ENDING TRADE ATTACKS ON CLIMATE POLICIES

The need for bold action to address the climate crisis has never been clearer.  Instead, international trade agreements are increasingly being used by both governments and individual corporations to attack and discourage new climate policies.  These trade attacks on climate action must end now!
In the face of the clear and growing threat that climate change poses to ourselves, our communities and future generations, governments cannot allow unjust and outdated corporate-centered trade rules to stand in the way of ambitious climate initiatives.
Global Exchange, together with the Trade Justice Education Fund, calls on governments to immediately:
1)    Eliminate Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) from existing trade and investment agreements, and commit not to enter into any new agreements containing ISDS.
2)    Enact a Climate Peace Clause under which they agree not to use state-to-state dispute settlement mechanisms in trade and investment agreements to attack one another’s climate and clean energy transition policies.
3)    Acknowledge that Global North countries most responsible for climate change — including the United States, Canada, European Union and others — owe a debt to the world that must be repaid, including, in part, with the inclusion of technical assistance, financing and/or the transfer of green technologies in international agreements.
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We are the People’s Movement for Peace and Justice. Our Message is Simple and Clear: In the face of violence and tragedy, we stand as one to demand justice.

#IgnoredNoMore #InvisibleNoMore

The destinies of the U.S. and Mexico, as well as our movements for social and environmental justice, are inextricably intertwined. Ending regional violence and success in handling cross-border challenges — like migration, human rights, inequality (fair and sustainable economic development), and dangerous gun trafficking  – requires the participation and engagement of civil society movements on both sides of the border.  

 

We are living in a pivotal and urgent moment in both Mexico and the United States. From rising gun violence, political exclusion and disenfranchisement, worsening repression of migrants, and the expanding environmental and climate driven crises, the need for action, reform and political activism is now.  

 

People of color across the borders share a history of oppression and resistance that brings us closer than what we think.

 

Both Mexico and the U.S. will have critical national elections in 2024. The time to build united, inclusive political power is now.  The PMPJ seeks to cultivate and catalyze a cross-border  movement to denounce injustice and drive community-led solutions to the growing inequality, violence and human and migrant rights crises that impact the region.  

 

More than 50 organizations from Mexico and the United States, under the leadership of Global Exchange, are organizing this initiative. The PMPJ aims to expand political access and build political power for those currently left out and left behind (youth, migrants, Indigenous communities and more) and to make their demands for human rights, justice, democracy, and peace heard.  

 

The PMPJ will host an international peace summit in June 2024 and will utilize innovative digital organizing tools to engage and nourish the active majorities on both sides of the border we need to demand and affect change.

12 PRIORITIES
FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE

The People’s Movement for Peace and Justice has a shared agenda to develop a pathway for an end to the proliferation of gun violence and the militarized drug war; a stop to the destructive impacts of pollution and climate change that disproportionately impact people of color and low-income communities; and support for migrant populations with compassionate immigration policies, rather than criminalization.

1. Prioritize Human Rights

Give human rights the same priority that is given to the U.S.–Mexico commercial agenda; Establish a binational body for monitoring, evaluating, and promoting Human Rights.
2. Stop the Flow of Weapons to Mexico

Stop the illegal flow of weapons from the U.S. to Mexico and the exportation of weapons to police and military units with a history of corruption and human rights violations.
3. Build the Necessary Conditions for the Right to Stay Home

Governments from Mexico and the U.S. must generate conditions for life, peace, prosperity, justice, and happiness in all the communities of the region, allowing individuals and families to live prosperous lives without having to migrate. 
4. Demilitarization Our Lands and Our Borders

Establish a path for complete demilitarization of territories and borders.
5. Repurpose Military Bases for Healing and Justice

Open military bases to survivors and relatives of victims of violence. Bring all military involved in crimes and human rights violations to justice. 
Read the Full List of Demands Here
Join the Movement Now is the time to rise up, stand for what we believe in, and be the catalyst for change. Join the movement and become part of a binational force dedicated to creating a future where everyone thrives. Your voice matters. Your actions matter. Join us!
Stay Informed Follow us on social media to learn about latest news, calls to actions, and ways you can get involved.
Make a Gift Take action today and become a catalyst for positive change. Your donation will be put to work to build our movement. Donate now and be a part of something extraordinary!

