THE PROBLEM: Free Trade Agreements in the style of NAFTA maintain and strengthen the hegemony of the global North over the global South. Negotiated behind closed doors without the input of affected communities, these agreements have had devastating effects on the environment and human and animal lives in the countries that have entered into them. While multinational corporations get richer, family farmers are displaced; communities are impoverished; access to generic medications is denied; inhumane, unsanitary, polluting factory farms expand; public services are privatized; families are separated and communties are shattered as people are forced to migrate for economic survival; food safety standards are lowered; and labor and environmental laws are undermined in the name of "investor protection."

OUR MISSION: TradeJustice NY Metro is a grassroots coalition of groups and individuals in the New York metropolitan area united in opposition to so-called "free trade" agreements modeled after NAFTA, the infamous North American Free Trade Agreement. Our aim is to prevent the passage of these agreements, instigate the repeal of NAFTA-style agreements that have already passed, create dialogues among diverse communities in New York City and throughout the world on alternatives to the NAFTA model, and to reclaim popular control over the decision-making process on international trade policy.

OUR STRATEGY: By raising awareness of the threat posed by these agreements through community forums, street activism, media outreach, and other means, Tradejustice NY Metro intends to organize communities and concerned individuals to pressure elected officials to vote against trade agreements that compromise the public interest in service to corporate campaign contributors and the neoliberal/ free trade economic agenda. Through lobbying and accountability campaigns we will demonstrate to elected officials the depth and breadth of public opposition to the NAFTA model, ensuring that elected officials fully understand the humanitarian, economic, and ecological costs of free trade agreements. With accountability campaigns, we will keep the public informed on how their elected officials vote on key trade legislation, while making elected officials aware of the political cost of supporting these devastating policies over the objections of an informed electorate. Through corporate campaigns we will target the interests whose agendas are really served by free trade agreements-- the oil companies, multinational banks, agribusiness interests, pharmaceutical firms, and extractive industries who stand to reap billions off ecological ruin and vast suffering. By targeting their public images and economic links, we will pressure them to drop their support for NAFTA-style trade agreements.

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