USA Friends, Stop the Pending FTAs: Sample message, call-in details
Image | Facebook, Adam Weismann
Please click on and sign Stop the Pending FTAs
Congress is poised to vote on three NAFTA-style trade deals — the Korea, Panama and Colombia Free Trade Agreements. It’s not too late to stop these harmful pacts, but your elected officials need to hear from you soon.
Message Text
The pending Free Trade Agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama represent a continuation of a failed trade model that is harmful to working people in the United States and abroad.
These NAFTA-style pacts threaten to destroy jobs at a time when our country can least afford it. They also include excessive foreign investor privileges; outrageous restrictions on financial service regulations; unnecessary limits on procurement policies that keep tax dollars circulating in local economies; and agricultural provisions that will force farmers off their land, worsening the ongoing human rights catastrophe in Colombia in particular.
Please stand up for your constituents against the offshorers, tax evaders and human rights violators by opposing each of these three trade deals. I look forward to hearing your final position on each of them.
Call-in Day vs. the Panama, Colombia, and S. Korea Free Trade Agreements
From Facebook
October 4: Call in Day To Stop the Panama, Colombia, and South Korea Free Trade Agreements!
On Tuesday, Oct. 4, join the national call-in day to tell your U.S. Representative, Senators, and President Obama to STOP unfair NAFTA-Style free trade deals with Panama, Colombia, and South Korea! Turn up the pressure and make sure Congress knows you won’t stand for more anti-environment, anti-worker, anti-consumer NAFTA clones! With more than 25 million Americans desperately searching for full-time jobs, the last thing our leaders should focus on is trade deals that are unlikely to create jobs or help working families. The Obama administration can submit the trade agreements to Congress to be voted on at any moment. You can help stop Congress from ratifying these agreements by taking action!
TELL CONGRESS: STOP THESE TRADE DEALS! CREATE JOBS FOR THE UNITED STATES!
EMAIL your members of Congress the message that if they don’t stop the job-killing Korea trade deal, we’ll hold them responsible for the next unfair trade deals as well. Use this easy to use, pre-written letter: http://tradejustice.net/sendletters. Let us know if you get a reply by calling Adam at (718) 218-4523 or emailing adam@tradejustice.net
CALL your Congressional Reps! Find your Representative and Senators’ names and contact info by entering your address at http://contactingthecongress.org/. Call your Rep, both of your Senators, and the White House (if you only have time for one, your Representative is the top priority). Urge them to speak out against these trade agreements publicly, to encourage President Obama to not send them to Congress to be voted on, and to pledge to vote against them if the President does send them to be voted on. Tell your representatives in Congress to get to work for working families — don’t reward job exporters, governments that fail to protect workers, and tax dodgers. Cite some of the facts listed below. Let us know what they tell you when you call or if you get a reply in writing by calling Adam at (718) 218-4523 or emailing adam@tradejustice.net
Also call the White House Comment Line at (202) 456-1111 and urge President Obama not to send these job killing trade agreements to Congress to be voted on. If he doesn’t send them, Congress can’t vote on them and they can’t be ratified!
When you call mention some of these points:
The Korea FTA is the biggest trade deal since NAFTA. It would displace an estimated 159,000 net U.S. jobs, mostly in manufacturing.
How can we reward Colombia, the most dangerous place in the world for trade unionists, with a free trade agreement? In 2010, 51 trade unionists were assassinated in Colombia — more than in the rest of the world combined. So far in 2011, another 22 have been killed, despite Colombia’s heralded “Labor Action Plan.”
Panama, with a history of failing to protect the environment and the rights of workers and indigenous peoples, is known as a tax haven for money launderers and tax dodgers.
Other ways you can help:
LEARN more about the Korea, Panama, and South Korea Free Trade Agreements. Visit http://tradejustice.net/ftas.
VOLUNTEER your time to help deliver thousands of signed cards to Congress! Over the last three years, activists have collected thousands of signed cards to Congress from New Yorkers opposed to these trade agreements — now we need to sort, copy, data-enter, and deliver these to Senators and Congressmembers. We also need the call the people who signed postcards to encourage them to call their Congressmembers. If you’d like to help, call Adam (718) 218-4523 or email adam@tradejustice.net.
DONATE funds to help cover the costs of copying and delivering these cards. Donate online at http://tradejustice.net/cardfund or call Adam to find out how you can donate by mail.
DISTRIBUTE fliers and get petitions signed at farmers markets, rallies, lectures by progressive speakers, activist conferences, film screenings, concerts, and other events. Contact Adam to be supplied with fliers and clipboards or copy any of the fliers or download and print fliers from here: http://tradejustice.net/publications
SUBMIT a letter to the editor of local newspapers using this convenient letter-generating tool: http://tradejustice.net/editor.
STAY CONNECTED by joining the TradeJustice emails lists (http://tradejustice.net/elists) and joining our Facebook group (http://tradejustice.net/facebook)!
LOBBY your Representative in Congress against the trade agreements. Call Cesar Torras at elchimango1@yahoo.com or by phone at (347) 951-0501 if you live in Brooklyn and would like to attend a meeting with your Congressmember. Brooklyn for Peace and TradeJustice NY Metro are working to arrange meetings with Representatives Nadler, Velázquez, Turner, and Grimm. If you live outside of Brooklyn and would like to meet with your Congressmember, call Adam at (718) 218-4523 or email adam@tradejustice.net.
Our Compass 