It’s Time to Normalize Relations with Cuba

Since 1990, Global Exchange has been at the forefront of a movement seeking to fully normalize U.S. relations with Cuba and end the embargo (or bloqueo, as it’s called by the Cubans) of more than 60 years. Global Exchange’s grassroots education programs, Cuba Reality Tours Program, publications, speaking tours, and campaigns have informed the debate about US-Cuba relations for more than twenty-five years.

Global Exchange has supported free interchange and cultural exchange between the U.S. and Cuba through organizing hundreds of Reality Tours and thousands of American citizens to travel legally to Cuba and by bringing Cuban cultural and political leaders here to the U.S. on education speaking tours.

While we celebrated the steps toward normalization made under the Obama Administration, the Trump reversed the progress during his term – returning Cuba to the State Terrorist list, reinstating travel restrictions, continuing economic sanctions.

The COVID-19 pandemic magnified the devastation of the U.S. blockade. In July 2020, a UN special rapporteur concluded the blockade was “obstructing humanitarian responses to help the country’s health-care system fight the COVID-19 pandemic.” Among other things, the blockade stopped medical aid and money transfers from overseas companies and humanitarian organizations, denied Cubans the ability to use Zoom, prevented the country’s purchase of ventilators, and caused a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE).

Biden needs to end the blockade.

Now is the time for U.S. citizens to ensure that the next many years of Cuba/U.S. relations will benefit the people of both countries and be free from the Cold War ideology which clouded our mutual self interests.

Cuba and the Cuban people have suffered too long.

Our work to educate the U.S. public on the right of U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba and to build people-to-people ties through our Cuba Reality Tours Program is more important than ever.

Now is the time to join one of the upcoming Global Exchange Reality Tours to Cuba.  If you are part of an educational institution, a union, a professional group or have a group of friends or family who want to travel  – contact Global Exchange about arranging a custom trip.

Now is the time for U.S. citizens to ensure that the next many years of Cuba/U.S. relations will benefit the people of both countries.  

We hope you’ll join our effort.  Sign up for our email list to receive updates and actions you can take to support the normalization of relations with Cuba and follow up on Facebook.
RESPECT: Responsible & Ethical Cuba Travel
Travel to Cuba

Global Exchange is proud to announce the launch of RESPECT: Responsible & Ethical Cuba Travel, an organization dedicated to ensuring travel to Cuba respects the people, culture and natural environment of the island.

The announcement in December 2014 by President Barack Obama and President Raul Castro to open relations between our two nations, and the subsequent opening of travel restrictions, has resulted in a level of tourism not seen to the island in over 50 years.

While Global Exchange applauds the opening of relations, the rapid growth in tourism to the island has placed strain on the existing infrastructure and poses threats to Cuba’s cultural heritage, environment, society and economy.

Since 1990 Global Exchange has offered hundreds of Reality Tours and facilitated travel for thousands of American citizens to Cuba.

We are deeply committed to the idea that travel to the island must respect the Cuban people, its culture and environment.

As a founding member of RESPECT, Global Exchange played a key role in bringing U.S. nonprofits and travel organizations together with their Cuban counterparts to practice and promote ethical and socially responsible travel to Cuba.

The 17 Principles issued by the 65 founding organizations and some 35 individual committed travelers, include the commitment to “respect all Cubans, without regard to skin color, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, political persuasion, abilities or economic status.”

Those interested should write to respect@respectassociation.org.

Why donate stock?

Global Exchange accepts gifts of appreciated stock, which we sell immediately in order to support our work.

Stock donations may offer significant tax benefits to the donor.  You can avoid capital gains tax, and capture the full market value of your stock as a charitable tax deduction.  We recommend that you consult a tax professional for specific advice about your situation.

In accordance with IRS regulations, you will receive an acknowledgement for tax purposes listing the number of shares donated and the value of the stock as of the date the shares are received in our account.

How to donate stock:
All donated stock is sold for us by our Financial Advisor at Empowered Investments.   At the time you make the donation, it is important that you inform Global Exchange at (415) 575-5534 or ashley@globalexchange.org with the following information, so that we can verify receipt and provide you with proof of your donation for tax purposes:

  • Stock symbol and name of the company
  • Number of shares
  • Date of transfer

Language for Letter and Transfer Information for Stock Gifts:

This letter will serve as my authorization to make a charitable donation of stock to Global Exchange, a 501(c) (3) charitable organization, located at 1446 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94102. The tax id # is 94-3066686.

