I thought that it would be helpful to review some of the reasons why we're out here protesting today (thanks to Global Exchange for some of the following information). I know that most of us here will already know these basic issues, but I thought that maybe today we could win a few cops over there to our side, if I speak loud enough...

Firstly, the WTO has a fundamentally undemocratic organizational structure. The policies of the WTO impact all aspects of society and the planet, but it is not a democratic, transparent institution. The WTO rules are written by and for corporations with inside access to the negotiations. For example, the US Trade Representative gets heavy input for negotiations from 17 "Industry Sector Advisory Committees." Citizen input by consumer, environmental, human rights and labor organizations is consistently ignored. Even simple requests for information are denied, and the proceedings are held in secret.

Although the ruling elites want us to believe that WTO policies will make us safer, that creating a world of "free trade" will promote global understanding and peace, the domination of international trade by rich countries for the benefit of their individual interests only fuels anger and resentment that make us less safe. To build real global security, we need international agreements that respect people's rights to democracy and trade systems that promote global justice.

The WTO tramples labor and human rights. The WTO rules put the "rights" of corporations to profit over human and labor rights. It encourages a 'race to the bottom' in wages by pitting workers against each other rather than promoting internationally recognized labor standards. For example, the WTO has ruled that it is illegal for a government to ban a product based on the way it is produced, such as with child labor. It has also ruled that governments cannot take into account "non commercial values" such as human rights, or the behavior of companies that do business with vicious dictatorships, such as Burma, when making purchasing decisions.

A critical problem with the World Trade Organization is its drive toward privitization. The WTO is seeking to privatize essential public services such as education, health care, energy and water. Privatization means the selling off of public assets--such as radio airwaves or schools--to private corporations, to run for profit rather than the public good. The WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services, or GATS, includes a list of about 160 threatened services including elder and child care, sewage, garbage, park maintenance, telecommunications, construction, banking, insurance, transportation, shipping, postal services, and tourism. In some countries, privatization is already occurring. Those least able to pay for vital services--working class communities and communities of color--are the ones who suffer the most.

The World Trade Organization is being used by corporations to dismantle hard-won local and national environmental protections, which are attacked as "barriers to trade." The very first WTO panel ruled that a provision of the US Clean Air Act, requiring both domestic and foreign producers alike to produce cleaner gasoline, was illegal. The WTO declared illegal a provision of the Endangered Species Act that requires shrimp sold in the US to be caught with an inexpensive device allowing endangered sea turtles to escape. The WTO is attempting to deregulate industries including logging, fishing, water utilities, and energy distribution, which will lead to further exploitation of these natural resources.

The World Trade Organization is literally killing people. Its fierce defense of 'Trade Related Intellectual Property' rights (TRIPs) comes at the expense of health and human lives. The organization's support for pharmaceutical companies against governments seeking to protect their people's health has had serious implications for places like sub-Saharan Africa, where 80 percent of the world's new AIDS cases are found. Developing countries won an important victory in 2001 in Doha, Qatar, when the important life-saving mechanisms of parallel importing and compulsory licensing were agreed to, so that countries could provide essential life-saving medicines to their populations less expensively. Unfortunately, these are some of the very provisions the US hopes to renegotiate in the current round of talks.

Overall, the World Trade Organiaztion is increasing inequality. Free trade is simply not working for the majority of the world. During the most recent period of rapid growth in global trade and investment (1960 to 1998) inequality worsened both internationally and within countries. The UN Development Program reports that the richest 20% of the world's population consume 86% of the world's resources while the poorest 80% consume just 14%. WTO rules have hastened these trends by opening up countries to foreign investment and thereby making it easier for production to go where the labor is cheapest and most easily exploited and environmental costs are low.

The World Trade Organization is increasing hunger. Farmers certainly produce enough food in the world to feed everyone--yet because of corporate control of food distribution, as many as 800 million people worldwide suffer from chronic malnutrition. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, food is a human right. In developing countries, as many as four out of every five people make their living from the land. But the leading principle in the WTO's Agreement on Agriculture is that market forces should control agricultural policies--rather than a national commitment to guarantee food security and maintain decent family farmer incomes. WTO policies have allowed dumping of heavily subsidized industrially produced food into poor countries, undermining local production and increasing hunger.

The World Trade Organization hurts poor, small countries in favor of rich powerful nations. The WTO supposedly operates on a consensus basis, with equal decision-making power for all. In reality, many important decisions get made in a process in which poor countries' negotiators are not even invited to closed door meetings--and then 'agreements' are announced that poor countries didn't even know were being discussed. Many countries do not even have enough trade personnel to participate in all the negotiations or to even have a permanent representative at the WTO. This severely disadvantages poor countries from representing their interests. Likewise, many countries are too poor to defend themselves from WTO challenges from the rich countries, and change their laws rather than pay for their own defense.

This leads to the fact that the World Trade Organization undermines local decision-making and national sovereignty of these smaller countries. The WTO's "most favored nation" provision requires all WTO member countries to treat each other equally and to treat all corporations from these countries equally regardless of their track record. Local policies aimed at rewarding companies who hire local residents, use domestic materials, or adopt environmentally sound practices are essentially illegal under the WTO. Developing countries are prohibited from creating local laws that developed countries once pursued, such as protecting new, domestic industries until they can be internationally competitive. California Governor Gray Davis vetoed a "Buy California" bill that would have granted a small preference to local businesses because it was WTO-illegal. Conforming with the WTO required entire sections of US laws to be rewritten. Many countries are even changing their laws and constitutions in anticipation of potential future WTO rulings and negotiations.

Similar to the World Trade organization's destructive policies, the Free Trade Area of the Americas also promotes corporate profit over the welfare of people and the planet. In recent years, representatives from 34 countries have been working to expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to Central America, South America and the Caribbean--essentially every country except Cuba. The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is another example of the free-market fundamentalism that has created a global race-to-the-bottom that threatens the environment, families' livelihoods, human rights, and democracy. Once again, a sweeping "free trade" agreement is in the works that puts commercial interests above all other values.

The FTAA ministerial meetings are meeting this November in Miami, Florida, and CAGE, the Coalition Against Global Exploitation, is helping to mobilize locally--bringing home to Baltimore the issues of unrestrained corporate globalization--and also working to send a Baltimore delegation to the protests. We need input and help from all of you out there, so please think about coming to the next CAGE meeting, which will be next Tuesday, Setember 23, at 7:30 p.m. Please see me if you haven't ever visited the Progressive Action Center at 1443 Gorsuch Avenue, which is where the CAGE meeting are held.

Thanks very much for your time.