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Around the Country News
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Sierra Club Action Daily
Vol II, #155
November 19, 1999

"What do you think: Is free trade worth environmental risks?"

-- "For Kids Only: WTO, What's the Big Deal?" Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, 11/18/99

SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE: Gearing Up for the WTO Summit

Sierra Club activists across the country are getting into the act to
protest the World Trade Organization Summit in Seattle beginning Nov.
30. Designed to promote global trade, the WTO has -- in its first few
years of existence -- hammered rules affecting sea turtles, food safety
and clean air as "illegal trade barriers." Tens of thousands of
protestors are now expected to turn out for what Sierra Club Executive
Director Carl Pope predicts will be one of the biggest confrontations
between the American people and their government since the 1970s.

In Los Angeles, activists Joan Jones Holtz and Martin Schlageter helped
rally more than 100 activists to stage a "Boston WTeaO Party" to protest
commerce secretary Bill Daley's "free trade road show" bus trip to
Tinsel Town. With signs emblazoned with the "Spirit of `76 Patriots" and
proclaiming "No Globalization without Representation," Holtz, Schlageter
and other protesters dumped "WTO-Dirty Gasoline" and "WTO Obsolete
Computers" into a "WTO Dumpster" to protest various decisions of the WTO
that undercut health and safety standards.

Meanwhile, activist Peter Grant staged the "Last Great Maple Syrup
Pancake Breakfast" in the hometown of the maple syrup industry,
Manchester, Vt., on Monday, Nov. 8. Grant drew loggers, maple-syrup
workers, representatives from the state's two senators' offices and
others to learn more about how an imported tree-eating bug called the
Asian long-horned beetle threatens Vermont's sugar maples. The breakfast
was covered on both the CBS and NBC affiliates.

Now it's time to prepare for Seattle. The action starts on Monday, Nov.
29, with the Health and Environment Day Peoples' Tribunal. Rep. George
Miller (D-Calif.) will chair a panel of international parliamentarians
taking testimony on the WTO's environmental impacts. At noon, we march
to the Seattle Convention Center for the "Make Trade Clean, Green, and
Fair" rally.  Carl Pope will be joined by environmental leaders around
the world -- and help conclude the rally with another "Boston WteaO
Party." On Tuesday, environmentalists will gather at Denny Playfield to
join the "People's Rally & March for Fair Trade."

TAKE ACTION
For those who can't get to Seattle, now is a good time to place that
letter to the editor you've been thinking about. Please make two points:
* the WTO hurts our health and heritage
* President Clinton should take action to "make trade clean, green, and
fair."

See our web page for more info at www.sierraclub.org/trade.

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