When it was passed in 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement was sold to the people of each nation on the promise that it would bring large net benefits in better jobs and faster growth. Twelve years later, it is clear that the costs to workers outweighed the benefits in the United States, Mexico, and Canada."

—Economic Policy Institute

What's wrong in Oaxaca? Over seventy years of crushing poverty, single-party rule, and institutional racism [...] have left the majority of Oaxaca's residents with few options outside of organized protest. What's wrong in Oaxaca? Non-violent protestors have been beaten, disappeared, and killed. Their demands? The resignation of a corrupt governor who has spent public money in all the wrong places and carried out deadly repression against a non-violent movement with legitimate demands."

—Jill Friedberg

Only by making life in the world's villages better, by making it possible for young people to have not only materially decent lives but culturally rich and fullfilling experiences in their communities, only in this way is there a hope of reversing the disastrous flood of impoverished peoples to the growing slums of the world's already-inundated and suffocating metropolises."

—george salzman, umb.edu

It had been stressed that terrorism could only be eliminated if conditions creating a fertile breeding ground for terrorism, such as poverty and marginalization, were removed. [...] The broad consensus on addressing terrorism went hand in hand with a recognition of the need to deal in parallel with the many concerns that had already been on the United Nations agenda, including the fight against poverty, underdevelopment, inequality, disease, and other economic and social problems."

—United Nations Press Release, 11/16/2001

The media and the public eye tend to focus on the actual act of the protest and not the content of it. I think we need to put the issues in people's hands because then you get a chain reaction of accountability happening. If people get angry enough they will start that process of protest going up the political lines. We have to work it from the ground up."

—Ricardo Acuña