No Backroom Deals for Polluters
and Habitat Destroyers!
Toxic TPP: Out of the Shadows!

Week of Action September 8-15

Sign up to RSVP and receive info on housing, buses, and carpooling for all events
at http://tradejustice.net/tppform

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a proposed 11 country international deal that is poised to become the largest Free Trade Agreement in U.S. history.  Approximately 600 corporate “advisers” – including representatives of notorious corporate polluters – have been granted access to the negotiating texts of the agreement, while the general public, environmental groups, and even most members of Congress are barred from even reviewing what U.S. negotiators are proposing in our names. 

If it continues on its current course, the TPP is likely to:
* encourage an increase in hydraulic fracturing for natural gas, a dangerous procedure that can permanently contaminate water supplies and poison farmland.
* allow corporations to attack restrictions on the importation of toxic products and poisonous chemicals as “barriers to trade” in international tribunals outside the jurisdiction of the US court system.
* empower foreign investors to sue our government for prohibiting polluting projects and ecologically destructive resource extraction (and give US investors the power to attack environmental protection in other countries)
* enable polluters to escape responsibility for remediating toxic sites
* promote coal exports, encouraging further mountaintop removal mining
* further endanger critical ecosystems, including Malaysian and Peruvian rainforests and Canadian and Chilean boreal forests.
* exacerbate climate change, agricultural pollution, and animal suffering by driving a global shift towards increased consumption of animal products, particularly those from factory farms and feedlots. (Animal agriculture accounts for 51% of climate change, according to a paper published by the WorldWatch Institute)

As the 14th major round negotiations gets under way in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, please join with environmental, labor, public health, family farm, consumer, Occupy and other social justice organizations from September 8-15th for a major mobilization demanding an end to back-room dealmaking for corporate polluters!

Activities will include:
September 8th and 9^th: Direct Action Training to Stop the TPP Global Corporate Coup!
Real News Network Building, 235 Holiday Street , Baltimore, MD
Admission is Free! Housing is provided!
Details at http://itsoureconomy.us/occupy-the-tpp-stop-the-global-corporate-coup/
Download a printable flier about the training at http://gjae.org/baltnat

September 9^th @ 3PM: TPP Out of the Shadows! Rally for Good Jobs, Affordable Medicine & A Healthy Environment
Lansdowne Resort  •  44050 Woodridge Pkwy  •  Leesburg, Virginia (near Washington, DC)
Details at http://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/blog/2012/08/09/no-back-room-deals-for-the-1/
Download a printable flier at http://gjae.org/tppnational

* Additional creative actions will take place through the negotiations! Attend the direct action training to learn more and fill out the form at the link below to indicate what days you are available to attend events.

RSVP online at http://tradejustice.net/tppform now for info on carpools, buses, housing, and volunteer opportunities.

• QUESTIONS ABOUT THE WEEK OF ACTION:
  
  HOW CAN I HELP IN ADVANCE? (sign up to help in any of these ways at http://tradejustice.net/tppform)
  
  1) Make signs, banners, and other visuals in advance of the rally that people can bring down.
  2) Volunteer to make calls to invite New York activists to come down for this mobilization.  We can provide lists of names and numbers.
  3) Pass our fliers at rallies, marches, and other events to publicize the rally, training, and other actions.  We can suggest places to flier.
  
  CAN I MAKE A DONATION TO SUPPORT THIS EFFORT?
   Donate to cover materials and other action-related costs at  http://tradejustice.net/tppfund.
  
  I CAN'T MAKE IT TO VA - ARE THERE OTHER WAYS I CAN HELP? (sign up to help at http://tradejustice.net/tppform)
  
  1) Make calls to reporters to invite them to the actions in Leesburg to and confirm that they received press releases.  Anyone can help with this regardless of experience if they have a phone and a computer (to mail press contact lists to and email press releases from.  People with additional media experience may also be able to help in developing press contact lists and updating news releases with new action details.
  2) Offer to house sit or pet sit for someone planning to spend several days in Leesburg.
  
  WHAT ABOUT ONLINE PETITIONS AND LETTERS?
  
  1) Spread the Word About the Trans-Pacific Partnership Send a letter to the editor to major news outlets and demand that they cover the deal that is swiftly becoming “NAFTA-on-steroids” with the world.

• http://action.citizen.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=11398

  
  2) Demand a New Trade Model  Ask your senators to help steer our trade policy back on course by cosponsoring the 21st Century Trade Agreements Act today.

  http://action.citizen.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=11299

• 
  3) Derail the Trans-Pacific Partnership TPP negotiations continue in Leesburg, Virginia, with the public locked out and the texts held in tight secrecy. Urge U.S. Trade representative Ron Kirk to release the draft texts.
  http://action.citizen.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=11209

• 4) Take Fracking Out of Our Trade Agreements Tell US Trade Representative Ron Kirk  that no trade agreement should pave the way for increased fracking.
  https://secure.sierraclub.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=9431

• 
  Questions: Call (718) 218-4523 or email notpp@tradejustice.net
  
  And don't forget - fill out the form to RSVP online now for info on carpools, buses, housing, and volunteer opportunities.
  
  Learn more about how TPP threatens the environment:

  Global Justice for Animals and the Environment: http://gjae.org/tppfli

• The Sierra Club: http://sierraclub.org/trade/downloads/TPP-Factsheet.pdf

• Friends of the Earth: http://www.foe.org/projects/economics-for-the-earth/trade/trans-pacific-partnership

• Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch: http://www.citizen.org/documents/fact-sheet-tpp-and-environment.pdf