The anti-CAFTA rally went well. About 50-100 protesters showed up. Mike Rotkin and Paul Ortiz spoke out about how we in the US need to take responsibility for the behaviour of our government and organize to oppose CAFTA. Mike Rotkin complained about how he can't even make copies of excerpts from his own book to use in class since the company that published it owns the rights. Paul Ortiz noted that the concept of Free Trade is a very sick and twisted concept, as first introduced by the British when they were exploiting the people of India. Basicly their logic dictated that it would be a restraint of Free Trade for the Indian people to save their grain asside in case of a local famine, rather than export it to the British.

Both Rep Sam Farr and Rep Mike Honda indicated that they either already publicly oppose CAFTA or that they would come out against it. Sam Farr claims he publicly oppooses CAFTA. Keep in mind however that Sam Farr was expressing opposition to NAFTA untill 2 days before Congress voted on the issue, at which point he changed his position and voted for NAFTA. So it may be necessary to keep the pressure on our Reps to make sure they ultimately vote the right way.


Also present at the rally was a giant puppet by the name of the Evil Dr CAFTA, sponsored by an evil medical corporation. Dr CAFTA, complete with blood shot eyes and an evil laugh, pointed out how he was in favor of patenting indigenous knowledge and then reselling it to the natives. He drew loud boos of course.

The contact #'s for our local Reps are:

Sam Farr (dist 17) -- Santa Cruz
District office # 831-429-1976
Washington DC Office 202-225-2861
(Voted for NAFTA)

Rep Mike Honda (Dist 15) Campbell
District office 408-558-8085
Washington DC office: 202-225-2631

Zoe Lofgren (dist 16) San Jose
District Office 408-271-8700
Washington DC office: 202-225-3072
(Voted for NAFTA)

Anna Eshoo (Dist 14) Palo Alto
District office 650-323-2984
Washington DC office: 202-225-8104

Sam Farr's voicemail box for his local office was full durring the lunch break from 12-1PM, so people at the rally used cell phones to melt their brains while they called the Washington DC office. 5 minutes per month of cell phone use is supposed to be ok (acording to the worst of the cell phone nay sayers) so I guess this part of the protest was ok too.

>Mike Rotkin complained about how he
>can't even make copies of excerpts
>from his own book to use in class
>since the company that published it
>owns the rights.

If this is true, then Rotkin is even a bigger idiot that I thought!

How could a Ph.D, professor, Mayor, be so incompetent as to allow the rights to his own written works to be wholly and exclusively held by some other party?

And people trust him to "run" the city?