No to NAFTA on Steroids

Coalition to STOP TPP Announces Week of Protest

and an International Community-Based Conference

 From June 30 to July 8, the secret, super-treaty negotiations known as the 13th Round of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Negotiations are being held here in San Diego at the Hilton Bayfront Hotel. The Coalition to STOP TPP hereby announces a week with rallies, a march, various other protests, and a week-long international community-based People’s Conference: A Better World Is Possible!

The 11 nations involved in the talks are the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Chile, Peru, Mexico, and Canada. Japan has 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. But their reality is different. Though the contents of these negotiations are secret, what is not a secret is that the impacts of the TPP on these Pacific Rim nations, on peasants, on farmers, on workers, on their natural resources, on the environment, will be devastating. Some people describe the TPP as “NAFTA on Steroids.”

 The TPP will:

•  Offshore good-paying jobs to low-wage nations and undercut working conditions globally

• Create new tools for attacking environmental and consumer safety standards

• Expand the deregulation of banks, hedge funds and insurance companies

• Further concentrate control of global food supplies, displacing family farmers and peasants and subjecting consumers to wild price fluctuations and un-labeled genetically-modified food

• Undermine public health policies that reduce tobacco consumption and increase access to medicine

• Give multinational corporations and private investors the right to sue nations in private tribunals. These tribunals have the power to overturn environmental, labor, or any other laws that limit profit, and award the corporations taxpayer-funded damages.

• Encourage privatization of lands and natural resources in areas where indigenous people live

During the week of July 2-7, the Coalition to STOP TPP will hold the following events:

 • July 2, Monday, 12 pm – Support the Fair Trade Not Free Trade Rally sponsored by the San Diego and Imperial County Labor Council, in the park adjacent to the Hilton Bayfront Hotel

 • July 7, Saturday, 11 am – March with Pots and Pans Against TPP! March leaves Civic Center at 11 am

 • July 2, 3, 5, 6 & 7 – Conduct a People’s Conference: A Better World Is Possible! Speakers/locations at

 We are protesting because the TPP must be stopped. We are holding our international conference in different venues in various San Diego communities so that we can share our experience and understanding of such disasters as NAFTA. But also we want to learn from each other about how we can build a better world – a world which is diametrically opposed to the practice of the multinational corporations and investor banks which are negotiating in secret to restructure the economies of the Pacific Rim nations to suit their profit-hungry goals. We will discuss in the conference, based on our varied, diverse and multicultural experiences how to build a better world based on: sustainable, networked, local economies; on full democratic participation: on cooperative and supportive human relations.

The Coalition to STOP TPP and its endorsers include: Global Trade Watch – Public Citizen Occupy San Diego, Women Occupy San Diego, Occupy City Heights, OccupYrCorner, OSD Labor Solidarity Committee, San Diego Coalition for Peace and Justice, International Socialist Organization – San Diego, Canvass for a Cause, In Motion Magazine, Occupy Santa Rosa, Bayan USA, International League of Peoples’ Struggle; Green Party of San Diego; Colectivo Zapatista; People for Social Sustainability.