 okay thank you Anthony and let me thank everybody for coming what's really exciting about today is that we have people from all over the state we have people from down in Bennington in Brattleboro and Newport and St. John's Bay everybody's else so thank you all for coming and I also want to thank the organizations who have helped us put on this function and that's the Vermont AFL-CIO, rural Vermont, the Perg, United Electrical Workers, the Peace and Justice Center, the Sierra Club and our special thanks also to the folks at United we stand who have helped as well and let me begin let me begin by saying in regard to NAFTA that there is a reason why all of the multinational corporations in America are putting millions and millions of dollars into the pro-NAFTA campaign and there is a reason why the handful of billionaire families who control the economics and politics of Mexico are putting an unprecedented 30 million dollars into this campaign to convince the United States Congress to vote for NAFTA and there is a reason why the corporate owned media in America is pushing the NAFTA agreement so hard and that is that the wealthy and the powerful in Canada, in Mexico and in the United States understand that the NAFTA agreement will bring huge profits, increased profits to the big multinational corporations and that obviously is why they are supporting it but on the other hand there's something also interesting and that is that the working people of the United States all over this country understand what NAFTA is about they're standing up against NAFTA and up in Canada our neighbors to North something very interesting happened last week you may have seen it that the political party the Conservatives who pushed the NAFTA agreement down the throats of the Canadian people they suffered the worst electoral defeat in the history of Canada and what you're going to hear today and we're very proud because here today we have not only Dave Bonya from Michigan we have a wonderful speaker guest from Mexico and what he's going to tell you is that the poor people and the farmers and the workers of Mexico understand that this agreement is not in their interest as well so what you have is the rich in all three countries pushing it and the poor and working people opposed to it and the reason that we are opposed to it is not a complicated reason you don't have to have a PhD in economics to understand that American workers and farmers should not be asked to compete against the death desperate in the impoverished people of Mexico who are working for a minimum wage of 58 cents an hour or a manufacturing wage of $2.35 an hour don't kid yourself NAFTA is not about raising wages in Mexico it is about lowering wages in the United States some of you may know that I was down in Mexico with a congressional committee a couple of weeks ago and I must tell you that from an emotional point of view not just an intellectual it was very distressing seeing workers at a general motorist plant in Matamoros Mexico working for a buck and 80 an hour and then right across the road about where the transportation department building is here you saw the shacks where these workers were living in which did not have running water and did not have electricity brought to them by general motors and then we met with a woman and most of the workers there by the way in the plants were women young women and we talked to them there's a woman there was making a buck an hour working for Zina and she broke down in tears as she told us about how difficult it is to raise a family and a buck an hour so the good news and all of this stuff is that American corporations are building state-of-the-art manufacturing plants and spending billions of dollars on that but the bad news is they're building in Mexico they're building it in Asia they're building it all over for cheap labor but they're not building it in Vermont or America and that's what NAFTA basically is all about it's about the deindustrialization of this country I don't have to tell the people here you see what's happening with GE with digital with Johnson controls with the downsizing all over the state 30 years ago one-third of the people in America worked in the decent paying manufacturing sector they made a decent wage they had decent benefits and now what we're talking about it's 17 percent of the people working in manufacturing and what's going on now is that our kids instead of producing real products and making a real wage they're flipping hamburgers for four and a quarter an hour and what NAFTA is all about is that last year over half of the new jobs that were created in America were low-wage temporary jobs and what NAFTA is about is people suffering a decline in their standard of living now some people argue about the amount of jobs job loss that will be associated with NAFTA it is very informative therefore to ask that question to corporate America themselves to go to these people and very interestingly about a year ago there was a poll rope a poll that was published in the Wall Street Journal 450 top CEOs across America and rope percent of these people if NAFTA is passed what do you intend to do in terms of your plants 40 percent of those people who responded said it was very likely or somewhat likely that they would move their plants or some of their plants down to Mexico that's what the corporate executives are saying and also very interestingly and very importantly 24% of the executives said they would use the threat of job loss to Mexico to bargain down the wages of their workers you understand what I'm saying what they're saying what they are saying is well we may not go to Mexico but you know what you know that plant on the other side of town they went and if you don't take a 10 or a 20 percent reduction in your pay that's where go where we're going so sign on the line and be lucky that you have any job at all now some of you may remember that about 12 years ago corporate America under the guise of Reaganomics they came forward and they said remember this they said if you give the rich and the big corporations big tax breaks what they're going to do with those savings is they're going to reinvest in America and they're going to create new jobs remember that's that was a lie and everybody knows everybody knows what Reaganomics was about they took those savings they bought traveling vans they took our jobs to Mexico and all over the world that's what they did with those savings and what they also did is became wealthy and on the Reaganomics tremendous massive transfer of wealth from working people and poor people to the very rich 12 years have come and gone and now they've got a new gimmick and their new gimmick is as they say if you allow the United States to merge economies with Mexico guess what we're going to do for your workers we're going to reinvest and we're going to create all kinds of great jobs for the American working people they lied a dozen years ago and they're lying today the fight there were waging goes beyond after and what it's about is the corporate America has committed economic treason against the working people of our country and what we have got to demand of them is that they claim to be every time there's a war they tell you how patriotic they are and how much they love America well if they love America then maybe they should start reinvesting in this country rather than in Malaysia and in the Philippines and maybe they should start paying workers a living wage rather than 50 cents an hour or a buck an hour to desperate third world people I'm delighted to see so many people here today and I'm delighted very delighted that we have people from all walks of life in the state of Vermont we have many of the people from the unions are working people family farmers the environmental community United we stand and so forth but I want to right now introduce a gentleman who is a very good friend of mine as many of you know you sent me down to Washington as the only independence in the United States Congress a lot of good things to say about either the Democratic or Republican parties and the truth is there's not a whole lot of good things to say but I want to introduce a gentleman who is the third ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives he's the whip his name is Dave Banya and Dave has played an extraordinary leadership role in fighting the NAFTA agreement and I honestly believe that if we are successful in defeating NAFTA it's gonna be a very close vote in the House there is probably no one in America who is more responsible for that victory for working people than Dave Banya so it's a great pleasure to welcome to the state of Vermont Dave Banya from Michigan