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

“Our Food, Our Right: Recipes for Food Justice” is a CAGJ Food Justice Project publication that combines hands-on tools for change with community recipes and political awareness to engage you in joining in the struggle for food justice! Our Food, Our Right promotes community knowledge sharing, self-sufficiency, accessibility, and food justice through a food sovereignty framework. For more information see: http://www.seattleglobaljustice.org/get-involved/cagjstore/

The Food Justice Project published our first edition of this guide in November, and now we are looking to continue with additional projects surrounding the guide. Some things the group will be taking on are distribution of subsidized copies to ally organizations, maintaining relationships with businesses currently selling OFOR and replenishing copies when necessary, and beginning discussions about the future of the guide and where it can evolve from here.

We would love to have your help! If you are interested in getting involved with this committee please email Maria at rodriguezme08@gmail.com

Thanks!

Maria Rodriguez
FJP Co-Coordinator

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.

1. Report on “Detroit Highlighted: Detroit Black Community Food Security Network / Earthworks Urban Farm”, by Heather Day (below)

2. 2nd report on the US Social Forum by Mark Engler, “Social Forum Moments to Combat Cynicism” (below)

3. Democracy Now interviewed legendary Detroit activist, Grace Lee Boggs – find the interview here.

4. Learn about Reclaim the Media and NW Media Action Grassroots Networkhere (NW MAG-Net), who gave a generous matching grant to CAGJ to enable more CAGJ members to travel to Detroit!  Many MAG-Net members participated in the Allied Media Conference before the US Social Forum.  Our friends at KBCS and the Prometheus Radio Project led a team of community radio producers to create an hour-long program of interviews and features from the Allied Media Conference. In the program, you’ll hear heartfelt stories from popular educators, community organizers, media makers and more, reflecting on the idea of media and the role it can play in our lives from communicating solidarity to creating justice. Check it out .  Also, Prometheus and Reclaim the Media collaborated on an op-ed, published yesterday, supporting the Local Community Radio Act. Read it here.

Heather Day’s Notes from Workshop, “Detroit Highlighted: Detroit Black Community Food Security Network / Earthworks Urban Farm“

1st speaker: Lila Campbell, Detroit Black Food Security Network:
What does it mean to be accountable to leadership of communities of color?
You can say you are anti-racist, but your behavior won’t change unless you do alot of work. Observing in Social Forum that there is not a strong connection to understanding power analysis.   Can’t talk about capitalism without talking about racism. People’s Institute does outstanding job of connecting economics and racism. Doing this work moves you to a different level of quality. Are you doing for or are you doing with?  Are you perpetuating racism or being anti-racist organizing?

Asked group to identify following…
Examples of Active Racism
-Seeing racism happen but not speaking out
-Denying service
-See a guy mowing lawn and thinking they are not the owner, being suspicious
-Being a white person and not examining white privilege and thinking your successes are the result of your own work
-Being a white organization and moving into a community of color and taking resources

Active Anti-Racism
-Interrupting racist jokes
-interracial romance [controversial!]
-not getting admitted to university and not feeling that this is not okay
-changing language from ‘black’/negative and ‘white’/good (?)
-white organization in community, seeking out group of color and ask them to partner

Passive Ant-Racism
-can’t be passively anti-racist
-anti-racism requires action

Passive Racism
-Not carrying your principles into your family, school or job
-most things folks think of as passive anti-racism is actually passive racism

2nd speaker: Patrick Crouch, Earthworks Urban Farm staff
Earthworks is a predominantly white organization who did anti-racism work, starting to strengthen organizing.The importance of building relationships as starting point for this work. Too often we focus on our work of day-to-day organizing, without getting to know one another. To begin this work, important to tell our stories and know where we are coming from. Need to understand what motivations are for coming to this work. Need to develop commonalities instead of focussing so much on difference.  Black Food Security Network so important for me being in this space right now. Four years ago Detroit was dominated by well-intentioned white activists such as myself, who knew white elephant was in garden, but whites would rather build a compost pile next to the elephant. Powerful that Food Security Network was formed defined as “Black” – Whites were uncomfortable with this, but here in Detroit, this meant they were dedicated to improving food security to 90% of population!

