I attended the WTO Teach-In Saturday, December 17, 2005, held at the Koinonia House at Portland State University in downtown Portland. Organizers were thrilled with the turn out and the event met or exceeded all expectations.

After a breakfast supplied by the sponsors of the event, attendees were able to choose from a range of three workshops: the Basics of International Trade and Neo Liberalism; Immigrant Rights in a Liberal World; and Labor and the Corporate Agenda. This was the first of three sets of workshops being offered throughout the day, providing our community an opportunity to gather information and participate in discussions on a wide range of topics concerning global and local economics.

This report is from the first workshop with Martin Hart-Landsberg, professor of Economics at Lewis and Clark College and Meredith Schafer, presently a business student who has worked with the ILWU and AFSCME in the recent past.

Martin Hart-Landsberg was the main speaker and Meredith, who, after a few brief comments of her own, facilitated the ensuing discussion. I was only able to get good audio from the main speaker, and am providing a 17 minute audio file of his presentation.

Martin began by speaking about what Neo Liberalism is. “It’s a theory, it’s a set of policies, and it’s a political agenda, a political strategy. And it kind of plays off these different things depending on how we confront it” He then discusses the situation in Iraq in which “we have a political agenda implemented by a set of policies covered by a theory. But you can really sense the political agenda part of it by also noting that within these Neo Liberal policies is the fact that the restrictions against union organizing would be kept……that people didn’t have the collective right to join together and say ‘do we want to control critical resources in our country and use the revenue to promote universal coverage in education or health care or economic stability or employment.’ Those kinds of freedoms don’t enter into the Neo Liberal theory or policy because they conflict with the Neo Liberal agenda”.

“So what you really have with Neo Libralism is a very clear political agenda that designed to create the maximum freedom or profit maximumization for private capital, that gets implemented through a selected set of policies designed to promote that freedom, and then covered by this broad theory which is designed to explain why doing all this will somehow be beneficial for all of us.”

“But if you think about an Iraqi economy, where everything is privately owned, large parts of it are foreign dominated, where there is no control of the movement of capital in or out of the country, no protection for domestic industry, no right to unionize, no right for a democratic collective decision making about how to promote social values, how well do you think that economy will function for people? What’s the point of that economic activity which is being created?
Martin uses Iraq to demonstrate the strategies and goals of Neo Liberalism, which culminated in the formation of the World Trade Organization in Marrakesh Morocco in 1994. And all this was presented in only the first few minutes of the 17 minute talk.

This was an extremely educational presentation. I would recommend it for those who know very little about Globalization and Free Trade, but also even for anyone who might already have an understanding of the politics, policies and agenda of the World Trade Organization.

A link to more audio files taken from other local Forums on these issues. The first file, by Barbara Dudley addresses some of the same material as does Martin, but goes into more detail and also speaks to the many recent failures of the WTO to come to agreements, due in no small part to community resistance.
PhilosopherSeed. Globalization Page

Audio files in both RealMedia and Mp3 formats:
Political Agenda Of Capitalism, REAL PLAYER

Political Agenda Of Capitalism, MP3

After these remarks, everyone marched along to the National Labor Relations Board, where a moderator introduced Stewart Acuff, Organizing Director for the AFL-CIO. Stewart is a powerful and inspiring speaker, insisting that human rights and worker rights are the same thing. Further, he remarked that those who were attending the rally were the forces of Justice, Compassion and the Future. He also mentioned the Employee Free Choice Act which allows employees to freely choose whether to join unions by signing cards authorizing union representation.
An 8 1/2 minute audio file of this segment:
RealPlayer
MP3

Next on the agenda was to gather at the Federal Building, where a number of people spoke concerning various local and national union struggles. This segment was moderated by Lydia, representing American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.Following these remarks, a representative of VOZ, a group which works for the rights of day laborers, spoke about globalization from an immigrant perspective, and its effect on the people of Mexico. Following this speaker, Stewart Acuff again took the mike for some closing comments.
An 18 1/2/ minute file of the final speakers:
RealPlayer
MP3

