Congratulations: We
won the First Round!
If CAFTA were to come up for
a vote in congress today-it would be voted down!
The efforts
of people from throughout the U.S. and Central
America, from schools, churches, government,
the development world and solidarity communities
have successfully stalled CAFTA. Why is
buying time before a vote on CAFTA so important?
Following
the closing of the negotiations of CAFTA last
December, after it was clear this was not a
fair trade agreement, or for that matter even
free trade agreement, the social movement in
the US made two goals:
1) Delay CAFTA.
We wanted to create enough opposition to ensure
a vote on CAFTA didn't happen until after the
presidential elections, buying us time to increase opposition.
As each day passes the impact of CAFTA, the
harm it would cause the poor of Central America,
becomes clearer and clearer both to civil society
and in the halls of Congress, which should help
us with our second goal.
2) Beat CAFTA--and in
its wake create a just trade agreement between
Central America and the U.S.
In order
to beat CAFTA we need to broaden the dialogue;
we need to make public the many devastating
impacts CAFTA will have. By implicating
more interests we can add new allies.
Also, we need to get our representatives who
are leaning no on CAFTA to commit to no now,
while we still have leverage--in November, when
the elections pressure has passed, many representatives
are likely to switch sides.
On behalf
of our friends and local partners in El Salvador,
thanks for supporting these efforts.
©
|
