Slide 2

The culprits in the eyes of the protesters

the World Trade Organization

(WTO) is contemptuous in the eyes of many anti-globalization groups. For these groups, the WTO relentlessly pursues the expansion of free trade as an end in itself, with little consideration given to its possible ramifications on society. The WTO has established a legal system that

enshrines free trade above “the interests of local communities, working families, and the environment.” Therefore many protesters would argue that the WTO systematically undermines democracy around the world. General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) opens up vital

infrastructure services, such as electricity and water, to the threat of competition.

FTAA

  Free Trade Area of the Americas

The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is the expansion of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to every country in Central America, South America and the Caribbean, except Cuba. Negotiations began right after the completion of NAFTA in 1994 and are to be completed by 2005.

Slide 3

Why target WTO

The claim is made that wealthy Western nations are able to dominate the WTO because beneath its democratic façade, decisions are actually taken by "consensus" in non-transparent backroom sessions. Global Exchange reports that only 20-30 key countries generally attended meetings of the WTO in Seattle in 1999.

Slide 4 and slide 5

How the FTAA could affect Health Care

if completed this would give global corporations the power to:

• Weaken health care quality standards.
• Increase the number of patients a nurse has to care for.
• Undercut health and safety laws in hospitals and health care facilities.
• Further privatize health care and make it harder to create an efficient, publicly coordinated health care system in the future.

Negotiated are held behind closed doors, with little citizen input but plenty of suggestions from corporations,

How could global trade agreements hurt health care?

• Foreign corporations and governments could challenge U.S. health care regulations as "more burdensome than necessary." For example, laws requiring reasonable staffing ratios, use of safe needles, and professional licensing could be challenged using new rules on "domestic regulation." Who decides what's "burdensome?" Three corporate trade experts deliberating in private and backed up with a powerful enforcement system. Workers and patients would have no right to watch the proceedings or present their perspective. In almost every case decided under the WTO (World Trade Organization) and NAFTA trade tribunal system to date, corporate interests have won and the public interest has lost.
• Rules on the temporary entry of workers could allow transnational corporations to bring immigrant workers into a country just to work in a particular hospital. Workers would have to leave the country if they were fired, so they would have no bargaining power to insist on decent treatment and fair wages. These rules would cut down wages, safety, and unions in the whole health care industry. WTO staff have stated that one of the aims of these rules is to lower labor costs.
• The "national treatment" rule in the proposed agreements could further privatize health care. Governments would have to treat private health care corporations from abroad just as favorably as public service providers based in the U.S. This could give foreign corporations an "equal right" to money that we now use to fund public services in the U.S. That would make it harder to save public hospitals and clinics, or create an efficient, publicly coordinated health care system in the future.

Slide 6

How the FTAA could affect agriculture

How could global trade agreements speed the day when
agribusiness and seed monopolies control our food supply?

The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), based on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), would impose throughout the hemisphere a legal framework that favors multinational corporations as they search for cheaper labor, less environmental restrictions, greater 'intellectual property rights' and monopolized markets.

• Clauses regarding intellectual property rules and patenting would allow a handful of corporations to extend their market control further over agricultural seeds, trees and plant-based medicines. This would further drive small seed companies out of business, erode diversity and contaminate native seed varieties through cross-pollination by wind and insects. As has already happened in Canada and the U.S. under free trade accords like NAFTA, farmers across the hemisphere could find themselves in the position of having to 'rent' seeds belonging to a mega-corporation, unable by law to save their seed for the following year's planting.
• Privatization requirements could do away entirely with collective land ownership practices. Indigenous and subsistence farming cultures have typically survived by holding and working their lands in common. Privatization makes it possible to break up such communities and even entire indigenous cultures by allowing outside interests to buy out individual landowners one by one.
• National and regional laws banning toxic pesticides could be overridden under trade accords, as obstacles to trade. Similarly, laws banning the importation of foods with pesticide residues could be declared illegal.
• In the context of the ongoing consolidation of agro-chemical seed companies (five mega-corporations have now cornered world markets for commercial agricultural seeds and pesticides), an FTAA accord would allow these corporations to crush any attempt to limit the movement of their agricultural chemicals and seeds, regardless of concerns over their safety or monopoly control. Thus, the food security of the native peoples or farmers in the 34 nations negotiating the accord would be threatened. An FTAA tribunal, meeting in secret, would judge any disputes between corporations and governments. (Note: To date no NAFTA trade dispute has ever gone in favor of a government defending against a foreign corporation.) The idea of 'national sovereignty' would no longer have meaning.

