Our joint event with the The Center for Political Education has been cancelled so we can join forces with another WTO anniversary event sponsored by Shaping San Francisco
Seattle/WTO Shutdown: 20th Anniversary
Wednesday 7:30-9:30
Eric Quezada Center for Culture and Politics
518 Valencia Street (near 16th), in San Francisco
Imagine waking up on December 1, 1999, and learning about the World Trade Organization (WTO) for the first time by watching it fall apart. The catalyst? An internationalist “inside-outside” strategy that leveraged people power on the outside to provide political space inside for the Global South and civil society organizations. (A note on the WTO.)
The potential for such a political moment is once again upon us, exactly 10 years after the collapse of the WTO in Seattle, Wash. This time, it’s the 15th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which will meet in Copenhagen, Denmark on December 7, 2009, for 12 days to forge a climate policy that will succeed the initial commitments set by the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. The goal is to substantially reduce atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gasses while addressing the consequences of climate disruption already underway. Global warming has already disproportionately impacted the small island states, coastal peoples, indigenous peoples, and the poor throughout the world, particularly in Africa.
"The climate bill, unfortunately, has been co-opted by the oil and coal industry."
—Tom Goldtooth
"My number one inspiration right now is not an organization or a person or an event, it’s the city of Detroit."
—Adrienne Maree Brown
The Financial Crash and the Right to the City
An Interview by Amy Goodman
David Harvey is a Marxist geographer and distinguished professor of anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He’s the author of several books, including The Limits to Capital and A Brief History of Neo-liberalism.
In the United States, there are 361 public ports. The Port of Oakland, the fourth largest, processes about $30 billion of exports and imports annually. Oakland’s enormous cranes, unloading gigantic ships, mean a lot of money is changing hands. But critics say local communities are being short-changed on benefits and plagued with negative impacts. “It’s not a private business, it’s a public agency and its revenue is not profit. It belongs to the people.” So says Rob Smith of Urban Strategies in Oakland.
Alternative models to corporate agribusiness
For thousands of years, small family farmers across the globe have grown food for their local communities, planting diverse crops in healthy soil, recycling organic matter, following nature’s rainfall patterns, and maintaining our rich biodiversity. Today, this agricultural system—which was built on knowledge accumulated and passed on from one farming generation to the next—faces both an environmental and moral crisis.
What’s called “modern industrial agriculture” is replacing family farms with corporate farms, and biodiversity with monocultures. This agricultural model is trading local food security for global commerce.
