TTIP Day of Action
WDM would like to work with others to coordinate (not dominate) a day of action against TTIP on 12 July. We’ve chosen that date because it is near the end of the EU’s consultation on TTIP.
TTIP will give huge new powers to transnational corporations. It threatens to undermine public control of services like the NHS and education, to erode environmental and food safety protection, to encourage controversial technologies like GM and fracking, and to give big business sweeping new power to write and challenge laws.
We hope a day of action would allow a number of groups concerned about TTIP to come together to express that concern in creative actions across the country. These actions might be focussed on the NHS, on education, on fracking, on GM food, on the power of banks. Some actions would also be focussed on TTIP as a whole. We will then work together to give these activities coherence under a ‘No to TTIP’ slogan.
We would like to build a social media tool with a map of where activities will take place, so that all involved organisations can point their own activists to the nearest activity or activities in their area and help build these activities. We will then all feed into the common site with pics and stories from the day.
We also hope to produce a common resource to hand out, which would be negotiated by everyone taking part (and of course, if any activists don’t want to use it, that’s fine too).
We hope this will be the start of an upsurge of activities around TTIP which will continue in the Autumn.
We will hold an information and planning day in London on Saturday 17 May. Please let us know if you want to come (register with katharine.talbot@wdm.org.uk).
Draft call to action which participants could sign
Rise up against TTIP:
Stop the corporate power grab
Call to action:
TTIP is a so-called ‘free trade’ deal currently being negotiated by the EU and US. This deal will give big business more power over our society, our environment, our public services, and our democracy.
That’s why we call on activists around the country to demonstrate their opposition to the TTIP on 12 July.
TTIP is being negotiated in secret, but proposals already being discussed would:
- Give corporations power to sue the British government for making laws which ‘damage’ their profits
- Allow corporations a bigger role in writing laws
- ‘Lock-in’ free market reforms in over the NHS and education system
- Erode environmental protection and safety standards
- Encourage more fracking, genetic modification and dangerous chemicals into Europe
- Hand more power to the banks and financial system
But we can defeat this agreement. Protests are gathering pace across the EU and US. President Obama has been unable to get special powers to negotiate the deal through congress. The European Commission has been forced to hold a public consultation. And across the world, countries from South Africa to Ecuador are ripping up agreements like this one.
Make your voice heard on 12 July. No TTIP.
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