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Lori Wallach is the director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, where Ben Beachy is the research director.

WASHINGTON — THE Obama administration has often stated its commitment to open government. So why is it keeping such tight wraps on the contents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the most significant international commercial agreement since the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1995?

The agreement, under negotiation since 2008, would set new rules for everything from food safety and financial markets to medicine prices and Internet freedom. It would include at least 12 of the countries bordering the Pacific and be open for more to join. President Obama has said he wants to sign it by October.

Although Congress has exclusive constitutional authority to set the terms of trade, so far the executive branch has managed to resist repeated requests by members of Congress to see the text of the draft agreement and has denied requests from members to attend negotiations as observers — reversing past practice.

While the agreement could rewrite broad sections of nontrade policies affecting Americans’ daily lives, the administration also has rejected demands by outside groups that the nearly complete text be publicly released. Even the George W. Bush administration, hardly a paragon of transparency, published online the draft text of the last similarly sweeping agreement, called the Free Trade Area of the Americas, in 2001.

There is one exception to this wall of secrecy: a group of some 600 trade “advisers,” dominated by representatives of big businesses, who enjoy privileged access to draft texts and negotiators.

This covert approach is a major problem because the agreement is more than just a trade deal. Only 5 of its 29 chapters cover traditional trade matters, like tariffs or quotas. The others impose parameters on nontrade policies. Existing and future American laws must be altered to conform with these terms, or trade sanctions can be imposed against American exports.

Remember the debate in January 2012 over the Stop Online Piracy Act, which would have imposed harsh penalties for even the most minor and inadvertent infraction of a company’s copyright? The ensuing uproar derailed the proposal. But now, the very corporations behind SOPA are at it again, hoping to reincarnate its terms within the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s sweeping proposed copyright provisions.

From another leak, we know the pact would also take aim at policies to control the cost of medicine. Pharmaceutical companies, which are among those enjoying access to negotiators as “advisers,” have long lobbied against government efforts to keep the cost of medicines down. Under the agreement, these companies could challenge such measures by claiming that they undermined their new rights granted by the deal.

And yet another leak revealed that the deal would include even more expansive incentives to relocate domestic manufacturing offshore than were included in Nafta — a deal that drained millions of manufacturing jobs from the American economy.

The agreement would also be a boon for Wall Street and its campaign to water down regulations put in place after the 2008 financial crisis. Among other things, it would practically forbid bans on risky financial products, including the toxic derivatives that helped cause the crisis in the first place.

Of course, the agreement must eventually face a Congressional vote, which means that one day it will become public.

So why keep it a secret? Because Mr. Obama wants the agreement to be given fast-track treatment on Capitol Hill. Under this extraordinary and rarely used procedure, he could sign the agreement before Congress voted on it. And Congress’s post-facto vote would be under rules limiting debate, banning all amendments and forcing a quick vote.

Ron Kirk, until recently Mr. Obama’s top trade official, was remarkably candid about why he opposed making the text public: doing so, he suggested to Reuters, would raise such opposition that it could make the deal impossible to sign.

Michael Froman, nominated to be Mr. Kirk’s replacement, will most likely become the public face of the administration’s very private negotiations and the apparent calculation that underlies them. As someone whose professional experience has been during the Internet era, he must know that such extreme secrecy is bound to backfire.

Whatever one thinks about “free trade,” the secrecy of the Trans-Pacific Partnership process represents a huge assault on the principles and practice of democratic governance. That is untenable in the age of transparency, especially coming from an administration that is otherwise so quick to trumpet its commitment to open government.

++ Check out our blog:  www.EyesOnTrade.org ++
Global Trade Watch’s website is: www.tradewatch.org
Join us on Facebook:  www.facebook.com/GlobalTradeWatch

June 15, 2013
10am-3pm

Beacon Hill

Calling all urban hikers and teams! 

Click here to register today!

CAGJ is proud to announce 2013′s Urban Hike-a-thon on Beacon Hill! This year’s Hike-a-thon will be a guided exploration of Beacon Hill’s social justice and food justice landscape, highlighting the historical and ongoing resistance of folks on the Hill, reclamation of land to grow food on, people of color-owned food businesses, the Beacon Hill Food Forest, all with a critical eye on the gentrification of the Hill.

We’ll visit El Centro de la Raza, Beacon Hill Food Forest, Alleycat Acres, and more! Check back for more details and announcements as we get closer to the hike.

