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Thursday 29th July 2010 10:23 AM |
Minnesota Trade Stories Project seeks participants
17 February 2009
| MINNEAPOLIS - Have you been affected by unfair trade policies? Tell your story through a special project going on in Minnesota and several other states. |
The Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition is one of five state-based, fair-trade-advocacy organizations participating in the first phase of the Trade Stories Project nationwide. The goal of the project is to increase public participation and accountability in trade policymaking by collecting and documenting stories of real people whose lives have been negatively affected by the current free-trade system.
In December, the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition collected the project’s first stories, hearing from workers who, earlier this year, watched their jobs shipped from the TRW auto-parts manufacturing plant in Winona, Minn., to Mexico. The workers talked about their struggle to maintain the life they’ve spent years building for themselves and their families, facing lost health benefits, rising health care costs, sick family members, a sunken housing market and deciding whether returning to school late in life is the best decision.
The project’s goal in Minnesota is to conduct 30 interviews with displaced workers, immigrants, farmers and others negatively impacted by trade policies in an effort to bring the power of personal stories to the trade policy debate.
To share your story, or to assist with the collection of others’ stories, contact Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition Director Alicia Ranney at 612-578-8266.
This article is reprinted from The Saint Paul Union Advocate. |
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