Get on the bus

Manufacturing News, Source : The Manufacturer US
Published : 10 Oct 2003 9:55

There’s a protest movement heading down your street: the March to Miami bus, currently carrying protestors from Seattle to Miami on a 15-city bus tour.

There’s a protest movement heading down your street: the March to Miami bus, currently carrying protestors from Seattle to Miami on a 15-city bus tour. The tour will include educational forums, press briefings, and protests against the Free Trade Areas of the Americas (FTAA) trade accord.

The Portland, OR-based nonprofit Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment joined together with two districts of the United Steelworkers of America to organize the March. The bus pulled pulled out of Seattle in late September, and will drive through 14 states drumming up support for its cause.

The biodiesel-powered bus—nicknamed the “Blue-Green Machine”—is headed to Miami, where trade representatives from 34 countries, including the U.S., will meet in late November to hash out details of the FTAA accord. The protesters intend to stage a 60-mile march from Lakeworth, FL, into Miami, followed by a mass anti-FTAA rally.

The FTAA accord, when finalized, would create the world’s largest free-trade area, which would include all the countries of the western hemisphere except Cuba, with a total gross domestic product of more than $14 trillion. A free-trade area is an area of international trade free of government interference or trade barriers, such as the one created between the U.S., Canada and Mexico by the North American Free Trade Agreement in the early 1990s.

Earlier this year, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said, “It is our shared hemispheric vision that free trade and openness benefits everyone and provides opportunity, prosperity and hope to all our peoples. President Bush has made the FTAA a top U.S. priority.”

If the accord proceeds, it could become a priority for most manufacturers as well.

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