Students protest free trade agreement here and abroad

Trying to add their voices to the worldwide chorus against the Free Trade Area of the Americas, student protesters took to the streets of such major cities as Philadelphia, Baltimore and Quebec City this weekend. With a working document approved by leaders from 34 countries on Sunday, the FTAA will create the world's largest trade zone -- with an annual output of over $11 trillion -- encompassing all of North and South America by the time it takes effect at the end of 2005. However, protesters said they felt that the document was crafted in secrecy and favored large, multi-national corporations over the needs of working people. "It's not an agreement that the people in America are going to have a lot to do with in terms of how it gets shaped," said Penn Political Science Ph.D. student Michael Janson as he led a protest in front of Philadelphia City Hall on Saturday. "It's really being designed by a set of individuals that over history have proven themselves not able to act without checks and balances." The most violent protests took place in Quebec City, where the international leaders had gathered. Over 400 people were arrested while police warded off nearly 60,000 protesters with water cannons, rubber bullets and tear gas. "I've never witnessed that before -- to be walking around and seeing people wearing bandannas around their nose and mouth," said University of Vermont sophomore Heidi Keller, who marched in Quebec City on Saturday. "It was great because they had thrown so much tear gas that it actually wound up in the hotel where the delegates were," she added. "They had to turn off the air conditioning and they couldn't eat the food -- it kind of backfired." This weekend's "Summit of the Americas" was the culmination of earlier FTAA discussions which began in 1994 after the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which opened up trade between the United States, Mexico and Canada. "One of the things that the media will tell you about us is that we're protectionists," said Michael Morrill, executive director of the Pennsylvania Consumer Action Network, an independent consumer and environmental rights organization, as he marched with about 100 people in front of Philadelphia City Hall. "Well, there's a sense in which we are protectionists -- we want to protect democracy, we want to protect the environment, we want to protect human rights," he said. Despite all of the criticism, Wharton Professor of Public Policy and Management Howard Pack believes that the FTAA is beneficial. "It's a super thing," Pack said. "It will lead to lower prices for all American consumers -- and a handful of workers will lose their jobs." With the FTAA, some compared the power of business conglomerates to that of such countries as England, Portugal and Denmark in colonial times -- when many countries were exploited for the benefit for a few. "It's any of the Fortune 500 companies... where you have the research and development in America but where you have your labor in peripheral countries where the safety, environmental and occupational safety standards are lax," Temple University junior Maggie Serota said at the Philadelphia rally. "Corporations take advantage of that to increase profit." But Pack contends that most of those protesting are ill-informed about the trade topic. "Nobody elected those people who are protesting -- in my view most of them don't know much about these issues," he said. The protesters did believe that they had an impact on the negotiations. The pact now includes a clause that requires countries participating in the FTAA to uphold democratic principles, and the leaders also promised to release the text of the trade agreement to public scrutiny for the first time. "Since there was this huge protest it made a lot of press -- now people are asking what went on in Quebec," said College junior Matt Grove, who traveled down to protest the FTAA in Baltimore. As for the many people who have never heard of the FTAA, Groves replied, "Most people never heard of the World Trade Organization either until there were like 60,000 people on the streets of Seattle." With the approval of the FTAA on Sunday, talks among trade officials will hammer out the details until 2004, when the country's leaders will gather again in Argentina. But the protesters did not feel that their efforts were in vain. "We knew that we weren't going to stop them from signing it," Keller said. "As long as we get people to mobilize and get a strong enough movement, eventually by [2005] we can do a lot to save the world from globalization."