Start a Team! – Want to hit the trail with a friend, partner, comrade, buddy, family, group, or more? Start your own team, and make a bigger impact for food justice. You and others on your team will each pledge to raise $50, getting us leaps and bounds closer to our fundraising goal and embarking on the urban hike with your team.

Individuals – Solo hikers pledge to raise $50 to participate in the event and do the hike on June 15.  Reach out to your community—every $10, $15, $20 goes to support great work!

Find out more details about the hike and register

Contact fjp@seattleglobaljustice.org to find out more about being a team leader and be a part of the Hike-a-thon.  Can’t participate on April 28 or want to help in another way?  Volunteers are still needed between now and the event to help organize.  Email us!

This event will help us distribute our book “Our Food, Our Right”. Last year, you helped us print it; this year, help us get it into every library and independent bookstore in the country! For more information on the book, click here.

Meet at 8:30am at CAGJ office, 606 Maynard Ave S – travel to Whidbey Island for Teach-Out
Return between 4:30 & 5pm

CAGJ’s Food Justice Project invites you to a Teach-out on Whidbey Island, exploring Greenbank Farms, an organic farm, agricultural training center, and natural preserve, and Good Cheer Food Bank, an empowerment-based organic food distribution program! Join CAGJ’s Food Justice Project in learning more about how organic farms can be at the center of building community on Whidbey Island. Then, we’ll spend a bit of time volunteering on the farm to support the Good Cheer Food Bank plot.

Space is limited, so RSVPs are required. To sign up, please email Jeff

We will send you directions, more details on what to wear and bring, coordinate carpools,  upon receiving your RSVP. All activities will be appropriate for children and we can work out disability accommodations if needed.

Since April 15, news about the Boston Marathon bombing and the two alleged suspects have dominated corporate-stream media. Despite the heavy coverage, the quality of the information reported was often lacking even by corporate news standards. Seemingly in competition with Twitter, Reddit, and other social media while in a desperate bid to fill airtime, cable news channels recklessly circulated unsubstantiated rumor and speculation, repetitive factoids, and emotionally manipulative human interest stories instead of actual investigation into exactly what happened and why (meaning not merely repeating dubious allegations from unidentified authorities). Since the suspicious death of one alleged suspect on 4/18 and arrest of the other on 4/19, changing narratives and conflicting facts being reported by corporate media have only worsened. But there’s at least a few clear trends the incident and its aftermath have confirmed. Cross-checking information between social media, local community and foreign news organizations and independent news sites provides far more accurate and timely information about major stories than one will find anywhere on corporate network and cable television. The corporate-security state won’t hesitate to exploit tragedies and disasters to further their agenda, including the militarization of police and public policy with an accelerated roll-out of domestic drones and other surveillance measures. Also, such events, as tragic and disturbing as they might be, distract from other potentially more important current events.

Just two days after the Boston Marathon bombing, a devastating blast at a West, Texas fertilizer plant killed 15 people, injured more than 200 others and damaged or destroyed more than 150 surrounding buildings. Federal investigators still haven’t determined the cause of the explosion, but it has since come to light that the plant’s last Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspection was in 1985. The most recent regulation legislation bill introduced by Congress earlier this year was endorsed by the Fertilizer Institute and actually reduced the EPA’s regulatory authority over fertilizer plants. According to an article from Reason.com, in the decade between September 12, 2001 and September 2011, 30 Americans were killed in terrorist attacks. According to an OSHA report, between 2001 and 2011 there were 59,167 reported work related deaths in the U.S.

On April 23, a forum was held at the University of Washington’s Seattle campus called “End Death Trap Factories” sponsored by the Washington Fair Trade Coalition, United Students Against Sweatshops, Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies, OUR Walmart, and UFCW Local 21. One of the speakers was Kalpona Akter, a former child garment worker and executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity, a group which played a vital role in documenting labor violations in the apparel industry in Bangladesh (which has 3.6 million garment workers, most of whom are women). Kalpona was interviewed extensively following the horrific fire at Tazreen Fashions in November 2012 which killed 112 people. Also speaking was Sumi Abedin, a garment worker and survivor of the Tazreen fire. Sponsors of the forum held a special ceremony the following day to commemorate Worker Memorial Day (officially recognized on April 28) in honor of the thousands of workers killed and millions more injured because of their jobs each year.

