Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition

Contact:
Alicia Ranney
612-578-8266
aranney(at)citizenstrade(dot)org
www.fairtrademinnesota.org


16 Years Fighting For Justice In The Global Economy

The Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition is more than 70 Minnesota labor, environmental, social justice, and family farm organizations striving to make respect for working people, family farmers, our environment, and our democracy an integral part of the global economy. We came together in 1991 in opposition to the failure of the North American Free Trade Agreement specifically, and corporate globalism generally, to incorporate such values.

The type of globalization put in place so far is characterized by huge corporations chasing around the planet seeking the most exploitable workers and the most lax environmental enforcement. This has been very lucrative for the corporate elite, but has meant lower living standards for most people, lost jobs, rural dislocation and widespread toxic dumping by transnational companies. There is nothing inevitable about this type of global economy. It has occurred because of corporate and government decisions and it can be corrected by citizen action. Our efforts to correct it include:

• Working to ensure that Congress approves trade agreements only if they contain comprehensive and fully enforceable protections for working people, the environment and democracy.
  
  Our current focus is educating people who may not have been directly affected by the previous generation of free trade deals about the dangers of the coming generation, particularly the trade-in-services-focused GATS and FTAA.
  
  
• Educating policy makers and the public about the negative consequences and vast injustices of the type of globalization seen to date.
  
  We communicate regularly with our state’s Congressional delegation and other elected officials on these matters. We communicate with the public via direct outreach to citizen's groups and through the news media.
  
  
• Building international solidarity against the injustices of today’s global economy.
  
  The Coalition mobilizes its member organizations and contacts to respond to solidarity action requests from workers and grassroots groups other countries over maltreatment by transnational corporations. We work for justice for workers in the global garment industry, through the anti-sweatshop campaigns we support.
  
  
• Building national and international relationships to develop positive alternatives to the type of global economic integration currently under way.
  
  We work with partner grassroots networks in the United States and in countries throughout the hemisphere in an ongoing effort to develop and present to the region’s governments proposals for a human and environmental based approach to global economic integration.

If your organization believes it has a stake in determining what kind of a global economy we live in, we invite you to join the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition and help make a difference.