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Peoples Global Action calls on all grassroots social movements, community
based organisations, trade unions, student organisations, indigenous
peoples, farmers organisations, autonomous collectives and everyone who
wishes to participate around the world, to carry out actions against the
World Trade Organisation (WTO) during the next ministerial summit in
Doha, Qatar, November 9th-13th, 2001.
The WTO's aim is very simple: to remove anything that gets in the way of
big business and free trade, upholding the freedom for multinational
companies to act as they please. The WTO polices international trade and
continues to set an agenda that places profit above people and the planet.
Faced with a rapidly expanding grassroots resistance to capitalist
globalisation, the WTO has fled to an isolated desert dictatorship for
its next meeting.
Already built into the agenda are three immensely destructive trade
agreements: the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), the General Agreement on
Trade and Services (GATS) and the Trade Related Intellectual Property
Rights (TRIPS). Between them, they cover issues like: the privatisation
of health, education and water, forcing GMO foods and seeds on member
countries and patents on life forms.
Regardless of whether the WTO meetings continue or not, we will be in the
streets, because the streets are ours. Grassroots organisations all over
the world are organising the following kinds of actions and call on
others to do the same:
- Awareness-raising campaigns against WTO and the effect of their
policies on a global and local level: community based consultations,
counter-meetings, public debates, publications.
- Maximum disruption of the work of the trade ministers attending the
conference: demands for the publication of national positions, blocking
of communications or of departures of delegations, etc.
- Mass coordinated actions on a national and international level: work
stoppages, road blocks, occupation of stock exchanges and other financial
institutions (New York, San Francisco, Sao Paolo...), liberation of grain
stocks (India) on Nov. 9th.
- Decentralised local action: land occupations, creative demonstrations
of grassroots alternatives...
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