Exciting New Legislation: The Trade Act

Just this past Wednesday (24 June 2009), a bill cosponsored by 106 Representatives was introduced to the House that would place the currently undemocratic trade agreement system into the hands of the people. The bill is called the TRADE Act, an acronym standing for “Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment” (HR 3012). If passed, it would protect human rights and put environmental safeguards into effect in both past and future multinational trade agreements. It would also vastly increase the transparency of such agreements, rightly giving the ultimate power not to a select few, but to Congress. The bill is sponsored by Rep. Mike Michaud (D-Maine), the Chairman of the House Trade Working Group. Its wording advocates a strong position on core labor standards which promote fundamental human rights as defined by the UN. The bill will not only ensure these rights for US citizens, but will also protect the rights, human and otherwise, of the citizens of the country with which the agreement exists. The bill requires that in order for the US to start or continue trade with a country, that country must live up to basic human rights laws that are already in effect in the US. Passing the TRADE Act would help to give needed jobs back to Americans by making it less economic to outsource labor to countries with bad human rights records simply because they have cheaper labor.

The bill itself makes provisions that would not only change the way future agreements are created, but would call for an extensive review of agreements already in place. This would include a review of trade agreements’ impact on citizens both in the US and the country in question, and would require renegotiation of existing agreements when necessary. This would ease concerns that have been ever increasing among the world populace. Call to mind the massive protests over the G8 Summits each year, and you’ll get the idea. Up to this day world trade and all things monetary are being regulated by organizations like the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. These institutions are responsible for closed-door agreements that are written “by and for corporations” (GlobalExchange.org).

Examples of WTO rulings include laws making it illegal to ban a product because of the way it is produced, not excluding morally negligent practices like child labor. According to GlobalExchange.org, the WTO 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.” Additionally, the WTO has blocked countries with rampant health concerns like AIDs from producing generic drugs. The WTO has cited rulings of companies’ “right to profit” to enforce such policies, and has often undermined countries’ preexisting laws in doing so.

“The TRADE Act acknowledges rights greater than a corporation’s supposed right to profit,” says Ben Beachy, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Organizer of Witness for Peace. “These include the rights of family farmers to a stable livelihood, the rights of parents to affordable medicines, the rights of all of us to environmental protections. The TRADE Act spells the overhaul of the NAFTA model that has not only failed to recognize, but has outrightly trampled, such basic human rights.”

Beachy states that the TRADE Act “launches a new era of trade.” It is “the first bill of its kind to call for the sort of trade we could support–the sort that places public health, democratic process, and decent work at the center.”

Americans are now personally aware of the disfunctionality of the current economic systems and the reality of just how global our nation’s trade has become. People are trying to learn more about what got us into this situation and how to change it. At the same time, however, it appears that the bigwigs responsible have not changed much at all, nor do they seem to have any intentions of doing so. That is where this legislation comes in. It is proactive yet extremely necessary to ensure the democratic power of the US in this globalizing world. In order to maintain control by the people, an ideal this country was based on, legislation like the TRADE Act is absolutely fundamental. For the first time, it requires that a trade agreement be approved by both Congress and the President (TRADE Act, pg44): Constitutional ideals which have been grossly ignored until this point.

A large success for transparent business practices exists in the bill’s stipulation that “if the trade agreement contains provisions related to dispute resolution, these provisions must “incorporate due process rules and procedures, including insuring… proceedings are open to the public; that public access to information… related to disputes is provided in a timely manner; and that conflict of interest rules apply fully to adjudicators.” It also requires that any dispute settlement panel addressing environmental and human rights issues “include panelists with expertise in such issues” (TRADE Act, pg34-35)!

In order to ensure acceptable treatment of citizens by US trading partners, the bill mandates that every two years a report be issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). This report will cite information regarding whether that country is democratic, respects fundamental human rights and religious freedom, has taken measures to combat public and private corruption, complies with multilateral environmental agreements, has adequate labor and environmental regulations, provides for governmental transparency, and maintains the due process of law. Additionally, there are exceptions to the Act in cases where a country is shown to pose a threat to the national security of the US.

The GAO would also provide information on the effects of existing International Trade like NAFTA and CAFTA which are among the trade agreements that have become considerable examples on which all other trade agreements are based. Their creation included corrupt, unmonitored and extremely exclusionary tactics that have set an unfortunate standard for international trade policies and practices. If the TRADE Act were passed, these agreements would have the potential to be tweaked or improved if Congress felt changes were necessary.

