December, 13 2017, 01:00pm EDT
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders Headlines #ReplaceNAFTA Day-of-Action Event: Millions Nationwide Call for Successful Renegotiation to Eliminate Job Outsourcing Incentives, Add Strong Labor and Environmental Terms
Labor, Environmental, Faith, Consumer, Family Farm and Other Advocacy Groups and Activists Nationwide Drive Calls, Tweets and Emails to Congress During D.C. NAFTA Talks.
WASHINGTON
An event on Capitol Hill today launched the national #ReplaceNAFTA Day of Action during the last North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) renegotiation talks in 2017, which are now underway in Washington, D.C. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), U.S. Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), and union and civil society leaders joined Americans nationwide calling, emailing and tweeting at Congress to demand a successful renegotiation of NAFTA to eliminate its outsourcing incentives and add strong labor and environmental terms.
NAFTA renegotiations have reached a pivot point. Business lobby groups are urging Mexico and Canada simply to ignore U.S. proposals to cut NAFTA's job outsourcing incentives and Buy American waiver, to limit Chinese content in NAFTA goods and to add a five-year review. The corporate strategy increases the chances that talks deadlock and President Donald Trump withdraws from NAFTA, which he has authority to do in no small part because Congress has delegated swaths of its constitutional trade authority to presidents in recent decades.
U.S. civil society groups and activists participating the #ReplaceNAFTA Day of Action are urging the administration to eliminate NAFTA's outsourcing incentives and add strong labor and environmental provisions that meet fundamental international standards, include swift and certain enforcement, and raise wages for all workers. Callers to Congress are demanding that a vote on a renegotiated NAFTA not be held until these essential standards are met.
Among key activities for this national NAFTA Day of Action and leading to it:
- On social media platforms, a #ReplaceNAFTA Thunderclap action reached more than 1.9 million people via Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr this morning.
- More than 70 organizations are taking part in the #ReplaceNAFTA day of action, emailing more than 10 million people to drive constituent calls to every U.S. House and Senate office.
- Public Citizen and the Citizens Trade Campaign have organized 15 town halls and independent field hearings on NAFTA's renegotiation across the country, giving voice to displaced workers, family farmers, immigrants, small business owners and others demanding replacement of NAFTA with a deal that works for them, not just large corporations.
- The #ReplaceNAFTA campaign has 675 people in 48 states doing boots-on-the-ground organizing. More than 400,000 Americans have signed #ReplaceNAFTA petitions demanding the elimination of NAFTA's corporate protections that promote job outsourcing.
- The Sierra Club, the nation's largest grassroots environmental group with more than 3 million members and supporters, is calling for a NAFTA replacement that protects people and the planet, not corporate polluters. Hundreds of thousands of supporters participated in the call-in day, building on the more than 100,000 calls and messages Sierra Club members and supporters have already sent to Congress this year on NAFTA.
- Communications Workers of America (CWA) activists are calling their senators on the day of action to ask them to hold U.S. trade negotiators to their promise that an updated NAFTA will raise standards and wages for workers in all three countries and stop providing incentives for multinational corporations to move jobs offshore. CWA members from every state are actively engaged in the fight for trade agreements that prioritize supporting working families and strengthening our communities.
Almost one million U.S. jobs have been certified as lost to NAFTA, with more outsourced every week to Mexico where wages are 9 percent lower than before NAFTA and a tenth of what they are in the United States and Canada.
Statements from Members of Congress:
"The biggest economic challenge of our time is that people are in jobs that do not pay them enough to live on - and NAFTA has only exacerbated that problem by allowing companies to outsource American jobs and pay workers even less," said DeLauro. "That is why NAFTA must be rewritten to raise wages and level the playing field for workers. We cannot let corporate special interests write the rules once again and rig this trade agreement against workers."
"Trade deals like NAFTA have decimated families and communities across North America, just so corporate executives can pocket even more in profits," said Ellison. "This is an opportunity to learn from what hasn't worked and come up with an approach to trade that serves the common good. We have to stand strong for a trade policy that lifts up workers, safeguards human rights and protects the environment, not one that simply hands more power and profit to massive corporations."
