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How Seattle City Council Is Fighting the TPP’s Fast-Track: An Interview With Kshama Sawant

While the resolution is mostly symbolic, supporters cited the large volume of foreign trade in the city as justification for Seattle taking a stand on the issue.

The Seattle City Council resoundingly approved a resolution Monday evening cementing its opposition to so-called Fast Track authority that’s needed to speed passage of corporate-friendly, rights-trampling trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

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We’ve borne witness to a chaotic first few months in Trump’s presidency.

Over the last months, each executive order has delivered shock and bewilderment — a core part of a strategy to make the right-wing turn feel inevitable and overwhelming. But, as organizer Sandra Avalos implored us to remember in Truthout last November, “Together, we are more powerful than Trump.”

Indeed, the Trump administration is pushing through executive orders, but — as we’ve reported at Truthout — many are in legal limbo and face court challenges from unions and civil rights groups. Efforts to quash anti-racist teaching and DEI programs are stalled by education faculty, staff, and students refusing to comply. And communities across the country are coming together to raise the alarm on ICE raids, inform neighbors of their civil rights, and protect each other in moving shows of solidarity.

It will be a long fight ahead. And as nonprofit movement media, Truthout plans to be there documenting and uplifting resistance.

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