The TRADE Act is a refreshingly non-ethnocentric piece of literature that promotes the right to self-governance and autonomy, significantly pushes environmental protection and human rights causes, helps ensure the transparency of international trade, and has the potential to change the face of America to the world.

By Kelly Flanagan

Americans Want Under 1.5 Degrees and Green Jobs

Young Americans ask Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel and President Barack Obama for strong action on Climate Policy at the G8 and Copenhagen summit

** Youth to rally again outside White House, 8:00 AM on Friday 6/26, as Merkel meets with Obama **

Climate action leaders dance with gigantic green hard hats, as well as cut-outs of Obama and Merkel, to urge the heads of state to take stronger action on climate change and support good, green jobs. (Photo by Julie Erickson.)

Washington DC – American youth holding gigantic green hard hats and signs danced in front of the German Embassy today in order to advocate for aggressive international climate policy. Several of them held a huge banner that read “Americans Want Under 1.5 Degrees and Green Jobs.” They dance to encourage  Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel and President Barack Obama to set the international limit on global temperature increase to 1.5 ˚C and support good, green jobs.

As the youth demonstrated at the Embassy, Merkel was preparing to meet with Obama on Friday. The two had planned on discussing the upcoming G8 summit as well as climate change issues.

“The decisions that Obama and Merkel make are going to significantly impact the state of the world that I grow up in. The youth will bear the brunt of the impacts of climate change,” says one of the dancing hard hats, Matthew Maiorana. “Our leaders need to set bold targets that show the world that the United States and Germany are ready to be climate leaders. We also call on them to commit to attending the important Copenhagen summit on climate change and adhere to a science-based climate policy.”

The youth assembled today with 11 larger-than-life cardboard green hard hats and cut outs of Obama and Merkel’s faces. Hoisting their hard hats, they participated in a choreographed dance with visages of Obama and Merkel. A huge banner that read “Americans Want Under 1.5 Degrees and Green Jobs” provided a backdrop for the festivities.

Their dance, they said, shows what America’s youth want for their future. It represents the connection between solutions to climate change and good, green jobs to lift America out of its current economic crisis. The youth also called for a global temperature increase limit to be set at 1.5˚C, a position supported by Merkel. If the temperature rises above this mark, tropical island states like the Marshall Islands and the Maldives will be under water.

America's youth dance to show what America's youth want for their future. The dance represents the connection between solutions to climate change and good, green jobs to lift America out of its current economic crisis. (Photo by Julie Erickson.)

“The G8 is an opportunity for heads of states to discuss the issues that are most pressing in our world,” said Rachel Young, a young American present at the event. “They are charged with ensuring that we are meeting the needs of all the countries, including the demands from small island states, who are calling for a temperature rise limit of 1.5 ˚C.”

America and Germany have the incredible opportunity to usher in a new era of clean energy economies, which starts with committing to a target of temperature stabilization of below 1.5˚C, and creating green jobs for all.

Today’s actions accompany a dramatic increase in grassroots mobilization around the up and coming floor vote, the American Clean and Energy Security Act of 2009 HR 2454. Which will lay the foundation for America’s stance in the upcoming international climate negotiations in Copenhagen.

The youth were working with Avaaz.org an international advocacy organization of 3.5 million members worldwide and 200,000 members in Germany. They are planning a second event for Friday at 11 AM at the White House.

Lacy MacAuley helps bring Sacred DC to life

This past weekend, DC saw its first annual Sacred DC, a festival for healing, arts, and activism. Massey Media’s Lacy MacAuley was intimately involved in the planning and media outreach for the festival. The organizers wanted to provide a space for dialogue and strategizing about environmental and social injustices. Held on the summer Solstice at Malcolm X Park in downtown DC, the festival was an opportunity for local residents and youth to connect while attending workshops on yoga, meditation, mural painting, and urban gardening, to name just a few.

