The Call To Action

San Diego:

We are waking up. The fog is lifting. We are sweeping away the lies and secrecy.

From July 2 to July 10, the political leaders of the Pacific Rim nations are meeting in San Diego to turn the Pacific Ocean and its peoples into a giant privatized corporate lake characterized by non-union workers, Wal-Mart supply chain feeders, poisoned, landless agricultural laborers, a dying biodiversity, and rising, drowning sea levels. We cannot and will not let this happen.

The TPP meeting is officially referred to as the 13th Round of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Talks. The nations involved are the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Chile, and Peru. Japan, Mexico and Canada have indicated a desire to join. The economic power of this group is more than 40% larger than the 27-nation European Union. The claimed purpose of TPP is to promote development and create jobs. However, this meeting is in fact one of the final conclaves to secretly negotiate the economic structural adjustments necessary to appease the world’s largest multinational banks and multi-unit corporations. Make no mistake, these talks have nothing to do with free trade between equal nations. Rather, they are negotiations being conducted on behalf of these corporations and banks by their willing and highly-paid governments (supported by their militaries and police departments) to systematize the exploitation of the Pacific Rim peoples and increase the capital acquisition rates of the 1%.

The essence of these talks is to privatize natural resources (despite the wishes of the world’s indigenous peoples;) restructure each country’s trade, labor, environmental, and finance laws; and reduce or eradicate social services to the people. These policies are known the world over as neoliberalism. Historically, they have been instituted around the world ever since the brutal taking of power in Chile, on September 11, 1973, by the fascist regime of General Augusto Pinochet. These policies, thus experimented with, spread to countries as widespread as the U.K., the U.S., Mexico, Argentina, Indonesia, Russia, Poland, Sri Lanka, and now Greece. They have been implemented by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, a plethora of “Free Trade” treaties (such as NAFTA), and various militaries. Enough is enough! ¡Ya basta!

The General Assemblies of Occupy San Diego and Occupy City Heights hereby invites our communities, our regional neighbors, and our co-inhabitants of Earth, in general, to join us in both protesting the TPP and also in creating a new world. We will march with pots and pans, and drums. (Can you hear me now?) We will sponsor an international weeklong conference and roundtables on what is wrong with the TPP Pact and what are the people’s alternatives.

Something Is Cooking In San Diego. Get Out Your Pots and Pans and March. Come Exchange Knowledge at Our OSD Conference and Roundtables.

Download the Call To Action in English

Download the Call To Action in Spanish

Download the Call To Action in Japanese

Download the Call To Action in Italian

 

Dallas

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a massive, new international trade and investment pact currently being negotiated behind closed doors between the United States and countries throughout the Pacific Rim. Wall Street banks and other corporate interests are pushing for the TPP to:

  • Offshore good-paying jobs to low-wage nations and undercut working conditions globally
  • Create new tools for attacking environmental and consumer safety policies
  • Expand the deregulation of banks, hedge funds and insurance companies
  • Further concentrate global food supplies in the hands of fewer-and-fewer middlemen, displacing family farmers and subjecting consumers to wild food price fluctuations
  • Institute longer patents that restrict access to affordable, generic medications

Instead of being debated out in the open, the TPP has thus far been negotiated in the shadows. Approximately 600 corporate lobbyists have been given special “cleared advisor” status to review negotiating documents and advise negotiators. Meanwhile, the general public has been barred from even reviewing what U.S. negotiators have proposed in our names.

The twelfth major round of TPP negotiations — perhaps one of the last — is taking place at the Intercontinental Dallas Hotel in Addison, Texas, from May 8 to 18. Please join us in dragging these negotiations into the light of day and ensuring that we aren’t saddled with a back-room deal that enriches the global 1% at the expense of the economy, the environment, family farms, public health and democracy itself.

Demand Transparency

The vast majority of Americans have been barred by the U.S. Trade Representative from reviewing its proposals for the massive new Trans-Pacific Free Trade Agreement. Meanwhile, approximately 600 corporate lobbyists have regular access to the negotiating texts as so-called “cleared advisors.”

International trade ministers and corporate lobbyists will be descending on Texas from May 8 to 18 for a critical trade summit aimed at rushing the secretive new Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Free Trade Agreement toward completion. The Texas Fair Trade Coalition and our allies are planning to welcome them — and we need you to join us.