PROTEST AT HILLARY CLINTON'S NYC OFFICES IN SUPPORT OF PERUVIAN FARMERS

A rally in in support of 5 Peruvian farmers killed by the Peruvian government was held today at noon in front of the Peruvian consulate in NYC. The protesters are asking for the Alan Garcia government to respect the life and the rights of Peruvian farmers in their struggle against the US-Peru FTA - Free Trade Agreement. The protest was sponsored by the NYC People's Referendum on Free Trade.

Also today, protesters were arrested after they shackled themselves at Hillary Clinton's NYC Senate office, after her support of the US-Peru FTA and her silence in regards of the Peruvian farmers killed. Hillary Clinton has lied repeatedly about this issue, and she hasn't come forward on the responsibility of her husband for signing the failed NAFTA free trade deal, from which the Peru deal was copied almost exactly. Both Clinton and Obama supported the Peru FTA but neither of them voted for it.

AP reports via International Herald Tribune

NEW YORK: Three people have been arrested while protesting free trade at Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate office in New York.

The about a dozen protesters included several who apparently shackled themselves to the building's front door. Charges for those arrested include reckless endangerment, criminal trespass, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.

A Clinton spokesman says the New York senator has always respected the public's right to legally exercise freedom of speech.

Free trade has recently become a hot topic in the Democratic presidential primary contest, with Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama trading charges over who would better protect U.S. jobs.

VIDEOS OF THE PROTESTS TODAY
AT HILLARY CLINTON'S OFFICES IN NYC










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BACKGROUND
By the NYCRFT

With the US maintaining subsidies on its genetically modified, industrially produced, pesticide treated field crops and factory farmed meat, dairy, and egg products, Peruvian family farmers will be driven out of business by the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement, ratified by Congress in late 2007.

This will lead to forced migration of farmers, destruction of ecologically sustainable traditional methods of agriculture, increased profits for inhumane factory farms, more farmers growing coca for the global cocaine trade, and rural displacement and unemployment creating a new workforce for sweatshop and corporate plantation exploitation.

Peru's farmers are being murdered in the streets as they protest this destructive policy!

With President Bush now pushing a free trade agreement with Colombia, these events demonstrate why NAFTA-style trade agreements must be REPEALED, not expanded to new countries.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Call and email your Congress member in the US House of Representatives and ask him/her to co-sponsor the Fair Trade for All Act of 2007 (H.R. 4124), for the President to withdraw from the United States-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement. Call and email your Senators and demand that they sponsor a Senate version of the Fair Trade for All Act.

You can find the names and contact information for your Senators and
Representative at http://snipurl.com/leglookup.


UPDATE - February 28, 2007

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! reports today:

Three Arrested Protesting Peru Trade Deal at Clinton Office

Three activists were arrested Tuesday after they shut down a New York building containing one of Senator Hillary Clinton’s offices. The activists chained themselves to the building’s doors. They denounced Clinton for supporting the Peru free trade agreement while campaigning as an opponent of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. Adam Weissman of the Wetlands’ Activist Collective spoke while chained to a door.

Adam Weissman: “Hillary Clinton is a hypocrite. She’s telling us that NAFTA needs to be reformed at the same time she supported a free trade agreement [with Peru] that is just as bad as NAFTA and in many ways worse—for workers, for the environment, for family farmers, for people with AIDS. Hillary Clinton now thinks it’s a good soundbite to oppose NAFTA when it helps her in the primaries. But when it really mattered, she stood in support of a free trade agreement that will doom the Amazon rainforest, that will kill people with AIDS by denying them access to life-saving medications.”

In December, the Democratic Senate approved the Peru free trade deal by a vote of seventy-seven to eighteen. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama missed the vote but expressed their support for the deal. Last week in Peru, farmers held a two-day national strike to protest the pending trade deal. Four farmers died, and 700 were arrested.

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