Root Cause: Global Justice from the Grassroots

Submitted by Nightwalker:

Join local Grassroots Groups in Fighting Back the Attack
on Poor People and People of Color throughout the Americas!

Convening Organizations:

Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is fighting to end modern-day slavery in the fields. The grassroots farmworker organization is working to transform exploitative working relations in the Florida tomato industry and spearheading the national Taco Bell boycott.

Miami Workers Center is building the power of grassroots organizations and low-income communities in Miami-Dade County. Together with LIFFT (Low Income Families Fighting Together), they are fighting gentrification and poverty-wage work in Miami.

Power U, is working with low-income communities of color in Miami to make public education work and fighting for environmental justice in these communities.


JOIN US IN OUR MARCH TO MIAMI TO TAKE OUR DEMOCRACY BACK!

JOIN US IN THE FIGHT AGAINST THE FREE TRADE AREA OF THE AMERICAS!

Multi-national corporations have used secret negotiations on free trade agreements to impoverish our communities, to weaken the unions that give us a voice on the job, to foster sweatshop conditions here and abroad, and to deny us our democratic rights. It's time we join the struggle to resist corporate power, make our voices heard, and build together a future of true freedom and justice!

NAFTA,or the North American Free Trade Agreement, was passed in 1994, promising jobs and prosperity for people in Mexico, Canada, and the US. Today, ten years later, we know the true results of NAFTA: US factories abandoning communities here and moving to Mexico in search of low wages and freedom from unions; US agricultural exports to Mexico forcing small farmers to leave the land they have worked for generations and to join a growing, desperate migration to dead-end jobs in maquilas in Mexico and low-wage jobs here in the US; increasing poverty and human rights violations across North America, including modern-day slavery; and growing environmental and health hazards.

FTAA, or the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, seeks to expand NAFTA to all countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, excluding Cuba. Allowing corporations to bypass environmental and worker protection laws and further erode our democratic rights, the FTAA could affect over 800 million people in 34 countries in the Americas. The FTAA will turn over control of basic resources - water, land and energy - to private corporations, ensuring that a growing majority will face increasing debt, hunger, and disease.

The struggles are connected. Poor communities and communities of color across the hemisphere are facing the of reduction of public services, privatization of the public sector, increased competition and exploitation of low-wage workers, gentrification and movement of people off land. The FTAA will only seek to spread this oppression across the Americas.


We support land, housing and jobs for all people.

We support a living wage for all people.

We support democracy and resist the global expansion of corporate power.

We resist removal and gentrification policies that serve the needs of corporate interests.

We will not be REMOVED.

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KEY EVENTS in NOVEMBER

Community Impact Report

Based on information collected during the grassroots gatherings of local organizations, we will put together a "community impact report" (CIR) outlining the impacts of free trade policies on poor communities and communities of color in South Florida. The CIR will include concrete data on wages, working conditions, housing, immigration, privatization and urban pollution in South Florida, as well as testimonials from members of each organization about how they have personally been affected by free trade policies. The study will be released to the general public through a press conference the week before the FTAA Summit in Miami and will be available throughout the week as a framing work for the 'ROOT CAUSE' events.

People's March for Global Justice

(November 16-18)

In the tradition of CIW's March for Dignity, Dialogue, and a Living Wage, on Saturday, November 15, people from South Florida-based grassroots organizations, together with allies from grassroots organizations from across the Americas, will gather 34 miles north of downtown Miami to begin a 3-day march to the FTAA negotiations. The march will highlight the impacts of "free" trade policies on poor communities and communities of color throughout theAmericas through a program of protests, rallies, press conferences, concerts, and workshops, culminating in mass mobilizations against the FTAA in downtown Miami from November 19-21.

Unity Ceremony (November 19)

March participants will gather with indigenous peoples of South Florida on sacred indigenous ceremonial grounds in the downtown Miami area to declare their unity in their common struggle for human rights.

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(305) 757-3880