"Grain Markets Panic Buying, Export Controls, and Food Riots," trumpets the headline of one Web site I read while researching the world food price crisis for Sojourners' July issue. Was the site a moral critique of how our corporation-driven, anything-goes global economy has caused the cost of food to skyrocket, driving 100 million people into poverty?

Actually, the "food riots" headline is geared to telling people how to profit from others' suffering. The next sentence reads: "Long-term global demand and supply trends in the agricultural sector remain very favorable for investors." Morally repugnant as that segue is, the real problem is that speculation probably helped cause the food price crisis (in concert with other factors such as agrofuel production, rising meat-eating, and the gutting of poor-country farm policy).

Speculative markets are innately prone to stampedes, as we can see from the mortgage bubble, the dot.com bubble, etc., etc. Wild price swings are built into the system: It's the job of a money manager to buy commodities that will go up (helping to inflate bubbles) and sell them when they start to go down (helping deflate them).

Turning up the speculative heat is the fact that there's a LOT of money out there chasing investments -- double what there was in the year 2000. A recent NPR program, The Giant Pool of Money, spells out, in human terms, how the pressure that speculative money exerts was a recipe for disaster during the housing bubble.

While that bubble hurt homeowners and investors when prices deflated, food-market speculation hurts the world's poor as prices go up -- way, way up. Incredibly, many voices in the press fly in the face of reality by arguing that speculation somehow decreases the wild swings and bubble pricing of markets. For example, The New York Times recently argued that

... the more money that speculators are willing to put to work in the market, the more liquid it is and the easier it is to buy and sell without causing big ripples in prices.

If you believe that stampedes calm vibrations, I've got some subprime mortgage-backed securities to sell you. A more accurate description of how speculators act can be found in Washington Post humorist Gene Weingarten's interview several years ago with Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Solow:

[Weingarten]: ... would it be your professional judgment that Wall Street, the principal bulwark of the American financial system, is at the mercy of persons with the maturity of kindergarteners -- or of preschoolers?

Solow: It's at the mercy of very, very nervous people.

Now, the world's poor are more than nervous. They're hungry. Very hungry.

Elizabeth Palmberg is an assistant editor of Sojourners.

In college, I took a cultural exchange trip (read: vacation) to Rome over spring break. Just around the corner from St. Peter's Square, I bought my father, a minister, a crucifix for his office.

Earlier this week, I saw that same souvenir in a report from The National Labor Committee on crucifixes made in Chinese sweatshops.

The report, titled "Today Workers Bear the Cross", documents the oppressive treatment of the workers in the Junxingye factory in Dongguan, China, who make crucifixes and other religious items to be sold to the faithful in the West.

[The] mostly young women—several just 15 and 16 years old—[are] forced to work routine 14 to 15 ½-hour shifts, from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 or 11:30 p.m., seven days a week … and even monthly all-night 22 ½ to 25-hour shifts before shipments must leave for the U.S. …Workers are paid just 26 and a half cents an hour, which is half of China's legal minimum wage (already set at a below-subsistence level) of 55 cents an hour. After fees deducted for room and board, the workers take-home wage can drop to just nine cents an hour … Workers fear that they may be handling toxic chemicals, but they are not told the names of the chemicals and paints, let alone their potential health hazards.

The products are then sold for upwards of $20 in the U.S., in churches like New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral and chains like Family Christian Stores. If God despises praise songs and offerings presented in the absence of justice, as the Hebrew prophets tell us, then crucifixes and plastic Bible covers made on the cheap at the expense of workers must really make God mad.

The image of women toiling away in sweatshops while handling an icon of the suffering body of Christ is quite striking. It brings to my mind a couple of questions. What might it mean for North American and European Christians to bear the cross—that is, to willingly suffer for the sake of justice—rather than participate in the unjust elements of our global trade system? Is it even possible to practice authentic discipleship within the global economy we're all swept up in? How can we, in even the smallest ways, seek to rid our lives of exploitation and be in solidarity with those who are suffering?