Statements from Participating Organizations:
"For millions of working families, NAFTA has meant lost jobs, closed factories and call centers, and lower wages, with most unable to find jobs that provide similar levels of pay and benefits. For communities, it's meant a loss of important public services and cuts in education and other programs as employers abandon cities and towns to relocate out of the country," said Chris Shelton, president of the Communications Workers of America. "CWA members understand what's at stake, and that's why we are leading the fight to make sure that a new NAFTA works for workers."
"Americans have had enough with trade deals that make it easier to outsource jobs to wherever workers are the most exploited and environmental regulations are the weakest," said Arthur Stamoulis, executive director of the Citizens Trade Campaign. "It's time to replace NAFTA with a new agreement that prioritizes the creation of good-paying jobs, the protection of human rights and increased wages for all working people. Central to that is ending NAFTA's outsourcing incentives, and the addition of labor and environmental provisions that are based on fundamental international standards and include swift and certain enforcement."
"Across the political spectrum, Americans reject the status quo of NAFTA helping corporations outsource more jobs to Mexico every week and attack health and environmental safeguards in secretive tribunals. We are fighting for a new deal that cuts NAFTA's job-outsourcing incentives and corporate tribunals and adds strong labor and environmental terms to level the playing field," said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. "The corporate lobby is urging Mexico and Canada not to engage on U.S. proposals to improve NAFTA, which increases the prospects that talks deadlock and President Trump withdraws."
"Congress must ensure that NAFTA renegotiations are used to stop the ongoing bleeding from NAFTA while also adding new protections for our environment, creating jobs and raising wages," said Murshed Zaheed, political director of CREDO. "If phony populist Donald Trump gets his way, NAFTA renegotiations will hand over even more power and wealth to the superrich and out-of-control mega-corporations."
"National Farmers Union and its 200,000 farm and ranch families support a renegotiated NAFTA that preserves duty-free market access for agricultural goods with Canada and Mexico, but fixes the flawed framework that has created a substantial trade deficit," said Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union. "Such an agreement should reinstate country-of-origin labeling (COOL) on meat and other food products and should only contain dispute settlement processes that are consistent with the U.S. judicial system."
"People will not stand by and let Donald Trump trade away their jobs, wages, climate, air and water to the highest corporate bidder," said Ben Beachy, director of the Sierra Club's Responsible Trade Program. "To avoid the fate of the corporate-backed Trans-Pacific Partnership, NAFTA's replacement must reverse the outsourcing of jobs and pollution and protect workers and communities across borders by requiring swift enforcement of core international labor, environmental and climate standards."
"Trade agreements have human consequences. For more than 20 years, NAFTA has devastated Mexico's most vulnerable communities. People have been pushed out of their homes by economic, labor and environmental factors and forced to migrate in order to survive," said Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice. "This renegotiation gives us an opportunity to address the desperate need for better agricultural policies as well as stricter labor and environmental guidelines. The U.S. should approach these negotiations with respect for human dignity. The effects of NAFTA transcend the economy and deeply affect the lives of people who need the benefits of trade the most. We must set things right for our communities; it is the faithful way forward."
"A renegotiated NAFTA must take concrete steps to raise labor and environmental standards throughout the continent," said Peter Knowlton, president of the United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America. "It must increase Mexican workers' wages and eliminate repressive labor laws, including so-called 'right to work' laws in the U.S."
"NAFTA has failed farmers in all three of its partner countries - the U.S. Canada and Mexico - all the while lining the pockets of large-scale corporate agribusiness," said Juliette Majot, executive director of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. "At its very essence, trade is meant to improve the livelihoods of people residing in all partner countries. NAFTA never has. It is time for a new approach to trade aimed at ensuring fair prices to farmers and fair working conditions and livelihoods for farmworkers."
