiations in Cancun, Mexico, members of the U.S. Congress join with representatives of faith, labor, and environmental organizations to critique current WTO policies and call for a new model for global trade. Representatives Marcy Kaptur and Sherrod Brown will discuss the many costs of current "free trade" policies, including falling labor standards, increasing poverty, and weakening environmental protections.
Representative Brown will speak about the newly introduced Fair Trade for Our Future Congressional Resolution, which would chart a fair and sustainable course for global trade. Speakers will also discuss how global trade policies affect employment and economic conditions here in Ohio, and what the failed talks in Cancun means for the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), a trade pact covering the entire hemisphere, except Cuba.
"With the second collapse of WTO talks in four years, the world now has an opportunity to change the rules of globalization from those engineered to benefit multinational companies to those that will improve people's quality of life, while improving labor and environmental standards," said Wally Ryan Kuroiwa, the United Church of Christ's Team Leader for Economic Justice.
"The legacy of the corporate globalization enshrined in NAFTA and the WTO is one of accelerated deforestation, heightened air and water pollution, and falling labor standards," said Jason Tockman, International Trade Director for American Lands Alliance. "We can and we must do better. The breakdown of the WTO provides the platform upon which the United States should develop a more socially and environmentally balanced trade policy."
"The promise of 'raising all boats' has been broken in favor of increasing the wealth of the few at the expense of many," said Jim Lowe, National Field Representative of the AFL-CIO. "The result has been loss of family farms, job security, and the hope for a better future for our children."
Representatives Kaptur and Brown are speaking at today's 10:00 am press conference at the Ohio Statehouse, alongside Ryan Kuroiwa, Tockman, and Donnie Blatt, the Rapid Response Coordinator for the United Steelworkers of America, District 1, representing the Ohio AFL-CIO. The speakers have been brought together by the Ohio Conference on Fair Trade, host of the media event.
Both Tockman and Ryan Kuroiwa have just returned from the WTO's Fifth Ministerial Conference in Cancun, and will offer their first-hand accounts of the negotiations, street demonstrations, and implications of the collapse of the talks.
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