I ask these questions not because I have the answers. (Much of this post was written on a laptop built in, you guessed it, China.) I think I have a small picture, though, of what it might look like:

We'd probably buy more local and union made products, even if they cost more. We'd become pretty comfortable with hand-me-downs, and even looking kind of frumpy sometimes. We'd realize we need less than we thought we did, and go without some things previously thought essential. We'd share a lot more with our neighbors. And we'd demand that unjust structures change. Most of all, we'd need a community—to keep us accountable to countercultural discipleship, to forgive us for the impossibility of living lives free of exploitation, and to remind us it is in God and not the global market that we live, move, and have our being.

I pray that the church would be that sort of community and come together in resistance to our present global economy. Then we could begin to free ourselves (and others, like the women in the Junxingye factory) from its captivity.

Tim Kumfer serves as an assistant at The Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C., and is a former Sojourners intern. He writes occasionally at timkumfer.blogspot.com.

Tuesday marked the beginning of what is likely to be a long and controversial Senate debate on the 2007 Farm Bill. People of faith around the country are waking up to realize how critical this legislation is to our goals of ending hunger and poverty in America and abroad. Unfortunately, Congress has yet to show the leadership to make this goal a reality.

The Farm Bill is a vast piece of legislation - authorizing everything from food stamps to conservation programs, from rural development to our infamous farm subsidy program. This summer the House of Representatives passed its version of the Farm Bill, with little reform to the commodity title that governs farm subsidies. Now it is the Senate's turn, and the bill they are starting with has every indication of ignoring the reform agenda yet again.

Today, I stood with African and U.S. religious leaders at a press conference to call on our senators to be true to their commitments to fighting poverty in Africa by cutting unfair and outdated subsidies in the Farm Bill. The following are my remarks from the event:

An evangelical always has a text so I'll begin with a text this morning. Proverbs 13:23: "A poor person's field may produce abundant food, but injustice sweeps it away."

The question this morning for members of the U.S. Senate is simply this: How long will you postpone justice?

Is there anybody on this hill, in this town, who believes that continuing outdated, outmoded, but enormous subsidies to the world's biggest and richest farmers at the expense of the world's smallest and poorest farmers is fair, is just, or creates global stability? I don't think so. I haven't heard that.

Unfortunately, poor cotton farmers in West Africa don't vote in races for the U.S. Congress. They don't contribute to senatorial campaigns. They have no lobbyists on Capitol Hill except for us - today. They're just too busy trying to make a living to support their families and allow their countries to earn their way out of poverty.

But they have a huge obstacle; they have a huge competitor to their efforts. Their competitor is the U.S. government; their obstacle is the U.S. government.

Everyone knows these inequitable subsidies must end. Everyone knows that by continuing them we put a gigantic obstacle in the way of the sustainable development we say we support - and then block. Everyone knows that these subsidies make a mockery of our rhetoric about caring for what happens to Africa. Everyone knows we are postponing justice again.

Seventy five percent of the world's poorest people support themselves by farming, and we stop them from doing that. Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, has said eloquently and clearly, "a world where a billion people live in extreme poverty is neither just nor secure."

We need to make the reforms in the commodities in the farm bill - now. To not do so is to be guilty of moral shortsightedness and political blindness to the real path for global security. But that moral shortsightedness and political blindness is likely to happen again on the floor of the U.S. Senate unless some senators open their eyes, develop new vision, and find the courage to lead.

The religious community is asking them to do just that.

TAKE ACTION: The Farm Bill debate is typically dominated by big agribusiness and a handful of congressional leaders from farm states. But we can make a difference – Sojourners is asking our supporters to call their senators in support of reforming the commodity title – click here to make your call.

One more reason to take up dumpster diving: I've been finding lots of bananas lately, many of them from Chiquita, and many of them from Colombia. I've been aware of Chiquita's entanglements with right-wing paramilitaries, but at least I can eat the fruit with a clean conscience since none of my dollars have made their way up the corporate food chain and back down to Colombian death squads.

A recent USA Today article summarized the scandal well. This was my quote of the week for SojoMail today:

Chiquita's money helped buy weapons and ammunition used to kill innocent victims of terrorism. Simply put, defendant Chiquita funded terrorism.