On the same day, April 24, a massive eight story garment factory collapsed in Bangladesh due to substandard construction and lack of oversight. As of April 28, 377 people have been reported killed, over a thousand injured and at least 900 remain unaccounted for, making it the country’s worst tragedy related to the global garment industry. As searches continued for the missing, public outrage led to violent protests around the site of the collapse. Two engineers and two owners of the building have been arrested so far, but nothing has been done to overhaul the dysfunctional systems at the root of such tragedies. In an interview with Russia Today, Trades Journal publisher Gerald Celente stated: “It’s an international trend that we see growing more and more as profits are put before people. People are more expendable. So it’s just a lot of talk that you hear from these companies in the West, for example, that say they watch the standards going on in the sweat factories around the world. They’re just show. There’s really no security, really no hard institutions in place that are monitoring these kind of factories.”

The Boston Marathon bombing and recent large-scale industrial disasters caused by corporate greed are both newsworthy topics, but coverage from corporate news media is obviously not proportionate to the scale of the events in terms of lives directly affected, public safety, and systemic problems they’re indicative of. What the focus and priorities of corporate-stream news can tell us is whose agenda they serve and whose interests they promote and protect, namely the upper levels of U.S. government and multinational corporations. It’s to their advantage to keep citizens in a state of fear and ignorance so countless taxpayer dollars can more easily be diverted from social services towards police, the pentagon, intelligence agencies, government contractors and private central banks. Such policies are pushed through in the name of “homeland security” and “defense” but have a tacit effect of consolidating power and weakening any opposition. Now more than ever we need to overcome fear and raise awareness of the neoliberal global capitalist agenda at the root of world’s worst problems and do our best to challenge it, whether that means to question, resist, subvert, network, mobilize, etc. in ways as myriad and unique as every individual.

Sources:

http://www.propublica.org/article/what-went-wrong-in-west-texas-and-where-were-the-regulators

http://reason.com/archives/2011/09/06/how-scared-of-terrorism-should

http://stats.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cfch0010.pdf

http://engage.washington.edu/site/MessageViewer?em_id=101263.0#Events10

http://rt.com/news/bangladesh-building-collapse-missing-499/

http://www.alternet.org/story/152670/how_the_fbi’s_network_of_informants_actually_created_most_of_the_terrorist_plots_%22foiled%22_in_the_us_since_9_11

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Would you like to learn more about the food system, food justice, food sovereignty, the farm bill, or racism, sexism, and classism in our food system? Want to learn more and be a part of changing the politics around how we grow and eat food to create healthier communities? Would you like to get skills in workshop facilitation, education, and help mobilize people to take action?

Come join us May 19^th for an Educate for Action training workshop! We have developed four great workshops on food politics. Now, we want to educate our broader community and mobilize the public to take action for food justice. We need people like YOU to become “Educators for Action”, to go facilitate workshops at various venues to help educate and mobilize people for food justice!

To get started we have put together a training workshop for trainers where we’ll review the workshop content, learn some basic facilitation techniques and practice so you feel ready to be a Food Justice Project educator.

RSVP:  Please RSVP by May 10^th. Participation is capped at 15 people.  RSVP is required. Email fjp@seattleglobaljustice.org with Trainer Workshop in title. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with any questions.

Cost: Free, donations encouraged! Anything you can give helps cover the cost of the training.

Last May, two military leaders involved in the massacre were jailed, but the conditions and systemic problems that made the massacre possible are still producing more victims. As stated by a recent call for action from La Via Campesina, “The dramatic environmental, economic and social crises that we are currently observing have surprisingly not led to a complete change in the direction taken by most national and international elites. On the contrary, we are seeing an increased offensive by economic superpowers to grab all the resources still available to make a profit. Land has become a valuable commodity entering speculative trade, followed by water, seeds etc.”

La Via Campesina has been defending and expanding the practice and policies of food sovereignty around the world for 20 years. To launch another 20 years of struggle, they are calling for a massive mobilisation day this April 17 to reclaim our food system which is being increasingly occupied by transnational capital. Disproportionate power and influence of big agribusiness in particular has led to the now widespread use of GMOs in the US, the defeat of GMO labeling initiative Proposition 37 in California, and the recent signing of the “Monsanto Protection Act”, a rider added to a budget bill that would give immunity to Monsanto and other biotech companies even if indisputable health and environmental hazards linked to their GMO products emerge. At the same time, all over the world, urban and rural communities hit by the same wave of privatisation and destruction of life are resisting against transnational companies and governments who value profit and power over human needs and rights.

