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Sample FTAA Press Release
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** For Immediate Release [Today's date] **
What: [The anti-FTAA event or protest your group is planning]
When: [Day/date/time]
Where: [local venue]
Contact: [local contact person and phone number]
Local Activists Seek to Halt NAFTA Expansion
[Your local group] will be holding a [protest/teach-in/meeting] against the Free Trade Area of the Americas at [location] on [date and time].
The Free Trade Area of the Americas will expand many of the terms and conditions of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) to the entire Western Hemisphere (with the exception of Cuba), creating the worldıs largest free trade zone. Thirty-four countries with a total population of over 700 million will be affected.
"We oppose the FTAA because it will expand and strengthen the powers of NAFTA. NAFTA has been an unmitigated disaster for workers, indigenous communities, and the environment in the US, Canada, and Mexico. Corporate interests, through the FTAA, are trying to inflict control on the entire hemisphere by writing a new international law that will supersede national and local laws," said [local organizer, from local group].
Furthermore, many of the proposed policies in the FTAA are the same regulations from the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI) in 1998 and the hotly protested Seattle Ministerial of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1999, both of which failed thanks to international education campaigns and massive popular protest.
"It is obvious that business leaders and their cronies in the US government are trying to impose unpopular polices on the Western Hemisphere. Both the MAI and the Seattle WTO Ministerial attempted to give corporations power over national and local laws and deny governments the right to regulate the selling of public services to multinational corporations. Now they are trying to sneak them through as the FTAA," stated [local organizer, from local group]."
"Only a minority of elites benefit from these kinds of trade agreements, while the vast majority of people throughout the world suffer," said [another local organizer, from local group]
Perhaps the most disturbing part of the FTAA is the fact that negotiations have been going on in secret since 1994. Not even the US Congress has seen a draft of the agreement that they will be asked to sign. While the public cannot even learn what is being negotiated, business leaders from around the hemisphere have been invited to give presentations at every ministerial and negotiation meeting since 1997.
The FTAA will be on the agenda when government leaders from every country in the hemisphere (except Cuba) meet this April, at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City. Throughout the hemisphere, people are mobilizing in opposition to the FTAA. [Local organization] will be sending [x number] of people to Quebec City and we will also be organizing local events [fill in what they will be] during the same time period.
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