By Frank Hammer

If you believe that we cannot move forward as workers and as a nation until we stop the ‘free trade” deals, you must get to a polling place (here in Michigan, Tuesday, March 8) and vote for Bernie Sanders.   He voted against Bill Clinton’s NAFTA in 1993, and has been consistent as a rock ever since.  Today he’s campaigning on his opposition to the TPP –Trans Pacific Partnership, otherwise known as “NAFTA on steroids”.

The same cannot be said about Hillary Clinton.  Yes, she voted against passage of the Colombia Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) in 2005, when she was in the Senate and George W Bush President.  She said then it didn’t have strong enough labor or environmental protections.

As recently disclosed emails reveal, once she was appointed Secretary of State by President Obama, she became an aggressive campaigner FOR it.  See http://bit.ly/1OQSJIt

The AFL-CIO issued a report in 2015, stating, “Three years after Colombia deal, workers still face violence, impunity and unfair working conditions.”  That’s in spite of the “unprecedented” labor protections that were made part of the CFTA. Since then, “Colombian workers have suffered more than 1,933 threats and acts of violence, including 105 assassinations of union activists and 1,337 death threats.”

We have not heard a peep about this atrocious record of violence against Colombian workers from the CFTA proponent, Hillary Clinton.

President Bill Clinton’s former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, criticized himself publicly for having supported NAFTA in 1993, stating “I used to believe in “free trade” agreements, until I took a hard look at the numbers. NAFTA cost U.S. workers almost 700,000 jobs.”  He is now actively campaigning for Bernie Sanders.

Hillary Clinton stands by all the Free Trade Agreements negotiated during her tenure at the State Dept., including the CFTA. Now that she is campaigning for the presidency, she’s been pushed to declare opposition to the Trans Pacific Partnership.  We are supposed to forget that she helped craft it while she was Secretary of State.

Trump, when he’s not busy stirring up hate, is talking against Free Trade Deals.

Who do you think will do better, running against him?  Clinton or Sanders?

Who would you prefer at the helm of our ship?

That’s two reasons to support, and vote for, Bernie Sanders!

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Frank Hammer

Frank Hammer is a member of the Real News Network Board of Directors, and has been a social justice activist for nearly 50 years. He spent the last 40 years in the labor movement as an autoworker and a member, elected officer, staff representative, and now retiree of the United Auto Workers. Frank was the former president of the Greenacres Woodward Civic Association in Detroit, and he currently represents the association as a member of the Michigan State Fairgrounds Advisory Committee. He is a lecturer in the Labor Studies Programs at Wayne State and Indiana Universities. He’s a board member of the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights, an activist with South East Michigan Jobs with Justice, the School of the Americas Watch (SOAW-UAW), and the Autoworker Caravan.