Michael Morrill, director of Pennsylvania Consumer Action Network and veteran of anti-globalization protests speaks on FTAA and the upcoming Summit of the Americas.

Michael Morrill was just a child when he first got into politics and activism, going door-to-door and handing out flyers. In recent years, he has attended major protests against corporate globalization in places such as Seattle; Washington, D.C.; Windsor, Ontario; and Prague, Czech Republic.
This week, Morrill will speak on the CU-Boulder campus as part of the People's Summit on Globalization, a four-day conference organized by students. A major current focus of Morrill's work, and of the conference, is the upcoming Summit of the Americas, taking place April 20-22 in Quebec. The Quebec summit -- during which heads of state will negotiate a proposed expansion of the North American Free Trade Agreement to include virtually all of the Western Hemisphere -- is expected to draw tens of thousands of protesters.
Morrill is currently director of the Pennsylvania Consumer Action Network (www.pcan.org), a grassroots activist group that has been working on trade issues. He spoke with the Colorado Daily via telephone Friday; what follows is a condensed version of the conversation:

CD: One of the main things you'll be discussing in Boulder is the Summit of the Americas. How can you best describe what this event is about?
Morrill: The major reason for this summit is to talk about expanding NAFTA into all of the Americas, except for Cuba. It is a summit; the heads of state of 34 nations will be gathering there to talk about how they can reduce "barriers to trade" -- that's a code word for giving corporations the right to do whatever they want.
FTAA is one of the topics at the summit. We call it "NAFTA on steroids." It's basically the worst parts of NAFTA, combined with the worst components of the WTO that didn't get through in the Millennium Round (in Seattle).

CD: So FTAA is about more than just expanding NAFTA geographically; there are other provisions as well.
Morrill: Yeah, it's not just, "Let's take NAFTA and expand it throughout all the Americas." It changes a lot of the practices.

CD: What's the connection between the Multilateral Agreement of Investment and FTAA?
Morrill: The Multilateral Agreement on Investment was something that was proposed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which is basically some 30-odd industrialized nations around the world. One of the things that they were working on was this thing called the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, which was negotiated by the Clinton administration behind closed doors for three years before anyone even knew about it, with the cooperation of the Republican leadership in Congress.
This sounds very conspiratorial, and I'm not a conspiracy theorist -- but the truth is that is what was going on. It was behind closed doors; these people were meeting and talking about things that no one had any awareness of, including members of Congress. And the only reason that it saw the light of day was because Public Citizen was able to get a copy of the draft of MAI and released it to the public.
MAI, basically, what they described it as, was "writing a new global constitution." This was in the document itself. It was said that the MAI would never pass the "Dracula test" -- when it saw the light of day, it would wither up and die.
And it was true. As soon as people in various countries saw it, they were just shocked. The French arts community was just outraged at the possibility of this, and they led the fight in France. And in India, and other Asian and African countries, there was an uproar. There was a demonstration against MAI, that had 500,000 people, in India. Country after country started balking at getting this passed, and everybody realized that this is never going to happen.
And so, during the Millennium Round of the WTO, there was going to be an attempt to pass a lot of the provisions, and when the Seattle meeting of the WTO was basically stopped by the demonstrations, they had to find a new venue for this.
So it appears that what they're going to do now is "global incrementalism," starting with getting some of the controversial provisions included in the FTAA. They'll do it piece by piece.

