Only certain voices have been included in the multi-year deliberations, with human rights organizations, labor groups, and environmental activists being consistently left out of deciding the nuts and bolts of the proposed rules and relations going forward. Such restricted-access negotiations show that one of the primary purposes of deliberations is to protect the interests of economic elites. The more people find out the more people are upset with being told to accept trade deals by ultimatum and corporate control.
While the TPP could be the biggest trade deal that "no one has ever heard of," it is like NAFTA on steroids. As a number of groups have noted, the risk of the TPP is that it could thwart almost any progressive policy goal. Depending on the interpretation of trade rules decided by corporate-led tribunals, any law that violates a company's potential future profits could be a violation of TPP rules: fracking moratoriums, a $15 living wage, pollution and extraction affecting our communities, the list goes on.
I will admit that there is no necessary relationship between affirming participatory decision-making and being part of a religious community. There are many traditions and organizations that are hierarchically arranged where dissent is so often equated with unfaithfulness. But in the tradition and communities in which I participate, more often I hear the image that we are "co-creators with God." God's creative act is an ongoing process in which we are all invited to join in: to work for the redemption of our communities from harm and oppression, to pray with our lips and our feet that another way is possible, and to resist evil in our person and in our world.
So if we are co-creators, then we also need to speak up and have a voice in whether and how trade rules are decided. We know that who is invited to sit at the table matters as much as what is decided at that table. I encourage you to pray with your phone and let your officials know that Fast Track is not the way to go (888-966-9836).
Praying with my phone,
Timothy Murphy
Executive Director