Lacy worked closely with the co-visionaries of the project, Graciela Lopez and Zainabu Dance, to craft a media strategy that could speak authentically about the spirit of the festival. She met weekly with organizers to make sure that everyone’s ideas and voices were heard and that everyone was familiar with the “talking points,” and she coordinated the pitch calls to press and bloggers. The press release she drafted went out to local media multiple times, creating a drumbeat, and pitch calls soon followed. Zainabu and Lacy secured a press hit with WPFW‘s “From the Vault.” Soon after, the Washington Examiner called. The reporter was on a tight deadline, so Lacy gave him an interview using the media messages they’d crafted.

Lacy also aggressively pitched the Washington Post, who sent a reporter and covered the story. Even as she was emceeing on the main stage, Lacy was called upon to facilitate his interview. NBC also showed up early in the day. In addition, Lacy made sure to coordinate photographic coverage of the event to offer to the press and funders of the event.

Massey Media brings this same level of attention to detail to all our clients. If you’d like to see your progressive event or cause in media, let Massey Media show you how!

- Janaki Spickard-Keeler

Drawing the future

With markers and charcoal, Albus Cavus artists and 45 DC young people kick-started their summer 2009 Edgewood mural project. Flowers bloomed off the pages while bars of music ran in rainbows over a kaleidoscope of silhouettes and colors. A non-profit organization dedicated to improving public spaces through the arts, Albus Cavus, in conjunction with the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities’ 2009 Summer Youth Employment Program, will work for nine weeks with 45 youth participants to create a large mural alongside the forthcoming Metropolitan Branch Trail that will be visible from the Rhode Island Metro Station.

On June 22, the participants had their first meeting with Albus Cavus director Peter Krsko and artists Pose 2, Quest Skinner, Decoy, Joshua Mays, and Chor Boogie. With large sheafs of paper, the artists and participants explored together the meaning of public art and how we apply our own personalities to a collaborative effort. The participants worked intently, looking up from their work only to search for the next color and engage with the artists. The group represented a variety of ages and interests, from teens to early twenties, marketing to urban mosaics.

The ideas that manifested themselves on the page represented this cross-section. One table created an organic piece with flowers and vines shooting through a maze of colors while another table’s piece had a decidedly bold, graffiti-like style.

Having worked with Albus Cavus before, we were excited to be partnering with them again. Our role is to bring community attention to the project. We arrived in time to join in the creativity. Pose 2 instantly invited us to pull up a seat and grab a marker. Like the other artists and youth participants, we were absorbed by our own designs and disappointed when it was time to put the markers away. Eyeing the “mini-murals” in the hopes of taking one home, we were disappointed when the artists collected them to be saved and used later on.

Over the course of the nine weeks, the participants will learn not only artistic techniques, but how to enable a project like this to happen. They will learn how to attract attention and talk to the media, finance a project, and create art that reflects and complements the neighborhood.

Albus Cavus will be providing a toolkit that surpasses just the artistic. They are giving the participants the skills to enhance their lives and neighborhoods through art and the ability to transform a plan into action.

The Bird is the Word

If someone told you two weeks ago that you would be “tweeting,” you may have raised an eyebrow in confusion and wondered if the bird flu was making a come-back. Blame it on laziness or a general apathy to technology, but new applications and gadgets held no interest for me. Give me my PC and a phone without a brain, any day. Lately, though, I’ve crawled out of my burrow to research social media, and, as it turns out, I don’t need a beak to tweet.

“Tweeting” is the commonly used term for interacting on Twitter, the fastest growing social networking site on the Internet. Twitter asks members to answer one simple question, “What are you doing?” and broadcast that to those who are “following” them. Knowing this, though, still didn’t help me understand the purpose or benefits of Twitter, besides allowing a member to tell 100 of their closest friends that they love peanut butter and now are going ice fishing with their grandfather. Couldn’t they just do that on Facebook or on their own blog? Aren’t all of these sites just the same?

The answer is no. Although these sites are often used for more trivial purposes, the number of businesses and organizations with presences on these sites is growing quickly. Social media sites enable groups to stay in contact with current clients and colleagues, but they also provide a cost-effective strategy to reach new audiences. Twitter, blogs, and even Facebook, to an extent, breed success through the ripple effect. One follower finds what you have to say interesting and passes it on to another friend who passes it on to another friend who passes it on to another.

However, you have to have “friends” or “followers” to attract more. How do you do this? To gain hits and attention, you have to engage. The more you interact with others, commenting and responding to their efforts, the more people will see your name and grow curious. The most important thing is to get your organization or business’s name seen by as many people as possible. This requires constant interaction. Posting once a month or even once a week is not enough; daily posts and updates are necessary to keep your name floating among the cyber community.

