Life still hard in ‘The Big Easy'
Over 30 students from five Ontario Universities and Colleges, including Fanshawe College, travelled to New Orleans to attend ‘The People's Summit', help rebuild and participate in various actions opposing the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) or as they call it; ‘NAFTA on steroids with guns.'
As the three North American heads of state met with the corporate elite at the Doubletree hotel in New Orleans' business district from April 20 to 22, local activists hosted ‘The People's Summit,' which included workshops, teach-ins, film screenings, community tours, protests, street theatre and other creative displays of resistance to corporate rule, and attracted trade unionists, activists, students and citizens groups from Canada, the United States and Mexico.
Jason Crane, an active organizer with the Fanshawe Social Justice Club who traveled the almost 2,000 km, said the trip was an opportunity to stand up for what he believes in.
“I was tear-gassed and clubbed by police in Montebello resisting this last summer and it's going to take a lot more than that to break my resistance to the undemocratic, corporate-hijacking of our society,” he explained.
“I refuse to let Canada become integrated into the United States as part of ‘Fortress North America.' I refuse to let corporations harmonize labour and environmental standards along the lowest common denominator for all three countries. I refuse to allow the flow of trade and capital to be eased while walls go up and borders become more militarized and inaccessible to people.”
Among the more pressing issues the students identify as arising from this partnership are the immediate escalation in resource exploitation of the Tar Sands in Alberta, expansion of hydroelectricity and foreign takeover of the national oil company in Mexico, the very real prospect of water privatization and bulk water exports across the continent, the recent civil assistance agreement that would allow the military of other North American countries to intervene and occupy each others territory in times of civil emergency and the further exploitation of migrant workers and undermining of labour rights.
Not only did the Ontario student contingent participate in the People's Summit and attend the many protests that were scheduled, they also organized one of their own, but with a little twist.
On Tuesday, April 22 at 9:30 pm they began ‘Fat Cat Tuesday,' a two-hour parade-like festive march through the ‘French Quarter,' which was packed with tourists. As students held banners, dancing and banging on makeshift drums, street signs and other percussive objects, they distributed more than a thousand leaflets to interested locals and tourists, and drew more people into their parade as it grew to be the largest and loudest one of the week.
The next day students volunteered with the ‘Common Ground Relief Collective,' a New Orleans grassroots rebuilding effort in the poverty-stricken lower Ninth Ward, which was totally destroyed and hit the hardest by Hurricane Katrina. Many residents reported that they still hadn't received any help from FEMA or the U.S. government to rebuild their communities other than the replacing of some street signs, meanwhile the government was still evicting people from social and affordable housing in an aggressive gentrification campaign.
To volunteer with Common Ground go to www.commongroundrelief.org. For more on the S.P.P. visit www.canadians.org/integratethis
As the three North American heads of state met with the corporate elite at the Doubletree hotel in New Orleans' business district from April 20 to 22, local activists hosted ‘The People's Summit,' which included workshops, teach-ins, film screenings, community tours, protests, street theatre and other creative displays of resistance to corporate rule, and attracted trade unionists, activists, students and citizens groups from Canada, the United States and Mexico.
Jason Crane, an active organizer with the Fanshawe Social Justice Club who traveled the almost 2,000 km, said the trip was an opportunity to stand up for what he believes in.
“I was tear-gassed and clubbed by police in Montebello resisting this last summer and it's going to take a lot more than that to break my resistance to the undemocratic, corporate-hijacking of our society,” he explained.
“I refuse to let Canada become integrated into the United States as part of ‘Fortress North America.' I refuse to let corporations harmonize labour and environmental standards along the lowest common denominator for all three countries. I refuse to allow the flow of trade and capital to be eased while walls go up and borders become more militarized and inaccessible to people.”
Among the more pressing issues the students identify as arising from this partnership are the immediate escalation in resource exploitation of the Tar Sands in Alberta, expansion of hydroelectricity and foreign takeover of the national oil company in Mexico, the very real prospect of water privatization and bulk water exports across the continent, the recent civil assistance agreement that would allow the military of other North American countries to intervene and occupy each others territory in times of civil emergency and the further exploitation of migrant workers and undermining of labour rights.
Not only did the Ontario student contingent participate in the People's Summit and attend the many protests that were scheduled, they also organized one of their own, but with a little twist.
On Tuesday, April 22 at 9:30 pm they began ‘Fat Cat Tuesday,' a two-hour parade-like festive march through the ‘French Quarter,' which was packed with tourists. As students held banners, dancing and banging on makeshift drums, street signs and other percussive objects, they distributed more than a thousand leaflets to interested locals and tourists, and drew more people into their parade as it grew to be the largest and loudest one of the week.
The next day students volunteered with the ‘Common Ground Relief Collective,' a New Orleans grassroots rebuilding effort in the poverty-stricken lower Ninth Ward, which was totally destroyed and hit the hardest by Hurricane Katrina. Many residents reported that they still hadn't received any help from FEMA or the U.S. government to rebuild their communities other than the replacing of some street signs, meanwhile the government was still evicting people from social and affordable housing in an aggressive gentrification campaign.
To volunteer with Common Ground go to www.commongroundrelief.org. For more on the S.P.P. visit www.canadians.org/integratethis
