FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 15, 2016
Contact: Breland Draper, IORC, 208-991-4451; Christina Stucker-Gassi, 208-888-5024
Last week, the Obama administration announced that they would no longer push the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a bad trade deal that the administration hoped to pass during the lame duck session of Congress. Following the administration’s decision, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell both announced they would not introduce the deal in Congress.
This is a clear win for grassroots organizations across the country that have been activating constituents, and pressuring decision makers for years against the trade deal. Many might write off the decision as a change of political winds, but the deal would still be on the table if it wasn’t for the grassroots community organizing and pushing for more progressive trade deals. In this case, direct action democracy has prevailed.
The Idaho Organization of Resource Councils (IORC), along with our local and national allies, has organized family farmers and ranchers, farmworkers, consumers, and Idahoans across the state to oppose the bad trade deal. IORC supports fair trade deals that lift up working standards, uphold strong environmental and labor laws, support local family farms and ranches, and protect the sovereign laws and regulations established under the U.S. government. The TPP failed to achieve these protections.
“With our local and national allies, IORC has successfully organized against the TPP for months now,” IORC board member Christina Stucker-Gassi said Sunday at rally in Boise to stop the TPP. “Convening meetings, writing countless letters, and posting photos and videos that gained national attention forcing supporters of this terrible trade deal to go on the defensive. In short, we’ve built power around this issue.”
IORC will continue to work to ensure that future trade deals achieve the standards that we believe Idahoans deserve. And we will hold Idaho’s elected officials accountable to the votes they take on the deals. Any bad trade deal in the future will be put under the same grassroots pressure as the TPP, and IORC members will be ready to organize and to speak out against any bad deal that the new administration proposes.
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The Idaho Organization of Resource Councils (IORC) is a non-profit grassroots organization working to protect Idaho’s unique way of life by empowering citizens to improve the economic well-being of their communities by preserving family farms and ranches; supporting local, sustainable agriculture; developing small businesses and clean energy; and being responsible stewards of Idaho’s water, land, air, and natural resources.
To join the campaign to protect family farmers, ranchers, and Idaho’s natural resources, please visit http://www.iorcinfo.org/donate/