Exposing a "Corporate Coup d'Etat" Stanford teach-in on the FTAA Monday, April 9

At Stanford University, School of Law Building, Room 180, from 6:30- 9 p.m., a Teach-In on the "Free Trade Area of the Americas," will bring light to the Corporate Coup and stealth negotiations that threaten California, through art, image, poetry, song, the video "New World
Borders," speakers, and break-out sessions. Free and open to all.
In Canada and the United States, this week, civil society took dramatic actions to expose the secret Free Trade Area of the Americas
Text. Despite thousands of letters, a lawsuit filed against the U.S. Trade
Representative's decision to withhold documents from the public, the demands of 54 U.S. Representatives to the President, access to the
documents has been limited to the 500 Corporations who will benefit from the agreement and sElected officials of the 34 governments of the Americas
and Caribbean speakers (except Fidel Castro and Cuba), who will meet April 20-22nd at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec. Protesting "Secret
Government," lack of transparency and democratic process, citizens dramatized their concerns in actions which included "issuing a Citizen's Warrant" in a demonstration at Ottawa, and stopping trading on the floor of the Pacific Stock Exchange in San Francisco when "Robin Hood, his Merry Men, and Maid Marion" Challenged King George's Corporate Cronies to stop Stealing from the Poor to give to the Rich.
Condemning N.A.F.T.A., the W.T.O. and the extension of N.A.F.T.A. to all of the Americas, granting corporations unprecedented rights over people, a protester said,
"In the world proposed by the FTAA, every basic element of life and community is up for sale, including the health of the environment, the
safety of workers, and the whole spectrum of efforts we citizens have made to provide education for our children, care for the sick, hope for the poor and all basic services of government.
"We say that our lives, our communities, the health of the earth's ecosystems, the cultures of indigenous peoples, the dreams of children are too important to be subsumed to profit. Another world is possible: a world
of justice, freedom, ecological balance and true abundance, and we will make it real."
Even The Senate Select Committee on International Trade Policy and State Legislation said, in the document "CALIFORNIA: OUR LAWS AT RISK", "under multilateral trade agreements such as the WTO and NAFTA, enforcement
of California's laws could be at risk."
"... the NAFTA and WTO agreements diminish the sovereignty of states such as California and, in doing so, shift decision making power from elected officials to non-elected international trade officials, and can detrimentally diminish the role of public input."
". . . Ultimately the federal government, through its Constitutional
authority and the [NAFTA] implementing bill, retains the authority to overrule inconsistent state law through legislation or civil suit . . . .
The North American Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, Statement of Administrative Action, Section A(2)(e).
"Trade rules of NAFTA or WTO agreements do not regulate trade; they regulate the power of governments to regulate or influence trade.
"... the sovereignty debate focuses on the shifting balance of political power ... away from state legislatures, away from national courts, and away from public proceedings by which voters could hold elected officials accountable. The resulting trade policy is ... more accessible and responsive to multinational corporations."