Resolutions and Statements

Posted on August 15, 2017 by the webmaster

This resolution was adopted unanimously on August 13, 2017 by the State Central Committee of the Peace and Freedom Party of California.

Cancel NAFTA! Tear Down the Wall of Shame / Not One More Deportation! Support Workers' Rights and Struggles in Mexico, the United States, and Canada!

Whereas, there is a stepped-up attack on immigrant workers -- documented and undocumented -- in the United States, and NAFTA has been used to pit U.S. workers against Mexican workers to benefit multi-national corporations from the U.S. and around the world, and

Whereas, the escalating attack on immigrant workers and people of color is a threat to all workers and to organized labor in the United States; the immigrant community and their children in schools are being terrorized by ICE and by the racist attacks on immigrants, and

Whereas, NAFTA has been used to privatize railroads, telecom, oil, education and the dismantling of Mexico's agricultural industry, causing forced migration of tens of millions of people from their homelands in Mexico, and

Whereas, the US and other multi-nationals corporations have colluded with the Mexican government, using NAFTA to prevent unionization at the 1,500 maquiladora factories in Mexico, and

Whereas, the privatization of land has forced hundreds of thousands of indigenous people off their indigenous homeland, with as many as 80,000 farmworkers and their families forced to move outside their communities, towns, and cities, to Northern states in Mexico to find work often under horrible, inhumane working conditions that are designed to enslave people/workers, as is the case of the Driscoll’s corporation in Baja California, Mexico and other subsidiary farms, and

Whereas, the Trump administration is increasing the militarization of the border of the United States and Mexico -- and proposing to extend the Wall of Shame all across this border -- thus dividing families and children from their parents, relatives, and grandparents, who have not been in reachable contact in many cases for over 20 years, and

Whereas, the Trump administration has said that the Mexican people are responsible for the failure of NAFTA, and the US will renegotiate NAFTA to allow US multi-nationals and businesses to expand, exploit, and renegotiate this agreement without the input of unions, human rights, environmental organizations, or health and welfare coalitions, and

Whereas, the same companies and multi-nationals that pushed NAFTA will be in charge of renegotiating NAFTA to benefit these same corporations and to further the expansion of the “Guest Worker” programs, and to further privatization and deregulation, and

Whereas, the Sacramento Central Labor Council has endorsed a comparable resolution.

Therefore Be It Resolved, that the Peace and Freedom Party stands in support of full unionization and full labor rights for workers in Mexico, the United States and Canada and for building direct worker-solidarity and militant labor actions against NAFTA and against the global multi-nationals thieving off the poorest labor force, and

Be It Further Resolved, that the Peace and Freedom Party stands in support of the united solidarity action of workers in Mexico, United States, and Canada for the cancellation of NAFTA. Repealing NAFTA is the necessary first step, the very pre-condition, to opening new negotiations -- with the full input of trade unions, environmental groups, and other community organizations in all three signatory countries -- that could lead to a trade deal that actually benefits working people in all three countries, and calls for an end to the massive ICE attacks on immigrant workers, documented and undocumented, in the US – with not one more deportation, and

Be It Finally Resolved, that the Peace and Freedom Party support this call and to urge solidarity actions around the above-stated demands on August 16, 2017, the day that the Trump administration has called for the talks on NAFTA renegotiation to begin in Washington.