NEAD
271 Dartmouth St. #2H
Boston, MA 02116
Phone: 617.266.8687
info [@] newenglandalliance.org

SPP Challenges You

Now You Can Challenge SPP!

RARE OPPORTUNITY FOR SYSTEM CHANGE.

This is a letter asking your cooperation as a democracy-minded citizen. It concerns a little known but extremely powerful plan for putting our governments—federal, state, and local—under the direction of major corporations. Some call it “Super-NAFTA”. It is deliberately misnamed “Security and Prosperity Partnership” (SPP)---unless you happen to be one of the privileged executives or shareholders whose security and prosperity it enhances. Organized by the executive branches of the US, Canadian, and Mexican governments, with heavy input by 30 major corporations, it seeks to “harmonize” trade, labor, environmental and security regulations among the three countries. The result will be a pro-corporate race to the bottom on workers’ rights, resource protection, personal liberty, and local democracy and economies.

SPP CHALLENGES YOU — Now YOU CAN CHALLENGE SPP!
Download this flier for your friends: www.NewEnglandAlliance.org

To slow or even reverse this plan, citizens and sympathetic legislators in Massachusetts and several other states have proposed or enacted commissions to scrutinize trade agreements like SPP and to advise law-makers and the public as to whether to support them.

A bill has been filed in Massachusetts to create such a commission here. It has been endorsed by the Boston City Council and the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. We are writing to enlist your power as a constituent to urge your state representative and your state senator to get the Globalization Impact Bill (or WTO bill, H.374) out of committee and onto the floor of the legislature for an affirmative vote. State senators and representatives listen to their constituents, but pay little attention to those outside their districts. ONLY A FEW CONSTITUENT PHONE CALLS WILL DO THE TRICK.

The bill will set up a commission that will scrutinize SPP and similar agreements, and shine the light of local, civil authority on them. Their recommendations will influence legislators to resist and possibly reject SPP and undemocratic federal executive agreements which violate our rights and interests.

1. Please read the SUMMARY below, to learn what SPP is. You can also read our article on H.374 in the February issue of BCA Dispatch (on-line at www.NewEnglandAlliance.org .)

2. Then please call your state senator and your state representative. You can look up your legislators at www.WhereDoIVoteMA.com. Type in your address and zip code, and the website will provide you with election information; scroll down to find your state representative and senator (in General Court). Click on their names to go to their official websites, with his/her NAME, photo, and TELEPHONE NUMBER. Call both your senator and representative. Ask to speak to the legislator, or to his/her LEGISLATIVE AIDE if the legislator is busy.

3. Then please explain your concern about SPP, and urge them to support H.374 (“Globalization Impact Bill” or “WTO Bill”). Most importantly, ASK YOUR REPRESENTATIVE & SENATOR TO PLEASE CALL REPRESENTATIVE DAN BOSLEY DIRECTLY, urging him to FAVORABLY REPORT THE BILL OUT OF COMMITTEE NOW. Rep. Bosley is Chairperson of the Committee on Economic Development & Emerging Technologies, to which H.374 has been assigned. Rep. Bosley must hear from as many legislators as possible before the MARCH 19 DEADLINE for reporting the bill out of committee. Ask the legislator’s aide to call you to confirm that they reached Rep. Bosley.

4. Please, if you have a moment, also let us know about your call. Alliance for Democracy: 781-894-1179.

SUMMARY OF SPP—THE MAIN 2008-9 TARGET OF H.374

You probably haven’t read about it or seen it on television—“SPP”, the so-called Security & Prosperity Partnership. In Texas many farmers have, and they persuaded their legislature to halt the part of it that was taking their land to make SuperCorridors—12-lane superhighways flanked by rail and pipelines to be extended throughout North America. But the governor vetoed the legislation, and construction continued. That’s only one thing. SPP is far more than changing the landscape. It is a huge, quiet takeover and integration of governance and military control of all Mexico, US, and Canada by 30 large corporations—--Lockheed-Martin, New York Life, Wal-Mart, etc., in an exclusive group called North American Competitiveness Council—--steering our presidents and prime minister.

1. SPP is a complex, half-secret agreement (begun in March, 2005) among executives—--governmental and corporate—--in the United States, Canada, and Mexico to change national laws, to diminish state and local authority, to exploit oil and water, to build huge “SuperCorridor” highway and pipeline systems for foreign goods and resources, and to put the politics, economics, and security of these countries in the hands of these transnational corporations. Read about SPP in “Why A Globalization Impact Bill?” at www.newenglandalliance.org (click on Readings), in “From NAFTA to the SPP” at www.dollarsandsense.org and in the article “Digby Neck, Nova Scotia vs Mega Quarry, SPP & Atlantica” by Janet Eaton at www.thealliancefordemocracy.org/pdf/AfDJR3208.pdf

2. SPP is totally undemocratic. It ducks congressional debate and oversight, using tax money and private funds to fund its planning groups and supercorridor construction. It has been passed over by the US media, although in Canada it is better known—--and feared as North American “deep integration”. It is taking land by eminent domain—--eventually as much as the area of Vermont. Conservative US patriots are concerned that SPP will undermine US sovereignty. Canadians are upset over the impending loss of their water and oil resources and control over prices. Mexican oil profits will be funneled into Wall Street, and Mexican laborers will be stuck in low-wage sweatshop and plantation/oilfield conditions. Economically squeezed people in Canada and Mexico will become restricted “guest workers” in the US, further driving down wages of US workers.

3. Under Homeland Security and US military control, Canadian and Mexican police and military will be set up to expand their operations onto US soil so as to protect the new infrastructure of SPP and suppress opposition. Although the overgrown national police and military are likely to remain, hydrocarbon and water resources will be drawn down toward exhaustion, and accelerated pollution will add to global warming and to permanent ecosystem and health damage. Corporate officers and shareholders and Mexican landholders will profit in the short term, but ordinary people—--in danger of being tarred with the “terrorist sympathizer” brush and detained by order of Homeland Security—--will suffer reduced living standards, reduced personal liberty, and undermined democracy.

4. SPP makes no plans for conservation, renewable energy, solidarity, or renewal of democracy.

DOWNLOAD THIS FLIER FOR YOUR FRIENDS: www.NewEnglandAlliance.org

Autor: Dave Lewit: 617-266-8687