>US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement

Last night I attended an event about the US-Colombia FTA. The speaker from Witness for Peace showed how “free” trade isn’t fair trade, but mainly benefits the corporations and leadership in each country. He discussed what has been learned from NAFTA’s effects on jobs in the US and disruptions to workers and farmers in Latin America.

More from Witness for Peace (the presenter last night works for them; he’s presented at AMBS in the past) and ICPJ:

• http://www.witnessforpeace.org/downloads/Witness%20for%20Peace%20Fact%20Sheet_FTA%20with%20Colombia_2011.pdf
• http://www.witnessforpeace.org/section.php?id=99
• http://www.witnessforpeace.org/article.php?id=1126
• http://ajws.org/emergencies/documents/hunger_campaign/0511_religious_organizations.pdf [religious groups opposing this]
• http://www.icpj.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Colombia-FTA-facts.pdf
• http://www.icpj.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Colombia-FTA-resources.pdf

>Three Films

Yes, I spend more time watching than doing. In the past month or so, I’ve appreciated these three documentaries:

God Grew Tired of Us (2006, PG) — War & Relocation

After raising themselves in the desert along with thousands of other “lost boys,” Sudanese refugees John, Daniel and Panther have found their way to America, where they experience electricity, running water and supermarkets for the first time.

Waiting for Superman (2010, PG) — Education

Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) weaves together the stories of students, families, educators and reformers to shed light on the failing public school system and its consequences on the future of the United States.

This Is What Democracy Looks Like (2000, NR) — Globalization & Protest

[T]his powerful documentary recounts the story of more than 100 activists who gathered to promote economic justice and turned cameras on police during the 1999 World Trade Organization summit in Seattle.

>The End of Poverty (Jeffrey Sachs)

>I cannot encourage you enough to read The End of Poverty. Just do it. Promise yourself that you’ll find a way.

The first few chapters relate Sachs’s own evolution as a development economist and advocate—a process that leads him from Harvard University to countries around the world and eventually to Columbia University where he helped found The Earth Institute. We follow him along the journey of gaining insights into the roles that geography, population growth, and disease play in the poverty trap.

The subsequent chapters describe the needs of the poor, the misconceptions most of us have regarding what is being done and what the real problems are, and finally the way forward.

Sachs quantifies, maps, deconstructs, and personalizes the problems. Thankfully, he does not end there. He also quantifies the needed response, demonstrates the possibilities we have over the next couple of decades, and offers policy advice on increasing capacity and accountability.

For less technical, but more spiritual analyses of the same topics, see Walking with the Poor (Bryant Myers), Red Letters (Tom Davis) and Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger (Ron Sider).

>MOVIE: Black Gold

>The Global Coffee Trade, a Bitter Brew for the Poor
(The New York Times, 6 Oct 06)

“The documentary “Black Gold” tells an unresolved modern version of the age-old David and Goliath story. The giants in this case are multinational corporations that control the worldwide coffee market. The heroic little guy, Tadesse Meskela, represents the Oromia Coffee Farmers Co-op Union, which encompasses 74 co-ops in southern Ethiopia. That country, the birthplace of coffee, produces some of the highest-quality beans in the world.

“Mr. Meskela devotes himself tirelessly to traveling the world looking for buyers who will pay a fair price for the beans harvested by the nation’s 70,000 coffee farmers. Instead of wielding a slingshot, he works circuitously by eliminating many of the middlemen who drive up the price of coffee and bypassing commodities exchanges to sell his product directly to buyers. His cause has been embraced by the fair-trade movement, which is working to bring so-called fairly traded commodities like chocolate and bananas, as well as coffee, to increasing numbers of American grocery stores.”

>ISSUE: Fair Trade

>
Fair Trade. We care about justice, so we care about fair trade. With globalization as the prevailing economic and social force of the modern age, we must individually vote for fairness and justice with each dollar spent.

What does fair trade mean? How can I support it? How can I learn more?

This article from Relevant Magazine is a good starter: The Conscious Consumer.

Or check out this resource: www.fairtraderesource.org.

And remember that World Fair Trade Day is May 13.

Also, you can go to Make Trade Fair.

Okay, here we go…