New Content posted 3/18/04
AUDIO FILE: THE UNDERLYING ISSUES OF THE FREE TRADE DEBATE
This is a presentation given by Barbara Dudley, professor of Political Science at Portland State University. The topic was: the underlying issues of the free trade debate. With the WTO and the FTAA in polical limbo, is the Neoliberal agenda in trouble? What are the broader political and economic implications of the developing countries’ revolat against the Washington consensus? Can we find common ground in shaping a new agenda?
Barbara has appeared in various venues around Portland for at least the last three years, sharing her knowledge and perspective about the subject of Global Free Trade. More recently, she has been addressing the failures of the International Global Free Trade meetings to reach agreements, first in Seattle, then in Cancun, and finally last November at the Free Trade Area of the Americas meeting in Miami.
All these various past presentations were distilled down into a cogent and smooth accessment of the situation facing the world at the present time. As Barbara states towards the end of her 40 minute talk: “we are living through one of the more interesting, if not most interesting, political moment that we’ve been in in my lifetime. And what’s going to develop over the next three to four years, in terms of the trade agreement and the trade agenda of the developing countries is going to tell us alot about the future of the world.”
“When I teach about the W.T.O. here at PSU, I find it very useful to begin by reading the US. Constitution as a trade agreement, because, in many ways, that’s what it was. It was an attempt to take something, 13 states, 14 or fifteen by the time it was ratified, and take those states that had been as separate as the European states before the European Union was formed and bring them into a free trade zone. So that this country could grow economically on a continent wide basis. That was the vision of the Founding Fathers.” She continues, describing how each state had their own tariffs, did not necessarily recognize each others contracts, and even, in some instances, had their own currency.
From here Barbara moves slowly up to the present day, through the Reagan era, discussing how this trade agreement, known as the U.S. Constituion, gradually became the template for a planetary free trade zone. She goes into a fair amount of detail concerning the failures in Seattle, Cancun and Miami, and finishes her remarks with a few conjectures concerning the possible future of the W.T.O.
An educational, interesting and very well developed presentation, which lasts about 40 minutes. This will give one a fair idea of what Globalization is all about, and why it is in direct opposition to the emergence of Democracy on a planetary scale.
Barbara Dudley at PSU

(New Content posted 12/8/03)
AUDIO FILE: MIAMI REPORT BACK
On December 7, 2003 at the Portland First Unitarian Church members of the community gathered to witness a multi media report back from the Free Trade of the Americas protests in Miami Florida which took place in late November.
The program was introduced by Kate Lore, Social Justice Director of the First Unitarian Church, who, along with many other members of her congregation, were in Miami. The program began with an overview of the FTAA and the significance of what happened behind the closed doors in Miami by Barbara Dudley. Following Barbara, six people who were in Miami addressed different aspects of the Convergence: a lawyer, Brenna Bell talked about the arrests, the police abuse and disregard for civil rights; Chris Ferlazo of Cross Border Labor Organizing Coalition spoke about the labor organizing; Will Levin and Djen Whitney spoke about the direct actions; M2, of Portland Indymedia and Bette Lee, an independent photographer and journalist, spoke about media perspectives.
Following an 11 minute slide show and 2 minute excerpt from a 1 hour indymedia rough cut video, three people spoke briefly about where to go from here. At this point people either broke into groups for spontaneous discussions, or watched the 1 hour Indymedia rough cut video of the Convergence.
This a 1 hour and 6 minute audio file of those presentations.
Miami Report Back
To facilitate the understanding of this material, I’ve broken the talks up into individual audio files for each speaker, beginning with the introduction by Kate Lore and overview by Barbara Dudley, who began by stating that what happened behind the closed doors with the FTAA negotiations in Miami really began last month in Cancun Mexico, and even further back in Seattle in late 1999. “What happened was the developing countries found their footing. It started in Seattle……and what was going on in that meeting was that the developing countries were refusing to go along with the green room meetings, the undemocratic nature of the negotiations, and were really starting to say no to a number of aspects of what the US and the European Union were putting forward in the negotiations.”
This trend continued through the meetings in Dohar, Cancun, and finally through the FTAA Meetings in Miami. Barbara continues with her analysis for about a total of 12 minutes.
Introduction and Overview

