Doris Haddock on Free Trade
Fair trade for the people instead of exploitive trade
In Miami, fine children came to stand peaceably for justice in the world--to argue for fair trade for the people of the world instead of exploitive trade. These young men and women-and I know some of them and how fine they are--were obeying the police.
They tried to leave the area but were cut off and gassed and shot with wooden bullets that blinded and scarred some of them. They were rounded up into trucks, their belongings and identification were taken from them and left fluttering in the street so
that they could not get out of jail or get home. This shame is upon the City of Miami, but it is on our society, too, as it moves toward a police state of repression of our civil liberties. That is the way it is now. And people, because they speak out
peacefully, are visited by the federal police and told to watch what they say. This is what America has come to and is coming to in the shadow of dark leadership that cares nothing for the rights and values that so many Americans have died for.
Source: Speech at Robert Frost's Farm in Derry NH
Aug 20, 2004
Globalization of the workforce is a con
The largest con of the 20th and 21st Centuries is the globalization of the workforce. If we need a new chair and our neighbor, the woodworker, needs work, what in hell are we doing at Wal-Mart buying a chair made three oceans away? We need to encourage
the localization not globalization of the economy-and thereby strengthen it and humanize it. Our political leaders have failed us monstrously in this matter, as more and more of our jobs, and members our middle class, have been sold down the ocean.
Source: Senate candidacy announcement speech
Jun 17, 2004
Don't forgo trade, but trade within communities
We need no preserved or mutant foods from afar when we can have fresh and natural foods from our neighborhoods. Our children need not to eat junk foods in school cafeterias when they have unused playgrounds that could grow a botany class and a good lunch
Creative disengagement from the old order; creative engagement with each other and with the processes of life.I am not advocating a return to simpler times: indeed it is simpler to eat a Happy Meal at McDonalds than to have a community pot luck feast.
I am suggesting a return to real life in all its richness. And I am not suggesting that we build walls or forgo trade with other nations: Communities can trade their specialties with each other, as can regions and nations, but we need not go overboard
with the concept. It is not rational to trade for what our own unemployed people can easily make here at home, and any savings we realize in trading with slave societies are soon lost as we lose our middle class and become a slave society ourselves.
Source: Speech at Heartwood Conference
May 29, 2004