Led by Real Food Hopkins, students and community members protested the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) on Friday. The rally, which began at Pennsylvania Station and ended Representative Elijah Cummings’ office, drew students from across the East Coast, local citizens and activists from Baltimore and the Baltimore Police Department.
The TPP is a trade agreement between twelve Pacific Rim countries, including the United States, aimed towards liberalizing trade between its members. It introduces a comprehensive set of changes that includes reduced tariffs, increased patent protections and streamlined procedures for online transactions. Although it was signed on Feb. 4, it is not currently in force. A vote by Congress to ratify the treaty is expected to occur in the summer or after the 2016 elections.
Some protesters, including Real Food members, believe that the TPP will harm local businesses by lowering the cost of imported foods. They say that it favors the profits of industrial agriculture over local farms, which will lead to environmentally unsustainable practices.
“It will negatively affect family farms from all across the world because corporations will be granted a lot of rights and a lot of money and the right to sue,” Real Food Executive Board member Sunny Kim said.
Protesters were concerned with a provision of the TPP known as the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). It allows global corporations to seek compensation for losses due to trade treaty violations in international court and is present in many other trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which some blame for moving American manufacturing jobs to Mexico, where employees can be paid lower wages. Critics say that the TPP goes too far in giving corporations the ability to sue for lost profit due to public interest laws, such as health or environmental protection.
“It’s taking away the sovereignty of local farmers and giving a lot of power to corporations and as a regional food-justice network, we are severely concerned with it,” Kim said.
The protesters began their march at Penn Station, where they held up banners, flags and cardboard signs. They chanted, “TPP is a sneak attack, we want our democracy back!” for a few minutes until they were asked by police to exit the building. Two people from the Baltimore organization Popular Resistance were briefly detained before the group continued their protest outside, during which they conducted public education and collected signatures.
“[The TPP]’s taking away the sovereignty of local farmers and giving a lot of power to corporations.” — Sunny Kim, Real Food Exec. Board
The march ended at the office of Rep. Cummings, who recently voted against the TPP. The Representative was not present, but the activists delivered a petition thanking him for his support and asking him to be more public about his opposition.
“Our action was to publicize his private rejection of the TPP and also push him to take regional leadership and lead other congressmen to oppose the TPP,” Kim said.
After the protest, Northeast Regional Coordinator Tlaloc Vasquez was confident that he connected with Cummings.
“I think that it actually was really geared up, what our message was and what we got across to the Representative. We were received well, and we’re excited to continue to develop that relationship,” he said. “The students did a good job developing and communicating that message.”
Vasquez says that he will continue to stay in touch with other community leaders to promote his message against the TPP. He said that the anti-TPP movement has the support of a several groups, including some labor unions, environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club and academics.
Other local activists gave speeches in front of the Representative’s office about the influence of the TPP on Baltimore. Among them was Brenda Sanders, the Director of the Better Health, Better Life organization, which addresses health and food insufficiency in Baltimore.
“This protest benefits local communities and gets us to move in the right direction,” Sanders said.
Andreas Spiliadis also gave a speech. He is an urban farmer and hula-hoop performer who shows up at farmers markets to promote urban farming and healthy lifestyles.
“We can control our medicine. We can control our food. And every time we do this, we start to control some of the main things that homeland security is about. Security is about food, housing and energy, and a lot of this stuff, we can fight for our rights and make it easier for ourselves. We can do a lot of things on our own,” he said, adding, “Pollinators need you to pay attention to plants and flowers.”
The students remained enthusiastic throughout the two-hour march, despite the cold day. A few students were there in order to better understand the global food system and how the TPP affects it. Rose Wang is a member of Real Food UMass and travelled with her group to the rally.
“I appreciate the concept of the challenge and stepping back to see a broader picture of the socioeconomic system internationally,” she said.
The Real Food Challenge has collaborated to produce panels on the TPP at other colleges and universities to galvanize support. While most of the concern about the TPP has been centered on the economic impacts, Real Food wants to raise awareness about the impact on local farmers and the threat to food sovereignty, which they claim has not been widely discussed.
“In our action specifically, there’s not a lot of folks talking about the interaction between the TPP and food. The people that are there also care about impact on environment, jobs and economy,” Vasquez said.
Food sovereignty, first coined by a global, grassroots organization led by small- and medium-scale agricultural workers, is a relatively new concept. It claims that regular people should create the policies that govern the production and distribution of the food that they consume rather than market institutions. They say that trade liberalization enables large-scale corporations to pursue lower costs through importation, squandering local food sourcing and the environment.
Vasquez says that the TPP’s changes to the food economy have broad implications, which is why Real Food will continue to reach out to other organizations to continue its fight.
“People came into the Real Food Challenge through very different avenues. Folks have a lot of energy and engagement around this, and we need to take comprehensive action against the TPP,” Vasquez said.
The Taharka Brothers Ice Cream Company in Baltimore also sent a few employees to participate in support of the community food system.
“We’re an ice cream factory, but we also do social justice work, community work and go help where we need to help. We need to make the market work. That’s the justice part of it, because you deserve to get better food,” Mark Bryant, an employee at Taharka Brothers, said.
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