Slide 7

Since 1970 multinational companies have bought or taken control of nearly a thousand, once independent, seed companies.

The purchase of Pioneer Hi-Bred in 1999, the world's largest seed company, for $7.7 billion by Du-Pont, is part of a trend of concentration of power in the life sciences industry. The $23 billion global seed trade is now dominated by a handful of giant corporations.

Patents

Multinational corporations have succeeded in gaining patent rights over new crop varieties. In 1970 the U.S. Plant Variety Protection Act was passed. Plant protection regimes offered opportunities for profit and created the incentive for corporate interests to buy control of the seed industry. Thousands of patents have been granted on plants. Indigenous plants that have been used for centuries have been patented

Top 10 Seed Companies (Ranked by sales in 2000)
2000 Seed Sales (US$, millions)
1. DuPont (Pioneer) -- USA $1,938
2. Pharmacia (Monsanto) -- USA $1,600
3. Syngenta -- Switzerland pro forma $958
4. Groupe Limagrain -- France $622
5. Grupo Pulsar (Seminis) -- Mexico $474
6. Advanta (AstraZeneca & Cosun) -- $373 U.K. and Netherlands
7. Dow (+Cargill North America) -- USA $350
8. KWS AG -- Germany $332
9. Delta & Pine Land -- USA $301
10. Aventis -- France $26

Slide 8

 Alternatives

Many groups, such as Our World Is Not For Sale and the International Forum on

Globalization, are calling for a total halt to further WTO expansion. Anti-free-trade

groups often believe that there are certain goods and services that should be

excluded from free trade agreements, such as health, education, and energy

distribution. In addition, these groups believe that trade-related intellectual

property rights (TRIPS) should be removed from the jurisdiction of the WTO.

Slide 9

Why protest the power of the international financial institutions?

Anti-globalization protesters believe that the governing institutions of the global economy have become too powerful, and are negatively impinging upon the ability of individual sovereign nation states to set their own policies. The

International Forum on Globalization contends that the power of nation states to determine their own futures has now been transferred to global and transnational institutions.

According to Global Exchange, the WTO is now the most powerful legislative and judicial body in the entire world. Unlike United Nations treaties, the rules and rulings of the WTO can be enforced through sanctions. Also, the World Bank and IMF have become the world's largest public lenders.

Why protest environmental destruction?

Many environmentalists believe that globalization is environmentally destructive.According to the International Forum on Globalization, globalization is leading to the accelerated invasion of the earth's remaining wilderness, thereby destroying bio-diversity.

Many protesters contend that globalization of trade allows for the spread of genetically modified foods before their full consequences have been

comprehensively investigated.

Why protest multinational corporations?

Globalization is being led and dominated by a small group of large multinational companies. The size of huge companies allows them to bargain down the wages and living standards of their employees around the world.

The culprits in the eyes of the protesters

Big name-brand multinational corporations, such as Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and McDonalds, are extremely unpopular with anti-globalization protesters. Consequently, whenever anti-globalization protests include more violent elements, branches of McDonalds and Starbucks are usually the first things to be destroyed.

Slide 10

World protest as art

Slide 11

Why Video Activism?
Video Activism deters police violence.
Video Activism helps to document what occurs at actions, for legal follow-up purposes.
Video Activism doesn't water-down, or alter the message of the people.
Video Activism allows the people themselves to shape public debate about our world of multiple crises, articulating what is truly relevant news about the world we share. The huge number of people who have their own video cameras at demonstrations today is testament to the democratization of electronic communications.
Video Activism is a big feature of the growing world of independent media. More and more concerned people, all over the world, are actually making their own media and by-passing the established, corporate-owned press with their own stories and their unique visions of a better world.