Please transfer (number of shares) of (name of stock) from (account name and account number). The shares should be transferred directly to Global Exchange’s account using the following DTCC delivery instructions:

DTCC#: 0226
F/B/O: NFS Global Exchange A/C # Q81-002775
Account Title: Global Exchange

You can also directly contact our Financial Advisor for assistance with your donation.  Contact Mehul M. Thakker at Empowered Investments:

1-800-701-4713 (toll free)
510-622-0202 x-207
mehul@empowered-investments.com

Thank you for your donation of stock to Global Exchange

The US and a few other wealthy countries lead the world in vaccine production and delivery.

According to the NYT Covid World Vaccination Tracker, the US is in a fortunate group of countries that have pulled ahead of the rest of the world to provide their populations with vaccines that can save lives, jobs, economies, and general well-being. This is wonderful, but most people in the world are still suffering from the ongoing pandemic and dangerous new virus variants  — without any protection at all.

In Africa just 2% are vaccinated, and without vast increases in vaccine availability there is little prospect of reaching levels that can significantly reduce viral transmission.

For the sake of humanity we must close the vaccine gap — and it will take more than just the “humanitarian donations” of vaccines now being offered by the Biden Administration. We need to change the terms of trade at the global level — in other words, waive the World Trade Organization’s patent and intellectual property regulations (known as TRIPS) to allow for accelerated vaccine production to meet the global emergency.

Now is not a moment for Big Pharma to control or hold hostage the fate of nations. Public health should always take precedence over corporate profit; but, at a time like this when delay can literally cost millions of lives, it becomes an urgent moral priority.

That is why Global Exchange has teamed up with the California Trade Justice Coalition to demand vaccine patent rights be ‘waived’ and technology shared so that countries around the world can produce the vaccine, protect their people, and put an end to the pandemic for everyone.

Our efforts are gaining traction and the work to pass a WTO TRIPS Waiver is gaining momentum.

The Biden administration (finally and with YOUR pressure) came out in support of the WTO TRIPS waiver last month.

This waiver is an urgent step to clear the way for mass global production of top quality vaccines.  And — thanks to everyone who demonstrated at their consulates and embassies last week — Australia, Japan and Brazil are now backing the waiver as well.

This is all great news!  But we’re not there yet.

Big Pharma is working hard behind the scenes to stall and derail progress. And the European Union, led by Germany, is standing in the way of a final deal. We need to continue supportive pressure on the Biden administration and other governments to get the whole world to YES.

We must stay active in this fight. We must continue to ramp up public support for the waiver. And we need your support to see the WTO Waiver over the finish line.

Together we will educate, mobilize and build grassroots pressure. And we won’t stop until vaccines are available to everyone.

Can you join us?  Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution today.

In late January, 19 people — 16 indigenous migrants from Guatemala — were brutally murdered in Camargo, Tamaulipas, just a few miles south of the U.S. Border.

The horror of that mass murder deepened when 12 state police officers from Tamaulipas were charged with the crime.  It has also been discovered that these state police forces were supplied with Sig Sauer guns produced and exported from the U.S.

Stopping the export and smuggling of guns — that are disproportionately killing people of color — is why we convened this webcast.  Please watch and hear from our expert panel on these complex challenges.

•Juan Manuel Juárez, a journalist in Tamaulipas who covered the tragic Camargo events will begin our webcast with an exclusive (pre-recorded) report. Juan Manuel reports on events in northeastern Mexico and recently inaugurated the news site Elefante Blanco.

•Stephanie Brewer, Director for Mexico and Migrant Rights at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) where she advocates for policy improvements on both sides of the border to protect human rights and support the rule of law in Mexico.

•John Lindsay Poland, writer, activist, researcher and analyst coordinates Stop US Arms to Mexico, a project of Global Exchange. He has written about, researched and organized action for human rights and demilitarization of US policy in Latin America for 30 years.

•Juan Ortiz, artist, activist and community organizer is a doctoral student and fellow in Mexican American studies at the University of Arizona

•Marco Castillo, Co-Director of Global Exchange introduced and hosted the webinar.

•Daniella Burgi-Palomino, Co-director of the Latin America Working Group moderated.

We invite you to watch our webcast “Covid-19, Trade and Resilience”.

The COVID-19 crisis has been exacerbated by decades of so-called “free trade agreements” focused on prioritizing private profits over healthy communities. In California, we are feeling these effects more than ever.

