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

Lovers of Justice, Sustainability and Dignity in the Agricultural and Food System (and the economy in general):

The June 22-26 US Social Forum was host to the first US Peoples Movement Assembly (PMA) on Food Justice and Sovereignty, which took place in the canopy village of the USSF in Detroit on June 23, despite weather forecasts of strong winds and hail. The People of the Land persevered and converged (about 150 strong representing probably 70 to 90 organizations across the U.S., rural and urban, grassroots and accompaniment NGOs, indigenous and non-indigenous, people of many colors and languages, elders and youth, to work out our common vision and shared lines of action we intend to take together. Below is the resolution/declaration with a list of actions we will be pursuing in the weeks, months and years to come. Also below that is the statement of the Indigenous Sovereignty Synthesis presented at the National PMA on Saturday, June 26, that holds particular resonance with the Food Sovereignty Declaration.) Out of this and other gatherings in Detroit, a new organization emerged, the US Food Sovereignty Alliance, that positions organizations part of this US based alliance to build a stronger U.S. counterpart than heretofore existed to the various Food Sovereignty alliances and movements across the planet. Representatives of Via Campesina North America, the Caribbean and International were present in the various meetings that moved this agenda forward in Detroit. (Via Campesina first popularized the concept of “food sovereignty” in their various struggles against international financial institutions, so-called “free” trade agreements and peoples gatherings in Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia…) People representing organizations or interesting in joining organizations, who are inspired by this declaration and this organizing effort, and would like to join forces with the process of building and strengthening the US Food Sovereignty Alliance, should contact myself (Stephen Bartlett, sbartlett@ag-missions.org and Tristan Quinn-Thibodeau, tristan@whyhunger.org ) to get in the (on-line listserve and/or other…) loop for future planning and organizing. As the Declaration states: The moment has come for lovers of food justice and sovereignty in the U.S. to “make salt.” Help us plan and implement the actions that will help us strengthen and unify our various efforts to “make salt” (fight impoverishment, cool the planet, preserve our “habitat”, the ecosphere). peace through active struggles for justice and freedom,

Stephen Bartlett
Agricultural Missions/ Sustainable Ag of Louisville (SAL, or “salt”)
US Food Sovereignty Alliance (formerly US Food Crisis Working Group)
***************************************************************

Statement from the People’s Movement Assembly on Food Sovereignty, US Social
Forum 2010

Over a half-century ago, Mahatma Gandhi led a multitude of Indians to the
sea to make salt-in defiance of the British Empire’s monopoly on this
resource critical to people’s diet. The action catalyzed the fragmented
movement for Indian independence and was the beginning of the end for
Britain’s rule over India. The act of “making salt” has since been repeated
many times in many forms by people’s movements seeking liberation, justice
and sovereignty: Cesar Chavez, Nelson Mandela, and the Zapatistas are just a
few of the most prominent examples. Our food movement- one that spans the
globe-seeks food sovereignty from the monopolies that dominate our food
systems with the complicity of our governments. We are powerful, creative,
committed and diverse. It is our time to make salt.

A movement for food sovereignty – the people’s democratic control of the
food system, the right of all people to healthy, culturally appropriate food
produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right
to define their own food and agriculture systems – is building from every
corner of the globe.

We find that our work to build a better food system in the Unites States is
inextricably linked to the struggle for workers’ rights, immigrant’s rights,
women’s rights, the fight to dismantle racism in our communities, and the
struggle for sovereignty in indigenous communities. We find that in order to
create a better food system, we must break up the corporate control of our
seeds, land, water and natural resources.

Because at a time of record harvests and record profits we have over one
billion hungry people on the planet; because poverty is the root cause of
hunger; because the world’s oceans are being polluted and plundered, because
industrial agriculture contributes one third of all greenhouse gas
emissions, because increasing inequality, poverty, hunger, a global land
grab, and environmental destruction are threatening the livelihoods of
family farmers, farmworkers, fisherfolk, and marginalized communities
worldwide; and because community based food systems and agroecological
farming can cool the planet, build resilience to climate change, and
eliminate poverty;

We therefore commit to re-building local food economies in our own
communities, to dismantling structural racism, to democratizing land access,
to building opportunities for the leadership of our youth, and to working
towards food sovereignty in partnership with social movements around the
world;

We call on others in the US to demand an end to the global land grab, to end
both corporate and military land occupations, to demand fairer trade, aid
and investment policies, land reform, and support for sustainable peasant
and community agriculture and sustainable community fisheries;

We endorse actions that include: the liberation of land and water resources
for the production of food and sustainable livelihoods; the creation of new
structures for cooperative ownership of land and food production, processing
and distribution; the integration of labor rights, immigrant’s rights and
food justice; the valuing of women as primary food providers, and the
denouncement of false solutions and false partnerships addressing climate
change, hunger and economic development;

We demand a world in which everyone has control over their food and no one
has to put food in their mouth that hurts people or the environment.
Organizations and individuals among us have therefore committed to the
following actions:

*    Launching a campaign for food sovereignty as a right of the
people
*    Growing and harvesting as much food as we possibly can
everywhere
*    Liberating land through reclaiming urban and rural spaces
for the production of food for communities; demanding the use of public
lands for food production
*    Participating in a global campaign against land grabs, in
which corporations and governments grab up the lands of communities
*    Carrying forward the people’s agenda coming out of the
Cochabamba climate summit — including popular education around food and
climate justice and promoting sustainable agriculture as a solution to
climate change
*    Standing with the people of Haiti, Palestine, Honduras, and
other countries whose food sovereignty is threatened by political, military,
and/or corporate occupation
*    Hosting collective meals in our communities as a way of
connecting people across generations and cultural backgrounds and as a tool
for dismantling racism in the food system
*    Forging new models of collective control of land and
waterways; assuring legal protection of the commons
*    Building the leadership of the next generation; providing
opportunities for urban and rural youth to have a future in food and farming
*    Rejecting GMOs and other forms of the corporate takeover of
our food systems
*    Creatively and strategically working to dismantle the
corporations who have hijacked the world’s food systems
*    Affirming the sovereignty of indigenous peoples in North
America and throughout the globe
*    Committing our food movements in the US to be active
participants in the global movement for food sovereignty and to work to stop
our government and corporations from practices that undermine food
sovereignty globally.
*    Challenging US food and agricultural aid and development
policy (e.g., Monsanto and USAID’s recent “donation” of seeds to Haiti)
*    Working towards a people’s food and farm bill based on
principles of food sovereignty
*    Hosting community seed exchanges
*    Engaging communities in popular education on GMOs and the
role of corporations in our food system
*    Engaging communities in popular education on community
nutrition and public health
*    Creating more community farmers markets that are accessible
and affordable to all; affirming everyone’s right to food that is good,
safe, healthy, and fair
*    Helping everyone understand where their food comes from and
who helped bring it to their table
*    Highlighting the common struggles between farmers and
farmworkers in the US and their counterparts throughout the world

Preamble:
We can build a better world. Working together, we can create a world that
respects the human rights of every human being, nurtures creativity and
health, promotes unity, solidarity and peace, and uses resources in a way
that protects the earth and affirms life.

At this historical moment, there is a growing sense of overwhelming crises.

We recognize that the money and other resources that have been swallowed up
by militarization must be redirected to solve human needs-to protect the
basic human needs of food, shelter, freedom of movement, freedom of speech,
freedom from harm, and protection of Mother Earth which nurtures and
sustains all life.

We believe that we can create a new economic system that is not based on
individual, corporate, or private ownership and does not exploit people, the
planet, natural resources or living beings but instead is based on
principles of collectivity and sustains our communities. We must move aside
old systems that have failed and create new ones that serve and are
accountable to all peoples and all living beings.

We must link arms with our sisters and brothers globally and commit to a
willingness to work together to seek understanding, to coordinate action,
and to move forward collectively with a sense of urgency to create a more
just world. We acknowledge the need to break down barriers. We must
integrate our national struggles for the human rights to dignity, welfare,
freedom and justice.

Each one of us has to dig deeper to understand each other’s culture and
history and to build respectful relationships across difference. Our
struggles and our goals are all connected to each other. Our fronts of
struggle and our goals are all on the same continuum. We have the desire and
energy to create something different that sustains us. As a people, we must
rely on each other. We can realize our dreams to treat each other as equals
and to build alliances and relationships across our commonalities and
differences.

We affirm self-determination and self-reliance. We believe that we can build
our collective power through participation in popular political education
and organizing collective action. We can each realize the power that resides
within each one of us and build collective power by participating in the
fronts of struggle recognized through the People’s Movement Assemblies. Let
us unite and create a better world for all future living generations. A
better world is possible! Another US is near . . .

Front of struggle:
INDIGENOUS SOVEREIGNTY
As older brothers and sisters of this land, we do not want another U.S.; but
the return of our Ancestral homelands and the right to self-determination.
We want others to understand our unique history as the first recipients of
systematic oppression and institutional racism in this hemisphere, to
understand the colonization of our homelands and the exploitation of the
national resources of Turtle Island.

In order to work together, we need non-Indigenous entities to become
educated on our history and issues from our perspectives, to RESPECT and
HONOR our identity, spirituality, traditional ceremonies and related
protocol. We ask that together we work toward the well-being of our
communities, our children, future generations, other life forms, the plant
and animal nations and Sacred Sites. We want others, to RESPECT and HONOR
our expertise in all areas of this land from North to South, and that of
Indigenous peoples respectively on other continents. We want to see more
representation of Indigenous peoples in the USSF planning process and more
Indigenous participation. We want an opening plenary at the next USSF to set
the context of our struggles from our perspectives.

We will take the lead on our own issues as decision makers and we ask for
support on our work in Environmental, Social, and Economic Justice dealing
with issues of: energy development (specifically: TARSANDS, coal, uranium,
gold, gas, and oil, and other extractive industries); green jobs;
disparities due to income, environment, and substance abuse; the banning of
ethnic studies programs; preservation of Indigenous languages and life-ways;
funding for health-care; imposed political borders and immigration issues;
food-sovereignty; protection of Sacred Sites and WATER; repatriation;
privatization of natural resources, and life-forms; commodification and
tokenization of Indigenous images and knowledge; continuity of spiritual and
healing practices; and the unrestricted access to and use of our traditional
medicines and healing practices. We ask you to support us by connecting your
work to the local Indigenous communities’ struggles in your area.

