TPP protesters stand for self-determination, democracy, environmental protection

Roughly 400 demonstrators gathered at Kāʻanapali beach on July 29, 2015, to protest the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a global trade deal being negotiated in secret at the Westin Hotel on Maui this week.

The protesters called for a stop to the trade deal, which they say is a corporate assault on labor, the environment, intellectual property rights, self-determination and more. The TPP is part of the TPP-TISA-TTIP mega-treaty package, which aims to lower tariffs between involved nations and to lock-in international rules designed to benefit large corporations and banks.

The gathering opened with a pule, a Hawaiian prayer, rooting the event in indigenous culture and concerns. The protesters then sounded hundreds of pū (Hawaiian conch shells) as a symbolic gesture of spreading awareness about the dangers of the TPP. Event organizer Trinette Furtado said that, in blowing the pū, “we are putting out a mighty kāhea (call), past the shorelines of Maui, to connect with others standing up for their ʻāina (land) and people.”

Following the sounding of the conch, protesters began to sing “I Kū Mau Mau” (“Stand Up Together”) up and down the beach.

Longtime activist Walter Ritte spoke to the crowd saying, “This is nothing new we’re talking about today. It’s nothing new for us Hawaiians. We don’t need another layer of colonialism and bureaucracy. We had the sugar and pineapple barons, now we have the chemical-GMO barons and the tourist industry. We don’t need anymore. It’s pilau, pilau, pilau (rotten).”

Furtado similarly called the TPP, “an affront to the sovereignty of all of us as individuals, and also an affront to Hawaiian sovereignty.”

The demonstration emphasized the connection between—and convergence of—the issues of social justice, labor, indigenous rights, environmental stewardship and human rights.

The ongoing call to oppose the trade deal is supported by many individuals and activist groups, including Kākoʻo Haleakalā, AiKea, Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi, UNITE HERE! Local 5, KĀHEA: Hawaiian-Environmental Alliance, the Hawaiʻi Alliance for Progressive Action (HAPA), Babes Against Biotech, Mauna Kea Anaina Hou, Kai Palaoa, Hawaii Center for Food Safety, Hawaiʻi SEED, Pacific Alliance to Stop Slavery, ʻOhana O Kauaʻi, Occupy Wall Street Maui, Public Citizen, Flush the TPP, Friends of the Earth, Shaka Movement, Popular Resistance, MoveOn, CREDO and SumOfUs.

Several of these activists asserted the need for charting new pathways in international relations based on human solidarity, raising the well-being of all, and maintaining local democracy and sovereignty.

Activist Andrea Brower said, “We aren’t opposed to trade, and we aren’t opposed to international cooperation. What we are opposed to is economic imperialism—the writing of the rules of the global economy in order to serve solely the most dominant financial interests, always at the expense of the poorest.”

Connecting the TPP to the defining global challenges of climate change and inequality, Marti Townsend, Director of the Hawaiʻi Sierra Club, said, “Signing a deal that would restrict governments from taking action on climate change, gut environmental protections, and increase poverty all at the same time is an injustice that will haunt generations to come.”

Cade Watanabe of the hospitality, healthcare and food service union UNITE HERE! Local 5 added, “Workers around the world are hurting. We need agreements that lift living standards for all, not drive them down so that big business can make another buck.”

Former Minister of Agriculture in Japan, Masahiko Yamada, shared how he had been fighting the TPP over the course of its previous five years of secretive negotiation, and explained how it would also hurt farmers and workers in his country. The crowd rallied behind him in chants of international solidarity: “Stop TPP” and “gambaro!,” or “let’s do it!” in Japanese.

Lorilani Keohokalole-Torio spoke from her indigenous ancestral connection to Hawaiʻi, “Behind me stands my ancestors and my ʻohana (family). We are not aligned with people coming in and restructuring how we live. It hurts my naʻau, my gut. We are fed up, we are educated, we are empowered, and we are aligned to help this place, mother earth, regain the strength that she wants back.”