"As NAFTA renegotiations continue, it is more important than ever that we work together to find solutions to trade that protect workers, the environment and the common good," said Patrick Carolan, executive director of the Franciscan Action Network. "Rather than having a trade deal that benefits corporations looking to make a profit or gain more power, we must find ways to protect the most vulnerable that are in the best interests of workers, public health and the environment."
"NAFTA renegotiations need to be taken very seriously. They represent an opportunity to do what's right. We can eliminate incentives for companies to leave the United States and move jobs overseas, while strengthening the labor and environmental side agreements, turning them into something enforceable with teeth," said Gabriela Lemus, president of the Progressive Congress Action Fund. "NAFTA has greatly disrupted workers' lives in all three countries -- this is our opportunity to fix it."
"The underlying crisis afflicting rural America - rural poverty - is a result of federal agriculture, dairy, food and trade policies that do not provide farmers a fair price that cover our costs of production," said Brenda Cochran, a Pennsylvania dairy farmer with Progressive Agriculture Organization, a member organization of the National Family Farm Coalition. "Farmers do not need NAFTA - we need a fair price - and NAFTA should be terminated unless farmers and workers are paid fairly."
Organizations Participating in the #ReplaceNAFTA Day of Action Include:
AFL-CIO | Jobs with Justice |
American Federation of Teachers (AFT) | Just Foreign Policy |
Alcohol Justice | Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) |
Alliance for Global Justice | National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC) |
California Labor Federation | National Farmers Union (NFU) |
California Nurses | National Nurses United |
California Trade Justice | NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice |
Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, Inc. (CDM) | NH Labor News |
Center for International Environmental Law | No Maiz Gringo |
Citizens Trade Campaign | Occupy the SEC |
Columban Advocacy | Oregon AFL-CIO |
Common Frontiers | Oregon Fair Trade |
Communication Workers of America (CWA) | Our Revolution |
Connecticut State Council of Machinists | Occupy Wall Street Special Projects Affinity Group |
CREDO | Pennsylvania Council of Churches Ministry of Public Witness |
CT Fair Trade Coalition | Pride At Work |
Demand Progress | Progress for All |
Democracy for CT | Progressive Congress Action Fund |
Fair World Project | Public Citizen |
Family Farm Defenders | Question your Shrimp |
Fight for $15 | Replace NAFTA |
Rock County Progressives | |
Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center | |
Global Exchange | Sierra Club |
Global Progressive Hub | South Florida LCLAA |
Good Jobs Nation | Southeast Minnesota Area Labor Council, AFL-CIO |
Greater Boston Trade Justice | SumOfUs |
Green America | Teamsters |
IAMAW District Lodge 26 | 350 Seattle |
IBEW Local 1837 | United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) |
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy | United Steelworkers (USW) |
Institute for Policy Studies | Washington Fair Trade Coalition |
International Association of Machines and Aerospace Workers | Witness for Peace |
International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) | Women's International League for Peace and Freedom |
Iowa99Media |
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
(202) 588-1000LATEST NEWS
'Unprecedented': Belgian Police Blast Climate Defenders With Water Cannon
"The fact that national governments are subsidizing fossil fuels is akin to a crime against humanity," said one Extinction Rebellion organizer.
May 05, 2024
The climate action group Extinction Rebellion Belgium on Saturday decried what it called "disproportionate police violence" against nonviolent demonstrators who were blasted with a water cannon during a protest in Brussels demanding an end to fossil fuel subsidies.
Hundreds of Extinction Rebellion-led climate defenders blocked Rue Belliard in the European Quarter, the de facto European Union capital, during EU Open Day, when agencies of the 27-nation bloc open their doors to the public. In what Extinction Rebellion called an "unprecedented police response," officers used a truck-mounted water cannon on the protesters, some of whom were also allegedly struck with batons.
Brussels police said 132 activists—some of whom glued themselves to the ground—were arrested.
"This police behavior toward nonviolent protesters exercising their freedom of assembly is illegal and authoritarian," Extinction Rebellion Belgium said in a statement Saturday.