CALL to ACTION: We call for an annual International Day of Action between
October 11-15 to unite against dirty energy projects and to celebrate our
living Indigenous cultures, languages, spiritual practices, sovereignty, and
nations.

As the caretakers of the land we have a responsibility to honor, love, and
give back to our Mother Earth, therefore WE DEMAND that the governments of
the U.S. and Canada fully adopt the U.N. Declaration of the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples without qualifications. We support the existing actions
and policies that promote our work by other entities, such as Bolivia’s
Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth. We will move forward by working
together collaboratively, involving Youth and Elders, to heal from external
and internalized oppression to restore BALANCE and to build healthy
relationships around the world.

Today we send some reflections from our journey, and notes from an amazing talk given today by Grace Lee Boggs and Immanuel Wallerstein. We will share more as we get the chance to write more! We are also including interesting commentary from Mark Engler – see below!

6/21/10 By Reid Mukai, CAGJ Co-Chair

The Day Before the USSF

While traveling from the airport to downtown Detroit at 7 in the morning, one thing I noticed (besides how incredibly hot and humid the weather felt for so early in the day) was how eerily quiet the city seemed. Very rarely are city streets in Seattle so seemingly devoid of people both in cars and on the sidewalks on a weekday morning. This surreally tranquil atmosphere was exaggerated with numerous deserted high-rises with boarded up windows extending to the upper levels, scattered jay-walkers ambling across wide multi-laned streets, and city blocks seemingly twice as large as Seattle’s (some on the outer edges of the city containing fenced-off empty fields). When I entered the USSF registration offices at about 9am, the frantic activity inside contrasted sharply with the relative peace outside. My original plan for the day was to leave my belongings at the solidarity housing location after checking in and then do volunteer work back at the registration office or Cobo Hall. Due to circumstances, I got involved in the work nearly as soon as I arrived. The office was seemingly in crisis mode with people running around, rapidfire questions and answers shouted back and forth, multiple phones consistently ringing with barely enough personnel to take the calls, more people constantly arriving while various other projects were in progress simultaneously. So I couldn’t expect them to finish my registration process for the solidarity housing immediately, but in addition to being swamped, they were also not able to get in contact with the person with the housing keys. While waiting, I helped load boxes onto vans, printed out signs for security, vendors and staff, and worked with a small group putting USSF stickers onto visors (jokingly called the “visory board”). At around noon, me and two others were finally driven to the solidarity housing at the Hague Building. I suppose I was expecting a dorm of some sort but it was a large and mostly deserted office building with a few closed-off sections shared with an acupuncture and holistic medicine clinic. The parts of the building we inhabited still contained miscellaneous office furniture and supplies, cubicle walls, and random books and files scattered around. It was my first experience with solidarity housing and felt as if I were camping indoors. After setting up my “camp” I left to explore the city. One of the sites I was planning to see was the Motown Museum. Since I did not have a map at the time I asked for directions and caught the right bus, but unfortunately it was the one going in the wrong direction. As the bus went further away from the city I saw more and more empty lots, feral houses, and feral factories. But even among the buildings overgrown with vines and weeds were homes with people hanging out on porches, working on cars, gardening and kids playing on the street. When I decided I had drifted far enough away from the city I got off and caught another bus to return. I spent the rest of the day walking back to the housing, ate dinner at a nearby diner (which despite having bullet-proof shielding between customers and employees was called “Aloha”) then went to sleep early.

6/22/10 By Reid Mukai, CAGJ Co-Chair

Workshop: Food Security in the Black Community

Despite waking up early I spent time talking to people serving breakfast at the Hague building and taking pictures of local landmarks as I made my way towards the Cobo building. It was my first time in the southern part of the city which also seemed to be the main business district. The modern Chase and General Motors buildings didn’t seem to belong in the same city as the numerous buildings with boarded up windows and empty store fronts but then again, perhaps the latter is the end result of the former? Anyway, the bulk of the morning was spent waiting in a very long line for the event registration. After completing the registration process I did a quick walk through of a large exhibition hall partially filled with tablers for non-profits, book publishers and independent artists and crafts people. Shortly after 11pm I joined a workshop in progress titled Food Security in the Black Community. Though the format was an open roundtable discussion, the primary speakers were Lila Campbell, an adjunct faculty member for Cultural Competency at Wayne State University, Patrick Crouch, Program Manager for Capuchin Soup Kitchen, and Dr. Monica White, Sociology Professor at Wayne State University. Among the topics covered were ways to address racism as it relates to problems associated with food access problems, including how it has affected Detroit’s past and present, and how to invite more community participation in projects organized by food justice groups through all the different planning stages. Later that day I attended the USSF opening ceremony at Cobo Hall featuring speeches from labor activist Sandra Williams, Detroit Local Organizing Committee member and spoken word artist Will Copeland, and numerous politically oriented musical performances. After the ceremony I met up with Heather and Travis who had just finished registering, as well as Maria and Yecelica. We all carpooled together to meet Bill and Margo for dinner at a restaurant north of the city. After dinner, Travis dropped all of us off at our respective solidarity housing locations and we (or at least I) got lots of rest in preparation for a busy Wednesday.