Next to speak was Brenna Bell, a lawyer working with the Miami Activist Legal Defense, the group that did much of the legal organizing for the Convergence, as well as defending those who were arrested and also will be pursuing a multitude of civil suits resulting from police use of excessive force before and during the protest. She speaks from personal experience, as she herself was attacked and arrested.
“The main thing that people are coming away from Miami with is a sense of complete and utter repression………..the people who got arrested weren’t just some Black Block kids who tried to take down the fence…….people were getting arrested everywhere. If you were in Miami and you were downtown, you were a target. The way that the police chief John Timoney, who was also responsibile for the amazing respression at the Republican National Convention in 2000, the way that he described it was that “they were hawks picking mice off of fields.’ And that’s what it felt like.”
Brenna continues her presentation for a total of 10 minutes, about police violence and disregard for civil rights and civil liberties.
Brenna Bell

Following Brenna is Chris Ferlazo with the Portland Cross Border Labor Organizing Committee. Before Kate introduced Chris, she commented on how she “was clearly marked as a church lady,”, as were other Unitarians, some of the younger who were shot with rubber bullets and one arrested. Following this Chris spoke to some of the coalition building in Miami. He attests to the fact that Miami witnessed some amazing advances in this area.
“In Miami we saw some of the most sophisticated efforts ever to divide us in our coalition work.” Efforts were made to paint a picture of good protestors and bad proestors, seeking to divide loyalties and create dissention.
Chris then read some quotes from after the protests. One was from Tony Fonsetta, president of the Florida Alliance for Retired Americans, which is mostly retired union activists. Tony complains that, “thirteen of the buses he helped organize were turned away and many of the others were diverted, forcing senior citizens to walk up to two miles to attend the permanant rally…..and only 5 out of 25 buses were actually able to get in to pick people up at the end of the day.”
Chris continues for a total of about 13 minutes.
Chris Ferlazo

Next, two speakers talked about the Direct Action hat took place during the Convergence. First was Will Levin, who was in Miami for 17 days, before and after the main day of action. “To me Direct Action is much more than just storming barricades, although that is an important part of it….direct action to me means coming in to a town and not just breezing in, doing our thing and then leaving, but working on outreach. In Miami, for example, there was a trememdous campaign by the police, a propaganca fear campaign, that was very effective.” Storeowners in the business corridor were showed video footage of Seattle and told the protestors were going to break windows and burn their shops down. People were afraid. “And many of us spent a great deal of time literally going from door to door with a flyer in both Spanish and English….Great pains were taken to reassure the community of the intentions of the protest and encourage the business owners to remain open…..People were overwelmingly supportive, I would say, of us being there.”
Will continues for a total of about 5 1/2 minutes, giving many other examples of ways in which the visiting protestors reached out to support and reassure the local communities.
Will Levin

Following Will talking about the many facets of Direct Action, Djen Whitney spoke for three minutes or so about where, in her opinion, the movement needs to think about going from here.
“I really believe that the idea of Direct Action, the idea of taking what we want, demanding it, rather than asking and petitioning for it, is crucial and incredibley empowering.” She quotes an IWW slogan that “Direct Action gets the goods,” and feels that perhaps we’ve lost sight of what those goods are. She says that Direct Action is a philosophy and not merely a tactic.
“I feel that our actions are becoming more spectacular and more symbolic and less goal oriented, and I really want to win this battle, this struggle, and I don’t think that’s possible if we don’t start thinking and asking more questions.”
Djen Whitney

