15 Apr 1998 22:04:42 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 22:06:36 -0400
From: David Snyder <dsnyder@goucher.edu>
Subject: Citizen's Gathering in D.C. Protest MAI and Corporate Power
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Dear Friends;
4-15-98
The Price of Liberty is Eternal Vigilance, and the recent discovery of
negotiations for the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) has come
like Paul Revere's horse and awakened people all over the world to the
growing power of corporations and global institutions like the World Trade
Organization (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.
JOIN US FOR A RALLY TO PROTEST THE MAI
THURSDAY, APRIL 23rd @ NOON
Senate Side Lawn of Capitol, Across from Supreme Court
The MAI is, as the head of the WTO put it, the constitution of a single
global economy-but one in which multinational corporations have the right to
exploit all the world's resources, and governments are greatly hindered from
regulating that activity. In fact, under the MAI, if a corporation feels
that a government has taken its profits away, even indirectly (through an
environmental law, for example), that corporation can sue the government in
the International Chamber of Commerce!
The increasing centralization of power in the hands of unaccountable
corporations portends the demise of the hopes of many for viable democracy
and social justice-the MAI was initiated by the US Council of International
Business (USCIB)
in May 1995, and many of our Senators still don't know what the MAI is!
When corporations reign unhindered, dictatorships flourish (just ask the
people of Burma, or Nigeria) peasants are kicked off their lands (ask the
people of Mexico or Brazil), the environment is plundered (every year,
forested areas four times the size of Switzerland are cleared), and workers
are exploited (ask the workers of Decatur, Illinois, or those who work at
the Maquiladoras, for starters). In the world of MAI-style free trade,
speculative investors are subsidized by our taxes and trillions of spectral
dollars cause economic meltdowns like those seen in Mexico, Thailand, South
Korea and Malaysia (the MAI would prevent countries from slowing down or
regulating those investments, as Chile currently does.)
The struggle between human beings and corporations reaches back to the 18th
century, when Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" condemned corporations as
destructive of the conditions necessary for free trade-for Smith, free trade
required that businesses be locally owned and rooted in the community.
That struggle is being waged all over the world today, and in the case of
the MAI, it has succeeded in at least delaying
the negotiations at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) in Paris. But already, the principles of the MAI-an
absolutely deregulated global economy-have appeared in other pieces of
legislation, like the Crane Bill for Africa and the Articles of Agreement of
the IMF. There is also talk of moving the MAI negotiations to the World
Trade Organization. Now that global citizens everywhere are waking up to
the reality of corporate power, we cannot rest with the postponement of a
single treaty! It is already being pushed through by other means, as we
speak.
By coming together next Thursday at the capital, and by raising awareness of
the perils of corporate rule, we are opening a space in the political realm
for people (like us!) to put forth alternatives. If we do not show our
legislators that we condemn the MAI and the faulty vision which animates it
(and NAFTA, and the GATT, etc.), that fragile space, which even now begins
to show itself in our public sphere, will be shut by the power of the
corporate lobby and mass media. That is the power of grassroots activism.
And that is the responsibility we bear as citizens and stewards of the
Earth. Indeed, it is the price of liberty.
-David Snyder
Sponsoring Organizations include: Public Citizen, Sierra Club, Friends of
the Earth, The Citizen's Trade Campaign, Center for International
Environmental Law, Progressive Challenge and the Global Economy Project of
IPS, Women's Division of the United Methodist Church and the Alliance For
Democracy.
For More Information About the "MAI International April Week of Action"
Contact Chantell Taylor at Public Citizen @ (202)546-4996 or
www.citizen.org/gtw
In Baltimore, e-mail David Snyder at dsnyder@goucher.edu - we may be able to
provide transportation