6/23/10 By Heather Day, CAGJ Director

Today several of us participated in the Food Justice and Food Sovereignty People’s Movement Assembly (PMA’s). This is an outgrowth of the Social Movement Assemblies developed at World Social Forums to advance social movement proposals for action.  Social Forums do not act as a body as they are meant as an open and diverse space for dialogue and exchange.  However strategies for action have emerged from Social Forums, and assemblies have played an important role in this.  The most famous example of an action that emerged from the European Social Forum was the most massive international protest in history, the anti-war protest on February 15 in the early 2000s.  Many PMA’s have taken place before the Social Forum, there are around 20 taking place on different issues here n Detroit, and there are plans to continue organizing communities through this process after the Social Forum is over.

Today’s Food Justice PMA was exciting as it represented the first time there had been a food justice movement gathering at a US Social Forum.  The fact that it came together here this year is evidence of the strength of this new growing movement, and over 100 people participated. The Assembly opened with a thoughtful overview of the current political moment. Eric Holt-Gimenez stated that it is time to make salt, referring to Ghandi’s march across India to the seas, where he made salt, and gathered diverse movements along the way, who marched with him, and succeeded in overcoming the British Empire.  Today we have several Empires to overcome in our multinational agribusiness giants, and Holt-Gimenez called on us to think in terms of a struggle strong enough to take them down.

The second part of the PMA were 10 smaller groups, organized according to key issues and challenges in the movement, with the goal of formulating possible actions we can take together to build food sovereignty.  Some of the groups were Youth and Agriculture, Labor Rights in the Food System, Access to Land, Undoing oppression through Urban Agriculture, and Building a Big Tent of Urban-Rural Alliances.  Each group made their proposals, and then participants looked for areas of overlap. These proposals will be refined in daily caucuses, and then combined with all of the other PMA’s proposals, to be presented at the National People’s Movement Assembly on Saturday.  We will bring these proposals home to our organizing in Seattle. Some of the suggestions were to take agriculture out of the WTO, to push for food to be grown everywhere and to not depend on farmers in rural areas in urban areas – city-folk should grow food too!,  to not eat any food that we know harms anyone or anything….and more.

Thanks to Grassroots International and Agricultural Missions, we had the privilege of working with partners from the Global South during the People’s Movement Assembly, including a farmer from Ramallah, Palestine, Via Campesina leaders from Honduras and Nicaragua, Haitian partners representing Collective of Wise Women, Popular Democratic Movement, Via Campesina and Papay Peasants’ Movement, farmer activists from the Dominican Republic, including the Movement of Rural Women. One of the Haitian representatives explained that in one week they organized a march of more than 15,000 peasants who rejected Monsanto’s donation of seeds. The march took place on June 4, when CAGJ also marched in solidarity in Seattle, and protested the connections between the Gates Foundation and Monsanto at the Gates Foundation headquarters.  One of the leaders from Honduras recounted what took place June 28th last year, when there was a coup d’etat in Honduras to take out a progressive president who had begun fighting neoliberalism and was calling for a constitutional assembly. The morning of June 28, shooting soldiers entered the Presidential Palace and captured the President, Zelaya, they then landed at the US base (supposedly to re-fuel, but no one believes this was the true reason), and then took him to Costa Rica. Within 2 hours thousands took the streets.  Massive protests have continued, as the dictator has yet to be removed, with the complicity of the US. 100 activists have been killed or disappeared.  In a country of only 7 million people, in one protest 3 million Hondurans mobilized all over the country.  “The blindfold has been removed” stated Sr. Alegria, and the movement is building. June 28th will be marked by a celebration of the popular resistance of the Honduran people.  The Palestinian farmer discussed the extreme conditions suffered by the people of Palestine, and stated “You can’t reach food sovereignty without independence.” He said he was confident that Palestine would achieve its own state.
Immanuel Wallerstein and Grace Lee Boggs
-Heather Day’s notes from 6/24/10 talk (this is a draft, my apologies for mistakes)
Moderator: Scott Kurishige, professor of history, co-author with Grace Lee Boggs
-Boggs the daughter of Chinese immigrants, received Phd in philosophy in 1940, African American movement.  With partner, James Boggs, developed theories of Bloack Power and a new America Revolution.  Boggs is 95, and between the two they have over 100 years of political engagement! Bogg’s new book: The Next American Revolution. Started the Boggs Center.

Today Wallerstein a senior research scholar at Yale, and writes a bi-weekly column (highly recommended).  Wallerstein is most known for his extremely influential modern world system theory – volume one of his groundbreaking study has been translated into 14 languages.

Moderator – Three Key Concepts unite them 1)Ideas matter, 2)We need to understand our place in history – as Boggs would say, what time is it on the clock of the world? Put into context the current crisis! 3)We need to understand the connection between local places and global systems.

They received a standing ovation at the beginning of the talk!

Boggs said she first met Wallerstein on the first page of the New York Times Book Review in 1975. She has turned to Wallerstein’s ideas over and over. His analysis that democracy is a bourgeois

Utopia-ists: Wallerstein wrote a paragraph that Boggs uses all the time: “the world of 2050 will be what we make of it”. We have the power within us to change the world. That is the role that intellectuals can play.  Often when you join a radical organization you think all that matters is practice and action, but ideas are essential.

