The problem with these trade deals is that they are being thrown at us one at a time and every time the corporations are successful we get weaker and our base to resist gets smaller. This China deal will mean huge outflows of capital and technology that will be used to pump up the Chinese manufacturing sectors by corporations.
Last night I noticed that congress passed a bill to limit/abolish the granting of low power 1000 watt fm radio station licenses. The sponsor of this bill was Mike Oxley a corporate Republican and pro-pntr advocate who represents the area around Mansfield, Ohio. Mansfield is also the location of the brutal AK Steel Corp lockout. In that dispute Oxley has sided with the AK Steel Corp.
One question I'm asking these corporate politicians goes like this, "would you like to see your children or grand children working in a Chinese or Mexican sweat shop?" This is a question I have been asking here in Ohio. What I'd like to do is print flyers with the various pro-pntr congressmens pictures on them, and in bold lettering ask people to call them and ask that question of them. Take for example the always un-decided Paul Gillmor. The flyer could be captioned, Call Paul and ask him, if he would like to see his children or grand children working in a Chinese or Mexican sweat shop? Then I would distribute these flyers in the neighborhoods around the congressman's district office--in every building, office, home etc. this would make for some great feedback to the congressman.
Tom
Lisa & Ian Murray wrote:
> Tom you wrote:
>
> Ian--I doubt if you or even Max realizes how seriously pissed off
> the average
> Steelworker and other manufacturing workers are at this time.
> George Becker
> represents hundreds of thousands of really unhappy campers. I
> very seldom do
> any pissing or moaning on this list---let me tell you we have got
> plenty to piss
> and moan about. Out there in your state, the Kaiser Aluminum
> debacle is just a
> little taste of what's going on across the nation. Even in
> places that never
> have problems there are serious rumblings about working conditions and the
> future of the workplace. These trade deals are killing us and
> personally, I
> don't care if we have to go below the belt to stop them.
>
> We can have all the most wonderful alturistic motives in the
> world; that's not
> what counts when your dealing with corporate politicians. The
> only thing that
> counts is what kind of heart attack you can give them.
>
> Tom
>
> =========
>
> Tom,
>
> I had the good fortune to meet John Goodman and other Steelworkers at
> pre-WTO conference in Olympia during the month of October. I listened as
> John and Don Kegley [one of the founders of the Alliance for Sustainable
> Jobs and the Environment] recounted both the horrors of the lock outs in
> Tacoma and Spokane and their eco-religious experiences while deep in the
> Headwaters Forest.
>
> I marched with them shortly after dawn N30 from Victor Steinbruck park in
> Seattle. They embody the most promising aspects of a potentially enormously
> fruitful blue-green alliance that needs greater solidarity over the long
> haul. The issue of China weighed heavily on their minds, yet they knew in
> their bones and stated in no uncertain terms that the biggest long term
> problem for workers and greens everywhere was the US gov/corp complex, the
> BWI's and the authoritarian ethos that pervades capitalism.
>
> Clearly, labor and greens need to do one hell of a lot of work on forging
> substantive analytical links between industrial organization, sustainability
> and workplace democracy, not just in the US, but everywhere workers and
> communities hunger for an alternative. Enlisting local enviro. chapters to
> help with fighting corporate crime [lockouts, dumping of pollutants etc.] is
> a great step in the right direction. Removing the institutional barriers to
> these tasks are gonna take a long time, but following the KISS principle
> seems to imply that attacking and dismantling those multilateral
> institutions will demonstrate to workers/citizens in other countries that US
> workers are inward gazing no longer. This in turn seems to imply that
> getting sidetracked on attacking individual countries is counterproductive;
> after China, should we go after Turkey, Mexico, Colombia? Where does it
> stop?
>
> Yoshie is right; we have to start here at home and continue sending, by any
> and all means necessary, two simple messages until those who fear democracy
> yell uncle or medic!
>
> An injury to one is an injury to all -and- workers of the world unite, we
> have nothing to lose but a planet.
>
> Ian