CD: What's so bad about some of these provisions?
Morrill: The definition of trade barrier (in the MAI) was anything that prevented a company or anybody from making money in one country in a way that they could do in another country. For instance, France protects its arts. Every movie ticket that you buy, there's a surcharge that subsidizes French-speaking films. ... That would be considered a trade barrier, because that's something that would be an advantage for French-speaking films that wouldn't be allowed for U.S. films.
More insidious, though, was the fact that the MAI was creating this new system of world courts, which essentially gave equal standing for corporations to nation-states. So General Motors could sue the United States for trade violations. There wouldn't be a new World Court, but there would be a few different venues from which the plaintiffs could choose. One of them, for instance, would be the International Chamber of Commerce. So the International Chamber of Commerce would serve as a court determining whether or not there was a trade violation, and nations would have to respond to this.
One of the things that was really frightful, and will be frightful if the FTAA goes through ... is the overturning of local sovereignty. One way that was evidenced was by having nations being the only party that could defend against a suit.
For instance, if Sony decided that they wanted to build a new plant in Philadelphia and start manufacturing, Philadelphia and many other cities have laws about developing, and if you want to build certain kinds of projects, you have to guarantee a certain number of local jobs. You have to guarantee that there are a certain number of women that are hired, African Americans, and that sort of thing. And whether you agree with those kinds of things or not, that is policy that the city of Philadelphia and its people have decided.
That would clearly be considered a trade barrier under (MAI), and so if Sony decided to sue, the city of Philadelphia could not defend itself; the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania could not defend itself -- only the United States attorney general could. And since the U.S. attorney general had been appointed by President Clinton and now is appointed by Bush, neither president would be inclined to defend on cases like this. They're the ones pushing for this. So that would mean that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania or the city of Philadelphia would have no defense.
One of the other components is GATS -- the General Agreement on Trade and Services. Services is a really broad category that includes virtually, well, all kinds of things: education, health care, environmental services, water, energy, postal services -- basically anything you pay for that isn't a physical object is a service.
In most nations, a lot of services are provided by governmental agencies. That would be discouraged, and it would basically require the privatization of a lot of services and would make it very difficult to continue the provision of a lot of these services -- public schools, prisons, postal service, water.
One of the scariest thing is it's saying that water is a commodity only. And that means that if this kind of thing happens, eventually it will require that all nations that are part of the agreement privatize all their water.
Public schools, we consider that basically a public function, and the United States has been a leader in that. And there have always been private schools. But if you determine that that's a service that must be private, then what's going to happen to public schooling? Are we going to give vouchers to everybody? Probably not, because that would be considered a trade barrier.
All of these things are not so far-fetched. Virtually anything that we care about is going to be affected by this, whether it's the environment, whether it's human rights, labor rights, local sovereignty. All of these things are going to be concepts of the past.

CD: What is the status of GATS?
Morrill: There is a GATS negotiation going on within the WTO, but the FTAA is going much further than anything the WTO thinks they can get.

CD: Is that because the United States has more clout within the Western Hemisphere than we do worldwide?
Morrill: Yeah -- basically, the main reason the WTO failed to get a lot of this done was not so much that there was a lot of groundswell among nations outside of the north; it was more that the Europeans and the United States couldn't agree on things. And so the combination of that and the demonstrations on the streets in Seattle killed that round.
There is much more agreement among the government leaders in the Americas. But there is actually even much more agreement among the people of the Americas that none of us wants this. Poll after poll in every nation where polls have been taken have said, "Don't do this."

CD: What are the prospects of this deal getting hammered out in Quebec?
Morrill: This is just a step on the way. There's a more immediate threat in the United States, and that's giving fast-track authority to George W. Bush. Clinton tried to get it and couldn't.
If you give the president fast-track negotiating authority, it means that he can negotiate an agreement with another nation and then bring it back to Congress for approval -- but Congress can only vote it up or down; they can't amend it. So if you like the idea of "free trade" and want some kind of agreement to pass, but you don't like the provisions because there are no protections for the environment, or there are no protections for human rights, or there are no protections for workers or anything that you might care about, you have to vote either yes or no. (But) if you agree with 95 percent of it, the likelihood is that you'll vote for it. That's really scary as well, because Congress is giving away its authority to approve treaties.

CD: The FTAA is being negotiated largely in secret.
Morrill: Yeah, and fast-track authority would only exacerbate that, because the president would have absolutely no responsibility to the public. He doesn't have to worry about anything until he comes up with a finished product. And that's the kind of thing that should raise a lot of suspicion among people who believe in democracy. You're giving the authority to the president and the U.S. trade representative to negotiate this completely behind closed doors, and not even a member of Congress gets to know what's going on until the finished product comes back.