"The use of water cannons against peaceful demonstrators is of great concern," the group added. "We call on the police to exercise restraint and respect the right to demonstrate peacefully and without violence."
The activists are calling on European governments to stop subsidizing fossil fuels amid a worsening planetary crisis. They're also demanding the declaration of a climate emergency.
"National and European governments are spending at least €405 billion each year subsidizing major fossil fuel corporations," protest spokesperson Bertina Maes toldThe Brussels Times. "That's ten times more than what's spent on climate policy."
Maes said the Belgian government alone spent as much as €20 billion ($21.5 billion) on fossil fuel subsidies in 2020, more than 2% of the country's gross domestic product.
"The fact that national governments are subsidizing fossil fuels is akin to a crime against humanity," she asserted.
This weekend's demonstration and arrests come a month before E.U. parliamentary elections. According to an April Eurobarometer survey conducted by the European Parliament, climate action is the fifth-most important issue to voters, after poverty and social exclusion, health, jobs, and defense and security.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Israel Bans Al Jazeera in 'Assault on Freedom of the Press'
"Rather than trying to silence reporting on its atrocities in Gaza, the Israeli government should stop committing them," said one observer.
May 05, 2024
The Jerusalem offices of Al Jazeera were raided Sunday after Israel's far-right Cabinet banned the Qatar-based satellite news network—the sole international media outlet providing 24/7 live coverage from Gaza—from operating in the country.
"If you're watching this… then Al Jazeera has been banned in Israel," correspondent Imran Khan said in a pre-recorded report from occupied East Jerusalem preempting the Israeli Cabinet's unanimous vote to shutter the network.
The order—which does not affect Al Jazeera's ability to operate in Gaza or the illegally occupied Palestinian territories—is believed to be the first of its kind targeting a foreign media outlet operating in Israel. It comes after the Knesset, Israel's parliament, recently voted 71-10 in favor of a law empowering the Israeli communications minister to ban foreign news organizations from working in Israel and to confiscate their equipment.
"The time has come to eject Hamas' mouthpiece from our country," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised address.
Ofir Gendelman, Netanyahu's Arab media spokesperson, said Sunday that the closure would be "implemented immediately."
Gendelman said that the network's "broadcast equipment will be confiscated, the channel's correspondents will be prevented from working, the channel will be removed from cable and satellite television companies, and Al Jazeera's websites will be blocked on the internet."
In a statement, Al Jazeera vowed to "pursue all available legal channels through international legal institutions in its quest to protect both its rights and journalists, as well as the public's right to information."
"Israel's ongoing suppression of the free press, seen as an effort to conceal its actions in the Gaza Strip, stands in contravention of international and humanitarian law," the network added. "Israel's direct targeting and killing of journalists, arrests, intimidation, and threats will not deter Al Jazeera."
The New York-based Foreign Press Association issued a statement slamming the move and saying it "should be a cause for concern for all supporters of a free press."
"With this decision, Israel joins a dubious club of authoritarian governments to ban the station," the group said. "This is a dark day for the media. This is a dark day for democracy."
Human Rights Watch Israel and Palestine director Omar Shakir called the order "an assault on freedom of the press."
"Rather than trying to silence reporting on its atrocities in Gaza, the Israeli government should stop committing them," he added.
Al Jazeera is the only international news network providing nonstop on-the-ground coverage of Israel's war on Gaza, often being the first to report Israeli atrocities in what many experts worldwide say is a genocidal campaign in the besieged, starving strip.
Its correspondents and other media professionals work under constant risk to life and limb. More than 100 journalists, the vast majority of them Palestinians, have been killed by Israeli forces since October 7 in what the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and others say are often intentional targetings of not only media workers but also their families.
In December, Israeli forces killedAl Jazeera cameraman Samer Abudaqa as he reported on the war in southern Gaza, an attack that also wounded Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh—whose wife, son, daughter, and grandson were killed in a separate Israeli strike.