We learned to talking with groups about what they are already doing, figure out what needs they are defining, We have a tendency to want to work with people of color communities, but really we need to work with white people. We need to start talking about this with our white volunteers, many of whom come in from suburban areas to work with poor people in Detroit, with missionary mentality.

Power analysis important: people really excited to talk about food system, but then tried to map power in our organization, and people got scared.  We created a power map, and left it up in our organizing space.  Folks were taken aback by identifying racism at Earthworks, many did not want to talk about it, but also inspired conversations. Caucuses allowed for work to continue. Look at hiring practices – we considered the exclusion of people without college degree, decided we wanted to value skills not usually valued, like for community organizing important that people are based in the community.  Started our Apprenticeship program: you can say ‘we really want to hire people but no one has those skills’, or we can train people!  What we decided to do through Apprenticeship program.  This approach is a lot of work, takes time, alot of people don’t want to do that.

We must actively work against mission mentality, of working with, not for.

3rd speaker: Dr. Monica White, a sociologist involved in Detroit Black Food Security Network
We want to change story of Detroit – not just abandoned buildings, police brutality problems….The story of Detroit needs to be about great people doing important work that can be model when people are heard from a genuine, sincere organic sense.  Can’t say it’s too hard, just need to do work.

Detroit Black Food Security Network getting more land. Have 2.5 acres, are going to have 7 acres in urban neighborhood.  Setting up as agro-tourist location.  Garden includes many elements. Why are bees important?  Children’s garden – kids love worms.  There are 60 school gardens attached to Detroit schools. Want kids to understand not just why it is important to grow your own food and know where it comes from, but from perspective of food justice and food sovereignty, that they have right to know where their food comes from.

Detroit Black Food Security Network  is completely volunteer organization.  Want more elders involved, working to include more people.  Need to document what is happening in Detroit. Collecting data:
-African American farmers: why do they do what they do?  Hard work of gardening and farming, why do they do it?
-Comparing why are blacks involved, why are whites involved?
-Gardening angels: seniors who have established 150 gardens and they are involved in patrolling neighborhoods: “We don’t give it from the lips we do it from the hips.”
-Looking at Policy: we have 400 acres of vacant land, want to make clean healthy food accessible. We want an urban agricultural policy: people who normally would not be engaged in politics inspiring people to engage.  We are not asking for politiians to please get us a grocery store. This is communty based, we are not too far removed from agrarian traditions, go back to what we know and find community-based solutions.
-Also need to document stories of people gardening and farming: stories of people who want to do somethig for communities, for example one man who has a garden where he is reading to children, hosting movie nights, will not sell his produce, no intention of selling.
-This is communtiy renovation, community development
-Detroit Food Policy Council – Council has been appointed, just started in September. Wrote a food policy that is online.  Got grant to get word out about policy…

DISCUSSION:
-African-American participant from Detroit raised issue of vacant land being used for gardens being an additional push of poor people out of city – housing is important for survival, also need to have access to housing.

Response: We don’t need to knock down houses in order to grow food.  There are many issues we are grappling with such as ‘Right-sizing’ – there is a drop in population and there are strategies people are designing to move more people out of city. Land-grabbing called “right-sizing” from corporate point of view. They are putting together land-packages that would facilitate industrial-urban food, and they market it as ‘access’, and it is not necessarily organic.  The power anlaysis is key: what does it mean to have urban agriculture from standpoint of community vs. standpoint of corporations? Urban renewal is negro removal.  There is an industrial farmer trying to grab land to grow for-profit farms.  Asked the elder to participate – “We need your voice”.

There is a major connection between poverty and food security – need to create living wage jobs to make this a sustainable movement. How can movement create jobs, so that people can afford to stay in their homes, and not be pushed off their land?