Next came two speakers from the independent media. First was m2 of Portland Independent Media Center, who began his remarks by giving a brief synopsis of what Indymedia is as a global network, and then some personal experiences in Miami about the repression of free speech and freedom of the press.
“This was a well orchestrated, extremely coordinated media blockout and corporate media controled.” He says that this was the most oppresive police state environment he’d ever witnessed. Police deliberately discrimated against the independent media, singling them out for abuse and arrest, especially, it seems, members of the Indymedia collectives. “They make a clear distinction between the media that is controlled and controlable-we call it the corporate whore press,….and the media that is free and open and trying to get the word out about what’s going on to the people.”
m2

Next Bette Lee, independent photographer and journalist, read a prepared statement. “….There’s nothing new about the Miami model police state tactics that the police haven’t used before against us. But it’s already being sold with a hefty price tag to other cities….ask any African American in Miami or any American city and they will tell you that their civil rights are violated daily by the cops…..what happened in Miami was that the illusion was shattered, and we saw the guns and the fist pointed at our head, openly.”
“The police are the instrument of class power, and they have been used as a very effective means of social control throughout history. Whenever the interests of the ruling elite are threatened, we can be sure that the police will be used to repress us, and to hell with our constitutional rights. History is full of accounts of attacks by police and armed forces against workers, the poor, people of color, immigrants and protestors.”
Bette Lee’s commentary was a penetrating analysis of state repression, not just here or there, but everywhere. Among other activities, Bette writes for the local The Portland Alliance
Bette Lee

Following an eleven minute slide show and two minute video collage of the Convergence, three people spoke briefly on some strateges on where to go from here.
Lynn-Marie Crider, of
Oregon AFL-CIO, spoke almost four minutes. SAhe began by saying how encouraging it is that the developing nations are working so successfully to overcome the dominance of the developed nations. “But, we can’t rely on the developing world to do our fight for us.First of all, it’s not fair.” She goes on to say that these developing countries, China, Brazil, etc. are goig to be coming under tremendous pressure, externally from the E.U. and the U.S., but also internally, “because in each of these countries there is going to be some sectors that are going to want particular things, like the various agricultural interests in Brazil…..It seems to me that we have to figure out how we are going to carry on the fight here”
Lynn-Marie Crider

Second to speak was Brush, who first offered what he and many others learned from both the Cancun and Miami Convergence. “This is a struggle about the future of the planet and about our future as human beings and our relationship with the world. Irt’s a struggle about an empire that has to collapse, and is in many ways already collapsing. But if something’s really going to happen, it’s because we, as a multitude of people and of movements have come together to create something different.”
A brief, under 3 minutes, but clear, poignant analysis of what those living in the developed nations must do to establish a world Democracy.
Brush

Last to speak was Djen Whitney, who also addressed this subject in her earlier remarks. She says that she had helped organize for 7 months before the Seattle protests, and that since then many have told her that this success “could never happen again because we’ve lost the element of surprise, as if that’s the only thing we had going for us in Seattle…..we organized, we were in the universities, the community colleges, the high schools the workplaces, the neighborhoods….the other thing we were doing was innovating. To innovate you need to think, you need to ask questions.”
Djen Whitney

Many have been saying that Another World is Possible, and organizing around this theme. To be sure, there is a better way than the many being ruled by the few, whether these few be priests, kings and aristocrats, or generals, as the case has been throughout history. Today we have a corporate aristocracy slowing emerging upon the world scene seeking to reduce the everyday life of all people to consumerism-to appetites deliberately enflamed and impossible to satisfy. In grasping to increase the bottom line of profit, no notice is taken of our relationship to Nature, to each other, or even to ourselves.
Yet, another World is Emerging, chronicaled by events in Seattle, Chiapas, Quebec, Genoa, Bolivia, Cancun, Miami, and countless other places where the people have stood up in the face of violent oppression and demanded that their voice be heard, their existance acknowledged and their rights as human beings protected. People have spoke up for the Earth, for the workers, for local sovereignty, for the spiritual values of brotherhood and equality which are at the heart of all Spiritual Paths and of Democracy itself.
Indeed, Another World is Emerging, right alongside the world of Free Trade, corrupt capitalism, and the drive to dominate and enslave. But no, rather, this Will to Democracy is rising up through the corruption and ignorance, demanding that the human reality is much deeper than how we feed, shelter and cloth ourselves. The human reality is respect for one another, reverence for life and for the Earth, and recognition of inherent spiritual values that superceed values founded in nationalities and trade.
This tradition is deep amongst traditional indigenous people. They have much to teach, and we of the developed nations have at least as much to learn as we have to teach. Miktakwe Oasyn, all my relations, from the Lakota Sioux; Namaste, we are one, from Nepal. Boh attest to a truth and a perception lacking in priests, aristocrats and generals as they seek to work their personal will upon the People.
As this value arises through the greed, the racism, the mace and percusson grenades and tear gas, it will slowly warm the cold heart of those who consider always first their own comfort and habitually disregard the basic dignity of others. Another World is Emerging.
Another World is Emerging.

