THINK GLOBAL
Act locally with Global Justice Now
January 2017
Contents
Welcome
News roundup
Food sovereignty campaign
Trade justice campaign
Corporate power and aid
Migration campaign
Groups and activism news
Current materials
Your role in setting our campaign agenda for 2017
Nick Dearden Director
Many of us will be glad to see the back of 2016 – a year in which decades of unsustainable ‘market knows best’ economics produced an upsurge in racism on the streets and authoritarian governments across the world.
But let’s not forget that 2016 was also the year in which popular pressure, driven by activists around Europe, succeeded in defeating TTIP, one of the most destructive trade deals we’ve seen since our campaigns against the World Trade Organisation in the early 2000s. Let’s remember, we can change things.
The campaigning focus for the coming months remains the Canada-EU trade deal CETA, as MEPs debate and vote on it. And we’ll be developing campaign activities around TISA, the Trade in Services Agreement, too.
In the last year, however, we’ve also introduced two new areas of work. The first was to step up our work on migration. In the new year we want to try to further challenge the hatred being whipped up by the tabloids and to specifically fight Europe’s unjust migration deal with Turkey (see page 9).
We’ve also started talking about taking on corporate power as whole, in order to change the debate and lay the ground for better control of corporations at the global level. ‘Big Pharma’ is one of the most damaging corporate sectors in the world, and uses trade rules and lobbying power to deny medicines to millions of people worldwide. We think it could be a good focus for the campaign. For a taster of what that could look like read about our work on antibiotics so far on page 8.
Then in late spring you’ll all be consulted on our entire future campaign agenda, instead of just one particular campaign, as we have done previously. This reflects the changing circumstances we face, and the need to think about our campaigning in the light of that.
For now, I’d like to wish you a happy new year. The world is changing fundamentally. It’s up to us to make sure it changes for the better.
Inserts
General
Trump recruitment poster
New sign-up sheets
Groups agreement renewal (groups only)
Selection of new ‘how to’ guides (groups only)
Food
Brexit CAP reform briefing
Trade
Trade deals overview table
Brexit
Dreaming of Empire briefing
News from Global Justice Now
Take Back Our World Scotland
28 January, Glasgow University
Anyone within travelling distance of Glasgow should consider attending our major Scottish activist conference. The excellent line up of speakers from around the world includes Larry Sanders (political activist and brother of Bernie Sanders), Hilary Wainwright (Red Pepper), Dorothy Grace- Guerrero (corporates campaigner from the Philippines), Christine Berry (New Economics Foundation) and Geneviève Savigny (La Via Campesina).
View the full programme and book your ticket at globaljustice.org.uk/events
Please also take a minute to share this event with others – we’d love a full house! Find it on Facebook via the Global Justice Now Scotland page.
Dates for your diary
National gathering and AGM
Saturday 10 June, Bristol A similar event to last year’s national gathering in London, with a mixture of speakers, workshops and opportunities for networking and organising. More details soon.
Attac European Summer University
24-28 August, Toulouse, France A major event bringing together activists from our sister organisations in Attac across Europe which we are involved in organising. Most sessions will either be in English or have simultaneous translation. Affordable accommodation options will be available. Toulouse is a lovely city in France’s beautiful south west, so the event could easily be combined with a holiday.
Media highlights
In November the Department for International Development announced that it intended to quadruple the amount of aid money being funnelled through its controversial private equity arm, the CDC group. Our criticisms of this decision were reported in the Financial Times, the Guardian and the Independent, and we were invited to contribute analysis to the Times’ coverage of the issue.
In December our quotes about the toxic trade deal TISA were carried by the Express, and our arguments about it being people power and not Trump that stopped TTIP informed feature article in the National.
Our recent briefing, Dreaming of Empire? UK foreign policy post-Brexit formed the basis of an opinion piece in the Guardian by regular columnist Zoe Williams
Action checklist
Trade justice Organise a stall, stunt, MEP lobby or meeting to mark the day of action against CETA on 21 January
General Organise a banner drop on 20 January to protest the inauguration of Donald Trump, as part of the Bridges Not Walls protests
Complete the groups agreement form and return to the office (groups only)
Migration Book a screening of Precarious Trajectories or a training session with Hope Not Hate
Start organising to attend the protests at the Security and Policing Fair in March
Food sovereignty
What’s coming up on food sovereignty in 2017
In 2017 we will continue to support food sovereignty both here in the UK and globally. We will do this through the development and promotion of food sovereignty-based alternative policies in the UK post-Brexit and also by supporting a global movement to push for rights for small-scale food producers.
Throughout this year we have been supporting and contributing to the development of a People’s Food Policy based on food sovereignty principles. This will articulate what food sovereignty would look like in a UK context. This is a grassroots initiative that emerged from the UK food sovereignty gathering in Hebden Bridge in October 2015.
The policy has been built bottom-up from face to face consultations and online surveys and it should be ready around April. We will be working with the People’s Food Policy to build a broad UK coalition to campaign for this policy and we hope our local groups will join in and get involved too. We will have more information next year.
In addition, we will be publishing a report that we commissioned the New Economics Foundation to write. The report will propose an alternative for EU subsidies for farming. UK farming currently receives subsidies from the EU (the ‘Common Agricultural Policy’) but this policy has been widely criticised for subsidising rich landlords and shutting out small-scale farmers.