-Another woman responded: Same issues in Boston – alot of houses were burned down – struggle is right to decide what is on the land – I am hoping for garden in my neighborhood bc I want lettuce.  We need to create legal structures for cooperative land, need land-trusts.  Need to work very hard to protect lands that are commons now. Important to think about getting away from individual ownership

Response: Yes, we Have to have strong connection to policy, need to know history, which brings power, and community voice in terms of decision making.  Important to teach soil-testing and water-quality testing. Started People’s Water Board in Detroit, a coalition that is dealing with water issues.

-What about Farmworkers?  Important to support Ag-Jobs which would legalize 75% of jobs!

-Land is not our land, it is Native American land. Are there attempts to collaborate, return land to Native peoples?
Response:  Indigenous people are typically invisible, can’t say that in Detroit we’ve done the outreach.

-Speaker from Detroit Agriculture Network: History of what is happening today comes out of a strong tradition when first Black Mayor initiated program called Farm Lot – you could apply to city for permit and garden on plot. Program died from neglect. In 90s farming and gardening took on new life – Gardening Angels came out of Farm Lot, strong tradition of black farming. What is new this decade is community gardening, bring together isolated gardeners and farmers.

Social Forum Moments to Combat Cynicism
Mark Engler – June 25, 2010 10:15 am
Early on at the U.S. Social Forum, I was struck by the disjuncture between the huge ambition of the assembly and the limitations of the conference’s agenda and slate of decentralized workshops. In their planning statement for the social forum, organizers declared an intention to respond to “a state of national and global emergency” by defining “a direction for what will be the great project of our generation.” Needless to say, that’s a big task for any convention.

Whenever the social forum speaks of itself as the future of the U.S. Left, vexing issues arise: Can any coherent political program emerge from an amorphous, multi-issue assembly? Can we formulate a vision of the Left without more serious participation from key progressive constituencies such as organized labor? Can the collection of radicals and community-based organizations that are present here become a political force with mainstream reach, or are they too self-marginalizing? The answers are not easy to come by, and non-starry-eyed attendees can easily grow wary in contemplating such imposing matters.

Where the social forum thrives, in contrast, is in smaller moments, free of grand pretense. Walking the halls and seeing a seemingly endless stream of organizers, urban gardeners, fil

6/25/10, by Reid Mukai, CAGJ Co-Chair

Workshops:

Social Movement Strategies and Tactics for Rebuilding Local Food Economies

Keeping it Real: Embodying Alliance in the Quest for Real Food

PMA: Food Sovereignty

I got an early start since I carpooled with Heather, Travis, Yecelica and Maria in the morning, so we stopped at a great “hippy” coffeeshop and bakery called “Avalon” where I got a cup of tea and a breakfast sandwich. The first workshop of the day was Social Movement Strategies and Tactics for Rebuilding Local Food Economies, organized by Agricultural Missions. Steven Bartlett was the main moderator, but also present were Luca Benitez of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and Via Campesina represtatives from Honduras and Nicaragua, a farmer from the Dominican Republic and Haitian members of Collective of Wise Women, Popular Democratic Movement, Via Campesina and Papay Peasants’ Movement. The structure of the workshop was pretty loose, allowing both questions and answers from all of the participants in the room. There were many questions, but one of the main themes was “what is the best way to support worker’s struggles around the world?”. The diverse range of possible solutions included:

• build broader social movement
• stronger fair trade associations
• an international alliance of CSAs
• educate and influence political leaders
• instill culture of health among youth
• unite allied groups and individuals in a coordinated manner
• let corporations know what they do right as well as what they do wrong
• and a people’s tribunal for corporations such as Monsanto

The next workshop on the list was Keeping it Real: Embodying Alliance in the Quest for Real Food, organized by Navina Khanna and Lloyd Nadal of Food For the People. The opening question posed by Navina was “how can we amplify voices of different groups and form a collective vision?”, and much of the following conversation centered on possible answers. Related ideas that our group came up with included developing and connecting land stewardship programs, urban farm hubs, anti-oppression workshops as part of urban gardens, organic food distribution contracts with family-owned urban convenience stores and outreach to youth using music, poetry, visual art and digital media.

