Miami or bust

Thousands of people will gather in Miami next month to protest the formation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas, a trade agreement that would stretch from the tundra of Canada to the tip of South America. Opponents of the proposed organization fear it will create another NAFTA-style set of rules that will supersede local governments and environmental laws to the benefit of multinational corporations.

Jason Tockman, the director of global trade with American Lands Alliance, told a group of about 125 people gathered at the Atlanta Friends Meeting Hall in Decatur last Sunday night just how NAFTA, which covers just North American nations, had rendered representative government impotent in the face of trade agreements: He cited a $251 million lawsuit the Ethel Corp. brought against Canada under NAFTA, because Canada didn’t want Ethel to sell a gasoline additive the Canadian government had decided would inhibit pollution controls. Instead of going before a panel of trade judges, Canada yanked the law and agreed to pay Ethel $13 million in lost profits — environmental degradation without representation.

Tockman was just one of a handful of people speaking out against FTAA. Others included Aldo Gonzalez, a community leader from Oaxaca, Mexico, and Father Roy Bourgeois, the founder of the School of the Americas Watch.

But as Tockman points out, it’s not clear that the FTAA will ever coalesce. America’s self-imposed 2005 goal for its creation is a “deadline no one takes seriously,” Tockman says. Tockman’s group is collecting petitions, which he hopes will number 25 million, to present to leaders at the FTAA meeting, scheduled for Nov. 18-21.

For more information, go to www.mexicosolidarity.org/ftaa_overview.html ftaa_overview.html or www.citizen.org/trade/.