Join the Food Fight!

It’s called the Farm Bill. And together, we can make it work better for everyone!

The day after the SLEE dinner…..

Join us for a community Farm Bill Workshop
& Kick-off the formation of the Seattle Farm Bill Action Group!
Sunday August 8, 4-6:30 pm, potluck following

Workshop Description:  Through interactive activities participants will learn about how the Farm Bill affects them personally and create a vision for the Farm Bill we want!  Guest speakers Ben Burkett, Sue McGann and John Fawcett-Long will help participants understand the basics of the Farm Bill, its impacts on farmers, communities and consumers in WA state, and the struggles to improve the Farm Bill in 2008, including what lessons we can learn from these past efforts to be more effective in 2012.

About the speakers: Ben Burkett is a 4th generation Mississippi Farmer, President of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives and the National Family Farm Coalition, and involved in the international movement of farmers and farmworkers, La Via Campesina. CAGJ invited him to Seattle to give the keynote at our annual dinner on August 7, Strengthening Local Economies Everywhere.  John Fawcett-Long has been a long-time advocate organizer for a sustainable and justice food and farming system.  He was raised on a farm in southwestern Minnesota and moved to Seattle in the mid-80s.  He has served as Director of the Western Sustainable Agriculture Working Group and on the Steering Committee of the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture.  He is a co-founder of the Washington Sustainable Food and Farming Network.  John served as a key grassroots food and farming organizer in 1999 for the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle. Sue McGann is the Coordinator of Marra Farm, historic preserved farmland in South Park.  A project of Lettuce Link – Solid Ground, Marra features a model urban community farm engaging people in sustainable agriculture and education while enhancing local food security. Sue coordinates the Giving Garden which generates tons of fresh, organic produce every year that is donated to a nearby food bank.

Free!
Potluck following- please bring something to share if you are able!
Location: New Hope Baptist Church
116 21st Ave.  – between Fir & Yesler in the Central District of Seattle (see directions below)

Workshop Sponsors: Cascade Harvest Coalition, Community Alliance for Global Justice, Creatives 4 Community/Ground Up, Equal Exchange, Moving Images, Seattle Central Community College Sustainable Agriculture Program, Seattle Farm Co-op, Spring Into Bed/Cascadian Edible Landscapes, Village Volunteers, Washington Fair Trade Coalition, Washington Sustainable Food & Farming Network, Witness for Peace

Directions
Note: The workshop takes place during SeaFair week-end. I-90 will be closed until 2:40pm on Sunday. Traffic will likely be bad near the water. For more info on closures, see this link: http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/northwest/king/seafair/

Directions from South:
From I-5 Take exit 164A for Dearborn St toward James St/Madison St.
Follow signs for Dearborn St
Continue straight after exit until you reach S Weller St
Turn right at S Weller St
Take the 1st left onto 12th Ave S
Turn right at E Yesler Way
Turn left at 21st Ave
Destination will be on the right

Directions from North:
From I-5 Take exit 165A toward James St
Merge onto 6th Ave and continue straight across James Street until you reach Yesler Way (About 1 min)
Turn left at Yesler Way
Turn left at 21st Ave

Want More Info?
Contact CAGJ: 206-405-4600
contact_us@seattleglobaljustice.org

This month we return to Clean Greens Farm, Duvall, WA
! The Black Dollar Days Task Force developed Clean Greens in response to the under-representation of African Americans among the ranks of those farming in Washington, as well as the lack of foods relevant to the African American as well as African immigrant food cultures locally. Operating on 22 acres near Duvall, Clean Greens produces chemical-free, organic food for inner city residents.

We will be on the farm from 10am – 3pm.   Those getting rides and riding bikes there will meet earlier. Contact us for carpool options and a bike route guided by a CAGJ member!

Please note, space is limited, so RSVP’s are required. To RSVP, or for more information, please email Molly at mollyjade@gmail.com. We will send you directions and carpooling details upon receiving your RSVP, as well as information about what to wear and bring. All activities will be appropriate for children and we can work out disability accommodations if needed.

Join AGRA Watch Friday June 4, 2010, as we march in solidarity with Haitian farmers, who have committed to burning Monsanto’s incoming donation of hybrid maize and vegetable seeds, which have been treated with highly toxic pesticides. The Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP) has condemned the shipment, and has insisted that Haiti’s future depends on food sovereignty – join us in saying YES! to food sovereignty, and NO! to Monsanto!

