Here's my notes and interpretations
Nandita
- Nandita helped organize APEC protests in Vancouver in 1997. police overreacted, brutalized protesters. The University there turned over to the police emails between student and faculty that participated. She and the organizer talked a lot about the police state we are in, our freedom to protest is restricted. In anticipation of APEC, they said bus and handi-van vehicles here in Honolulu have been retrofitted with cages to arrest protesters? They emphasized not to be stupid, but to know our rights. We have the right to protest and speak out against policies we don't like
- APEC- perpetuate and extend the globalization of capitalism. If the things people need to simply live are forced into the global marketplace, people are forced to be as well
- Capitalism began 500 years ago in England through farming. They began privatizing the land forcing people to rent or buy, kicking off those that could not afford it
- Today we have laws that make poverty/homelessness a crime
- APEC wants to force all people into global capitalism, "free trade in member economies", open all markets up to competition and eliminate tariffs
- This perpetuates practices like mono-cropping, GMO, toxic herbicide, toxic pesticides, that produce the most product and profits fastest, but at great environmental cost. Producing more and fast keeps farms competitive, if you don't conform, you wont survive. Land gets consolidated by large Ag (that can buy out the losers?)
- Smaller number of people owning land and controlling our food supply, destroying alternatives to this competitive method
- If the market forces all farmers to use this method to stay competitive, it will result in the loss of healthy food, organic food, small diverse farming, biodiversity. APEC promotes petroleum dependent food
- Privatizing food through patents on crops, essentially making them private property.
- Big Ag corporations can successfully sue small farmers for saving seeds, ability to resist capitalism is severely compromised
- Vitamin D is added to rice, engineers promote this and the fact we can add nutrients when weeds that naturally occur have ample vitamin D
- Big Pharm and Big Ag are working together with genetically engineered seeds
- If you control food, you control people. No access to land and food outside corporate market place
- US exports rice it grows in the desert, with water that will never be replenished. If APEC succeeds, this is what farmers will have to compete with
- Farmers have been at the forefront of APEC protests.
- APEC and present day capitalism is another era of colonization
- "Era of free trade", trying to open all lands and livelihoods to competition, "freeing" capitalist of all barriers to their profitability. Barriers include: Environmental protections (too costly), minimum standards like health and safety, anti-discriminatory policies, feminism, anti-racism policies
- Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement: Eliminate all tariffs by 2015
- If we think our representatives act in our best interest, and we just need to talk and show them the consequence of APEC policies, we're delusional. 16th century capitalism goes hand in hand with state powers, legislating private property rights
- Talking with APEC and sitting at the table with them would legitimize them by letting the the corporate media say they are democratic and listen to the other side
- If you fight for the commons, capitalism can't exist
Shelley
- Hawaiis top 3 Ag products are GM seed, nursery and floral, and pineapple for export. Our Ag is not for providing food locally
- Capitalist food system makes farmers cut corners, grow as much as you can as fast as you can to make as much money as you can
- Corporations that own and use the land here don't live here and don't have incentive to care about poisoning the land, when it's cheaper to grow and be somewhere else they will go and we are left with degraded top soil, etc.
- Swimming in Circles, Greed for Feed, Industrial Aquaculture is exploding where there is no labor standards, no environmental standards. We are leasing the ocean.
Organizer asked us to always look beyond short term profits and consider the morality of policies, despite the jobs created and benefit to the tourist industry.
Nandita and Gaye Chen have started Eating in Public where they grow food on private and public land not being utilized. Trying to build a system that is not dependent on the market or charity. Free Stores, not Goodwill where you donate and they sell. Weed seed vitamin D. Building SOCIAL systems, not competitive systems. They consider this activism that is not just symbolic.
Audience member questioned the Us versus Them stance, dehumanizing the police and the corporations. Asked about considering the human impulses of greed and power, show compassion/empathy for that. Nandita responded used the phrase 'analytically precise' to explain the positioning of corporations as an entity we need to fight