Forwarded by Jane Clark at [log in to unmask] Around the Country News ================================================ 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. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - For SC email list T-and-C, send: GET TERMS-AND-CONDITIONS.CURRENT to [log in to unmask]