Wallerstein has admired Boggs a long time bc she incarnates the idea that though the struggle is long it is also immediate – you have to take care of the present if you are going to have any realistic impact on the future.  Worked hard to make life better immediately for people in Detroit, but also trying to transform the world with a longer range prospect.

Moderator: What are core concepts we need to make sense of making change?

Boggs lived through Detroit becoming the national and international symbol of industrialization, then de-industrialization, then post industrialization and laternaitves. Living at the expense of the earth and all people has brought us to the edge of disaster. it is upt to s – it is that time on the clock of the universe where we face evlution to a high humanity or the destruction of all life on earth.  Revolution is also evolution – what I have learned.

Wallerstein states that we all live in historical systems, and these systems do not go on forever. Current system of capitalism that came into existence 500 years ago, and it goes on and has a normal life – i have been trying to do that – but systems don’t go on forever, they move slowly away from equilibrium until they get too far away – that is where the modern system is today.  It is coming to an end and to its destruction, to a structural crisis. Not because so many people are oppressed and don’t want this system to survive – that has been true for a long time – what is new is that the system does not provide the possibilities in its own terms, and does not work. Endless capitalist expansion is impossible, and we are now in extreme disequilibrium.  The powerful will not give up easily – they have money and guns – but that does not mean we can’t win. Another world is possible – it is possible, not certain, and that is up to us.

Boggs – when I became an activist years ago I wanted certainty, so I was attracted to Marxism. We have to live with uncertainty.  We have to make a new revolution – what we are trying to achieve is not to prove that our analysis was correct.  Wallerstein says in uncertainty there is hope – fundamental to understand this.

Wallerstein: People are at the USSF bc they know that there is a deep problem with our current system.  Capitlaism based on idea that there should be an endless accumulation of capital. You accumualte capital in order to accumulate capital in order to accumulate capital – you are on a treadmill.  It depends on growth, people talk about it all the time. Growth per se is not a plus or a minus – cancer is growth too!  In indigenous movements of the Americas, they talk about buen vivir – to live well – it is not to endlessly consume, it is to make ratoinal arrangement with the world – which requires restraints as well as growth. This is the kind of system we want to create – not the system that those in Davos want to create. The capitalist system has the consequence of hierarchy, polarization and ….. The consequences for organizing: people have to live in the present: have to eat, have to sleep – you can’t tell people if they wait for 5, 10, 20 years things will get better. That was the line of historic anti-systemic movements.  You have to combine organizing that means we work for today but you also have to work for tomorrow. People need to have less pain immediately – does not transform the world, but it addresses the present. Then also have to have long-range strategy, 30 – 40 years to new better order.

Boggs – important to think about word ’system’. When i became a radical i thought of the system as something you could wipe off the blackboard, that was in-tact.  I didn’t realize that it was something that had been created.  As an individual, think about how you think about change, how do you imagine it?  In Detroit in 70s and 80s, all we could see was blight, vacant lots.  Some African-American women saw these lots as places for gardens that would meet a basic need, but also a place to inspire change in young people. The urban agriculture movement developed out of this.  Will Allen, first African-American basketball player at University of Miami. When he retired he thought back to when he was growing up in rural America, when people were poor but they had enough healthy food to eat. So he started farming in Milwaukee with 2 acres.

Wallerstein: A fundamental aspect of capitlism is the commodication of everything – goal of all activities are to make profit. This process has not been easy for capitlaists. Up until 50 years ago, universities, health-care, bodies and water were not commodified.  In attempt to find last bit of growth, everything is being commodified.  One of the things we can do is to resist commodification, de-commodify what ever possible.

Boggs – have you read Blessed Unrest, by Paul Hawkins? Talking about resistance to commodification is a human impulse. All over the world people are resisting commodification. Why we are here. We are creating a new movement for a radical revolution in values.  How many of you have read Martin Luther King’s speech on Vietnam War – he is speaking to the dehumanization of war and capitalism.

Moderator: What is the the current moment we are in: economic crash, recession, quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan. What is unique about this moment?
Wallerstein – we are not in a recession, we are in a depression – people don’t want to use the word, as if not using the word will wash it away.  I was reading this morning about private profit making universities, which did not exist before, but now there are many all over US.  They make money by getting students to take out loans. Yesterday in the newspaper, the US Congress is discussing the next bubble being the student loans that students can’t pay back. Fluctuations in world market are so radical that it is impossible to predict. Pension funds, for example, are invested, and they have been going up and down so fast, they are not sure what to do with the funds, and mistakes are made. Funds end up getting cut.  Almost everyone is aware that the war is being lost, McChristol was just forced to resign, replaced by Petreus: why would he do such a stupid thing? My analysis is that he was not stupid.  He is setting new rules for military that they don’t like it. Like they should be more careful about bombing, he postponed going into Kandahar. He said to himself that it is not going to work, and he did not want to be blamed for it, so he said, I will get myself fired. I think the US will have to withdraw in same way that Russia had to withdraw from Afghanistan, and US had to withdraw from Vietnam. Unavoidable sitatuons where there are no good choices for US government.  Another example: Spain is in trouble – has too much debt etc. Everyone telling Spain you have to cut your budgets. Spanish voted severest cuts in history of Spain. The next day the ratings of Spain’s bonds were downrated. Their argument: cutting the budget reduces possilibty of growth – damned if you do, damned if you don’t.  There isn’t any good thing to do: no good choices faced by governments today, it is a losing game. Who can be blamed?  Governments get voted out to be replaced by governments with same bad choices.

