When
Thursday, July 31, 2014
7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Thursday, July 31
Interference Archive, 7 to 9pm
Join TradeJustice New York Metro and the Interference Archive for a panel discussion on resistance to pro-corporate free trade agreements – from the Zapatistas to grassroots activism in New York City.
20 years ago, the Zapatista uprising began on the day the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect. Two decades later, popular movements in Mexico, the United States, and around the world are still resisting the use of trade agreements as a tool of corporate domination. The governments of the United States, Mexico, and 10 other nations are currently negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive new trade deal described as NAFTA on steroids. In February 2014, 65,000 people protested the TPP in Mexico City, while an activist movement in the United States has effectively stymied effort by President Obama to grant him authority to Fast Track TPP through Congress at the completion of the negotiations.
Join a panel of journalists and activists to learn about:
- why NAFTA was a central focus of Zapatista resistance
- the devastating effects of NAFTA on the people and environment of the US, Mexico, and Canada
- how the Zapatistas and popular movements throughout the hemisphere successfully resisted attempts to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas
- how the US has continued to push the NAFTA model incrementally in Asia and the Americans, leading to many of the same catastrophic consequences
- why TPP promises to be even worst than NAFTA
- how people in Mexico, the US, and beyond are resisting TPP
- what we can do to stop the TPP here in New York City!
Panelists will include:
– Bill Weinberg is an award-winning 25-year veteran journalist in the fields of human rights, indigenous peoples, ecology and war. He is the author of Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico (Verso Books, 2000), and War on the Land: Ecology and Politics in Central America (Zed Books, 1991).
– Elliot Sperber is a writer, attorney, and researcher/fellow with the UK-based Heathwood Institute and Press. Focusing on legal theory, political theory, and human rights, Elliot is a regular contributor to CounterPunch, and a member of the Occupy Wall Street Zapatista Solidarity Network.
– Malou H.D.T. (Malú Huacuja del Toro) is a Mexican author, playwright and screenwriter with more than 10 published books in Spanish who has been supporting the Zapatista fight for 20 years and was part of the movement of intellectuals and artists fighting NAFTA in Mexico. She just published a collective book written by independent journalists both in Mexico and the US about the effects of NAFTA in Mexican culture, named “Salinas Reloaded” (“Salinato Versión 2.0”). She translated into English the Zapatista Freedom School online and is part of the OWS Zapatista Solidarity Network.
– David Valle, Mexican Biologist specialized in Genetics who recently went to Chiapas to the Zapatista Freedom School. OWS Zapatista Solidarity member.
– Manuel Pérez-Rocha helps to coordinate the Networking for Justice on Global Investment project, as part of the Institute for Policy Studies Global Economy Project. Prior to moving to Washington, DC in 2006, he worked for many years with the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade (RMALC) and continues to be a member of that coalition’s executive committee.
– Adam Weissman organizes against the TPP and other free trade agreements with TradeJustice New York Metro, a coalition of organizations resisting neoiberal trade policy, and with Global Justice for Animals and the Environment, an organization addressing the threat posed by free trade agreements to animals; the environment; safe and sustainable food; and the human rights of environmentalists.
– Susan Metz is a retired high school teacher, lead organizer of the Park Slope Food Coop Fair Trade Group, and a member of Clarke Constitutents for TradeJustice.