THINK GLOBAL
Act locally with Global Justice Now
November 2016
Contents
Welcome
News roundup
Food sovereignty campaign
Trade justice campaign
Corporate power campaign
Migration campaign
Groups and activism news
Current materials
It was people power that pushed CETA to the brink
James O’Nions Activism team
“Il est mort.” That’s how the premier of Wallonia (Belgium’s French-speaking region), Paul Magnette, declared the death of CETA after refusing to agree to the EU-Canada deal for the second time in two weeks.
Because Belgium has a federal system, all three of its regions have to grant it authority to sign CETA off alongside other EU governments. And unlike the EU as a whole, Wallonia had done its homework, commissioning impact assessments and convening expert panels.
Then, just as we were finalising Think Global, a deal was struck which meant Wallonia was prepared to stop blocking Belgium from signing CETA. Just in time for Halloween, the EU had brought CETA back from the dead.
Even so, the temporary impasse has left us in a better position than before, with the profile of CETA raised and new stumbling blocks created (see page 6). And while Wallonia might have been the agent of that, it’s hard to imagine how it could have done so if it weren’t for the huge European movement we have built over the last three years to oppose both TTIP and CETA.
Thanks to activists around Europe, hundreds of cities and regions have declared themselves TTIP and CETA free zones. Wallonia just happens to be one of the few regions that got an official say in agreeing CETA. And then there’s that 3.5 million strong petition, the self-organised European Citizens’ Initiative. Half a million of those signatures came from Britain, and Global Justice Now activists should be very proud of the work we all put into that.
Add to that stunts, protests, public meetings, letters to papers and a host of other things and you can see how TTIP, and now CETA, have gone from obscure to toxic Europe-wide.
That’s why Germany’s deputy chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, took a political gamble in September and dumped TTIP in order to give the European establishment the political capital to push CETA through. TTIP still isn’t officially dead of course, and CETA even less so, but there’s still a chance that Gabriel’s gamble will fail, and the EU will lose both deals. If it does, it will be thanks to a truly pan-European form of people power.
Inserts
Trade
Briefing about a UN treaty on corporations and human rights
Food
Photos from our Monsanto mini photo exhibition
News from Global Justice Now
Take Back Our World Scotland
Sir Charles Wilson building, University of Glasgow, G12 8QQ Saturday 28 January, 10am-6pm
If you live in Scotland, put Saturday 28 January in your diary. Global Justice Now is working with the Radical Independence Campaign to organise this one day conference in Glasgow with a great line-up of speakers. The event will feature talks, workshops and debates on how corporations are capturing the government, the media and the global commons; how politicians are aiding this by promoting neoliberal trade deals and privatisation; but also how communities and campaigners from around the world are successfully fighting this takeover.
The full programme and details of how to book tickets will be announced soon. To keep up with the latest information see globaljustice.org.uk/events or the Facebook event page which you can find via facebook.com/GlobalJusticeNowScotland
Media highlights
In October as part of the launch of our new campaign on pushing back on corporate power, we released new research showing that 69 out of the top 100 economies were now corporations rather than countries. The research was picked up by the Guardian, the Independent and the Express in the UK, as well as El Pais in Spain, the Wall Street Journal and news outlets in 20 other countries around the world.
At the time of writing, the CETA trade deal has being hanging on a knife edge. We’ve been putting out comments to support the region of Wallonia that has been putting a spanner in the works of the deal. These have been picked up in Common Space, The Ecologist, Common Dreams and the Morning Star and our letter was in the Guardian.
The new secretary for development Priti Patel has been making disturbing statements about the direction of UK aid money, and our critiques have been used by the Guardian and the i newspaper.
Facebook group
Don’t forget we have a Facebook group for Global Justice Now activists. It is proving a useful forum for sharing information across the network, from breaking campaign news to useful short videos. Join the group by searching ‘Global Justice Now activists’ in Facebook, or go to http://gju.st/2fjz52v
EVENT: TAKE BACK OUR WORLD
Freeing ourselves from the power of big business
· 10am-6pm, Saturday 28 January
· Sir Charles Wilson building, University of Glasgow, G12 8QQ
Big business has a grip on our lives and society like never before. Corporations are capturing government, the media and the global commons. But communities and campaigners from around the world are successfully fighting this takeover. In this period of rapid political change, there has never been a more important time to get organised to challenge the rich and powerful. It’s time to Take Back Our World. More info at globaljustice.org.uk/events
New staff member
Alex Scrivener has taken a year’s sabbatical and Jean Blaylock as started as policy officer in his stead. Jean will be mainly be working on our trade policy work for the year she’s here. Contact her via jean.blaylock@ globaljustice.org.uk
New activism guides
Working with our friends in Campaign Against Arms Trade, we’ve produced some new, updated guides to help local campaigners. We hope they will be useful to a wide range of activist groups, rather than just being aimed at those in Global Justice Now’s groups network. The guides cover most of the key activities which local groups might find themselves doing, from basic organising to chairing a public meeting.
For now you can find them online at globaljustice.org.uk/activist-resources There are a few more still to come, and when those are finished we’ll send printed versions out to groups and anyone who wants them.
Action checklist
Food sovereignty
Decide if you want to put on a Monsanto photo exhibition
Trade justice
Organise a CETA campaign stall, stunt or other event (funding still available).
Write to your MEPs, arrange lobby meetings or a hustings.
Migration
Let the activism team know if you’re interested in the having difficult conversations training.
Decide if you’d like to screen Precarious Trajectories.