Previous probes—like the investigation into Israeli troops' 2022 killing of renowned Palestinian American Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh—have confirmed that Israel has deliberately targeted journalists.
Last May, CPJ published Deadly Pattern, a report that found Israeli troops had killed at least 20 journalists over the past 22 years with utter impunity. While some of the slain journalists have been foreigners—including Italian Associated Press reporter Simone Camilli and British cameraman and filmmaker James Miller—the vast majority of victims have been Palestinian.
Israeli forces have also attacked newsrooms in every major assault on Gaza, including in May 2021 when the 11-story al-Jalaa Tower, which housed offices of Al Jazeera, The Associated Press, and other media outlets, was completely destroyed in an airstrike.
On Friday—World Press Freedom Day—Palestinian journalists covering the war on Gaza were awarded this year's UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize after being recommended by an international jury of media professionals.
Keep ReadingShow Less
On Kent State Massacre Anniversary, Progressives Decry Repression of Student Protests
"The militarized repression of young people speaking out against a terrible war was shameful then and it's shameful now," said one state lawmaker.
May 04, 2024
As U.S. Republicans push for the deployment of National Guard troops to quell nationwide student demonstrations against the Gaza genocide, progressive lawmakers marked the anniversary of the 1970 Kent State Massacre by condemning police repression of peaceful protesters and reaffirming the power of dissent.
"On the 54th anniversary of the Kent State Massacre, students across our country are being brutalized for standing up to endless war," Congresswoman Cori Bush (D-Mo.) said on social media. "Our country must learn to actually uphold the rights of free speech and assembly upon which it was founded."
Fellow "Squad" member Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said that "54 years ago, the Ohio National Guard opened fire on unarmed students at Kent State."
"Students have a right to speak out, organize, and protest systemic wrongs," she added. "We can't silence those expressing dissent, no matter how uncomfortable their protests may be to those in power."
On May 4, 1970, 28 Ohio National Guard troops fired 67 live rounds into a crowd of unarmed Kent State students rallying against the expansion of the U.S.-led war in Vietnam into Cambodia. They murdered students Allison Krause, Jeffrey Glenn Miller, Sandra Lee Scheuer, and William Knox Schroeder—all aged 19 or 20. Nine other students were wounded, including one who was permanently paralyzed.
"The militarized repression of young people speaking out against a terrible war was shameful then and it's shameful now," New York state Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher (D-50) said on Saturday.
Protests against Israel's assault on Gaza—which according to Palestinian and international officials has killed, maimed, or left missing more than 123,000 Gazans—have spread to dozens of campuses across the U.S. and around the world. Police have been called in to break up protest encampments at numerous schools. Hundreds of students, faculty, and journalists have been arrested, sometimes violently.
At the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), police stood by this week as a pro-Israel mob attacked a campus protest encampment before officers arrested peaceful protesters and supporters.
As law enforcement officials have tried to justify the crackdown by claiming "outside agitators" are behind the protests, some observers noted historical parallels.
"Watching what is happening at UCLA," Virginia state Sen. Mamie Locke (D-2) said on social media. "Old enough to remember Kent State, Jackson State, South Carolina State, and the dog whistles of 'law and order,' 'outside agitators.' So reminiscent of 1968."
On February 8, 1968, police shot 31 students—most of them in the back—at a protest against Jim Crow segregation at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, murdering three young Black men: Samuel Hammond Jr., Delano Middleton, and Henry Smith.
Eleven days after Kent State, police opened fire on a crowd of Black students protesting the bombing of Cambodia at Jackson State College in Jackson, Mississippi, killing Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green and injuring 12 others.
"Our institutions must learn from these past mistakes to not use militarized responses against unarmed, peaceful student protesters by calling in the National Guard, bringing in state troopers, or deploying police in riot gear," Laurel Krause, the sister of slain Kent State protester Allison Krause, said in a statement marking the ignominious anniversary.
"We must not repeat the horrors of Kent State 54 years later," she added.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular