NO-WTO: DEMO SAT 17TH DEC, READING.

10 years of WTO - 10 years of plunder and destruction:

For ten years the World Trade Organisation has been destroying lives and communities around the world. Effectively a 'world government', the WTO's trade regulations push a destructive 'single global market' agenda. Through enforced market liberalisation any 'barriers to trade' - like environmental regulations and human rights laws - are outlawed.

In the UK, due to this capitalist globalisation, green and public spaces are lost to rampant development, healthcare, education and transport are destroyed by privatisation and our whole lives become precarious as we lose housing, secure income and pensions.

Around the rest of the world the attacks of the WTO on local people and their communities are even worse. War, poverty, climate chaos, border controls, exploitation... The list goes on.

Yet, over the last decades, millions of people around the globe have made links and resisted summits of the WTO (as well as G8, IMF, World Bank etc). Millions more organise campaigns, resisting the local effects of policies created far away. This year peasants and farmers organisations based in Asia have issued a callout for resistance to the WTO Summit to take place around the world (see www.agp.org).

We recognise the diversity of those opposed to the WTO and corporate globalisation and hope to reflect this diversity in the event. Our hope is that we can come together in the same place, at the same time, yet each take whatever form of action we feel appropriate. As an example, some local anti-capitalists will hold a free cafe, giving away delicious hot food made from locally grown, organic produce while the recently launched Reading Zapatista Solidarity group will give away hot fairtrade coffee. Others involved in Columbia Solidarity work will be present along with local environmentalists and anti-war activists - itd be great to see you too!

For more info please see the website at www.no-wto.co.nr. If you would like to get in contact with us, or have your planned action added to the website, please email no-wto(AT)hotmail.com or phone 07833758317 and leave a message.

See you on the streets!