(New Content posted 11/18/03)
AUDIO FILE: SYMPOSIUM ON THE FREE TRADE AREA OF THE AMERICAS
On November 17, 2003, in solidarity with those in Miami and around the world protesting the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the Lewis and Clark Organization for Peace and Politics and the Campus Greens held a Symposium on the harmful effects of free trade.
Two speakers, Martin Hart-Landsberg, professor of economics at Lewis and Clark, and Barbara Dudley, professor of Political Science at Portland State University gave presentations on the FTAA and then took questions.
Martin said that he was going to give the context within which the whole series of treaties, from NAFTA to the Multilateral Agreement on Investments to the FTAA, operate, and Barbara was to speak more specifically about the Free Trade Area of the Americas.
Martin began by referring to the FTAA meeting in Miami as an important event in a long series of struggles against what these treaties represent. He quotes from the New York Times an article that came out after the collapse of the September 2003 WTO talks in Cancun. “The WTO was represented as a wonderful opportunity for the third world. What a sad thing that the WTO in Cancun didn’t produce anything.” Quoting the New York Times: “World trade meetings intended to help developing nations unexpectedly collapsed today, when delegates from Africa, the Carribean and Asia walked out……the Director General of the WTO said,’we must return to the task at hand with renewed vigor, to complete this round of trade negotiations. If we fail the losers will be the poor and weaker nations.’”
The Times articles continues, quoting statistics from free trade proponents, that if the Cancun round would have been successful, “global incomes would have increased by at least $520,000,000,000by the year 2015, and 144,000,000 people would have been lifted out of poverty. Martin continues, “the point is that these things are presented as, first trade agreements, and second, clearly being done by the developed capitalist world for the benefit of the Third World.”
These are not trade agreements. They are “more about restructuring economies and limiting national development.” Martin further states that “most of these studies which are designed to talk about how much free trade will help everyone are really quite bogus.” These studies have built in assumptions: “they assume that there will be full employment…that there is no capital mobility……and trade will remain balanced…. When you read things in the newspapers you got to start by realizing that these are ideological structures of what is actually going on.”
Martin speaks for about 18 minutes, a compact, scathing and detailed analysis of the weaknesses and harmful effects of free trade.
Martin Hart-Landsberg
Barbara Dudley, who teaches politics at PSU, first speaks about the founding of the United Nations and the ending of colonialism at the end of World War 11 with the emergence of a number of independent countries, either through revolution or through some sort of negotiation with their former colonial masters. “The U.N. was a whole different world of creation that was happening simultaneous with the so called Breton-Woods institutions, which are the GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which then morphed into the W.T.O and the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.”
Due to the pressure exerted due to the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union, “all these emerging states were having to choose sides in a war that had nothing to do with them, and to choose an economic system that had nothing to do with them . …Either the hyper capitalistic system of the U.S. after World War 11, or Soviet style socialism.”Yet, in the 1970’s some of these developing nations, the so called non aligned nations, began to find some space in between the two super powers to develop alternative economic and political agendas for their own countries.
The end of the cold war drastic altered this dynamic. “As the Soviet Union began to lose its power over it’s own colonies as it were, over it’s own block….all the other countries of the world that were neither Europe, Japan or the U.S. found themselves facing the military and economic power of the U.S. without any buffer…..It was at that time that the U.S. proposed it’s agenda in the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade.” In this they basically declared capitalism the winner of the cold war conflict and began to dictate to other countries how they were to fit into this capitalist system that now becoming global.”
Barbara then moves to the present time, to Cancun Mexico, to the collapse of the WTO negotiations there in September, “when the developing nations essentially walked out of the trade talks for the World Trade Organization and brought at least that institution to a screeching halt. [this] was the emergence of something like the emergence of a new non aligned movement.” She then cites a New York Times article from just before we invaded Iraq which declared global civil society to be a new world super power on the world scene. “And what I see happening in reality is that there is room now for a new non aligned movement to emerge between these two super powers. And it is global civil society that is providing the buffer and providing the impetus and forcing their governments, ours included, but all the other governments of the world, to do something which may not be in the interests of their business elites, but instead in the interests of their voting citizens.”
There are now 191 countries in the world; 148 of them are now members of the W.T.O. The governments of many of these countries are some sort of Democracy. The ministers attending these Ministerial have to reckon with the wishes of their citizens or their decisions could lead to the down fall of their government.
The presentation continues, addressing the current Free Trade of the Americas meeting in Miami. About 32 minutes in length.
Barbara Dudley
Some websites:
Focus on the Global South
FTAA IMC
Stop FTAA

