A nationwide concert tour designed to voice opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal will kick off with a concert headlined by Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello.
The show will be held place in Denver on June 23 and will be the first of five stops in yet-to-be-announced cities through August.
In addition to Morello, the Denver show will feature actress Evangeline Lilly, future hip-hop group Flobots and punk band Anti-Flag, among other acts.
“Working people everywhere have had enough,” Morello said in a statement through digital activist group Fight for the Future, which is sponsoring the tour. “The TPP is nothing short of a corporate takeover of our democracy. That’s why people are rising up to stop it. Corporate lobbyists want to sneak the TPP through Congress quietly; that means it’s time for us to get loud.”
Lilly echoed those sentiments in the same Fight for the Future release.
“This fight against the TPP is not about right and left, it’s about right and wrong,” she said. “Whatever you’re passionate about, whether it’s human rights, Internet freedom, climate change or food safety, the TPP is a bad deal for humanity and a threat to the future of democracy. The more people learn about the TPP, the less they like it. It’s our responsibility to sound the alarm, before it’s too late.”
President Obama has been pushing the 12-nation trade deal as a way of creating more jobs for Americans, but critics say the pact would only serve to ship more jobs overseas. Other concerns are that the labor and environmental protections are too weak, and many are unhappy about pharmaceutical provisions in the agreement.
Congress is not expected to vote on the pact until after the November elections.