After this workshop I walked over to the “Tent Village” area several blocks west of the Cobo building to attend a second Food Sovereignty People’s Movement Assembly, also moderated by Steven Bartlett. When I arrived, a Food First organizer was discussing the importance of seed sovereignty. He viewed indigenous agricultural communities as valuable storehouses of generations of knowledge about seeds and food. Not long after, we formed break-out groups to brainstorm different aspects of a proposed Food Justice Alliance. The following is the list of group discussion topics and a sampling of some of the ideas from each (the group I was in was Values/Principles):

Structure and Implementation: Should there be individual membership? Create subcommittee focused on membership and structure. Expand coordinating committee and working groups.

Values/Principles: Everyone has right to real food. Respect for inherent value of life and natural systems, cultural diversity and biodiversity. Commitment to anti-oppression principles. International solidarity between youth, workers, activists and agricultural communities. Develop leadership and decentralize power. Localize food systems.

Outreach/Organizing: Outreach for Food Justice Alliance continuing at future USSFs. Networking through existing relationships, phone banks, email lists, and regional workgroups. Develop goals and membership criteria.

Action Agenda: Mobilize around issue of climate change. Fight against land grabs. Organize networking visits.

Heather joined the PMA after I got there, so when the assembly ended we carpooled back to the Cobo building with Dean and Clare, two great organizers and PMA participants from California. At Cobo we reconnected with Travis, Yecelica and Maria then carpooled to the Mexico Town district for dinner. Before going in the restaurant we admired a beautiful mural on a wall across the street in the process of being painted by USSF attendees from Brooklyn. After dinner I was feeling tired so returned to Cobo to do a little writing and check the news before going back to the office/house, meanwhile, the rest of the group partied hard at the USSF’s Leftist Lounge.

6/26/10, by Reid Mukai, CAGJ Co-Chair

Workshop: Detroit Highlighted: Detroit Black Community Food Security Network / Earthworks Urban Farm

It was hard for me to believe it was the last day of the USSF. That morning Shankara and I had breakfast at the solidarity housing and caught the bus to the Cobo building for a workshop called Detroit Highlighted: Detroit Black Community Food Security Network / Earthworks Urban Farm. This was actually a shared workshop highlighting the work of the Detroit Black Community Network and Earthworks, a project of the Capuchin Soup Kitchen, which shares some of the same staff. Some of the same speakers from the first USSF workshop I attended were there such as Lila Campbell, Patrick Crouch and Dr. Monica White. Monica spoke first, talking about the mission of Detroit Black Community Food Network (DBCFN) and how food access is their focus but it’s just one aspect of their goal of self-determination. She outlined some of the major problems Detroit’s citizens struggle against, such as unemployment (approx. 35-50% unemployment rate), foreclosures and a weak local economy (out of the city’s 140 square miles, approximately 40 square miles are vacant) and lack of access to fresh and healthy food (Detroit’s last chain grocery store closed in 2007). To address these issues, DBCFN has organized programs that mobilize people to buy locally, develop youth activism and leadership, created a citizen’s food policy council, and established D-Town farms, a 2.5 acre plot in a neighborhood park with 37-40 crops. Patrick Crouch, also a member of DBCFN, then spoke about Earthworks Urban Farm, a community garden that focuses on food access but also educates and engages the community. Projects they organize through the farm include the Healthy Stores Initiative (a partnership with Wayne State University that brings fresh produce to stores that traditionally offer processed foods, alcohol and cigarettes), and the Garden Resource Program, which distributes educational materials, seed and gardening supplies to students. Following Patrick Crouch’s talk was a powerful anti-oppression excercize led by Lila Campbell, which explained why being anti-racist is never passive and is always an ongoing process. This incorporated an open discussion about what is racist and anti-racist leading to a wider conversation about environmental racism, impact of race on Detroit’s history and present, gentrification and land grabs, state and city policy, and alliances with indigenous peoples, the original stewards of the land.