June 4, 2010—Meet at 4:00pm at Grand Central Bakery: 1616 Eastlake Ave. E, Seattle

4:30pm Creative action at Gates Foundation
March at 5:00pm to University Bridge

“A New Earthquake for Haiti”–Chavannes Jean-Baptiste
Monsanto recently announced that it will donate 60,000 sacks (475 tons) of hybrid corn and vegetable seeds to Haitian farmers, some of them treated with toxic pesticides.  The shipment is scheduled to arrive this week in Haiti.  However, Haitian farmers are rejecting this “donation,” and rejecting Monsanto’s profit-driven strategy of creating dependency on their products by offering free seeds to poor farmers.  The Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP), a member of the international peasant movement La Via Campesina, called this dumping of seeds “a very strong attack on small agriculture, on farmers, on biodiversity, on Creole seeds … and on what is left of our environment in Haiti.”  The MPP has called upon the farmers of Haiti to march in opposition, and burn the seeds of this foreign transnational.  Haitian social movements have stressed that keeping chemicals and imported GMO seeds out of Haitian fields are not their only concern.  The future of Haiti depends on establishingfood sovereignty: the right of small farmers to make meaningful decisions about their food system and their agricultural practices — decisions that will allow them to produce abundant, healthy food for the local population.

Why AGRA Watch?
AGRA Watch has spent the past two years challenging the Gates Foundation’s plans for imposing an unjust and unsustainable model of agriculture on countries in Africa.   Both in their direct grants to GMO agricultural research, and through their participation in the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) they are paving the way for the widespread use of GMOs in African nations where they are heartily contested. We criticize the Foundation’s strong connections to Monsanto—from their staff and board member choices, the projects they fund in Africa, to the solutions they envision.  The dumping of toxic seeds on Haiti, is only the latest in a long line of acts that Monsanto has done to push unsustainable “solutions” on farmers around the world. If the Gates Foundation wants to support a sustainable agriculture system in Africa or elsewhere, they must divorce themselves from Monsanto.

Learn more:
Beverly Bell: “Haitian Farmers Commit to Burning Monsanto Hybrid Seeds”

Timi Gerson: “Five Questions Monsanto Needs to Answer about its Seed Donation to Haiti”

All day/1pm presentation at Green Festival

All day June 5 and June 6 CAGJ will be tabling at the Green Festival: Email volunteer@seattleglobaljustice.org if you can help out with tabling for a few hours! Volunteers get in for free! At 1pm: Bill Aal and Heather Day of AGRA Watch will be giving a presentation – “”Green Revolution” or “True Revolution” in Africa? The Case Against the Gates Foundation”. Location: Fair Trade and Social Justice Pavilion.

5 – 8pm: AGRA Watch Film Night & Potluck!

CAGJ invites you to our fifth AGRA Watch film night. These monthly film nights address issues that are directly relevant to the work of scholars, activists and others on issues of development, neoliberalism, agriculture, and African affairs. This month, we will be showing ‘We Feed the World‘, a film by Austrian filmmaker Erwin Wagenhofer that traces the origins of the food we eat.

WE FEED THE WORLD is a film about food and globalisation, fishermen and farmers, long-distance lorry drivers and high-powered corporate executives, the flow of goods and cash flow–a film about scarcity amid plenty. With its unforgettable images, the film provides insight into the production of our food and answers the question what world hunger has to do with us . Interviewed are not only fishermen, farmers, agronomists, biologists and the UN’s Jean Ziegler, but also the director of production at Pioneer, the world’s largest seed company, as well as Peter Brabeck, Chairman and CEO of Nestlé International, the largest food company in the world.

Location: Cascade People’s Center, 309 Pontius Avenue N, Seattle, WA 98109.  Please RSVP to agrawatch@seattleglobaljustice.org. Drop-ins are welcome, but please RSVP if you get the chance. Please bring some food or drinks to share.

Sat. May 8, 10 – 3pm
optional celebration 4-8pm

AN OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN ABOUT AND WORK FOR A LOCAL COMMUNITY GARDEN – JOIN THE GUIDED BIKE RIDE, OR CAR-POOL!  Coordinated by the Food Justice Project of the Community Alliance for Global Justice

First Teach-out Event of 2010! Spring into Bed!
Spring into Bed is a city-wide garden-building event and day of grassroots action. All over the city, individuals and community members will revitalize or build gardens, and volunteers will help create ten subsidized “food justice gardens” for low-income communities. Teach Out participants will help in one of these food justice gardens, working with residents of the Croft Place Townhomes in Seattle’s Delridge neighborhood to create raised vegetable beds. Croft Place Townhomes is an affordable housing project of the Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association. Home to twenty-one families, its design promotes community building and sustainability. After the work is done, we will carpool and bike to the celebration at Seattle Central Community College!