Posted 09/13/03
AUDIO FEATURE: THE WTO: CAN GLOBAL TRADE BE FREE AND FAIR?
This is the third in an ongoing series of Community Action Forums presented in Portland exploring peace and justice. This event took place at the First Unitarian Church on Friday, September 12, 2003, and features two speakers who support global free trade and the WTO and two in opposition.
Moderated by Allison Frost, producer and host of OPB radio’s regional new show, “Oregon Considered.” Allison opens with a fwe remarks and then introduces the panel
Allison Frost
First in support, Scott Goddin, Director of the Portland U.S. Export Assistance Center, which is an office of the U.S. Department of Commerce, helping small and medium sized companies get into export markets. He speaks to what the WTO is about, in terms of what U.S. negotiating objectives are, and the context in which U.S. trade policy is formulated.
Scott begins by going into a narrative defining historically where the World Trade Organization came from, defining the three institutions responsible for globalization,the WTO, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. “After WW ll, there was supposed to be a three pillared multi lateral system: one was the United Nations; one was International Monetary Fund/World Bank; and the third was..the..was supposed to be something which they hoped would become the U.N. of trade. What that turned into was the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which really up until 1990, and the formation of the WTO, was a fairly weak institution.”
Not the easiest listening in the world, but a good sketch of the goals of the WTO and strategy of globalization.
Scott Goddin
Next, in opposition, is Martin Hart-Landsberg, who also gives a brief overview and speaks to what is wrong with the WTO. Martin is Professor of Economics and Director of the Political Economy Program at Lewis and Clark College.
Martin Hart-Landsberg
Next, in support of the WTO, is Jonathan F. Schlueter, executive Vice President of Paific Northwest Grain and Feed Association, an association which represents over 210 companies that comprise a $$ billion industry accounting for 23% of U.S. grain exports
Jonathan F. Schlueter
And finally, speaking in opposition, is Brent Foster, a public interest environmental attorney working in Portland Oregon. He currently serves as the Conservation Chair for the Oregon Chapter of the Sierra Club.
Brent Foster
Each presentation is roughly 15 minutes in length.
Websites on this issue:
Local to Global
Focus on the Global South
Portland Alliance for Democracy

