Lucas,
Thanks for last week's calls to your senators to say: "Welcome to the TPP 99%."
Now let's put the pressure on the House of Representatives.
Thanks to your many phone calls last week, some U.S. senators are starting
to realize that they're locked out with the 99% in the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP) "free trade agreement" negotiations.
Your 800-plus calls to Senate offices created a buzz. Some Senate offices said
that they weren't even aware of the TPP. Some staffers suggested Googling to
find the negotiating text. Many agreed to send a copy of the draft text!
Let's
keep this going, now focusing on the House of Representatives.
For more information, see last week's email (copied below in case you missed
it) and then take action in the House today.
Thanks,
Brooke
Lucas,
The 13th round of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) "free trade" agreement talks just ended. It is becoming "NAFTA on steroids" -- millions more jobs offshored, floods of unsafe food and products, Internet freedom undermined, higher medicine prices, and Buy America banned.
Six hundred official corporate advisers have the draft TPP text. But does Congress?
Contact your senators today and ask them to send you a copy of the draft TPP texts.
Negotiations have been underway for three years. There is completed text for many issues. Certainly your senator has a copy of the draft, right? (wink, wink) After all, the U.S. will be required to conform all of our domestic laws and policies to the TPP rules.
If you contact your senators today, either they will send you the text and we will all know in detail what's been happening behind those closed-doors -- or they will realize that, um, THEY have been left in the dark. (Senators, welcome to the TPP 99%.)
Senators are not generally keen about getting dissed, turfed or shut out. Like having unelected trade negotiators operating behind closed doors rewrite large swaths of U.S. federal, state and local laws via a "trade" agreement ...
So, contact your senators today: Ask them to send you the draft TPP text. Surely they have it; they are senators, after all.
Your efforts are making a difference; now we need to actually extract the draft text and expose it to a dose of sunshine.
With your help, Representatives Rosa DeLauro and George Miller, along with 133 other Democratic representatives, delivered a letter to the Obama administration demanding that the TPP text be publicly released. Senators Ron Wyden and Sherrod Brown have each introduced legislation to open the TPP process. Senior House Republican Rep. Darrel Issa requested that he and his staff be allowed to participate as observers during the TPP talks that just ended. (Despite this being normal practice for past trade deals, he was shut out -- but not deterred in his efforts to open the process.)
Do your senators know that they can't even see draft texts of a trade agreement that is swiftly becoming "NAFTA on steroids"?
They will sure find out fast when they ask for a copy for you!
Please contact your senators and ask him or her to send you a copy of the TPP draft texts.
Thanks for all that you do.
Sincerely,
Brooke Harper, Senior Field Organizer
Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch