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Free Trade Area of America: Smash it to Pieces!

Stop the FTAA!

MPAC Newsletter, November 2003

By Tiffany Warzecha

On November 20 and 21, elite delegates met at the Inter-Continental Hotel in Miami for the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit to finalize their vision of an economic policy. These policies will threaten the freedom and well being of every living being in this hemisphere. Because most ordinary people were not be allowed into the meetings to offer their input, we welcomed these delegates in the streets of Miami and Maine.

Over 755 million people are at risk because of the conference decisions, except for minority who has control of capital and corporate power. The FTAA is working to give this small group of billionaires and corporations power over people and governments.

The FTAA threatens to absorb both North and South America into a homogeneous market, where transnational corporations will be empowered to successfully challenge any regulation, policy or procedure which runs contrary to their ideal of increased profit at any expense, human or otherwise.

NAFTA was implemented in 1994 and has been a disaster Canada, United States and Mexico. Almost 800,000 jobs have moved from the US to developing countries and social services have been cut. In Mexico, thousands or people have been displaced from their land so foreign businesses can take over. While companies can cross borders with ease, it is ever harder for people to cross them. Inequality within and between the counties has grown rapidly. Only the rich have gained from NAFTA, while life for workers and the poor has become steadily worse.

Under FTAA, more jobs from the US will move to Central and South America, where workers labor in sweatshop conditions, and the environment, people's health, and standards of living will be sacrificed for higher profits.

The good news over 20,000 people rained down on Miami in protest of the ministerial, including a small contingent from the University of Maine. By going to Miami, we participated in a world wide struggle for economic justice. We fought in Miami, fully realizing the real struggle was not in Miami but in our own communities.

Due to free trade, Maine has already seen 22,000 jobs disappear since 1994. To stop the further loss of jobs, we must create grass-root resistance against the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Already groups across Maine, including the Maine Fair Trade Campaign and Maine College Action Network have been working to educate the state of Maine on global economic issues. However, education will not be enough. We need to build a movement in Maine where we can have fair trade, job security, and just social services.