That's the U.S. Justice Department, in court filings last month against Chiquita for paying off right-wing paramilitaries in Colombia. Here's the rest of the story, Harpers Index-style:

• $1.7 million - amount Chiquita paid the Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, AUC), a right-wing paramilitary organziation responsible for the majority of human rights abuses in Colombia's armed conflict
• $25 million - amount Chiquita was fined after pleading guilty of paying money to a terrorist organization
• $49.4 million - profits reaped by Chiquita from its Colombian operations between Sept. 10, 2001, when the AUC was designated a terrorist group, and January 2004, when its payments stopped. That's a number to keep in mind when Chiquita protests that it was merely trying to protect its workers.
• 173 - Colombians allegedly murdered and in some cases tortured by right-wing militias that received payments from Chiquita, whose families are now suing the company.
• 4,000 - number of people killed in the Uraba banana-growing region during the period when Chiquita admits to paying the AUC.
• 1989 until 1997 - years during which Chiquita paid left-wing guerillas before the region in which they operated was taken over by the AUC

And if this makes you not want to eat Chiquita bananas, here's some more bad news:

A spreading investigation in Colombia into what is being called the "para-politics" scandal may ensnare other corporate targets. Former AUC leader Salvatore Mancuso in May told the newspaper El Tiempo in Bogota that all banana producers had paid for protection, including Dole and Del Monte. Mancuso, who was jailed after turning himself in as part of an ongoing government-backed demobilization, said his group received 1 cent for every dollar of bananas exported. "All of the banana companies paid us. Every one of them," Mancuso told the newspaper.

And one more closing thought:

"It may be true (that) you could not operate in these areas without paying the AUC. If it were al-Qaeda, that wouldn't be a defense," says Terry Collingsworth, an attorney with the International Labor Rights Fund, which has filed lawsuits against several corporations, including Chiquita, over their activities in Colombia.

Ryan Rodrick Beiler is the web editor for Sojourners. He traveled to Colombia in 2003.

The questioner from a D.C. think tank was confused. Costa Rican politician Ottón Solís had just told an audience of D.C. journalists and policy thinkers how his homeland has a 120-year tradition of democracy, strong respect for human rights, and by far the best economy, lowest poverty and illiteracy rates, and highest life expectancy in its region.

In other words, it's exactly the kind of country that backers of the Central America Free Trade Agreement think is well positioned to "reap the gains" from CAFTA. Yet it's the only potential member that has so far not ratified the agreement; in an October referendum Costa Ricans will vote whether to join CAFTA, and Solís is urging a "no" vote.

Patiently, Solís repeated his point: Costa Rica is already benefiting from trade (its exports last year grew four times faster than in 2005, far better than neighboring countries who had implemented CAFTA). Joining CAFTA would only undermine "precisely … some of those institutions that you and I are praising": The universal health care system would be bankrupted by new rules favoring pharmaceutical companies, environmental laws could be challenged in closed-door trade tribunals, and the government-run electric and telephone companies, losing their monopoly, would no longer be able to offer the low prices and wide coverage that are "basic for social mobility."

Bookish-looking, vocally pro-business and pro-U.S., and armed with a statistics-laden PowerPoint presentation, Solís is as far as you can get from a populist firebrand like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. In response to the anecdote-based pro-CAFTA claims of his debating partner from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Solís got spirited, but in a courteous and polysyllabic way:

Why is the U.S.A. building a wall [on its southern border]? If this CAFTA is for us such a magic machine of employment generation and small entrepreneurship strengthening, then the U.S.A.—with all of Central America, practically, and Mexico in free trade agreements—would have been eliminating visa requirements. They are making them more stringent, and building a wall, because the U.S.A. knows very well what's going on here in our countries [including, in Mexico, the NAFTA-induced] disappearance of 1.3 million farmers. … In these deals, you cannot survive if you are small.

And small- and medium- sized landowners, Solís pointed out, have been "the very basis of [Costa Rica's] democratic development" and prosperity.