Moderator: Liberal reforms were enacted to make people believe in the capitalist system. But they can’t work.
Boggs – Why did World Social Forum begin? Began in 1999 in Seattle at WTO protests, inspired the alternative to World Economic Forum that started in Porto Alegre, Brazil.  It is not that Obama is weak, it is that the system is dysfunctional.  What do you do? You look for alternatives amongst ordinary people who seek ways to survive through the food they grown, the water they drink. We think of the movements of the sixties too much as the identities of blacks, latinos, women etc – They were all involved in a search for a new human identity.  We have to know how to think philosophically and intellectually.  Starhawk analyzed witch hunts were inaugurated to expropriate land of peasants and knowledge of women….philosophy is not an abstraction, it is a way of thinking – we can think with our hearts or only with left side of our brains. We are learning from science that our brains are much more complex that we realized.  We need to talk about another education, in the way that Freedom Schools imagined it – not just to learn something to regurgitate on a test, but to use education to serve our community, for each of us to become full-fledged citizens, K-12, and to develop a more participatory democracy.  Our democracy is obviously dysfunctional, we have challenge of changing that, and starting with young kids. The role that labor played is now played by those involved in education – maufacturing is not just about creating things, but also to create people.

Wallerstein: The WSF is very different from all previous attempts to change the world.  Before all major anti-systemic movements were hierarchical organizations that believed they should be only organization, and believed that there would be single movement with sectors led by specific groups, and that stood for the revolution. In 1968 this sense was ended, of the single hierarchical movement. Took 30 or 40 years to develop World Social Forum to bring together whole range of social movements, in terms of scope  (local regional int’l), in terms of focus (labor, women, LGBT, ecology).  What does the WSF say should happen? Movements should talk to each other and not denounce each other, to understand things they might have not understood about other movements, where they can find cooperation.  I am a great believer in the Social Forums – people say they don’t make a difference, but they do, and it is a growth industry, if there is one – there are Social Forums all over the world.  Some people unhappy, and there are responses to criticisms. People ask where is the action?  it is where we make action – it is the consequence of networking made possible by Social Forum.  Hope some of you will make it to World Social Forum in Dakar, Senegal, 2nd WSF in Africa.

Boggs: Melissa Young and Mark Dworkin made a wonderful film about 2nd WSF, 20 minutes long – Moving Images Films

Changing concepts of revolution: not a one-time event, but a protracted process.  Everything we do is about creating new relations:
Boggs – most people still have in their minds the hierarchical model of revolution from 1917, need to see how people became captives of the state.  Have not thought enough about what has happened since 1917. Need to internalize changing concepts of revolution.  How do we create the new ideas, alternatives? How do we get beyond oppositional thinking that boggs us down? Revolution is a new beginning – not in how we make a living, but in how we think, in our concept of what it means to be human.   If we come out of Social Forum with one thing, it is to become more theoretical.

Moderator joked that we would now recite the Communist Manifesto. Boggs responded that Marx wrote a wonderful paragraph about the constant revolution, which ends with these words (which Boggs recited from memory): “all that is solid melts into air, all that is sacred….and its relations with its kind”.

QUESTIONS:
Role of creativity in making new world?: (W)It is the reality of uncertainty that creates the possibility of creativity. Creativity is the center of possibility, and that compensates us for not knowing what is going to happen tomorrow. (B)Einstein talked about imagination being more important than knowledge – imagination allows us to project the future. In 1992, when we were critiqued for rejecting casinos, we created Detroit Summer to involve young people in rebuilding redefining and respiriting Detroit from the ground up – that is an act of creativity and imagination. That kind of organizing allows us to imagine the future differently.

What can we learn from Iroquois Constitution? (missed part of this question) (B)Democracy of US constitution is a democracy of its time…next American revolution has to be very different from previous ones, it has to be giving up (us?) things. Until we acknowledge this, we will face terror. To get ride of terror or fear we have to give up conveniences, we have to understand negativity that comes from consumption and accumulation.

How do you see Venezuelan socialism on 21st century?
(W) Latin America in last 10 years has had remarkable series of elections in which various versions of left of center governments have come to power. How come?  In part bc of what is going on in Latin America, and in part bc US did not have military and ecnominc energy to handle situation in ways they historically did that Gvt was putting such enormous energy to middle east. Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, El Salvador (added by h) – all very different from each other: Changes geopolitical situation significantly.  Makes alternatives a reality. We also have right-wing coup in Honduras, and in Colombia right wing guy just won elections – Latin America is an autonomous actor on world scene. A very good thing – limits US and Europe in some ways on the world stage. They have instituted various versions of social-democracy. Is this transformative? no. Is it minimizing the pain? yes. (B) I think it is important what is happening in Latin America, but more interested in whether this is socialism – where does this idea come from?  Utopian socialism was replaced by scientific socialism of Marx and Engels, seen as a sequence that leads towards communism. If you don’t believe in this, you are seen as a knave, a fool.  We can’t use the same word with the same kind of naivite that we ted to. Every concept has historical origin, created by creative people of their time. We have to create vision of our present. We do know that the change will not be hierarchicial, patriarchal, focused on industrialization. (W) The way i answer that question is the world that is relatively democratic and egalitarian – a world we have never had.  What are the institutions of this system? We don’t know.  They could not have imagined the structures of capitalism in 1450 as feudalism was ending and capitalism was growing.  We can say that we’ve got to push and set it up on a certain fundamental thrust – we want a system that is relatively democratic and egalitarian – I use relatively bc no structure will ever be perfect.  There is no true democracy or egalitarian government or country in the world.  Is Venezuela establishing 21st century socialism?  I don’t think so, and i don’t think they can. Are they pushing towards a new system? Yes.  Workers in China push for a better deal, in the right direction.

