At the "World Trader of the Year" award ceremony at Grand Valley State University's DeVos Campus last night, activists questioned how a conference that purports to care about world trade and development be held without including NGOs concerned about the environmental and human rights aspects of trade. Immediately after World Trader of the Year award winner Jeff Meyer of the Van Andel Global Trade Center praised his organization for the work they do working with business interests, three activists stood up and addressed the conference:
Activist: Sir, I have a question - if this is World Trade Week I'm not sure how you can't invite any human rights or labor party or any sort of those NGOs to comment on that situation if you really care about world trade and fair development for all.
World Trader: This is an open forum and everyone is welcome - everybody is invited!
Activist: It's an "invite only"
World Trader: It's a week of celebration of world trade ... all ideas are open to be discussed, so we'll address that later
(someone tells him that he is welcome to stay but that he has to pay)
Activist: Why should we have to pay $25? If this is truly concern for the global market and the global welfare of people who know that NAFTA has overall damaged and disemployeed folks all over Mexico in rural farming, how can you pretend that this CAFTA or other trade agreements are going to help?
World Trader: We would be glad to have that discussion after I get off this podium.
Activist: I wanted to hear from the... I'm from Grand Rapids and I want to hear from the Trader of the Year
(someone tells him that they have been "very courteous here" informs him that it's not very courteous to interrupt the speech)
Activist: It's not very courteous either when indigenous people are dying all over and Central and South America and these are just the actions that encourage their corrupt governments.
Audience Member: You can have the courtesy to let him speak first and then you can speak
Activist: The thousands of the jobs that have popped up along the border, I was just there, and in Southern Mexico rural farmers can't even survive. I'm not making this up... I live here and I really care about this and I also care about other countries that we deal with in trade agreements.
World Trader: We appreciate your comments and I think they are appropriate to be discussed but it's also not fair to interrupt us when we speak.
Activist: I feel like human rights have such a much more important role than interrupting people in such an event that it's worth it...
At that point, the three joined activists from the Stop CAFTA Campaign who distributed information about CAFTA and drew chalk body outlines accompanied by messages like "NAFTA = 76,000 Michigan Jobs" outside the event. After the interruption, GVSU security called the Grand Rapids Police Department who informed people that they could not be on university property. According to the GRPD, the public university is privately held and only students with ID are allowed to be on the property.
