Enact Fair Trade Policies
Bad trade agreements that do not have worker protections and rely on moving manufacturing and production to low-wage areas of the world are resulting in a vicious spiral to the bottom, without a safety net for those displaced from their livelihoods nor job training programs to provide skills for new jobs.
a. Rethink trade
We need to create GOOD trade policies – to fight FOR trade that raises wages and lessens economic inequality, counters the planetary climate crisis, and curbs corporate power in this era of globalization. (Read More)
b. Campaign to Guarantee Protections for the Right to Organize a Union
Read about Susana Prieto Terrazas, a labor attorney and activist who was released from jail. (Read more)
c. Free Trade Disproportionately Harms Black and Brown Workers
Read about how black and Latin American workers are being harmed by current U.S. trade policies.
(Read more)
d. Promote Cross Border Solidarity with Maquiladora Workers
Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso Texas, is the location of many huge maquiladoras. A growing movement of maquiladoras workers is protesting their working conditions. (Read more)
People displaced from other parts of Mexico would arrive on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez and find a plot of sand. They would rope together wooden pallets and tack on black roofing paper to make walls and stretch a vinyl tarp across for a roof. After they made some money in the maquiladoras, they would start making a cinder block wall. In this way, the neighborhood of Anapra began to develop. Many people come from close-knit villages where their people lived for thousands of years. In Anapra,they are strangers to each other. The grass-roots organization Las Hormigas Comunidad en Desarrollo (the Ants, a community in development) built a community center to organize programs and workshops to develop a sense of community in Anapra. Building a collective identity and relations between people is a necessary step to winning social change. (Read more)