The world watched as protests erupted across the United States at the end of 2014. Demonstrators across the country chanted “No justice, no peace!” and “Death to racism” after the shocking announcement that the white police officer who killed unarmed 18 year old African American youth, Michael Brown, would not be charged with a crime.
In New York City, thousands later marched to draw attention to racial profiling, police brutality and what one man de-scribed as the “systematic murder of people of colour in this country and its institutionalized racism.” #BlackLivesMatter emerged as the rallying call and the opportunity for people of diverse origin around the world to express solidarity with the black community in the US, who experience higher rates of police shootings, incarceration, unemployment and poverty.
What the TISA is this?
A new report by Public Services International (PSI) warns that governments are planning to take the world on a liberalisation spree on a scale never seen before. According to the report, this massive trade deal will put public health care, broadcasting, water, transport and other services at risk. The proposed deal could make it impossible for future governments to restore public services to public control, even in cases where private service delivery has failed. It would also restrict a government’s ability to regulate key sectors including financial, energy, telecommunications and cross-border data flows. The Trades in Services Agreement (TISA), currently being negotiated in secret and outside of World Trade Organization rules, is a deliberate attempt to privilege the profits of the richest corporations and countries in the world over those who have the greatest needs.
Negotiations began in 2013 and continue today working towards a very ambitious agreement on far-reaching services liberalization and disciplining of government activity. The “Really Good Friends of Services” currently include Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia,
Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, the United States, and the 28 member states of the European Union.
Global justice in film
CUPE Global Justice and the Island Peace Committee held a Social Justice Film Festival in February at the University of Prince Edward Island. CUPE Global Justice activists hosted the film The Take, a docu-mentary about a group of 30 unemployed Argentinean auto workers who attempt to kick-start their dead careers. Fol-lowing in the footsteps of others throughout the country, they set up shop in the desolate auto factory where they used to work, announcing their intentions to re-start the plant as a cooperative business, without the aid of bosses. The fes-tival was well attended.