Posted 07/20/03
AUDIO FEATURE: TOWN HALL MEETING ON FREE TRADE.
On Saturday, July 19, 2003, citizens of Oregon and Washington gathered at the First Unitarian Church in downtown Portland to discuss and decide what kind of trade policy will work best for the Northwest.
The event was sponsored by at least 100 groups, many of which are actively opposing globalization as members of Local to Global
This was a well organized and attended event, lasting from 1:00-4:00, with a one hour break out session afterwards, featuring 5 workshops on various related subjects, from preparing for the next WTO protest to the “connection between globalized trade and what is at our dinner table,” given by Mark Des Marets of Northwest Resistance Against Genetic Engineering
This report contains two audio files. The first is Barbara Dudley, speaking on “how trade became something everybody needs to pay attention to.” An excellent synopsis of both the history and long range goals of Globalization strategy.
Dudley, a Constitutional scholar, states that if you read the Constitution carefully, it is essentially all about creating a Free Trade Zone; “that and a few freedoms, but they come in the amendments, you might notice.” She further says that “the essense of a real free trade zone is that you have a level playing field, which means you have to allow for workers to organize; you even have to subsidize infrastructure and education.”
When the cold war ended a whole counter weight to the Globalization agenda was removed from the world scene. “There was no longer a challenge to multi national capital….and the developing world which heretofore had thought of itself as a third force, as a non aligned force, as playing a very careful balancing act between the Soviet block and the U.S….found themselves unable to pursue a third way because there was no counter weight to this superpower.”
According to Dudley, the anti trust laws of the end of the last century were a response to the growing power of corporations,which had grown so strong that states could no longer control them. Now nations states “are really not strong enough……to control multi national corporations, because they can move quickly, they can move money around quickly.” She concludes her 30 minute talk by mentioning the Yardstick for Assessing Trade Agreements, which is a statement of important principles which should guide trade and investment policy. Basically, in it’s nine points, it seeks to put people before profits, values human beings and cultures above trade, economics and profits.
Barbara Dudley

The second audio file is Lynn-Marie Crider, of the Oregon AFL-CIO, who enumerates the 9 points of The Yardstick Project, and breifly explains them. The first states that Trade Agreements should protect public interest laws from attack by private companies and other governments. The second, that Countries should have the right to ban products or practices that may present a risk to the public. The sixth, Trade Agreements should not pit workers against each other or drive down labor and environmental standards. All pretty much common sense, right? Yet current trade agreements violate all three of these values, and any country who has signed on to these trade agreements, and then seeks to protect their citizens by labor and environmental laws, find themselves sued by corporations and trade sanctions imposed upon them. An ugly story, and one which, with new trade agreements up for approval over the next few years, could get much worse.
Lynn-Marie Crider

The remainder of the Town Hall Meeting consisted of 3 minute statements by representatives of various organizations and elected officials. Due to its length, about 80 minutes, I have broken it up into two parts of about 40 minutes each. This sounds long, but each presentation is short, no more than 4 minutes, and they give a broad perspective of the many objections people have to Free Trade. The files move quickly, full of information and examples of NAFTA, GATT, and their many components, past present and future.
Part One,is about 40 minutes and freatures the following speakers and organizations:
Dick Schwartz, American Federation of Teachers.
Michael Arkin, Oregon Alliance of Retired Americans.
David Delk, Portland Alliance for Democracy.
Brad Witt, AFL-CIO.
Nancy Stevens, Common Cause.
Kevin, Card, Letter Carrier.
David Strader, International Longshoreman and Warehouse Union, Local 40.
Don Merrick, Earth Save.
Will Newman, Oregon Sustainable Land Trust.
Nancy Newall, Eastside Democratic Club
Ray Lewis, First Unitarian Church; and Environmental Justice Action Group.
Steve Kofohl, American Federation of Government Employees
Testimonials, Part 1

Part two is also about 40 minutes in length.
Jeff Crop of Portland Green Party
Walt Brown Of Socialist Party of Oregon
Kate Brown, Oregon State Representative
Jeff Merkley, Oregon State Representative
Serena Cruz, County Commissioner, District #2
Judy O’Connor North West Labor Council
Catherine Tommassin, Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility
Chris Lang, Jubilee USA
Jason Reynolds, Oregon Consumer League
Abby Solomon, Service Employees International Union
Liisa Wale, Northwest Resistance Against Genetic Engineering
Chris Ferlazo, Oregon Jobs with Justice
Madelyn Elder, Communication Wrkers of America
Testimonials, Part 2