by Carol Brouillet
In San Francisco,California, February 23,
2001, hundreds of people gathered
to protest the "Free Trade Agreement of the Americas" and to march in
solidarity with the Zapatistas who will march down from Chiapas to Mexico City.
During our procession, we stopped at corporate criminals' buildings and spoke
out against U.S. militarisation, Citibank, the Gap, accompanied by the police
and Critical Mass. There were huge puppets, many banners and torches; people
helped one another, we sang,our brothers and sisters from Mexico told us of
the plight of the Zapatistas- the president will not allow the Red Cross to
accompany them and their lives have been threatened. The FTAA poses an
unprecedented threat to working people, the environment, students, teachers,
public health, immigrants, farmers, indigenous peoples and communities in
North, South and Central America, and the Caribbean. A delegation of fourteen
people representing the diversity and strength of our opposition to the FTAA
visited the office of Senator Feinstein to meet with her staff and a staff
member of Senator Boxer's office to demand that they publicly oppose the FTAA
and Fast Track Legislation. I was asked to represent women and this is what
I said to them:
Women have suffered the most under
"globalisation." The Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the U.S., the North American Free
Trade Agreement, and the General Agreement on Trades and Tariffs, are misleading terms, a more
accurate title for the treaty would be "Deadly Devouring Extraction Orders." All these rules allow
transnational corporations to force deadly policies that rapaciously exploit the environment, labor, and
in particular, women. The wealthiest in all countries, and the affluent within industrialized countries, get
to consume 80% of the world's resources, while the vast majority of humanity struggle to survive, and
die of hunger, disease, lack of the vital necessities of life- nourishing food, clean water, health care,
education.
The Rules of the corporations, by the
corporations and for the corporations are antithetical to life. By putting profit over people, they have
destroyed millions of lives, driven farmers from their land, obliterated 90% of the edible food species
in the last hundred years. The dumping of cheap foodstuffs makes it harder and harder for the small or
subsistent farmers to keep their land, and feed their families. If the man goes off to find a job; it is the
woman who does the farming, as well as child-rearing.
Over 90 million Latin and Caribbean
farmers live below the poverty line, over half in "extreme poverty." Women are the sole heads of
households in 8 to 10,000,000 households in that region. Two to three million also work as seasonal
wage-laborers, while 30 to 40 million farm, as well as work in small rural industries. This situation drives
down wages even more. Forcing peasants off their land into cities where people, especially women,
have been super-exploited in foreign owned factories. The conditions are so harsh that people's health
is often ruined after less then ten years, but the continual migration from rural areas to the cities allow
corporations to treat them worse than disposable objects, although physical and sexual abuse occurs
far too frequently.
With horrendously low wages,
mothers must sometimes face terrible choices between food,
water or medicine for their children. Water privatization quadrupled the price of water in Bolivia
and led to great social protests. Already women spend an estimated 40,000,000 hours every year hauling
water from distant and polluted sources. As water prices rise, women are forced to ration water, or
substitute unsanitary water for clean water. Unclean water is a leading cause of child mortality and
illness in developing countries. Women are the major primary healthcare providers for their families.
The International Finance Center
of the World Bank makes no pretenses about its purpose. They are not interested in alleviating
poverty; their sole purpose is to make money. They show corporations how to privatize water,
electricity, land profitably. The Cree said once- "Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only
after the last river has been poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then you will
find that money cannot be eaten."
Women want to feed their children.
If they cannot grow their own healthy food and must buy it, they do not want pesticide laden,
genetically modified, radiated, industrial food- food safety is a major concern to women. The FTAA
would further drive the small farmers off their land, along with their knowledge of local plants and seeds.
Access to clean water is essential for health, it is sacred, a human right- not something corporations
can pollute freely, so that they can commodify the scarce, uncontaminated sources that remain.
Social services such as education,
health, even the postal system are threatened by the FTAA, making it more likely to permit only the
affluent access and to restrict or terminate services to those who might need, but cannot afford them.
As governments are forced to lay off workers in the Health Care and Educational professions,
women are the first to be shed, and their earnings drop considerably as they scramble to find other work.
While corporations can sue for lost
profit opportunities caused by restrictive environmental, health or labor standards, women cannot
sue for the loss of life, health, the ecosystems upon which their lives depend. They cannot sue when their
original handicraft designs are patented by a big coporation and mass produced and sold elsewhere.
Africa is suffering death rates from
AIDS of up to 25-30% of its people, a catastrophe not totally unlike the Bubonic Plague which wiped
out a substantial part of Europe's population. This is criminal; this is preventable; this is genocidal; this
is corporate greed over human need. Brazil has challenged the rules of International Trade under
the national emergency/reality of AIDS. It has begun to produce generic drugs and treat all people with
AIDS for free. It has continually been pressured by the pharmaceutical companies to stop its program.
Other countries could follow Brazil's example and the pharmaceutical companies are being forced to
reduce prices. They continue to resist in every way the global generic production of drugs which could
prevent or alleviate greatly the expanding holocaust of AIDs. The danger of Brazil being pressured to
stop treating freely its 90,000 AIDs victims under, a more corporate-friendly intellectual property right
treaty is real and another reason to oppose the FTAA. The secrecy, deception, myths surrounding
"free trade" and a heartless regime bent on making money, regardless of the life threatening, catastrophic
disasters strewn in its wake are thoroughly condemned by women and all who cherish life, liberty and justice.
As a woman, as a delegate of the
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, I am firmly opposed to the FTAA and will do
all in my power to stop it. I was also a delegate to the recent World Social Forum, where thousands
of people from all over the world, part of the growing global movement, visible by their protests against
the WTO and the IMF, in Seattle, Washington D.C., Prague, Melbourne, Seoul, Dakar… We reject
the logic wherein the free-market and money are considered the only measure of worth. From one hundred
and seventeen countries, but primarily Brazil, we gathered to continue building a great alliance of a wide
diversity of groups dedicated to social change, to chart a path for "another World where human beings
and nature are the center of our concern."
Globalisation reinforces a sexist and
patriarchal system. It increases the feminisation of poverty and exacerbates all forms of violence against women.
In the Call for Mobilisation from Porto Alegre, it specifically says,
"We call on people everywhere to support the mobilizations against the creation of the Free Trade Area
in the Americas, an initiative which means the recolonization of Latin America and the destruction of
fundamental social, economic, cultural and environmental human rights."
Of course it was hard to say
all that in 2 minutes, and many more reasons to oppose the F.T.A.A. were articulated by my
friends, but I gave them a copy of this to pass on to the Senators...
FTAA Threatens Women, February 23, 2001