Faced with a media that (not unlike the U.S.'s) offers only pro-CAFTA messages, Solís is leading a group of volunteers going door-to-door to urge his countrymen to vote no to CAFTA in October's referendum. With 600 people each knocking on a thousand doors (so far Solís has hit 683), they figure they'll hit half the nation's households, all on a budget of less than $20,000 (used to print brochures). The anti-CAFTA speakers have found that church doors, unlike television studios or the halls of government, are often open to their presentations.

"I have seen very many instances in history in which hearts, passion, conviction, have defeated money [and] power," says Solís. "And I hope that this is going to be another case."

Elizabeth Palmberg is assistant editor of Sojourners. Ottón Solís spoke recently in Washington, D.C., at a forum hosted by the Global Policy Network.

Last Friday the House passed a 741-page Farm Bill, largely keeping intact the existing system of subsidies for commercial farmers while adding billions of dollars for conservation, nutrition, and new agricultural sectors. While Democratic leaders will call this a success, the bill demonstrates the brokenness of our politics in which the common good is so often sacrificed to political expediency and powerful corporate interests.

The Farm Bill is a massive, complicated piece of legislation that addresses everything from nutrition programs to commodity subsidies to rural development. It symbolizes the crisis facing American farmers, who are captive to a rhetoric-filled battle over how best to preserve their livelihoods. However, rather than protecting the livelihoods of small farmers, this current bill goes to even greater lengths to provide a form of corporate welfare to large commercial farms and agribusinesses.

Late Friday morning, House lawmakers defeated an amendment sponsored by Representatives Kind (D-Wis.) and Flake (R-Ariz.), which provided desperately needed reforms to this deeply flawed bill. The Kind/Flake Amendment would have made crucial reforms by denying subsidies to large commercial farmers with an average adjusted gross income greater than $500,000 and limiting annual subsidies to $250,000 per person. The savings would be redirected to fight hunger, protect the environment, and help poor farmers.

Instead, billions of dollars of price support subsidies will go to commodities such as wheat, soybeans, and cotton, resulting in one of the greatest heresies in the religion of free trade, let alone fair trade. These subsidies lead to overproduction and distort prices on the international market, making it almost impossible for poor farmers across the developing world to compete and earn their way out of poverty. Ironically, the interests of the small cotton farmer in South Carolina are much more aligned with poor farmers in Africa than with the agribusinesses and large commercial farms that keep winning the lion's share of Farm Bill benefits.

In order to win sufficient support, the Agriculture Committee loaded the bill with billions of dollars for nutrition programs, conservation, black farmers, and Florida and California fruit and vegetable industries. However, Democratic leaders were unwilling to defy corporate pressure and overhaul the corporate welfare of commodity subsidies.

The Farm Bill exposes a clash between the pragmatic politics of compromise and incremental change with the prophetic politics of the common good. Congress was caught between advocates for reform, including a broad faith-based coalition, and the heavily financed commercial farms whose power in 20 congressional districts dominates the debate. This outcome in the House illustrates the brokenness of a political process in which corporate interests too often drown out the voices of faith-based and civic advocates. It also demonstrates the urgent need to reclaim our democracy on behalf of the common good.

Prophets such as Amos, Isaiah, and Ezekiel didn’t mince words or withhold prophetic judgment when leaders advanced the interests of the strong over the welfare of the weak. With our pastoral side we can sympathize with elected officials who are trying to do the right thing—balancing the interests of multiple stakeholders while facing real and perceived constraints around what’s politically possible. However, our prophetic vocation calls us to hold elected officials to a higher standard and change the very parameters within which these policy decisions are made, one that privileges and protects the interests of the weak and dispossessed—in this case, small farmers at home and abroad.

Fortunately, the debate around the Farm Bill now moves to the Senate, giving us another chance to fight for the common good. But senators must believe there’s a real political cost to preserving the status quo, and the prophetic voice must overpower the voice of lobbyists representing commercial farms and agribusinesses.

Adam Taylor is director of campaigns and organizing for Sojourners/Call to Renewal.

(Click here to read the first part of this series.)

