• Trading Away our Forests Roadshow
• Turning Point Roadshow
• Rights Action Roadshow
• Call To Action Roadshow
• Border Caravan
• CLAC Roadshow
• Salmai Roadshow

Turning Point Roadshow

This last year saw one of the largest eruptions of massive citizen protest in North American history. Lately the momentum appears to be losing steam as large demonstrations are becoming fewer and farther between. The media has been declaring, almost with a tone of pride, that the movement born in Seattle has died. What the media is ignoring, is the work activists are doing locally – educating people about the many issues affected by globalization while building and strengthening alliances.

After Seattle, the media declared that a new movement had been born. The world acknowledged the activism behind the issues at the forefront of the Seattle protests. But Seattle was not the start of a movement; it was a coming out party. And it would not have been successful without the years of grassroots organizing that took place before it. Seattle was successful because of the Zapatistas, because of the defeat of the MAI and the fight against NAFTA, because of info-shops and micro radio, because of community and organic gardening, because of teach-ins and roadshows, because of tree sits and union strikes, because of alliances between environmental and labor groups, because of consensus and direct action and thousands of people around the world creating change in their communities. The work of activists before Seattle was ignored and now, after a year of massive protest, the media is pulling the blanket back over dissent in America and saying it doesn’t exist.! !

Now activists from all around the country are turning their attention to the next big fight, the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) – a plan to expand NAFTA to the entire Western Hemisphere. The FTAA is expected to be finished by 2005. In April 2001, the FTAA will hold their Summit of the Americas Meeting in Quebec City. Thousands of activists from all around the Americas plan to be there.

The Turning Point Roadshow will be traveling throughout the American southeast during February and March. This group of four activists will be offering a variety of trainings and workshops designed to educate people and inspire action on issues of corporate globalization. Presentations at each stop will include spoken word, music by David Rovics, visuals, and more. Trainings will include everything from consensus, to movement strategy, to the FTAA. The group is focusing on the southeast in order to infuse the region with a stronger because of its lack of activism in relation to the rest of the country. The Roadshow will encourage and help develop individual activist skills as well as regional activism, build and strengthen alliances, create opportunities for discussion, as well as encourage people to go to Quebec City in April.

The Turning Point Roadshow is only one of at least seven other FTAA educational tours that will be traveling throughout February and April in other regions of the U.S., as well as Mexico and Canada.

Turning Point Roadshow on the FTAA

Turning Point Roadshow Web Site

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Rights Action Roadshow

Speaking Tour in Canada and the US March-April, 2001

FTAA ["Free" Trade Area of the Americas], Poverty & Repression

An opportunity to learn about "free" trade, impoverishment and repression in Honduras, Guatemala and Chiapas, and about community economic development alternatives.

In late March & April 2001, Rights Action [formerly Guatemala Partners] will organize speaking tours for community human rights and development activists from Honduras, Guatemala and Chiapas, who will travel through the US and Canada, speaking in public educational forums.

Their tours will culminate in Quebec City, April 15-21, 2001, during the "Summit of the Americas" when government leaders from across the Americas will meet to discuss the "Free" Trade Area of the Americas - FTAA.

Along with accompanying Rights Action staff persons, our southern activist partners will talk about:

• The nature of the "free" economic development models, well entrenched in their countries, that systematically violate the economic and social rights of millions of people, and that contribute directly to violations of political and civil rights.

• The FTAA, as an extension of NAFTA [North American "Free" Trade Agreement], and why thousands of citizens from across the Americas will gather in Quebec City, April 2001, to participate in educational, advocacy and protest activities concerning the FTAA and the "Summit of the Americas".

• What NGOs and CBOs (community-based organizations) are doing in Honduras, Guatemala and Chiapas, to build economic development models that guarantee respect for the basic economic and social rights of the majority poor, as well as their cultural, civil and political rights, and the environment.

• How individuals and organizations in Canada and the US can work with partner groups in the south to enable them to build just societies and development models.

Is your university, school, church, institution or community organization interested in organizing (an) educational and fund-raising event(s) for one of our speakers - accompanied by a Rights Action person -- in late March and April 2001?

If so, let us know as soon as possible.