CD: Canadian authorities are preparing unprecedented security measures to keep protesters away from the Quebec summit. What does that say to you about the FTAA process?
Morrill: I've seen this happening on both sides of the border since Seattle. Seattle began the militarization of police work as far as demonstrations and unfortunately, it's continued.
Last April in Washington, the same thing happened at the meeting of the World Bank and IMF. And the same thing happened at demonstrations that we organized in Philadelphia during the Republican National Convention, where the police not only patrolled things but infiltrated organizations, made pre-emptive arrests.
In my Canadian experience last June, during the Organization of American States meeting, I was held by Canadian customs for four hours before I was allowed into the country.

CD: On what grounds?
Morrill: They don't have to give grounds. They knew where I was going. They knew that I was attending the (activist) conference that was taking place at the same time as the OAS meeting. And they copied every piece of paper that I had. They took my car apart, and every piece of paper that I had -- whether it was personal stuff or business -- flyers, brochures that I was going to be using, my notes for my remarks, my address book, my datebook, all of the pages of everything was copied. They had Interpol records or something; I don't know where they got the stuff. They had records of arrests that I've had. I was arrested a year ago in January, in the (U.S.) Capitol, for reading the Declaration of Independence.
I was just contacted this week by the Criminal Investigation Unit of the U.S. Customs Department. And they wanted to know what we were doing, under the pretense -- I think, pretense -- that they were going to be assisting us in getting back and forth across the border. They wanted to know who we had that was going to be going, and what we were going to be doing.

CD: It looks like no one's going to be able to come near this thing in Quebec. Is there any way activists will be able to have an impact?
Morrill: Absolutely. There are so many different ways of having an impact. Physically shutting down a facility didn't really happen in Seattle, but there was such an uproar over what was going on in the streets, tear gas and other things, and people were delayed, so it made it very difficult to continue the meeting.
Even though they're putting up 3-meter fences around the city ... that means they have locked themselves in; they've made themselves more vulnerable. They did something similar in Windsor during the OAS meeting. They put up the same kinds of concrete barriers topped by chain-link fences and surrounded a four-block area, which meant that the delegates had to stay in there. But it also meant that people had a very difficult time, because there were only three gates, and it meant that the demonstrators, when they did their blockade, were able to shut down access to the site for a few hours. People bringing food couldn't get in there, and it meant that police were tied up.
So it did have an effect, and there were only about 1,500 demonstrators in Windsor, and there were 5,000 police.

CD: Will public attention be a large part of the effect in Quebec?
Morrill: Yeah. Who among the public even knew what the WTO was before Nov. 30, 1999? Now, you talk about the WTO and people say, "Oh yes, that's what they were demonstrating against in Seattle." They may not know all the details, but they are at least aware that this is something to be concerned about. And now when the WTO speaks, there are news articles in papers across the United States.
So it's definitely had an effect. Even if it hadn't shut down the event, it raised awareness, and it gave people a chance to mobilize. We, before Seattle, did a 20-city tour across the United States with activists, and brought them into communities where people had never even thought about organizing around the issue -- and they began to. And when Seattle happened, they saw that this was a major issue, and they were ready for it.
The same thing, I think, will be taking place around Quebec. Cities around the United States and Canada are mobilizing. Similar to what we did a year and a half ago with the caravan, there are 10 or 15 caravans going around the United States, talking about FTAA and raising awareness in communities that wouldn't ordinarily hear about this stuff.
There will be a huge demonstration, and no matter what happens, there will be international attention.

CD: Other than going to Quebec, what are some ways that people who are concerned can get involved?
Morrill: There are lots of things. The struggle in the United States is going to be about more than Quebec; it's going to be about some legislative things that are happening. And there are going to be demonstrations in communities all across the country. There are organizations all over the United States mobilizing around this. In every state, there's something going on. And there are things like the People's Summit.

The People's Summit on Globalization will take place Thursday through Sunday on the CU-Boulder campus. For a schedule of events and speakers, visit http://powerful.as/people