Our new report will present an alternative subsidy system which is based on subsidising public goods such as local employment and positive environmental impacts. A four-page briefing based on the report’s findings is included with this issue of Think Global.
Combined with the People’s Food Policy we are hoping we can articulate a vision for food sovereignty in the UK in 2017.
International
We have been asked by our ally La Via Campesina to help fight for a UN declaration of rights for small-scale farmers. Small-scale farmers across the globe are facing huge waves of oppression, violence and criminalisation. Their whole way of life – growing food for local and regional markets using ecological techniques – is an affront to the aggressive growth of agribusiness.
La Via Campesina, one of the largest social movements in the world, has played a big role in pushing for a declaration of rights to achieve recognition of small-scale producers
as rights-holders. This is a key tool in pushing back against violence and oppression from state and corporate power. The UK government has been opposing this process and so we will be campaigning to pressure the UK government next year to support this process or at the very least to not oppose it.
New Alliance
The New Alliance was transferred from the G8 to the African Union last year. There is a drive in the African Union (AU) to try and harmonise the New Alliance processes with the existing African Union agricultural policies and processes as they do not want to have duplicated reporting structures. Our critique of the New Alliance has always been around the push for industrial agriculture through the policy changes and corporate investment that is documented in each country’s co-operative framework agreement.
The next big fight is to make sure that the content of these agreements are dropped in the AU’s harmonisation process. However, we are unable to target the AU ourselves and instead will be supporting our African friends and allies in their efforts.
We will still have a role in pushing for the Parliamentary International Development Select Committee to conduct a review into DfIDs’s support for agribusiness and corporate controlled agriculture so please keep using the action cards to help build up pressure for this.
Monsanto
The Monsanto tribunal that took place in October will be reporting their legal opinion in April 2017 (rather than December as previously expected). This legal opinion will provide legal arguments for various groups around the world to progress legal cases in national courts. We will feed back the opinion of the tribunal when it comes and will keep a watching brief over developments in order to let you know if there are any other follow up actions.
Bridges Not Walls
On 20 January Donald Trump will become president of the United States of America, a frightening symbol of the rising power of the hard right across western societies.
In response, a coalition of activists and groups including 350.org, Black Lives Matter UK and Global Justice Now are calling for a coordinated set of actions across the UK.
We are calling for groups and activists to hang banners off bridges anywhere in the country on 20 January. The banners could read ‘Bridges Not Walls’ or any other suitable slogan to challenge the rise of racism and authoritarianism.
If your group wants to take part you can find more information and register your protest or banner drop on the website: bridgesnotwalls.uk. Alternatively, search ‘bridges not walls’ on Facebook.
Group recruitment poster
Our answer to Trump is that we need to organise more people with progressive values to win a better world. So we’ve produced a new poster to help you do that. There is space for local group details at the bottom. Order more from us at
Trade justice
Stopping CETA in the European parliament
The vote to ratify CETA in the European parliament is still due to be on either 1 or 2 February. Many of you are already pressuring your MEPs to vote against this deal, and over 10,000 emails have been sent to UK MEPs already. But we need to keep up the pressure at this crucial time.
The Labour Party and the SNP have yet to decide how to vote. With Conservatives and the Lib Dems set to vote for CETA, the best progress we can make is by focusing on persuading Labour MEPs to vote against CETA (though we think it’s worth informing all of our representatives of what’s at stake if they vote for CETA). Insider knowledge tells us that there is a fine balance among Labour MEPs and there’s everything to play for.
Here are a few ideas you may want to use:
Keep a look out for your MEPs’ public appearances, and use any opportunity to ask them their voting intentions and congratulate / pressurise them accordingly. MEPs are not required to be in Brussels or Strasbourg from now until 9 January
Ask for a chance to meet them at a surgery or similar event.
Write your own letter targeted at the individual MEP – a break from the pro-forma emails coming from the likes of us or 38 Degrees.
If you have any feedback from your MEP(s) please send it to guy.taylor@globaljustice. org.uk so we can keep up with the latest on each of our representatives in Brussels.
We have produced a video on Facebook which puts the basic arguments against CETA across in a witty and punchy way – it’s getting plaudits from across the EU! Please share this over social media.
International day of action against CETA
As part of the global efforts to stop CETA, Saturday 21 January has been called as an international day of de-centralised action against the deal by a coalition of groups from Belgium, France, Greece and Portugal. There are events planned in many countries in different cities and towns, including street meetings, stalls, getting a big card to MEPs signed, indoor meetings, MEP hustings and stunts. If your group plans to do something, advertise it at www.stopceta.net
After the European parliament vote
If CETA is rejected by the European parliament in early February then we will have achieved an enormous victory for democracy against corporate power. However, we have to be aware that it may pass. If that happens, it is far from the end of the road for our efforts to stop CETA, however. National parliaments will still have to vote to ratify CETA, including the UK. This will give us another major opportunity to challenge CETA, and in the uncertain context of Brexit the UK government may have substantial difficulties pushing it through.
Hopefully it won’t get to that stage, but the European parliament is by no means the last hurdle that CETA’s backers have to overcome.