In my search for an ethically made bra, I came face to face with the two distinct worlds of justice issues. There are those who are passionate about caring for the environment and then there are those who seek justice for people, and it appeared that ne’er the twain shall meet. I found the sites where collective groups of women in Africa made clothing for fair wages, but used cloth made with environmentally unfriendly practices. Or I found clay-dyed organic cotton bras, but had no clue to how they were made. After e-mailing the company, I might hear back that they care about their employees (whatever that means), but there was no concrete certification that fair practices are used.

Granted, there were a small handful of companies that carried lines of trendy organic fair trade t-shirts designed for the emo crowd. They’re cool, but I needed a bra. Eventually I found a site in the U.K. that carries organic, ethically hand-stitched lingerie. But I needed everyday wear, not five-minutes-in-the-bedroom wear. And I wasn’t willing to pay their $100 price tag either. I knew this endeavor would require more funds than the typical sale bin at the mall, but I had my limits. There has to be a balance between saving a buck at the expense of a worker in a third world nation and throwing one’s money away on luxury items. (And no, I don’t see being an ethical consumer a luxury, just part of living out that whole loving one’s neighbor thing.)

Then finally, after a couple of weeks of fruitless searching, I stumbled across Rawganique.com. It's a business based out of an off-the-grid island in Canada where they grow their own organic food (eaten vegan and raw), power their computers with solar and wind energy, and promote their products as “a quiet, old-fashioned retreat from the hecticness and rampant chemicalization that are characteristic of the modern, conventional world.” It looked promising. As I researched further, I discovered that their clothing met all of my criteria—they care about the environment and people. And they sell bras (which are actually cheaper than those I typically buy at the mall—ethical and affordable!). Mission accomplished: I found my justice bra.

But why, I have to ask, did I have to dig up some hippie commune sort of place in order to find this? It’s great that they are doing this, but with all the attention justice issues are getting these days, one would hope that ethical shopping would have become a bit more mainstream. What’s the deal? Is it just easy to talk about this stuff and never actually live it out? What will it actually take for us to change the injustices in our economic system and shop for a better world? That’s what I want to know.

And in case you were wondering, I really like my new bra.

Julie Clawson is a church planting pastor in the Chicago area and the coordinator of the Emerging Women blog.

(Click here to read the first part of this series.)

I realized the other day that I needed a new bra. Usually I would hop in the car, drive to the nearest Victoria’s Secret, and buy some mass-produced, synthetic hot pink thing that claimed to make me sexy. Easy enough. But I just couldn’t do it this time. My conscience wouldn’t let me.

Over the last few years, my knowledge of justice issues has grown. I can no longer ignore the realities of sweatshops, child labor, toxic pesticides and dyes, and unjust trade laws. Sure, it’s easy to walk into the mall and buy whatever is on sale. It’s easy to not care about where my clothes came from, who made them and under what conditions, and what their long-term effects will be. I buy things without asking those questions all the time—like I’m sure the ad execs want me to. Of course, I’ll buy the fair trade coffee or the organic produce when it’s readily available, but, when it comes to just about everything else, I still know how to mindlessly consume with the best of them.

But not this time. I decided to see if I could find a new bra that was ethically made—just to see if I could do it and to force myself to actually put my money where my mouth is. So as my friends rolled their eyes and offered sarcastic “good lucks,” I began my search for the justice bra. But first I set my criteria.

The bra had to be made from an organically grown material. No synthetics made from petroleum, no pesticides that harm the environment and the farmers, and no unsustainable practices. Since hemp growth is restricted, bamboo isn’t usually sustainably grown (and who would ever want a wool bra?), organic cotton seemed to be my best option. Cotton is the most pesticide-dependent crop in the world, accounting for 25 percent of total pesticide use. Since we don’t eat cotton, the amount and types of chemicals dumped on cotton crops aren’t as restricted as for other crops. These chemicals are taking their toll on the environment as well as on human health. The EPA considers seven of the top 15 pesticides used on cotton as "likely" or "known" human carcinogens. Every t-shirt made of conventional cotton requires a quarter pound of harmful chemicals. I can’t knowingly support that. So to be ethical, it had to be grown using ecologically friendly practices.