Please note, space is limited, so RSVP’s are required. To RSVP, or for more information, please email Molly at mollyjade@gmail.com. We will send you directions and bike route details upon receiving your RSVP, as well as information about what to wear and bring. All activities will be appropriate for children and we can work out disability accommodations if needed.

Other ways to get involved in Spring into Bed!

-Sign-Up: Visit www.springintobed.org to volunteer your time and expertise with other gardeners in the area. When you sign up you will be contacted by one of the volunteer coordinators who will give you the address of a garden in your area that needs your help. We have gardens ranging from urban farms to back yard garden beds through out the city.
-Show-Up at one of 3 Volunteer Hubs: CAGJ is coordinating 3 drop-in sites and Volunteer Hubs. You can show up at anytime between 10-2 and we will put you to work, or we will give you the address of a site that needs your help. South: Delridge (CAGJ Teach-out Site): 6701 21st Avenue Southwest, Seattle, WA 98106; Central: Ground Up: 825 Yesler Way; North: Ravenna Eckstein Community Center Garden, near 21st Ave NE and NE 68th St.
-Garden-up: You could even participate by spending time in your own garden, gather some friends and have a day dedicated to building your garden for your own food and to donate food to the local food banks. We want to know if you are doing this so please visit the website to let us know if you are gardening in your own backyard.

Check out this awesome video of the street theater, an overview of its themes by Executive Director Heather English Day, and music by the Seattle Fandango Project:

Through street theater, we educate the community about the links between the Gates Foundation, Monsanto and other agri-corporations, and the US government and World Bank, and how these chains are being broken as we speak by small farmers in the US and around the world!

Join us in answering the international call to action on this important day!

Saturday April 17th

Meet at 9:30 AM at UW Red Square to partake in Theater

Meet at 11 AM at UW Red Square to join Procession to U-District Farmer’s Market

Meet at Noon at University District Farmer’s Market to Join the Fun!

Read on to learn more about La Via Campesina’s call to action:
17 April 2010 – Join the International Day of Peasant Struggle

To commemorate the International Day of Peasant Struggle on April 17th 2010, the international peasant movement La Via Campesina calls upon member organisations, allies and supporters to unite against transnational corporations (TNCs), which seek complete control over food and agriculture systems around the world.

On April 17th 1996, nineteen landless Brazilian peasants who were defending their right to produce food by demanding access to land were massacred by the military police. Since the massacre at El Dorado dos Carajás, every year on this date actions are organised around the world by farmers’ organisations, communities, student groups, non-governmental organizations and activists, in order to demand food sovereignty and peasants’ rights to produce food.

The year 2009 ended with three international summits: the Food and Agriculture Organization World Summit on Food Security in Rome, the World Trade Organisation Ministerial Conference in Geneva and the United Nations’ Climate Summit in Copenhagen. At each event, TNCs displayed their intention to control food and agriculture systems, markets, lands, seeds and water—indeed all of nature—worldwide. TNCs such as Monsanto Company, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland and Nestlé deployed armies of lobbyists at these events to shape policies to their benefit.

For example, US-based Monsanto Company is lobbying to receive public subsidies for Roundup Ready soybeans, which are genetically-modified to resist glyphosate (sold by the corporation as Roundup), the most widely used herbicide in the world. Monsanto claims Roundup Ready soybeans reduce climate change because resistance to Roundup means the soybeans can be grown without ploughing the soil (which releases carbon dioxide), known as ‘no tillage’ or ‘conservation tillage’ agriculture. Monsanto argues that it should therefore be eligible for carbon credits from the Clean Development Mechanism of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change.

Yet the reality is that Monsanto and other TNCs are some of the primary contributers to climate change and other environmental crises, because they promote an unsustainable model of industrial agriculture.

Additionally, TNCs exacerbate poverty and economic recession, worldwide. As they consolidate their control over lands and agricultural markets, TNCs expel small farmers and peasants from their lands and reduce employment opportunities in rural areas, thereby swelling urban slums with even more desperate and unemployed families.

TNCs are making huge profits while hunger and poverty are on the rise. Thus, an offensive against TNCs is now a priority for La Via Campesina. Our movement envisions a world in which TNCs such as Monsanto, Cargill, Carrefour and Walmart, and their destruction of nature and humanity, will cease to exist. To replace them will be billions of peasants on small and medium-sized farms, producing healthy food for local and regional markets, preserving biodiversity, protecting water aquifers, sequestering carbon and revitalizing rural economies.

To mark the 17th of April 2010, La Via Campesina calls upon its members and allies to join forces and increase resistance against TNCs, and to amplify the voices and rights of peasants worldwide.

