Ya Basta! - A Great Padded Gathering!

New York City Ya Basta! Collective calls for all bodies to resist the FTAA.

Ya Basta! calls for a mass resistance to take place on the US-Canadian border at Champlain, NY, by all who aspire to be citizens of the world, indivisible by borders, nations and checkpoints, and consistent with globalizationís "free borders" rhetoric.

As World Capitalism relentlessly promotes "investment" and the "free market" to the detriment of the freedom of people, indeed exploiting and destroying everything in its path, we will travel to Quebec City as citizen of the world, defying the archaic notions of nation-states and borders, and asserting the right of free movement of people across all borders.

We in Ya Basta! call for all people to assert themselves as meaningful citizens of the world, beyond imaginary borders and legislating pieces of paper. We refuse to be commodified, ignored, or accorded a "value". We will not allow the FTAA, NAFTA, MAI, and other alphabet-soup agreements to attempt their perverted and unjust form of 'globalization', which tries to divide people statistically, while unifying and consolidating power and money into still fewer hands.

We cry Ya Basta! Enough!

On April 21st, 2001, in Quebec City, from a thousand points distant, a great, popular convergence of humanity will call for the rejection of the Free Trade of the Americas Area agreement, known as the FTAA. This historic, clandestinely negotiated treaty comes on the rotten heels of the North American Free Trade Agreement, that pivotal "agreement" signed in 1994, between Canada, the United States and Mexico. NAFTA, as we are all too aware, facilitated the rise of a new sweatshop labor force in Mexico, furthered the degradation of living standards and social services in which women and people of color are disproportionately affected, and expedited the loss of jobs for workers in all three countries.

We in Ya Basta! refuse to accept the validity of faceless corporate bureaucrats that claim to speak on behalf of all the peoples of the Americas. These voices of technocracy have unilaterally assumed the power to write, at whim and in the name of global capital, rules that control our lives.

Not so long ago, from across the Atlantic, in defiance of the false barriers to humanity called "borders", came a new force in opposition to globalization. Transformed upon entry, into the colors of a land it finds home to, our colors became orange for the dangers we warn of, yellow for the canaries dying in their cages. We in North America will commit our bodies in opposition to the anti-human practices of global capital, as have our precursors in Europe, most recently against the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, in Prague this past September. New York City Ya Basta! was formed to carry the confrontation with global capital to its home turf, where freedom means little more than the choice between Coke and Pepsi, and where "value of life" is something defined by latter-day robber barons and thieves, whose measuring stick is not freedom nor justice, but profit.

Details:

A Peoples Caravan to mobilize, from all points in the Americas, to cross the imaginary line at
the Canadian / U.S. border at Cornwall, NY on April 19th. Distribution of World Passports to all those who desire to express and live their humanity for its own sake and all those who reject borders in full. Distribution of regalia of self-defense, including padding, shields, and chemically resistive suits. Full transparency as we choose to make no covert plans, to hold no secrecy regarding our intent. We wish to live by our own demands for transparency. Trainings, teach-ins, and other festivities. TBA Coordination of effort with similar actions in Buffalo and Quebec City.