[Sosfbay-discuss] Our Weekly Cover Story -- "Open Borders"

[alexcathy at aol.com]

Dear Green Friends.

Our Weekly Los Angeles, an inner-city newspaper, published a cover-story on  the so-called 'Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America' (SPP).  It's been called 'NAFTA-Plus' and the first step toward an EU-style "North American Union."  Gregg Reese interviewed me at some length about the position of the U.S. and Canadian Green Parties.

I wrote a blog entry about the article with links and an image of the cover at: 


North American Union? -- Some Green Points 

The meat of the argument is the controversy over the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and views over the North American
Alliance tend to reflect whether or not one thinks NAFTA has been a
success.?  Our Weekly was particularly interested in talking to an African-American member of the Green Party here in Los Angeles.  I am not an expert on this subject, but I reviewed the information posted on the Canadian Green Party web sites (thanks to an assist by Wes Rolley) and tried to represent the Green position as best I could.? 

Anywhere, here is my long sound bite: 


Published by Our Weekly Los Angeles, November 15 - 21, 2007. 
Can Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. Become One United Community?
by Gregg Reese

.? .? .



A "North American Alliance with a common
currency and a regional government like the European Union would be
terrible. Corporations could play the countries against each other
while happily buying and selling U.S. Democrats and Republicans;
Canadian Liberals and Conservatives; and Mexican PAN and PRI
politicians. Corporations would be more powerful than governments.
Minutemen and other U.S. conservatives, blinded by hatred for Mexicans,
rightly criticize the idea, but for the wrong reasons with the wrong
solution. Greens don't want to build a wall around America. U.S. Greens
stand with Canadian Greens and Mexican Greens for Fair Trade...for
everybody." - Green Party member Alex Walker





 The Green party, with incarnations
throughout Europe, Africa, and the Americas, is devoted to concepts of
environmentalism, decentralization, and autonomy which might be equated
to the fears of losing sovereignty in this country as well our
neighbors to the north and south. Greens in Canada and the U.S. are
vocal about the "stealthy" manner in which negotiations are done with
out the participation of Congress or Parliament. Walker speaks for many
of his fellow Greens about the after effects of NAFTA: In the U.S.
we've seen the loss of middle-class manufacturing jobs, stagnating
wages, and larger trade deficits. In Mexico they've seen
heavily-subsidized US corn and other farm products driving small
Mexican farmers off the land. Wages along the Mexican border have
actually been driven down by about 25 percent. 


It is an issue "below the radar" of the clueless MSM, but the potential impact is enormous.  By the way, this is another example of an issue where the Green Party
of the U.S., with an international perspective very different from the
U.S. imperial Democratic and Republican parties, has a very important
role to play as a progressive and inclusive political party.

Read More at: 
http://www.greencommons.org/node/850 


Alex Walker 

________________________________________________________________________
Email and AIM finally together. You've gotta check out free AOL Mail! - http://mail.aol.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.cagreens.org/pipermail/sosfbay-discuss_lists.cagreens.org/attachments/20071117/382d9df6/attachment.html>