La Via Campesina urges everyone to organise activities, protests, art exhibitions, direct actions, discussions, film screenings, farmers markets etc., in your village, school, office, neighbourhood, organisation, community as part of a collective action on April 17. From La Via Campesina’s International Day of Peasants’ Struggle press release:

“On April 17, Farmers organizations will occupy the Ministry for Agriculture in Dominican Republic, to oppose the mining industry and will march and occupy land in Bahia, Brazil, as well as organize a public demonstration in Portugal. In Mozambique, the National Union of Farmers, UNAC, is organizing a conference on land and seeds in Mozambique. In Europe, the European Coordination of Via Campesina (ECVC) is joining this celebration and organizing a European conference, open to the public, on 17th April, in the framework of its General Assembly. The event is co-organized by its Spanish member COAG (from the Canary Islands) and will be held in Fuerteventura.”

One of the larger actions taking place in the U.S. will be a convergence at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange led by Family Farm Defenders. On Fri. April 19, family farmers and their allies will take action and demand further action on two major issues: harmful trade deals such as the Trans Pacific Partnership and price-fixing at the CME by food giants in defiance of antitrust laws. The protest will be followed by a potluck and open community forum on food sovereignty.

The US Food Sovereignty Alliance, of which CAGJ is a member, is also mobilizing people  to take action with the many amazing members of the USFSA. Read the full USFSA press release, and action alerts below.

Actions, events, and campaigns YOU can support for April 17, International Day of Peasants’ Struggle with USFSA members:

•  April 9, Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York (ROC-NY) joined a meeting of Darden Restaurant executives in New York City to tell them that consumers want to eat at a restaurant that treats its workers with dignity, as part of the ROC’s Dignity at Darden campaign: http://www.dignityatdarden.org/.

• April 14, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and its allies in New York City staged the “Pigtail March for Justice” to make Wendy’s pay a fair wage for farmworkers and join the Fair Food Campaign. Take action with the CIW here: http://www.ciw-online.org/action.html.

• April 17, 12pm EDT/9am PDT Conference call with Alexandre Conceição, member of the national coordination committee of the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST). The US Friends of MST is organizing this learning call about the land struggle in Brazil as a contribution to the work of families and individuals who are also fighting for the same goals in the United States. Sign the petition to support the MST: http://www.mstbrazil.org/.

• April 17, join an Urgent Response Team to protect Honduran campesinos struggling for land amid violence. Both Spanish and English speakers are needed to call and pressure Honduran officials to uphold basic human rights. Organized by COPINH (Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras), email Stephen Bartlett to join this Urgent Response Team at sbartlett (at) ag-missions (dot) org.
• April 20, Detroit Food Justice Task Force protests against racism, poverty, land, and political takeover by an Emergency Financial Manager at Flagstar Bank, one of the leading banks responsible for thousands of evictions – 70 cents out of every dollar Detroit receives goes to repay loans that have been accumulating for almost 50 years.

• May 1, International Workers Day and Immigration Marches throughout the country.

• May 5, March for Dignity, Fighting for the rights of immigrants, farm workers, and real immigration reform, Bellingham WA, with Community 2 Community – De Comunidad a Comunidad.

• Support the Food Chain Workers Alliance Minimum Wage Campaign by signing their petition here: http://foodchainworkers.org/?page_id=2329. Also, read their report, “The Hands That Feed Us” and join “the Welcome Table!”

• Sign this petition to support family fishers in New England before April 29.

On April 19, CAGJ and partners will read from our new book “Our Food, Our Right: Recipes for Food Justice” along with GRuB and the Olympia Food Co-op in Olympia, WA. Selected readings will include “Farmers at the Table, Connecting Food and Trade Justice” by author Kristen Beifus, “Breaking Bread” a Poem by Merna Hecht, and “Traditional Foods of Puget Sound Project” by author Elise Krohn. CAGJ’s Food Justice Project appropriately has its monthly meeting on April 17 to focus on issues related to food sovereignty and our ongoing work in solidarity with small-scale farmers and eaters everywhere. Everyone’s invited to join us to help organize empowering and fun projects like Educate for Action, a spring Food Justice Hike-a-thon on June 15, and our Solidarity Campaigns in the following five areas:

- Food Justice Everywhere: Working with the Washington Fair Trade Coalition to stop the new NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership

- Food Chain Workers: Supporting food chain workers’ rights with the Making Change at Walmart Campaign and OUR Wal-Mart

- Right to Good Food

- Local Family Farms

- Farmworkers

CAGJ remains committed to working in solidarity with La Via Campesina, the US Food Sovereignty Alliance, and encourages everyone to learn about and support their valuable work. Then, take action to support invaluable work of local food justice projects, union grocers, locally sourced restaurants, local food processors, urban farms, family farmers, farm workers, food chain workers, and other important parts of the Pacific Northwest and global food system!