After doing a little sight-seeing after the workshop, I regrouped with Heather, Travis, Yecelica, Maria and Masha, for dinner and coffee. We were all almost deleriously exhausted by the end of the evening but had fun talking about events of the week and any random thing that popped up. After I got dropped off at the solidarity housing I was surprised to find the place was now nearly empty except for Shankara and two other people.

6/27/10, by Reid Mukai, CAGJ Co-Chair

The Day After USSF

I woke up late, enjoyed the peace and quiet of the near-empty office building and got my things packed for the flight back to Seattle later that night. For the past couple of nights Shankara and I were borrowing a couple of camping air mattresses from Travis and Heather, so they stopped by briefly to pick them up. While waiting in the parking lot I met a rapper named Majestic from New York, who told me some great stories about the USSF party I missed on Friday which he performed at. We also got into a good conversation about road trips when Heather and Travis arrived since he was thinking of touring through the midwest and west coast. After they left I had brunch with Shankara at the Avalon coffeeshop down the street, and after that it was another bus ride to the airport and then the flight back home.

Thinking back on the past week at the USSF, I feel inspired by the numerous informative workshops, people I’ve met, and their wealth of ideas and experiences. It’s a rare opportunity to meet many people from a wide range of states and nations (including Detroit locals) working to create a better world in so many different ways. The USSF brings together an analysis of local and global problems from a diverse range of perspectives, making it easier to see connections between various issues as well as ways groups and individuals could potentially collaborate, share information and strategies, and form alliances to stand up to institutions that are often the source of problems (ie. corporations and governments). After days of workshops, the many struggles of the modern world may seem overwhelmingly complex and intertwined, but the multitude of ongoing and future projects organized by allied groups interacting at the forum give reason for hope.

Strategies for Building Food Sovereignty
-Notes by Heather Day, CAGJ Director

Ben Burkett – National Family Farm Coalition
Strategies employed by African American farmers.  Farm started as homestead in central 1800’s. Main strategy we use is cooperatives.  Farmers are organized into 75 cooperatives from N Carolina to Texas. Started off as cotton farmer in 1972. As cotton prices became depressed, black farmers got out of cotton. Mississippi has largest number of cotton farmers today. Old growth pine on Ben’s farm, majority of it destroyed by Katrina…in fight with government to plant long-growing pine trees – government wants me him to grow GE quick-growing and quick-harvesting trees.

Fourth generation of family farmers marketing to New Orleans market.  We are trying to change agriculture, but there has to be alot of us in the movement to change things.  Hard to find seeds in varieties we want to grow.  People in the North want seedless watermelon, in South watermelon with seeds is preferred.  Market-place dictated seedless watermelon, which costs $2000 per pound of seeds – too expensive.  Three or four companies control agriculture in the US.  Wall-mart number 1 buyer, Kroger and 3 others – they dictate the market. To change that, we have to challenge corporations. We have to channel our dollars into protest. When Wallmart comes to town, main street dies.  Major supermarkets have signs saying “buy local”. That is good to a certain point, but farmers have many obstacles to selling locally. Small farmers learn to adapt to regulations.  In Mississippi Africa-American farmers have to deal with racism that is still alive and well.

Luca Benitez, Coalition of Imokalee Workers
I am a farmworker.  Ben is right, a few select grocery stories control the market in the US. Years ago there were many thousands of family farmers and many more local markets.  Just learned about a family farm stand that had been selling for 3 generations, but had to close it recently bc Wallmart had opened in their town.  A company like Wallmart does not want 100 farmers to grow in the community, they just want a few that will grow year-round to supply them.  Downward pressure of Wallmart.  In Imokalee Florida, thirty or forty years ago, there were hundreds farmers, but now there are only 50 or 60. But only 8 – 10 control the entire production of tomatoes.  About 90% of tomatoes consumed in US May – October come from that region.  Many small farmers have gone out of business with consolidation.  Wallmart comes and buys from farms with 5000 acres and they have certain demands: they dictate the price and farmers working with agribusinesses don’t have power to negotaite with massive buyers like Wallmart.  On other side, for inputs, tomato companies have to buy inputs from Monsanto, tractor from John Deer. With pressure from above and below, the tomato industry is in the middle of a hamburger. But expensive prices of Monsanto and John Deer, and low prices of buyers, someone has to pay.  The price has been the loss of small farmers and exploitation of farmworkers. That is why we launched our campaign for Fair Food.