Take Massey Media as an example. Recently, Massey Media has made an effort to reach out to clients and groups of interest by expanding our blogroll to include them and becoming their “followers” on Twitter.  We showed our support and interest; and in response, we have gained additional Twitter followers.  Own the Press blog posts have been picked up by other groups.

Name recognition is an elementary principle of media relations. Yet, it has been transformed profoundly by the new social media. Massey Media understands that applications like Twitter and Facebook give groups, whose reach would be traditionally only local, a chance to reach out nationally and even internationally. With today’s technology, individuals and groups can connect globally, and Massey Media can help to foster that change.

-Kimi Killen

Dear New York Times: Where are the Women Writers?

Yesterday, the New York Times launched a new blog: You’re the Boss – Just another blogs.nytimes.com weblog.

Sounds great for folks like me, doesn’t it? Scroll down the list of writers and you see that they are all men. Where are the women business writers? Um, hello, New York Times, there are a ton of us out here.

Here is the comment I submitted, it’s “awaiting approval”:

Thank you for starting this resource. I am a long-time Times reader. I am an entrepreneur and founder and principal of a boutique public relations firm in DC. My company is four years old and has a small staff.

I ask the editor: Where are the women writers for this blog? May I apply?

Last month, my female friends and I started a new group called the Fabulous DC Women Business Owners to support each other and network. The demand for the group and participation is growing. Women have a different way of approaching work and different issues in negotiating the work world.

Please consider including more voices in this blog.

- Sarah Massey

Newsworthy but not sexy

If you are a reporter and reading this, try this exercise: you’re a single parent; you have two children, ages two and seven; you have a high school diploma. Write yourself a budget: give yourself a job in line with your qualifications (with a typical salary), then figure out how much a typical apartment in the L.A. basin area costs, how much to budget for food, health care, child care, transportation. The assignment serves a purpose: to bring home the fact that it is impossible to support a family on minimum wage. The numbers simply cannot work. You can make up relatives to take care of the children while you’re working, you can make up a second or even a third job, you can pretend that L.A.’s public transportation works well enough that you won’t spend hours commuting, you can discover the holy grail–a minimum wage job with health insurance!–but no matter how many miracles you make up, you’re going to be relying on credit cards and getting deeper and deeper in debt.

Since the ’90s, real wages have dropped. While this economy means that everybody is feeling the pinch, a press that already underreported the “working poor” has stopped talking about them altogether. Every story is about how the formerly-rich and -middle class are dealing with cuts in income. This makes sense in one sense; reporters are, in essence, reporting about the trends as they themselves are experiencing them. As reporters are being laid off right and left, those who are left are seeing budgets drying up for local news coverage, and advertisers don’t target the working poor because the working poor have no money. So reporting is going for the most accessible story, the cheapest to produce, the one that will resonate with advertisers’ target demographics: how their own class is dealing with this economy.

Barbara Ehrenreich wrote an excellent article, Too Poor to Make the News this weekend, pointing out that while the press will pay lip service to unemployment, stories about the working poor who are losing the minimum-wage jobs that barely got them by are not “sexy” enough. People losing their houses are more likely to get press sympathy than those who simply can’t make their rent. And at the same time, nonprofits that service low-wage populations have seen their endowments drop and donations decline, leading to layoffs and service cuts.

Economic stimulus money isn’t likely to get to the people at the bottom. Measures enacted to get it to the people who need it most, like reforming unemployment insurance, have been stymied by several state governors more interested in political rhetoric than their constituents. Affordable universal health care is gearing up for a fight against an apathetic or even hostile Congress. When the press doesn’t cover the people who are hurting the most, it’s easy to say that modernizations to unemployment and health care aren’t necessary. If the press were to show the true state of poverty in America today, the public would demand that something be done.

Unfortunately, as I see it, the press is too afraid of losing what’s left of its own industry to use their platform to leverage change.

- Janaki Spickard-Keeler

The IMF: International Monetary Failure?

Abandoning emerging economies to the assistance of the International Monetary Fund is like assigning a child to a tutor who is not only failing, but bullying other children and selling drugs on the side. However, leaders at home and abroad have failed to realize the disservice they are committing and have promised the IMF 1.1 trillion dollars.