Contact: Grahame Russell, Tel:. E:

Rights Action [formerly Guatemala Partners]. With offices in Washington DC, Toronto and Guatemala City, Rights Action is a tax-exempt organization that funds and provides technical support to development, humanitarian relief and human rights organizations in Guatemala, Chiapas (Mexico), Honduras and Haiti; and educates in the US and Canada about international rights, humanitarian and development issues.

For more information, see

Call to Action Roadshow

Call To Action (CtA) is now booking stops for our national Spring 2001 tour. We are offering quality skill and issue workshops focusing on the FTAA, and its poster-child: Citigroup.

If your group is interested in tackling the Prison Industrial Complex, Third World Debt, Forest Destruction, Predatory Lending and Redlining as well as expanding your organizing skills, then bring us to your town.

-Informational-
Prison Industrial Complex
Citigroup Campaign (History, How-To, Tips..)
FTAA Basics (including Quebec City updates!)
Predatory Lending and Redlining
Forest Defense: Boise Cascade and Staples
Race and Class
Gender Issues
Globalization and Popular Economics

-Skill Building-
Strategic Campaign Design
Guerrilla Theatre
Media
Direct Action (including blockades and strategies)
Consensus and Facilitation
Organizing 101
Legal Workshop for Direct Action and Mass Action
Non-Violent strategy and tactics
Corporate Research

Call To Action Tour Dates

• Portland, OR -Feb. 16-18
• East Lansing, MI -Feb 23-25
• Chicago -March 2-4
• Lawerence, KS -March 9-11
• Ruckus Spring Break Camp, Flordia -March 13-18
• North Carolina -March 23-26
• Washington DC -March 30 - April 1
• Philidelphia -April 6-8
• New York City -April 10-12
• Boston -April 14-16
• Quebec City -April 20-22

ANTI-FTAA BORDER CARAVAN
 

Community activists in Kingston, ON. would like to invite all FTAA opponents to take part in a border action caravan the day before demonstrations at the Summit of the Americas conference in Quebec City. We encourage all of those either organizing locally or travelling to the Summit of the Americas to fight against international capital every inch of the way.

Ensure Safe Border Crossing for All People
Organizers, and activists  from Peterborough, Belleville, Toronto  and all points west are invited to stay in Kingston with billets on the evening of Wednesday, April 18. We will leave Kingston at 7am Thursday 19 in caravan and travel towards Quebec City, along the "NAFTA Free Trade Corridor" Hwy 401. We will do this very slowly, creating a clogged artery in a major Canada-US trade route. We will stop at the 1000 Islands International Bridge past Gananoque to wait for allies from Syracuse, Utica, Binghamton, the rest of New York State and beyond.
A cell-phone number will be available for any comrades from the US. If they are not allowed free passage, we will close down the border. If they can't pass, nothing will.
From the 1000 Islands bridge the Caravan will continue east, picking up activists from Ottawa at the junction of Hwy 401 and Hwy 16. (If we are blocking the bridge Ottawa activists could join us)

Shut Down the Life-Lines of the Global Economy or Block the Locks!
The caravan will stop in Cornwall, again to ensure safe crossing at the border for anyone who wants to enter Canada.
Near Cornwall are a series of locks for the St.Lawrence Seaway. We will lock down these locks, stopping the vast commercial shipping volume in or out of the Seaway. Paul Martin, Canada's Finance Minister owns  CSL (Canada Shipping Lines) Closing the locks closes down not just an inhumane economic system but directly affects the pocketbooks of the very people implementing the neo-liberal agenda.
From here caravanners could continue to Quebec City or keep the locks shut down. We hope to be in Cornwall by noon, which would leave lots of time to get to Quebec City the evening before the all of the action.

Please visit the Smash FTAA website at   When up and running the site will include 
1. Cellphone numbers for the caravan.
2. Contact numbers for local activists from towns and cities in Ontario and New York who will join the caravan.
3. A detailed timeline of the caravan.
4. Maps.
5. Links to more anti-FTAA direct actions including the border action at Buffalo

If you are interested in joining the anonymous "Smash FTAA" list serve to discuss the Anti-FTAA Border Caravan or other regional (ON/NY) organizing please send and email with "Smash FTAA' in the subject line to

In solidarity and resistance,
The People's Community Union