What can you do?
* To raise awareness about the destruction being caused by TNCs, and the benefits of peasant agriculture, organise an event or action in your community, school, city or organization. Possible events might be a protest, public debate, direct action, film screening, farmers’ market, heirloom seed exchange, song or picture contest;
* Subscribe to La Via Campesina’s 17th of April mailing list to stay informed about the actions being organised around the world, to receive our mobilisation kit, and to tell others about your plans. Subscribe here: http://viacampesina.net/mailman/listinfo/via.17april_viacampesina.net
* Tell us what you are planning as early as possible to be included in the activities’ list published on www.viacampesina.org
* Send us pictures, articles and videos after the event at viacampesina@viacampesina.o

Please RSVP to agrawatch@seattleglobaljustice.org

About the Film: Darwin’s Nightmare is a tale about humans between the North and the South, about globalization, and about fish. Some time in the 1960’s, in the heart of Africa, a new animal was introduced into Lake Victoria as a little scientific experiment. The Nile Perch, a voracious predator, extinguished almost the entire stock of the native fish species. However, the new fish multiplied so fast, that its white fillets are today exported all around the world.  Huge hulking ex-Soviet cargo planes come daily to collect the latest catch in exchange for their southbound cargo… Kalashnikovs and ammunitions for the uncounted wars in the dark center of the continent.

This booming multinational industry of fish and weapons has created an ungodly globalized alliance on the shores of the world’s biggest tropical lake: an army of local fishermen, World bank agents, homeless children, African ministers, EU-commissioners, Tanzanian prostitutes and Russian pilots.

Bus Routes to Cascade People’s Center: 8, 25, 70-73, 74, 77, 79, 304, 317, 355, 377

Saturday, March 27, 6:30 – 9:00 PM
Hidmo Eritrean Restaurant, 2000 S Jackson St. Seattle, 98144

Come to hear from Kenyan Farmer & Community Organizer Joshua Machinga, Director of Common Ground in Kenya, and Heather English Day, CAGJ’s Director, who will report back on travels to Kenya and Uganda, where she was learning about the new “green revolution” in Africa and the alternatives, including a visit to Joshua’s program.  You can read more about Heather’s experiences on her blog.

Common Ground Program works in many areas, with a special focus on increased food security, crop diversification and the protection of natural resources.  Their sustainable agriculture projects provide families and communities with vital technical and material resources for improving nutrition and increasing income generation. The projects also enable rural farming communities to adapt and survive in the face of challenges to their livelihoods, including globalization, commercialization of food production and climate change.

Heather had the opportunity to meet over 50 farmers in their visits with Common Ground and four other programs around the country.  She will share images and stories from the thriving organic farming movement in Kenya, as well as the ongoing push for GMO’s and chemically dependent agriculture by the Gates Foundation and others.

Co-sponsored by Village Volunteers. Event is free. Eritrean food available for purchase, full bar available.  All ages welcome to attend!  For more info, contact agrawatch@seattleglobaljustice.org; Or call 206-405-4600.

The Food Justice Project of the Community Alliance for Global Justice (CAGJ) recently published their first food justice resource guide and recipe book, Our Food, Our Right: Recipes for Food Justice. The guide combines hands-on tools for change with political awareness to engage YOU in joining in the struggle for food justice! Plus, it features beautiful illustrations and photographs by local artists and delicious recipes submitted by community members and friends of CAGJ.

Please come support the release of CAGJ’s first ever publication!! Join us for food, music (featuring Ghanaian artist Mohammed Shaibu, guitarist, drummer, vocalist and leader of the band Soyaya, and Quetzal, a dynamic group mixing Mexican and Afro-Cuban rhythms with rock, R&B, and jazz), raffle prizes, and good times! A handful of recipes from the guide will be sampled, and copies of Our Food, Our Right will also be available for purchase for $5-$20, on a sliding scale. This event is free and open to the public, please bring your friends, family members and join us in the celebration!

For any questions for more information, please email Maria Rodriguez: rodriguezme08 [at] gmail.com

Saturday August 7, 2010

Strengthening Local Economies, Everywhere!  Dinner & Fair

Same great location! St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church, in Montlake

Volunteers make this annual community event and CAGJ fundraiser happen.  We are currently seeking volunteers to help organize the Silent and Dessert Auctions, to do outreach to friendly organization and businesses,  farmers and potential food worker guests, and to help with publicity. This is a great way to learn valuable event organizing skills while having fun with other folks dedicated to food justice.

Contact volunteer@seattleglobaljustice.org if you want to get involved!