Joseph,
Two year ago, conventional wisdom said that in the epic fight between corporate-backed trade deals and regular citizens, stopping these dangerous deals would be nearly impossible.
In one corner, there are hundreds of corporate lobbyists and government officials doing everything they can to increase corporations' power over our lives through two massive trade deals called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
In the other corner, there's all of us regular people, joined by thousands of other organisations banding together to stop these sneaky deals.
Against all expectations, we are actually winning.
How do we know?
These are the top 5 signs that trade negotiations are way off track:
Last week, we had some really good news. In the US, politicians were voting on legislation that would “fast track” the process for agreeing to trade deals, making it easier for Obama to sign the US up to TPP and TTIP and push the deal ahead. They thought they’d win.
Shocking everyone, those backing the trade deal lost the crucial vote -- throwing a wrench into the process and potentially delaying negotiations by weeks. Debate now moves to the other chamber, where SumOfUs members in the US have been hard at work overwhelming the email boxes, offices, and Facebook pages of key legislators like Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi with calls to stop “fast track” and the TPP:
Comments left on US Democratic Leader Pelosi's Facebook wall.
TTIP is being negotiated under a cloak of secrecy with special access for corporate lobbyists: from Monsanto to Nestlé, corporations are scuttling around Brussels to get their agenda into the deal.
European citizens, on the other hand, have been faced with shut doors wherever they turn. So we made sure European leaders and TTIP trade negotiators would get our message anyway: SumOfUs members chipped in to place ads in two top Brussels newspapers and made sure EU politicians and negotiators can no longer turn a blind eye to where we stand on TTIP. Check them out:
Splashy ads funded by all of us in two major European papers.
Thousands of SumOfUs members in New Zealand and Australia, along with our partners at Action Station and It’s Our Future raised over $15,000 to blanket over 140 radio stations across New Zealand with our hard-hitting radio ads. The ads got loads of play, reaching hundreds of thousands of people -- including key decision-makers involved in TPP and other trade deal negotiations:
SumOfUs has teamed up with more than 400 partner organisations to form a EU-wide, self-organised Citizens’ Initiative against TTIP. Already a whopping 1.8 million of us have signed on to stop the deal -- and the number is rising by the minute. Exploding opposition against the TTIP has European leaders terrified. They're scrambling to save the deal by proposing superficial changes to appease the public.
TPP negotiators keep picking isolated, far-away places (increasingly, at gorgeous tropical resorts) to hold their talks. Maybe they don’t want to be bothered with people marching and chanting, disturbing their rounds of golf? Well too bad, because at every turn, we’ve been following them and making sure they know we want this disastrous deal stopped. Here’s a video of a crew of awesome SumOfUs members in Hawaii making their presence known:
If these deals pass, here's just a bit of what we could be in store for: Corporate power grabs that span the world and could change the way we live forever. Deals that set some of the worst global inequalities in stone and make them almost impossible to fix. And a blank cheque for multinationals to draw down the world’s resources, without any rules and regulations to protect future generations.
Does this sound nasty to you? Then you're on the right team. Together, we're standing up against big companies that have hundreds of high-paid lobbyists and slick advertising campaigns, big ad budgets and fancy spin doctors.
But all of that can’t beat what SumOfUs has to offer: millions of committed members, ready to take on corporate trade deals wherever they show up.
These campaigns aren't over yet, and we still have a lot of fight ahead of us, but we are proving that people power can do amazing things.
Just over a year ago, the odds of stopping the TPP and TTIP seemed bleak -- but now public opinion is shifting. These deals are no longer a sure bet, thanks to the work that all of us, and our partners across the globe, have been doing.
Thanks for all your support. We know we're powerful when we work together to stop these dangerous deals. SumOfUs members are the reason this campaign is working -- and together, there's no doubt we can win.
Thanks for all you do,
Kaytee, Emma, Wiebke and the rest of us.
P.S. Can you help fuel our campaign for the final stage? Every dollar we raise helps us dedicate more resources and energy into stopping these dangerous trade deals. Chip in here to help us go all the way to victory. Thank you so much!
A new report finds that the honeybee death rate spiked by 23 percent in the past year. But the world's biggest producer of bee-killing pesticides calls this "good news"!
Will you chip in CA$1 to fund newspaper ads demanding that Bayer stops selling bee-killing pesticides? |
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Dear Joseph,
A shocking new report finds that honeybee death rates spiked by 23 percent in the past year. Bees were already dying by the million, so this is truly frightening news.
And what did Bayer, the world's biggest producer of bee-killing pesticides, say about it?
They called the increase in bee deaths "good news" -- because the increase wasn't as big as it might have been.
Enough is enough -- we're organizing to demand that Bayer stop selling bee-killing pesticides at the company's annual shareholder meeting in Germany on May 27.
Will you chip in CA$1 to buy ads in major newspapers with quotes from beekeepers at the centre of the massive bee die-off that Bayer and its shareholders can't miss, so that the company will have to take us seriously at the meeting? SumOfUs campaigners will also be there in person to deliver our message.
Bees play an absolutely critical role in agriculture as pollinators. Many of the world's most important food crops rely on bees to grow.
And one of the key reasons for the massive global bee die-off is the explosion in use of bee-killing pesticides known as neonicotinoids. Bayer is the biggest producer of bee-killers of them all.
We know Bayer will do everything they can to silence us. But by putting massive ads in newspapers at the heart of Bayer's global headquarters, they won't be able to ignore us.
And by bringing beekeepers voices to the forefront -- the people who are seeing the massive global bee die-off firsthand -- we'll have the most compelling voices on our side.
Unlike Bayer, SumOfUs doesn't have billions in corporate profits to pay for actions like this. The only way we can organise the kind of global campaign we need to save the bees is if you, our members, chip in. We've done it before with the TTIP meeting in Brussels, and to stop the TPP in New Zealand -- and we're closer than ever to killing those dangerous trade deals.
Can we count on you?
SumOfUs members are already fighting globally to save the bees, and making real progress. One of the world's biggest home improvement and gardening chains, Lowe's, recently committed to remove bee-killing pesticides from its stores. This came after nearly one million of us spoke out, funded groundbreaking reporting into the store's pesticide use, and rallied at the Lowe's shareholder meeting and stores around the world. But we need to do more to win this fight -- and the next battle is against Bayer.
Thanks for all you do,
Paul, Jon and the team at SumOfUs
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For more information:
SumOfUs is a worldwide movement of people like you, working together to hold corporations accountable for their actions and forge a new, sustainable path for our global economy.
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