Even worse, corporate lobbyists are using this crisis to push for more trade deals that will harm working people, the environment and access to affordable lifesaving medicines. This status quo is unsustainable and unethical — and has caused disproportionate harm to black Americans domestically and to people of color across borders.

Watch our webcast and learn about the connection between COVID-19, trade and resilience — including racial justice — and learn what you need to do to take action to fight for trade policies that protect and safeguard lives in times of crisis.

Presenters included:

  • Catherine Houston works for the United Steel Workers (USW) District 12 on how trade policies have outsourced America’s medical equipment & PPE manufacturing capacity.
  • Hannah Lyon of Cancer Families for Affordable Medicine (CancerFAM) on ways trade agreements have hurt public healthhe has written and lectured extensively on how global trade impacts women’s health and access to healthcare.
  • Jessica Tovar of the Local Clean Energy Alliance on ways the COVID-19 pandemic provides a window into the climate crisis and climate solutions.
  • David Bacon is a photojournalist, author, and organizer on how bad trade deals have driven down working conditions and human rights standards in ways that have hindered nations’ response to the crisis.
  • Will Wiltschko, director of the California Trade Justice Coalition will moderate.

Cosponsors include Citizens Trade Campaign, the California Trade Justice Coalition, Global Exchange, United Steelworkers District 12, CancerFAM, Local Clean Energy Alliance, and the Trade Justice Education Fund.  For more info, contact: will@citizenstrade.org or Ted@globalexchange.org.

 

The Coronavirus pandemic has turned life upside down.

And while we all face this threat together, it is the most vulnerable in our global community – the elderly, the poor, migrants and refugees, communities whose health is already compromised from air pollution – who will suffer the most dire health and economic consequences.

The devastating impact of this pandemic has exposed and magnified the deep structural fault lines within our socioeconomic system. Even now, elected officials and business leaders are prioritizing Wall Street interests over public health and safety. If we are to survive and thrive in the aftermath, we have to envision a new way of life.

Just as we all must commit to social distancing and, for many now, ‘sheltering in place’, washing our hands (a lot), and taking care of those around us — our children home from school, aging parents, and neighbors, we also need to work together toward new national and international priorities.

Here at Global Exchange, we are putting our thirty plus years of creating people-to-people ties to keep global solidarity strong into (digital) action and (online) movement building.

We have already been educating, activating, connecting people and mobilizing via online webcasts and actions for the past several years. And we are working hard (from our homes) right now to keep you updated with frontline webcasts on developing issues, strategies for fighting back, campaigns you can join, and connection to a worldwide struggle.

We’ll be sending out an invitation early this coming week for a webcast on how COVID-19 is impacting communities we work with around the world from Italy to Brazil, Mexico to Cuba, South Korea to communities here in the United States. We hope you’ll tune in.

But we can’t do any of it without your support.  Can you make a special donation to fund our work?

With global travel shutdown and our Reality Tours program on hold (through April), we are facing an unprecedented revenue crunch.

If you are able, please make a donation today and help us continue to do what we’ve done for decades: educate, engage and activate communities around the world toward building a better future for everyone.

As we face the unprecedented crisis of the Coronavirus, we are grateful to have you on our side. It is passionate, committed and generous people like you who are the lifeblood of work toward a better world. You keep the torch of human rights lit and make the dream of a new dawn possible, even as we face one of our darkest hours.

Thank you for all you are doing to “flatten the curve” and protect and support your community, and thank you for standing with us and supporting our ongoing work for peace, environmental-justice and a future that works for everyone.

We simply can’t do it without you. 

Your support means the world to us! Thank you.

 

I’ll be straight with you: we are facing an economic crunch. With global travel down as a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic, so is the revenue generated by our Reality Tours program. Our deadline to secure funding for critical work in 2020 is just weeks away.

To stay strong at this critical moment we need one-hundred and fifty new Global Exchange Monthly Sustainers between now and the end of March. Can you please be one of them?

A common threat like coronavirus is a reminder of how interdependent we are — as a species and as a global community, on a fragile planet. Our collective action, inspired by belief in a kinder and more just world, has never been more important.

We know people have vast capacities for renewal and change; and we know we need each other to build a better future. We can’t express to you enough how grateful we are to have you by our side.

Please help power and sustain our work. Become a monthly member, today.

Thank you for standing with us!