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The
Poor of the Americas Unite Against the FTAA
Cheri Honkala, Executive Director of KWRU, told what happened to the MST. Their visas were denied at the last minute, and they were unable to attend the event. Cheri went on to say that, "NAFTA and the FTAA are really about how to keep the rich rich and the poor divided. Now, they are not just dividing us in the US against each other, they are pitting the whole world against one another and asking: 'who in the world is willing to work for next to nothing?'. The US has more people in prison than any other country of the world. More even than in South Africa at the peak of aparteid. Who are they building all of these prisons for? They are building them for us. The FTAA is our issue. The poor in Canada, El Salvador, Mexico, Brazil, and the poor of the US are linking up. We won't let them determine what kind of world our children will grow up in."
The evening ended with a lively discussion of the issues with the close to 100 local residents who came out to the town hall meeting.
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[4-30-01]
The Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU), The Association of Rural
Communities for the Development of El Salvador (CRIPDES), the Movement
of Landless Workers of Brazil (MST), Low Income Families Together in
Canada (LIFT) and U.S. - El Salvador Sister Cities joined together to
have a Town Hall Meeting on Monday
April 30th in North Philadelphia. These
organizations of the poor from throughout the Americas have all joined
together in opposing the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Members
of each organization talked about the effects that FTAA will have in
their communities and countries and dialogued about how the employed
and the unemployed can unite in this fight for economic justice.
The
evening began with KWRU member Erica Morrison leading us in song. The
first speaker was Josephine Grey of LIFT in Toronto Canada. She said
that NAFTA had resulted in "8 million people went from the middle
class to poverty in Mexico. Canada lost 500,000 jobs to Mexico in that
same period. The Tory govenment lead a campaign of hate against the
poor, and cut welfare by 21 percent. The result has been a 120% increase
of homelessness in Ontario. My neighborhood used to be peaceful. I live
in public housing, and since these changes went into effect my home
was broken into 14 times in a single year. Crack use has gone through
the roof in Toronto. Things are getting very bad in Canada, but much
of the population is in denial. The reality of what's going on is hidden,
and they are trying to divide society to get people to accept it. We
need to unite to challenge this."
Elsie,
a representative of an organization of poor people in El Salvador called
CRIPDES. "When the poor started to organize in my country, we were
bombed and attacked by the army for 12 years. When I was 9 years old
I learned to read and write whiile living in the mountains and resisting
the army. We as poor people organized ourselves, gained a little liberty.
Through struggle and sacrifice, we gained a little land, and for our
children to go to school. Now we are suffering greatly under globalization
and the imposition of "free trade". They have privitized electricity
and the phone, and now they are privitizing water. We as poor people
must continue to struggle. The war of bullets is over now, but the political
war is just begun. We have a sister relation between El Salvador and
Kensington. There is much poverty here in the US. The poor of the world
need to unite and say to the US, that has the money to send bombs around
the world that it needs to find the money to house its own people."