Boggs – I think it is wonderful to be in a room where people talk about 14th and 19th century.  Such a gulf between generations, we don’t realize what we have lost of our humanity. Democracy is not just a bourgeois concept….What is important that democracy is  a concept that is now in contention, that needs to be created.

Are we closer to true transformation now than when you began your activism…with a trend towards right today? I want to put this question into context: Grace Lee Boggs born June 27, 1915.  Vincent Harding also acknowledged – he wrote the first draft of Martin Luther King’s Vietnam speech.  Big 95th birthday party for Grace tonight.  Glover also coming for party.
(W) There is a trend towards right, as well as trend towards left. Today we see Bolivia ruled for first time by first indigenous leader. They are ideas under contestation, and that is a great thing, no one is immune from critique – that is very important.
(B) It is a great thing that there are elders here!  You all are evidence that we are closer than when we joined movement.  When I joined in 1941, the ideas that dominated movement were ideas of 1917.  We argued about other countries, it was not clear to us that an American revolution would be different. I was in Cuba in 1966, and I heard Castro speak, said a wonderful thing – said we are not a socialist country or a communist country, we are a socialist country with a communist dream.  Good that there are workshops her about bringing spirituaity out of the closet. Don’t think you can become a revolutionary unless you have a very rich idea of spirituality.

Anger is very important motivating force. But compassion is key too – how can we use them for social change?
(W) Anger will lead you to strike out to not necessarily the real enemy, but who ever is closer. It has to be tempered with cold analysis, which will lead you to compassion. importance of putting yourself in others’ shoes…
(B)We are each other’s business and harvest. It goes back to an epistemology, a theory of knowledge that is not just the brain, but of the heart, an epistemology of the heart, that recognizes how we are each other’s – to be on the clock of the universe where we can make the change to recognize that ‘others’ are part of ourselves. That is a wonderful place to be alive.

Number of questions about non-profit sector….Non-profits over dependent on money for our movement work and lack of acknowledgement of economic conditions. Do non-profits help us create transformative change?
(W) Progressive Omaha ran workshop yesterday – topic was how you run a movement on no money.  Explained what they can do that cost nothing or very little. That is admirable.  We probably can all do many things on less money than we think but on the other hand, to come from LA to Detroit, someone has to pay for the trip, you have to raise money from somewhere. You can raise it from other poor militants, or a non-profit. Is there a price to pay? There always are, every time you take money from anybody, but you can balance that, work with a difficult situation.  We are having a WSF in Dakar. Getting to Dakar is an expensive proposition!  You have to buy plane ticket, you have to stay there, it is an expensive city. Who will pay?  SHould WSF accept money from Ford Foundation or someone else? Some say that is terrible bc of their ties. Could result in small delegation of people. There are no good answers.  Before independence in Africa people would talk about being bribed – you gave the bribe and then you do what you want!
(B) Young people in college want to be community organizers. Some took grants from non-profits in order to do that.  That seems better than becoming part of rat race.  Non-profits in Detroit right now partner with groups trying to shut down schools, and they have to be fought.  A very complex question….the Boggs Center is making so many contacts, so many opportunities to expand. we will have to decide what to do.

The Next American Revolution, Chapter 6 addresses this question, coming out in 2011, as well as volume 4 of Modern World System by Immanuel Wallerstein.

Your vision of 2050?
(W) we will talk about capitalism of system of past. WHat is my vision? i don’t know!  If enough of us flap our wings repeatedly

How do we dismantle white supremacy distinct from our efforts to dismantle capitalism?
(W) It is not distinct. Capitalism is racist. It is a multi-layered thing, not with good people and bad people, but racism is in the movement. Has to be attached systematically, in all of its manifestations. Can’t have assumption that there are some people that are outside.
(B) Some of Obama’s staff members came to meet with Boggs Center, what we tried to tell them applies here. You need to get the young people talking to their parents. Young people decide their parents are hopeless. But parents are the ones in right-wing movement. They have lost their way of life, they can’t see a good future their kids rant and rave at them, but they are human beings, and our challenge is to weaken opposition, but not be strengthen it by hurling epithets. There is a lot that can be done in this room to weaken right-wing. The US is in a terrible state of the world. Several losing wars, unemployment.  We have to understand clock of the world, and our role now.

