Saturday, July 9, 2011   at the Irvine Ranch Water District Headquarters--15600 Sand Canyon Avenue, Irvine, CA

Bring a friend.  As always, our meetings are free and all are welcome.

Bring a healthy snack or treat to share.  We will provide hot and cold drinks.

6:00 PM: Gathering, chatting, and munching.

6:30 PM: Bill Moyers Reports: Trading Democracy

8:00 PM: Discussion

This month Eva Goodwin-Noriega and her husband, Cosme, will be presenting the meeting. They were inspired by a recent story on NPR: the struggle of Francisco Pineda in El Salvador to block a multinational gold mining company from polluting local water supplies. You know what NAFTA and CAFTA stand for: North American Free Trade Agreement and Central American Free Trade Agreement. Are these trade agreements helping or hurting Americans? Central, Southern and/or Northern? Eva and Cosme have tracked down a great documentary by Bill Moyers that explains how NAFTA can be used to undermine local control of our environment. CAFTA has very similar provisions. Here is a synopsis of the video they will show: Bill Moyers Reports: Trading Democracy: Bill Moyers takes an investigative look at the way corporate investors are using an obscure provision in the North American Free Trade Agreement to secretly challenge laws, regulations and jury verdicts before an international trade tribunal. Allowed by Chapter 11 of NAFTA, multinational corporations have been able to argue that certain laws aimed at protecting the environment are harmful to them economically. These parties are demanding compensation and getting it. Moyers goes beyond public record to discover how this provision got into NAFTA and who lobbied for it. (57 min.)  Then Eva and Cosme will relate the documentary to the piece that aired two weeks ago (Thursday, June 23, 2011) on NPR's "The Story." NPR is running a series of stories on the health of water and its importance to all of earth’s plants and creatures. This particular story focused on what has happened to an area of El Salvador because of CAFTA--the Central American Free Trade Agreement. A gold mine, brought in by a CAFTA international corporation, was supposed to provide jobs and a better life for the people. Instead it provided jobs for highly educated foreigners and death for local activists, ruined the local resident’s lives by contaminating their water & turned previously friendly neighbors into enemies. A three-minute video about the lead organizer, Francisco Pineda, will be included. 

Democracy begins with you!

~Linda Vician and Wayne Taylor