PROTEST

Why are people protesting globalisation (because the plants and animals can’t?)

Why protest free trade?

Why protest the power of the international financial institutions?

Why protest environmental destruction?

Why protest multinational corporations?

The culprits in the eyes of the

protesters • WTO

• GATS

• FTAA

Why target WTO

• Global Exchange reports that only 20-30 key countries generally

attended meetings of the WTO in Seattle in 1999.

How could global trade agreements hurt health care?

• Right now, US laws and regulations protect us when we need health care. For example:

• Licensing laws make sure that doctors, nurses, and technicians are qualified and competent.

• Staffing ratios limit how many patients nurses have to care for.

• Labor laws limit the hours that health care workers have to work.

• Health and safety laws make sure hospitals are safe places. • People won these protections through years of organizing

and hard work. But under the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas), GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services), and CAFTA (Central America Free Trade Agreement):

Foreign corporations and governments could challenge U.S. health care regulations as "more burdensome than necessary."

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.

The "national treatment" rule in the proposed agreements could further privatize health

care.

How the FTAA could affect agriculture

• 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. • Privatization requirements could do away

entirely with collective land ownership

• National and regional laws banning toxic pesticides could be overridden under trade

accords, as obstacles to trade. • consolidation of agro-chemical seed

companies

Since 1970 multinational companies have bought or taken control of nearly a thousand, once independent, seed companies.Biopiracy (the collecting and patenting of life forms formally held in common and their exploitation for profit.) 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

alternatives

• Groups organising for change1. "Our World is Not For Sale“2. “International Forum on Globalization” asking for• total halt to further WTO expansion • certain goods and services should be

excluded from free trade agreements,

•Why protest the power of the international financial institutions?•Why protest environmental destruction?

•Why protest multinational corporations?

World protest as art

Graphics/Posters

Internet (protest.net)

'protest culture' ~ The Art of Post-Modern

Protest

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. •Video Activism is a big feature of the growing world of independent media.

Alternative news and cinema• Indy Media• Organic Chaos Network• http://www.undercurrents.org/(pie eaters)

(Beyond TV)• www.beyondtv.org• www.consciouscinema.co.uk• www.videoactivism.org• www.havc.org• www.bignoisefilms.com• www.gulfislands.com/ames• www.adbusters.org • www.lnp89.org • www.abhivyakti.org.in • candida.kyuzz.org

• lab-rats.tripod.com