Can you reflect on what keeps you going, motivated and still struggling, what sustains you?
(W) What else can we possibly do? (big applause)
(B)I was very fortunate – I was born female (big applause), mother taught me to read and write (there were no schools in our Chinese village), my father believed n education, I was a graduate student and i came across Hegel, and I discovered that progress does not happen like a shop out of a pistol, it takes a labor of suffering. Have to understand how to make negatives a positive – the labor and suffering of the negative enriches the concept of the possible. In these difficult times there are people inventing new ways of cooperating, people coming to detroit and buying rows of houses, and giving them a lift collectively, honest and young people – it is amazing.  To live in the system, you can’t do it yourself, it takes too much of yourself. There are ways to you can build the collective, eat together, bike, there are so many things we can do that makes us more human and at same time help to create the new society.

From the U.S. Social Forum
June 23, 2010, by Mark Engler

I arrived in Detroit on Tuesday for the start of the United States Social Forum, a national-level incarnation of the World Social Forum. The latter was first held in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 2001 and was conceived as a people’s alternative to the World Economic Forum—the exclusive annual gathering of economic elites in Davos, Switzerland.

In this tradition, activists from around the country are getting together this week under the slogan “Another World Is Possible. Another U.S. Is Necessary.” Detroit is a symbolically important location for the assembly. As a commentator on Truthout noted:

“Detroit, a city especially ravaged by the decline in American manufacturing and the foreclosure crisis, was called ‘the ultimate reflection of America’s pain’ by ‘Dateline NBC.’ But it was not chosen to host the forum only for its status as poster child of the global economic and environmental crisis—unemployment in Detroit was at 15.5 percent in March—but also for the grassroots social movements which have begun to fill the void left by a lack of social welfare and regenerative funding.”

Some predictions have suggested that as many as 20,000 people will be attending the social forum. During the opening ceremony an organizer offered a more modest estimate from the stage, stating that “over 10,000 people” had registered and that “over 1000 workshops” would take place.

Whatever the final numbers, lack of mainstream news coverage of the event is almost a given—although there’s no good reason that more than 10,000 people calling for a political agenda significantly to the left of the Democratic Party’s should warrant less attention than Tea Party events that have been of similar size (or, in many cases, smaller.)

My own initial survey suggests that youth activists, the anarchist Left, and representatives of community-based organizations in major U.S. cities are well represented here. I suspect that a variety of international solidarity movements, radical environmentalists, and people working on food issues will also make a solid showing.

Missing, however, are two additional constituencies that were major parts of the global justice movement’s “Seattle coalition”: organized labor and mainstream environment groups. The AFL-CIO made favorable mention of the Social Forum on its blog, noting participation by some union leaders such as UAW President Bob King and Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO President Saundra Williams, who briefly addressed the opening ceremony. Yet I did not see big blocs of union t-shirts in today’s mass march through downtown Detroit, and labor’s involvement in workshops seems to be limited. Likewise, if the Sierra Club or their brethren intend to make a significant appearance, they have thus far escaped my notice.

This is unfortunate, for while labor and Big Green may have been the most moderate factions of the global justice coalition in the years around 2000, they brought to the movement a suggestion of greater resources, wider reach, and a disciplined political program. In turn, the more unruly community-based constituencies prodded some usually cautious labor and environmental groups into more vigorous stances on issues of trade and development, among others. That global justice moment was, in other words, a period of unusual cross-fertilization and unexpected alliances.

While more modest, what is on display here in Detroit seems to be healthy enough on its own terms. I’ve come because I support opportunities for progressives to meet, talk, learn from one another, and be inspired. Still, given that this is meant to be a major gathering of the U.S. Left, the question I am wrestling with is: do we owe it to ourselves to expect more?

– Mark Engler, a writer based in New York City, is a senior analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus and author of How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy (Nation Books, 2008). He can be reached via the Web site http://www.DemocracyUprising.com.

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.

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.

Thursday, April 29th
7:00-9:00pm
FREE
Gowen Hall Room 201 at the University of Washington, just north of Suzzallo Library

Josphat Ngonyo Executive Director of African Network for Animal Welfare, a lead organization in the Kenya Biodiversity Coalition, is coming to Seattle!  Kenya is currently at a crossroads between burgeoning organic movements, and its participation in the “New Green Revolution” for Africa, financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and their partners. As a representative of farmer organizations in Kenya, Mr. Ngonyo will discuss the social, economic, and environmental consequences of the new green revolution agricultural model. He will also share stories with us of resistance to this approach and information about actual alternative agricultural practices.

Josphat Ngonyo is Founder and Executive Director of African Network for Animal Welfare, a lead organization in the Kenya Biodiversity Coalition (KBioC). CAGJ’s Director, Heather Day, recently met with Josphat and many of his colleagues in KBioC, who are taking the lead in resisting the introduction of GMOs into Kenya, and promoting agroecological alternatives.

Other ways to catch Mr. Ngonyo:

April 29^th Tune in to hear Mr. Ngonyo on KUOW’s The Conversation 12 – 1pm

Join Brown-Bag luncheon with African Studies Program, UW Thomson Hall Rm 317, 1:30 – 2:30

Questions?  Contact 206-405-4600 or email AGRA Watch

Sponsored by UW Community Environment and Planning, Anthropology, African Studies Program, Geography, UW Bothell, Village Volunteers and Community Alliance for Global Justice

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.