A US activist yesterday called on President Barrack Obama to stop building a wall of death on the Mexican border and arrest white collar criminals who caused the financial collapse in the US. Speaking yesterday at the Workers’ Forum at the University of the West Indies, Cindy Wiesner, of the group Grassroots Global Justice, said that Obama must remove the US troops from the Middle East, lift the “criminal embargo” from Cuba and arrest US conglomerates who were riding the backs of poor people around the world.

“There is a crisis within the crisis in the US. There is now an unprecedented number of job losses. Every day a factory closes. There are an unprecedented number of homes that are closed. People are being evicted and they are forced to live in shelters,” Wiesner said. She said that capitalism had crumbled and was no longer beneficial to the world. Wiesner added that an alternative economic model had to be developed, and it was up to the workers to provide the government heads with the answers.

“The stimulus bill was a bail out for capitalism. Money is now being given to the same crooks and thieves that got us into this mess in the first place,” Wiesner said. Wiesner said Grassroots Global Justice will continue to pressure Obama to build an alternative economic model. She said the summit was an opportunity for the governments of the Americas to re-negotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta).