From: SchNEWS, the weekly direct action newsletter published by Justice? in Brighton, England.

Published in Brighton by Justice? - Brighton's Direct Action collective

 FRIDAY 27th April, 2001

SUMMIT WRONG?

"When laws are unjust, it's criminal not to resist them." - José Bové, the anti-globalisation French farmer who helped demolish a McDonalds.

"The truly violent are those who prepare for the summit by accumulating tear gas, plastic bullets and pepper spray. Those who enact laws and measures that will put hundreds of thousands of poor in the street, those who let pharmaceutical corporations make billions on sickness causing the death of millions of people, those who are copyrighting life and creating dependence and hunger. In a word, those who put their profits before our lives. These are the ones we should fear, not the anarchists." Black Bloc communiqué "Don't worry about the Black Bloc; worry about the Blue Bloc [the police]-These leaders are not committed to non-violence." Jaggi Singh, CLAC

Last weekend leaders of 34 nation states were in Quebec City for the Summit of the Americas. Amongst other things they hoped to achieve was to put the finishing touches on the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) which aims to establish a 'free trade' zone extending NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement - see SchNEWS 200) to the tip of South America. It's been described as 'NAFTA on steroids'.

Unfortunately every time the world's elite have a corporate knees-up, their meetings are met with resistance. Tens of thousands of people from all walks of life faced the usual barrage of rubber bullets, mass arrests and a thick white blanket of gas. No matter if they were masked-up black bloc trying to pull down the fences or peaceful protesters sitting in the road; the treatment was the same. As one protester pointed out, "The scene looked and felt like war, yet only one side had any real weapons. After the extreme police violence I'd witnessed the past few days, a few broken windows didn't merit a second thought."

But like Professor and author John McMurtry put it, "The corporate media will continue to block out the life-and-death issues at stake, focus on the saleable spectacle of a large public confrontation, blame and trivialise the thousands of opponents who are assaulted for putting themselves on the line, and return to selling other images and distractions once the violence entertainment is over."

TRADING STANDARDS

Free trade accords are the icing on the cake for the globalisation-will-solve-all-the world's-problems cheerleaders. That's because they eliminate 'barriers to trade' - you know, inconvenient little things like environmental protection and worker rights- and push the way for the privatisation of anything that moves, even essential services like health care and education.

So just who benefits from these Free Trade Agreements? John W. Warnock, a Canadian political economist and author of 'The Other Mexico: The North American Triangle Completed' spells it out: "Mexico has always been characterised by inequality, but this has risen under the neo-liberal regime." 73% of the population live in poverty, 45 million in extreme poverty.

Since NAFTA was signed, wages in Mexico have declined by 10%, while labour productivity increased by 45%. This is mainly due to the fact that many workers have increased their hours of work from 8 to 12 hours a day.

In 1980 the average carworker in Mexico earned about one third of the wage of an American car worker. By 2000 this was down to one twelfth.

Warnock continues: "Neoliberalism and NAFTA have been good for the rich in Mexico and the large corporations. The banks, privately owned and robbed by the Mexican rich, have been bailed out of bankruptcy twice by taxpayers. The illicit drug industry flourishes and is now more important than the oil industry, and free trade and cross-border trucking have made marketing much easier. Mexicans know that their country is falling behind the United States and Canada in every area. Aside from incomes, spending is very low on education, health, agriculture and rural development plus research. It is not surprising to find that most people, including academics, do not believe that so-called 'free trade' has been good for their country."

And that's without even mentioning the environment. According to the Sierra Club total pollution has doubled in Mexico since NAFTA was introduced. As mentioned above, under NAFTA corporations can sue governments for getting in the way of business with daft stuff like pollution laws and safety regulations. In August 2000, following a NAFTA ruling, US corporation Metalclad won $16.7m compensation and the right to pollute an area in San Luis Potosi after local protests delayed the building of a waste treatment and disposal site which would poison the local water supply. Which is all rather depressing, isn't it?

Lots of behind-the-scenes activity happened in the build up to the Summit that you wouldn't have seen reported. CLAC (anti-capitalist convergence), CASA, and affiliated groups travelled across Ontario, Quebec and northeastern US to do countless teach-ins on the demonstrations and what the FTAA will mean. Commite Populaire du St. Jean Baptiste distributed 10,000 copies of a 4 page tabloid in the neighborhood where most of the action would occur and set up an 'adopt-an-activist' program which encouraged local families to put up visiting demonstrators (hundreds of demonstrators were housed this way).

Wanna know more? Try www.ainfos.ca or Indymedia www.indymedia.org.uk