March 2001

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

After Quebec, What?

Mike Prokosch works with United for a Fair Economy, 37 Temple Pl., 2nd fl., Boston MA 02111; 617/423-2148; stw@stw.org

The Free Trade Area of the Americas is a bold bid for corporate domination of the western hemisphere and of our lives. However, it is much more. It is our chance to build an ideal movement with power and vision.

Power can come from its breadth. Look at all the people the FTAA will hurt. It will force industrial workers into contract concessions and bust their unions. It will privatize state workers' jobs and turn them into contingent, de-unionized employees. As services are privatized, poorer people will go without, and women will pick up the slack as caregivers. Capital will gain new freedoms to cross borders while immigrants will be legally victimized and scapegoated for the economic distress that capital created.

The FTAA will take away taxpayers' right to invest and spend our public money morally. It will force governments to pay for environmental laws that cut into investors' potential profits. It could give corporations control of the hemisphere's water supplies. The FTAA could ban eco-labeling, state purchasing preferences for recycled paper, and controls on genetically engineered food. Taken to its limits, it could end public subsidies for education, turning our schools and universities into corporate profit centers.

Because it will hurt all of us in so many ways, the FTAA is pushing us together. You've heard that idea before. What could make it real this time is the "Seattle model" of a single movement rooted in many local fights. It's not just a theory; in Minnesota, Tennessee, and other places people have already built very broad coalitions for local and global economic justice.

Similar coalitions are emerging internationally and for the same reason: a massive threat that pushes us together. One shadow "people's government" has already emerged in the Hemispheric Social Alliance, which is dozens of grassroots groups throughout the Americas imagining how our economies could work for us. Internationalism and solidarity can give the movement its vision.

And the FTAA's timetable can give it legs. The official schedule says FTAA negotiations should end by 2003 and enactment in 2005. Here is an organizer's dream: a two-to-four-year campaign against a sitting duck of a trade agreement, modeled on NAFTA, which millions of Americans already know and hate.

We've already started building the structures for the campaign. The FTAA's summit meeting this April created a Global Action Network in Rhode Island and revived one in Maine. All the New England states now have global networks and a regional one which meets monthly to coordinate anti-FTAA work. Forty labor representatives across the region came together in January and formed the Northeast Labor Committee for Global Justice, which will send busloads of workers to Quebec. The April protest is building skills, leadership, and regional coordination which will keep going afterward.

What about afterward? How does this beautiful machine keep growing after Quebec, when public awareness and media attention will be at their peak? Here are some ideas already being discussed.

Alternatives. Immediately after Quebec, a week-long conference will discuss how the global economy affects our communities, and how we can transform that economy to work for us. The series will help build the local-global relationships to knit this decentralized movement together.

Town Meetings. In May, fan out and hold public meetings wherever possible, to discuss the path the global trade elite wants to take us down. We can also discuss other paths. There are bills in three New England legislatures to research the effects of global trade treaties on state laws and sovereignty, and in a fourth (Maine) to establish a state ethical purchasing bill banning sweatshop goods and investments. Which do we want in our town and state, free trade or fair trade? Trade oligarchy or democracy? Public discussions at this teachable moment could reach many new people. They could also establish ongoing groups in towns across New England, working to change the global economy's rules.

Union education and outreach. The Northeast Labor Committee for Global Justice includes public sector and service unions. They have years of internal education cut out for them: their members are generally less aware than industrial workers of new trade agreements' threats to their wages, jobs, unions, and communities. The FTAA is the perfect vehicle for a multi-year education and action campaign which can help transform the labor movement internally.

International solidarity. Union activists might also expand their international work. The FTAA protests can be a springboard for supporting Mexican labor organizing, tours of labor activists from abroad, and union-to-union relations with Canada, Mexico, and the rest of Latin America. Building internationalism in the labor movement is a key step in building a broad global movement and fighting xenophobia. Other social justice activists can join campaigns to support union struggles in other countries, especially when workers are struggling against US-based corporations.

A national referendum on the FTAA next fall or spring. This would be a month-long popular education session where the public learns about the FTAA and globalization. It could bring new people into the movement and create new committees all over the country, while knitting together those that already exist. The actual referendum could include a couple of nationwide questions about the FTAA and trade, and a couple about local economic justice issues like affordable housing or environmental justice. Instead of an exercise in two-party disenfranchisement, it would be a democratic space defined by us, on our own terms and our own time. With institutional support, the referendum could accomplish massive outreach and education, deliver a nationwide NO to the FTAA, and knit together the movement organizationally.

Banner hanging from Toronto Convention Center during meeting of the FTAA Trade Ministers, November 1999. Photo: Langelle/ACERCA

Resistance. If the FTAA is adopted, don't cooperate with it. This proposal takes its inspiration from the Pledge of Resistance against the Central American wars of the 1980s, but is much more ambitious. The Freedom Rising Affinity Group imagines using the FTAA to build a mass non-cooperation movement, starting with conventional forms of opposition. Labor activists, people of faith, and others would lobby congress, hold town meetings and a national referendum, or otherwise work against the FTAA. Meanwhile, in case lobbying fails, they would form study groups and discuss how they would noncooperate with the global economy.

These study groups could reflect on their place in the global economy, how they are linked to others, and what collective strength flows from those links. Would religious congregations and individuals move their investments and pension funds out of global corporations and into local worker-owned cooperatives or housing trusts? How could unions or non-unionized workers send warning signals to the largest corporations? What actions can others take, and not just as consumers? How do those actions strengthen a parallel, democratically controlled economy?

Our first actions do not have to cause measurable harm to the corporate economy at this stage. Rather, we could perform "demonstration actions" which if done massively and nationwide, really would disrupt business as usual and start building an alternative economy. Noncooperation might block the FTAA, raise its costs, and create a nationwide and truly mass US resistance to capitalist globalization.

Race and class. Many activists postpone the job of overcoming the movement's whiteness and narrow class base when mobilizing for a major protest. A multi-year campaign can build cross-race and cross-class relationships, and cross-border ones too. If activists commit to anti-FTAA organizing for the medium term, they can and should also commit to building the kind of movement we all want by supporting community-led struggles for economic justice and democracy.

Northeast Global Alternatives 2001

Northeast Global Alternatives 2001 is an opportunity to look beyond our daily struggles for economic justice. A series of evening meetings, from April 23 through 28, will look at the impact of globalization on our communities and near-term steps we can take to transform our regional economy so it works for the majority.

The proposed agenda covers community economic development and the role of government, immigration, our environment, labor rights and standards, plus a wrap-up "next steps" session on Saturday, April 28. An anti-FTAA demonstration in Boston will usher in the series on April 21 and a huge immigrant rights march on May 1 will provide a coda.

Alternatives 2001 is sponsored by Boston Jobs with Justice, the Campaign on Contingent Work, the Boston Global Action Network, and United for a Fair Economy. For information contact Gail Nicholson at 338-9966 or ccw@igc.org.

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