Behind closed doors, the Obama administration and the governments of 10 other countries are negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive expansion of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. Leaked texts have revealed that the TPP will contain rules that give foreign investors in fracking projects the power to sue the US in international tribunals for unlimited sums if our government decides to ban hydrofracking. In addition, the TPP will eliminate the public interest review process for liquid natural gas (LNG) terminals designed to export fracked gas to TPP member nations.
Join us this Friday for the first of a series of educational forums to learn more about the Trans-Pacific Partnership and what we can do to stop it! This Friday’s event will feature a panel of speakers who will share about how the TPP threatens public interest laws, how NAFTA-style free trade agreements have already helped extractive industries violate human rights and pollute the environment in Latin America, and how the fracking industry may use TPP to eliminate public review and undermine anti-fracking legislation.
Speakers
- Alisa Simmons, Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch
- Ilana Solomon, Trade Representative,The Sierra Club
- Manuel Perez-Rocha, Associate Fellow, Global Economy, Institute for Policy Studies
- Bill Weinberg, World War 4 Report, Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade
- Sponsored by OWS Environmental Solidarity, OWS Trade Justice, Health Global Access Project, Trade Justice New York, New York Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, Witness For Peace, Sierra Club, and the Green Sanctuary Committee, CCNY, UU.
Suggested Donation
$5-15 for each event; FREE if you can't afford to pay.
Further Information
- RSVP: http://gjae.org/tppforums (we'll send directions & updates)
- Phone: (718) 218-4523
- Email: [email protected]
About the Presenters
Alisa A. Simmons is the National Field Director for Global Trade Watch. She has worked on a range of social and economic justice issues, including global trade, worker’s rights, student’s rights, LGBT civil rights and voter’s rights. Alisa helped organize anti-WTO meetings in Seattle in 1999 and joined an international group of activists to protest the World Trade Organization meetings in Prague in 2000.
Ilana Solomon, Trade Representative: Ilana Solomon joined the Sierra Club’s Labor and Trade program in March 2012. Before coming to the Club, Ilana was a Senior Policy Analyst with ActionAid, a rights-based anti-poverty organization. Ilana started her work at ActionAid in 2004, working on a diverse range of issues including women’s rights and the right to human security in times of emergency.
Manuel Pérez-Rocha helps to coordinate the Networking for Justice on Global Investment project, as part of the IPS Global Economy Project. Prior to that, he directed “The NAFTA Plus and the SPP Advocacy Project,” as part of the Global Economy Project. He is a Mexican national who has led tri-national efforts to promote just and sustainable alternative approaches to North American economic integration for more than a decade. Prior to moving to Washington, DC in 2006, he worked for many years with the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade (RMALC) and continues to be a member of that coalition’s executive committee.
Bill Weinberg is an award-winning 25-year veteran journalist in the fields of human rights, indigenous peoples, ecology and war. He is the author of Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico (Verso Books, 2000), and War on the Land: Ecology and Politics in Central America (Zed Books, 1991).