Mexico Archives - Occupy Toronto

Day against the TPP, 12:30 event below

Jan 31, 2014 – Day of Action against the TPP When: Friday, January 31, 2014 Where: Across North America No more NAFTA — 20 Years is Enough! This is a call to action for communities throughout Mexico, Canada and the United States to join together on January 31, 2014, and say “ENOUGH!” to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other corporate “trade” deals. Solidarity actions elsewhere throughout the globe are also welcome. January 2014 marks the twenty-year anniversary of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a pact that has had devastating consequences for working families, small farmers, indigenous peoples, small business and the environment in all three countries and beyond. The pending Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has been described as “NAFTA on Steroids.” Four years into the TPP negotiations, this new corporate power grab threatens to: * Destroy livelihoods and accelerate the global race to the bottom in wages and working conditions * Further commodify agriculture, trample food sovereignty, hurt small farmers and contribute to forced migration * Enable new corporate attacks on democratically-enacted environmental and consumer protections * Undermine global economic stability by prohibiting effective regulation of financial markets * Reduce access to life-saving generic medications, increase the costs of prescriptions, and restrict freedom on the Internet tradejustice.ca/tpp/jan31 | Facebook event When: Friday January 31 — 12:30 pm Where: Mexican Consulate, 11 King St W, Toronto What: Silent march from the Mexican consulate to the U.S. consulate Why: January 2014 marks the twenty-year anniversary of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a pact that has had devastating consequences for working families, small farmers, indigenous peoples and the environment in all three countries and beyond. The pending Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has been described as “NAFTA on Steroids.” Sponsored by Council of Canadians, Mining Injustice Solidarity Network, Common Frontiers and Trade Justice Network | Facebook event...

Occupy’s Brief Stay on the Long Arc

“The true problem… is to allow the problems to arise,” wrote R.D. Laing in The Politics of Experience. No less true today than when published in 1967 – or underlined in red the next year. 1968 saw the Prague Spring and My Lai massacre, the Chicago riots and Irish “Troubles.” Students were murdered in Mexico’s Plaza de las Tres Culturas; they brought Paris to a halt when university occupations spread to factories. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Three years earlier, the year of Malcolm X’s murder, King delivered one of his now most-quoted sermons. “[T]he arc of the moral universe is long,” he declared from the steps of the Montgomery, Alabama Capitol, “but it bends toward justice.” New students of social justice still hear stories of ’68 – more than they might about that long arc’s course through their own lifetimes. After all, such stories – activist leaders murdered for their charisma; a world capital nearly taken over by students – seem more fantasy than history, and so don’t implicate Gen X-ers and Millennials, still yet to allow the problems arise in our own time, as more recent events might. After they arise again, as they must, those who ask how will look to 2011 — the Arab Spring, the Indignados, Occupy’s meta-movement. But, with some distance, 2011 might only make sense in the light of the decade that came before it. By this point in 2001, hundreds of thousands of “ant-globalization” protesters – who had captured headlines in 1999 by shutting down the World Trade Organization in Seattle – had laid siege to Free Trade Area of the Americas and G8 meetings, in Quebec City and Genoa respectively. full article: http://www.ryersonfreepress.ca/node/155...

#mai22 Solidarity with Quebec Students

All Canadian eyes should be on Quebec now, as the Quebec student movement marks its 100th day of contiuous striking. Initially the movement was prepared to oppose incremental university tuition rates, but as the four months progressed, it took hold as a civil liberties and human rights movement; and through their endurance, and popular support, the world now recognizes Quebec as a leading example of what civil resistance and direct democracy is capable of, as did the Occupy Wall Street and Tahrir Square movements, only a few months prior. Media statement by Occupy Toronto As hundreds of thousands gathered in the streets of Montreal for a general strike in support of Montreal’s student movement, Occupy Toronto led a march of hundreds to show their support for the students and against the repressive Charest government’s moves to criminalize protest. Occupy Toronto is answering the call from Quebec to bring the spirit of the student strike to the rest of Canada, and stands with the rallying cry for free education. “Education, the youth: these are investments, not expenses. And if we aren’t investing in our children, then what is the point of money?” said Roxy Cohen, an organizer with the Occupy Toronto Free Skule. The Toronto march, which started at the University of Toronto’s Hart House today at 2pm, held a general assembly to discuss the march’s route, deciding on a route that ended at Ryerson University. Montreal student activist Laura Dolan addressed the assembly. This isn’t just a solidarity action, Dolan explained. Tuition is already too high across Canada considering places like Mexico can afford free education at the university level without sentencing students into a lifetime of debt. full article: http://wearechangetoronto.org/2012/05/23/4660...