Food sovereignty
‘Monsanto on trial’ events
Thank you to the groups who were involved in the Monsanto speaker tour in October. All five events were packed out and there was a lot of interest and engagement. Audience sizes were 150 in London, 150 in Bristol, 120 in Edinburgh, 100 in Manchester and 80 in Leeds. We managed to sign up some new members and there was lots of interest in local activism – particularly in Bristol.
The combination of the photo exhibition, Farida Akhter our Bangladeshi speaker and the samosas we bought as refreshments created a good formula for a buzzing event. We will be releasing the photos in an online gallery in the next month, do share them on social media.
Hold your own photo exhibition
The speaker tour was accompanied by a photo exhibition that we commissioned to show communities affected by corporate agriculture in India and Bangladesh. We are offering a mini version of the photo exhibition (on A3 photoboards) to groups and activists to hold your own exhibition. Some groups have already started using these.
There is an insert with this month’s Think Global so you can see what the photographs look like. If you want to order a photo exhibition pack, please email dan. with your name, address and proposed date you need the photos.
The pack includes:
10 x A3 photoboards with quality prints from the main exhibition.
1 x A3 introduction board explaining the photo exhibition-10 A5 caption cards.
Guidance on matching the captions to the photos.
An information sheet on how to organise local events.
The Monsanto Tribunal
After the Monsanto speaker tour, members of the campaigns team travelled with Farida Akhter to The Hague where she was giving evidence to the Monsanto Tribunal. Farida was one of 30 witnesses giving a testimony of the damage that Monsanto has done to their lives and livelihoods. We heard witnesses from Burkina Faso, India, Colombia, Sri Lanka, Argentina and Brazil, all testifying to the impact that Monsanto’s control over the food system has had on them.
We also took part in the people’s assembly, a gathering of civil society groups, which happened alongside the tribunal. This was a good opportunity to meet activists and campaigners resisting corporate agriculture from across the globe. We heard about the growing resistance to corporate seed laws in countries around the world.
New Alliance action cards
Please continue to use these where you can to keep up the pressure on the international development select committee to call for an inquiry into the New Alliance.
European food sovereignty gathering
At the end of October two Global Justice Now campaigners joined a UK delegation to the 2nd European food sovereignty gathering in Romania. This gathering will bring together over 500 participants from 42 countries across Europe and Central Asia.
The gathering was a unique opportunity to meet with other activists, campaigners and growers who are working on exciting projects and activities across Europe. Alongside them we will be able to build a strong European movement for food sovereignty.
Trade justice
CETA in trouble
Think Global went to press amid at a particularly uncertain time for CETA. The government of Wallonia, the French-speaking region of Belgium, had blocked Belgium from agreeing to CETA at the European Council meeting (the body of the EU which is direct representatives of EU national governments). It was able to do so because of Belgium’s federal system and was motivated to do so because Wallonia has been a clear loser out of globalisation over the last few decades, and the governing Socialist Party (the Belgian equivalent of Labour) has understood that the political mood there is against another free trade deal.
However, after holding out for a week and ruining the official timeline for the European Council to agree CETA, Wallonia finally agreed to lift their block. In doing so, however, they extracted a document from the Belgian government which included an undertaking to ask the European Court of Justice to rule on the legality of the corporate court system within CETA. At the time of writing the full document was still being analysed.
It’s very possible, however, that the document will result in more than one stumbling block for CETA down the line. For instance, MEPs may end up being asked to vote on CETA while the legality of the corporate court system is still up in the air.
What’s certain is that we need to continue to pressure MEPs as we have been doing so far, to put us in the best position to defeat CETA in the European parliament.
Keep the pressure on MEPs
Please keep using the CETA postcards and order more if you need them (we’ve reprinted them along with the fold-out leaflets). Then send them back to us quickly so we can deliver them. There is still money available to groups who want to jazz up their stall or plan a stunt. Get in touch with Ed about this: . You can also find the online action to email your MEPs at http://bit.ly/2evvzNK - you could send this to your mailing list, Facebook page etc.
You can also write to MEPs and try to arrange to meet them to discuss CETA. Remember you can have as many as 10 MEPs (if you live in the South East outside London). Find their addresses on the European parliament website: europarl.org.uk/en/your-meps
Organising a public event with a number of your MEPs can also be a useful way to put pressure on them. Manchester have one lined up for 10 November.
We need to target Labour, SNP and Conservative MEPs especially, but every one of them should get a feeling of the mood among their constituents against CETA! The European parliament is scheduled for a vote on CETA at some point in December or January, although that timetable is threatened by the current hold ups.
SNP conference demo
Marking the beginning of the Europe-wide ‘CETA week’ of action in October, Global Justice Glasgow organised a ‘Stop CETA’ demonstration outside the SNP conference. Featuring activists dressed as corporate rats and a banner with demands for a ‘people’s trade deal’, the demo attracted a lot of interested SNP members coming to their party’s conference. Trade justice activists from across Scotland joined the demo, and we got some great pictures that made a splash on social media, including an article in the online news service CommonSpace.
Steve Rolfe, chair of Global Justice Glasgow, wrote a blog post on the demonstration and the SNP’s position on CETA. Read it at globaljustice.org.uk/blog
BITs, Brexit and other trade deals
Perhaps counter-intuitively, the push for CETA from our government is part of the hard- Brexit strategy, an attempt to introduce more corporate influence and control. There will be a similar attempt to keep the UK in TISA, the Trade in Services Agreement, which we will be opposing.