On June 10, 2009, the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade convened to examine issues relating to the current global, economic situation. The hearing, “Foreign Policy Implications of US Efforts to Address the International Financial Crisis: TARP, TALF, and the G-20 Plan,” devoted a significant amount of time to the domestic impact of trade agreements like the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF), yet subcommittee Chairman Brad Sherman (D-CA) opened the hearing with a statement that questioned the policies and practices of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Chairman Sherman accused the financial institution of enacting policies that were “utterly blind to the anti-genocide, anti-proliferation and anti-terrorist policies of the United States.” Such policies will allow for the likely 250 billion-dollar expansion to drawing rights to finance governments like Iran, Sudan, Syria, Burma and Zimbabwe. While, according to witness Dr. Nancy Birdsall, “efforts” are being made to reform IMF governance (such as expanding China’s voting share from 3.7% to 5.6% – currently, Belgium and the Netherlands combined hold a greater share than China), nothing is being done in regards to which nations are granted loans.

Further, and equally important, emerging nations in need of economic assistance have experienced economic mismanagement by the IMF. The IMF’s common prescription for economic growth, full liberalization of the markets, most often results in cuts to social services, high interest rates, and in the case of Malawi, the removal of all agricultural subsidies. Eight years after enacting such “recommendations,” the price of a bag of fertilizer doubled and Malawi farmers found themselves unable to purchase even one bag.

Dr. Nancy Birdsall, President of the Center for Global Development, however, supported the G-20 plan at Wednesday’s hearing, stating that “the IMF today is not the IMF of old.” She claims that the IMF now recognizes and supports the practice of deficit spending during economic crises, especially in the arenas of health and education.

Birdsall’s position is contrary to studies that show that countries engaged in IMF programs suffer. Harvard and New York University studies report that once a nation enters an IMF program, growth does not just slow, it retards.  One study found that countries under IMF programs grew at a rate of 2.04% while those not involved in IMF programs grew at a rate of 4.39%. Another study found that IMF participation had a direct negative impact on growth by producing a stigma which discourages private investors. In these times of frugality, why would the government throw needed taxpayer dollars away on a failing business?

The G-20’s plan to fund the IMF is a plan to keep the markets of developing nations open to U.S. exports. The United States’ economy, in 2008, was almost completely dependent upon exports, one-third of which went to emerging markets. In the race to save developing nations’ economies, the world powers are racing to save themselves.

While the ideal of aiding developing nations should not be opposed or criticized, it is the manner in which the major governments seek to do so with which one finds offense and fault. We should be investing in these countries through government grants and a new, modernized Foreign Assistance Act which could provide the necessary capital and assistance to transform the economic environment by developing infrastructure, education, and better health programs, but we should be doing so in a fair, effective and humanitarian manner. In 2007, the U.S. spent only 21.8 billion dollars on foreign aid, approximately 1/50 of what the G-20 leaders have promised the International Monetary Fund. The effort to remove the proposed 109 billion-dollars from the war funding bill should not be an exercise in penny-pinching; it should be an effort to find a better way.

-Kimberly Killen

Photo Credit: Africa Renewal http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol22no3/malawi2.jpg

The violent face of free trade: Government forces kill indigenous Peruvians defending the Amazon

Peruvian government forces attack indigenous protesters defending their ancestral lands. PHOTO: Thomas Quirynen

As Peru wakes up this morning, many will decide whether to engage in strikes to stand against “free trade” and support indigenous people of the Amazon who were tragically attacked last week by their government. The official death toll from last week’s police attack on indigenous people in Peru is 30 lives lost, though it is estimated that many more have died. They died while protesting the harmful impact of the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement on their forests, their families, and their ancestral lands.

Sarah’s CreativesDC talk on how to make press tonight! 6/9

CreativesDC meets again this Tuesday, June 9th at 6:30 PM, at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. At this CreativesDC event, you will hear some of DC’s most dynamic women, including Sarah Massey, tell us how they use creativity to grow their businesses in 3 minutes, 20 seconds each, using imagery (similar to Pecha Kucha for those of you who may have been to one of their events). Check out the nice shout out at Free in DC, Amy Melrose’s fabulous blog about great things to do in DC.

I hope to see y’all tonight!

- Sarah Massey