Globalize the struggle, Globalize the hope

La Via Campesina

US Food Sovereignty Alliance

Community Alliance for Global Justice
www.seattleglobaljustice.org
contact_us@seattleglobaljustice.org
For more on the Food Justice Project, check out our webpage or contact fjp@seattleglobaljustice.org

With the Community Alliance for Global Justice,  Olympia Food Co-op, and GRuB

Friday, April 19th
7-9 pm

Traditions Cafe and World Folk Art
300 5th Ave SW
Olympia, WA 98501

Come learn about the local and global food movement in your community! Including speakers from GRuB, an Olympia based group dedicated to inspiring positive personal and community change by bringing people together around food and agriculture. And the Olympia Food Co-Op , a community resource that practices and promotes nutritional awareness, local farming and production, environmental responsibility, social and economic justice collective management and consensus decision making.

Also hear readings from the authors of CAGJ’s newest publication Our Food, Our Right; a book that promotes community knowledge sharing, self-sufficiency, accessibility, food justice and food sovereignty.

Readings Include:

“Farmers at the Table, Connecting Food and Trade Justice” read by author Kristen Beifus.

“Breaking Bread” a Poem by Merna Hecht

“Traditional Foods of Puget Sound Project” read by author Elise Krohn

We hope to see you there!
Traditions Cafe and World Folk Art
300 5th Ave SW, Olympia, WA 98501
Friday April 19th
7-9 pm

Order the book online: www.seattleglobaljustice.org/book/

Share the Facebook events with your friends!

For more information, contact CAGJ: 206-405-4600, fjp@seattleglobaljustice.org

Washington DC – April 8th – 10th, 2013

April 9th, 2013
Dear Compañeros and Compañeras,

The USFSA represents a national alliance of more than 25 organizations working for food sovereignty, food justice, human rights and the rights of all workers in the food system, from the fields to the table. We are confident that these days of advocacy work and mobilization will represent not only a step forward for the movement to defend the rights of immigrants, migrant workers, farmworkers, and food chain workers, but also for all of us who are struggling for a more just society.

The USFSA began to form in 2008 as “the food crisis working group” and our call to action held, among others, the following key points:
● Establishing living wages, so that everyone can afford healthy food;
● Implementing full rights for farmworkers and other food system workers;
● Establishing equitable regional and global trade arrangements that enable countries, communities, and all farmers, fishers, pastoralists and other food providers to meet food and livelihood needs.

At the USFSA’s 1st National Assembly, held November of 2010 in Oakland, CA we created an Immigrant Rights and Trade work group to build solidarity, defend workers’ rights, and resist the expansion of any more free trade agreements. At our 2nd National Assembly, held March

17-19th, 2013 in Tampa, Florida we ratified the importance of the Immigrant Rights and Trade work group as fundamental to defend food sovereignty.

At the 2nd USFSA National Assembly we agreed that:
· WE call for a pathway for legal dignified employment for all immigrant workers of all skill-levels.
· WE oppose temporary low-wage guest worker programs that compromise the dignity, freedom, or livelihood of workers.
· WE support all workers’ right to the expansion and protection of collective bargaining, the right to strike, and the right to due process.
· WE call for an end to the detentions and deportations that tear apart immigrant families.
· WE will resist and work for the repeal of all of the unjust “free trade agreements” pushed by the corporations and our governments and which are destructive to the livelihoods of farmers in other countries, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

We believe that achieving the dignity and rights of farmworkers and other food chain workers is critical to achieving equitable and sustainable food economies. We pledge to engage in solidarity actions to defend the rights of all workers in the food chain as a pillar of food justice and food sovereignty.

For Legalization and Work with Dignity!
Food Sovereignty for All!

In Solidarity,
The Coordinating Committee of the US Food Sovereignty Alliance (USFSA)