It also couldn’t have toxic dyes in the fabric—dyes that hurt the environment and are potential carcinogens. I didn’t want fish to die or metals and chlorines to seep into my skin just so I could have hot pink. Numerous chemicals are used to dye most fabrics and these chemicals generally do not break down in wastewater treatment plants. And often to get the dyes to set heavy metals are used in the process. All of this is in the clothes we wear. It hurts the environment and it’s unhealthy. So standard number two was that the bra had to be free of harmful dyes.

Finally, the bra had to be fairly made. From the farmers who grew the fibers, to the weavers who spun the fabric, to the tailors who assembled it, each person (adults, not children) along the way had to have been paid a living wage (usually much more than minimum wage), not been coerced to work, and treated humanely. I’ve read the reports of the growing numbers of Indian cotton growers who are committing suicide because under "free trade" agreements they can’t earn enough to survive by growing cotton. They deserve to be fairly compensated for their labor, not cheated because the hypothetical potential of cotton flooding the markets drove down prices. I also didn’t want to support a company that holds women (or children) as virtual slaves in a sweatshop (where often the women also have to perform other “services” for their male employers in order to keep their jobs). Nor did I want to support a company that pays their workers a wage that isn’t sufficient to live on just so the company could make a bigger profit. Whoever made my bra needs to be able to make a living doing so. And not a degrading, oppressive living either, but one that treats them as a real person.

Not too much to ask, just an ethically made bra. I could find that somewhere, right?

Julie Clawson is a church planting pastor in the Chicago area and the coordinator of the Emerging Women blog.

(Check back soon for part two of Julie's search for an ethical bra.)

Putting Robert Zoellick in charge of the World Bank, as that anti-poverty organization's board recently did at the U.S.'s behest, is a bit like making a power company lobbyist the Chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality - oh, wait, we've already done that.

The problem with Zoellick is that he was formerly the U.S. Trade Representative - head of the agency responsible for mercilessly "negotiating" trade agreements or, more accurately, strongarming weaker countries into accepting agreements focused on widening market access for U.S. corporations, often at the expense of their smaller competitors.

A growing number of NGOs, like Center of Concern, believe that U.S. trade policy under Zoellick (and before and after him too) has actually been pro-poverty. Trade agreements have usually ended up forcing poor countries to give up any protections against more powerful competition from the U.S., which pays out billions of dollars in subsidies to our farmers each year. The agreements also force poor countries to allow privatization of their basic services, like water and electricity; they prevent governments from giving any preferential treatment to their own companies and industries; and they eliminate governments' abilities to control their own development policies. Still, Zoellick continually argued that trade liberalization is "the starting point for greater development, growth, opportunity and openness around the world." Add: "For rich countries." (Here's an overview of what's wrong with the U.S. trade agenda).

And then, of course, there's one other obvious question. Since 1985, Zoellick has worked for the Department of Treasury, Goldman Sachs, the Naval Academy, the State Department, and of course, the U.S. Trade Representative Office. Shouldn't the president of the World Bank be someone who has at least worked at an anti-poverty organization?

Jill Rauh is Senior Program Associate with the Education for Justice Project at Center of Concern, a Jesuit organization promoting economic and social justice. Read more about trade agreements in Sojourners' recent article, World Market 101.

Why is it so ironic that, last Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that congressional leaders had reached a compromise with the Bush administration to make proposed trade agreements with Peru and Panama somewhat less terrible, and would now encourage Congress to approve those agreements?

Less than a week earlier, U.S. trade negotiators admitted that - oops! - back in the early 1990s, at the start of the WTO, they’d accidentally committed the entire nation to provide completely unfettered access to foreign Internet casinos:

the United States did not intend to adopt commitments that were inconsistent with its own laws … gambling or betting services are generally prohibited or highly restricted in the United States for reasons of public morality, law enforcement and protection of minors and other vulnerable groups.

We only noticed the blooper when casino host country Antigua filed a successful trade lawsuit (European countries were expected to follow suit). And what the government isn’t emphasizing now is that, in order to withdraw our gambling market from WTO jurisdiction and protect countless state and local gambling laws, we’re going to have to pay through the nose to Antigua and any other country that feels cut out of the action.

So, when Pelosi tells Congress, and the rest of us, that it’s “a new day,” and that all the problems with the proposed U.S-Peru and U.S.-Panama trade agreements - extraordinarily complex, binding treaties - are fixed now, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do you feel lucky?

Well, do you?

Elizabeth Palmberg is an Assistant Editor for Sojourners magazine. + Learn more in Sojourners' May special issue on trade justice

Last week Congress started to inject just a bit of sanity and morality into the discussion about proposed trade agreements with Colombia, Peru, Panama, and South Korea. A congressional proposal, whose full text has not been publicly released, would seek to incorporate labor standards, and some recognition of environmental concerns and poor countries’ right to generic lifesaving medicines, into trade agreements.

It’s a great start – but the House Ways and Means Committee Chairman, Charles Rangel, is signaling that he thinks Congress can work out a deal with the White House on those trade agreements soon, possibly as early as this week. That accelerated timetable is a spectacularly bad idea: There’s no way that the agreement texts, which are deeply flawed, can be fixed in so short a time. Here are a few reasons why:

1) In trade agreements, the devil is in the details. Who knew, when NAFTA was being considered, that a single phrase among the text’s hundreds of pages would give corporations the right to sue governments when health and environmental laws affected profits? (Hey, overworked congressional staffer – what part of “tantamount to expropriation” did you not understand?) It’s great to talk about labor, the environment, and essential medicines in a press release, but you can’t put all that in enforceable trade-agreement writing in a few weeks.

2) The congressional press release doesn’t mention many important problems with the current trade agreement model, including conventional trade agreements’ devastating effect on other countries’ small farmers (many of whom will be pushed to undocumented migration or coca farming in order to feed their families).

3) Current trade agreements are the result of a deeply flawed process, in which corporations get privileged input into negotiations, while advocates for the poor are shut out. No last-minute deal between Congress and the president can represent all the voices that need to be at the table.

So keep all of those affected by trade agreements in your prayers and thoughts – and watch for Sojourners’ special issue on trade justice, released next month!

(Note: Unlike normal bills, trade agreements are rejected or approved by Congress after they are negotiated by the executive branch; the fact that the president has signed the trade agreements with Colombia and Peru simply means he has sent them to Congress, not that they are a done deal).

Elizabeth Palmberg is an Assistant Editor for Sojourners.

Who do you think should give nuts-and-bolts advice to help craft trade agreements that can cut Third World AIDS sufferers’ ability to buy lifesaving generic medicines? a) Pharmaceutical corporations, b) other large corporations, or c) public health advocates, including religious groups.

Trick question! There are no public health advocates on the government-organized group that advises U.S. trade negotiators on medicines - just folks from Pfizer, Monsanto, and other corporate interests (plus one environmental group). That setup - along with the “fast track” system, whereby the executive branch negotiates bad agreements and Congress is limited to a yes-or-no vote on them – are two reasons why recent U.S. trade agreements like CAFTA carve out new entitlements for Big Pharma at the expense of sick people in desperately poor countries. And the health of the poor is just one of the ways in which CAFTA, and similar not-yet-approved pacts with Colombia and other countries, are bad products of a bad process.

Some in Congress are starting to speak out about the problem, but a number of congressional leaders, including Sen. Max Baucus, seem to be suggesting that the soon-to-expire “fast track” can be renewed, and that the disastrous course of the past few years can keep rolling on, with only a few changes.

You can tell Congress that this just isn’t good enough. As a first step, pick up the phone TODAY and tell your representatives about Tuesday’s “Rethinking U.S. Trade Policy for the Common Good,” a briefing put together by an interfaith coalition that cares about the well-being of AIDS sufferers, the environment, and ordinary people in the U.S. and abroad.

(And stay tuned for Sojourners’ May issue on trade justice to learn more about what you can do to help build a better world!)

Elizabeth Palmberg is an Assistant Editor for Sojourners magazine.