We have 3 demands: 1)Buyers pay 1 cent more per pound for tomatoes, and that these funds go directly to farmworkers, 2)Enforceable human rights conduct, zero tolerance of enslavement of workers, no sexual harassment and other matters, 3)There be a voice for farmworkers in developing and enforcing this code .  Today there are 8 major food purchasers that have accepted our demands. But in doing this we have had resistance from tomato agribusinesses. This year was the first time we were able to break the resistance of tomato industry. Two smaller farms agreed to implement code of conduct, so large purchasers are obligated to buy from them, so they are getting more business. Even though it sounds good, it is a process to work it out. One of them is a major organic farmer, he is still very paternalistic, for example he claims that “my farm-workers like to work in the sun – Americans don’t understand it, but my workers like to work in the sun”.  But the new code of conduct has a provision that farmworkers have the right to shade, and a right to a break. So the farmer has had to accept this.  Another larger farm, the largest in Florida, just bought 40 tables with sun umbrellas so the workers have somewhere to take a break, with shade. All of these changes were possible not because of laws, but because of the market demand, so two smaller farmers especially were willing to implement this because they benefit as well.

A lot of consumers feel good about themselves when they go to Whole Foods to buy organic, organic does not mean it is just food, that it is produced by small farmer or that it is fair trade.  As a closing reflection, the connections between food justice and food sovereignty, there is a kind of race track of sustainable food in three areas, but most consumer think of two: 1)good for the environment, organic; 2) animal rights gets a lot of attention especially having to do with meat; 3)where are human rights for small farmers and farmworkers – we are just getting our shoes on to enter the racetrack. We have to get our laces laced up and start running.

Campaign for Fair Food: right now it is focused on ?, one of top 10 grocery chain in Southeast, Apple and Krogers, 2nd largest after Wallmart: all 3 of companies buy from one or both of farms where we won…

Agricultural Missions met with Kroger recently, a PR guy – brought a bag full of tshirts from successful Coalition of Imokalee Worker campaigns, started with Taco Bell: Did show-and-tell of all of our successful campaigns.  By the end the guy was feeling pressure, worried he was in the cross-hairs!

Scarlet from Dominican Repbulic: Federation of rural women in DR.
Formed in 1986, work with women producers in country-side, one of biggest struggles has been land tenancy.  We have won great battles and have gained access for many women farmers.  We have a campaign now in the form of a Bill to stop selling and privatization of land, for integrated agrarian reform. Projects with women producers in South of country, where women producing onions, grains, rice, roots. In East work with cattles and pig farmers. We have barter system with our products, for example people producing meat trade it with a special oregano seasoning. We buy together collectively. We create local markets. We undertake campaigns for human rights for gender equity, against domestic violence and campaign against forced internal and external migration. Also working with youth to get them more engaged in agriculture, including a leadership school for young women.  Involved in Via Campesina.

We believe in food sovereignty as the right of the peoples to cultivate and prepare their native seeds according to how they want to do it. We have rights and cultures that no one can invade. We have to protect our autonomy and our spaces.

Daisy Castillo, a mixed men and women federation – we fight for gender equity within the organization.  Some people talk a good talk [about gender equity] but we have to struggle to make it real. Also part of National Peasant Articulation for Unity, a coalition.  We are a coalition with same vision and same goals. We are like an eco-system with many different groups producing many different products. We are also unified to achieve wider goals. We have similar problems in terms of access to land, water, healthcare. We were once invited by official agrian institue of gvt.  Our participation in the various workshops, we understood that our gvt was willing to take away land to sell to large land-holders, so we decided we had to convene our own Congress to create a bill to create a just and equitable land reform. On April 17, the day of International Peasant Struggle, they took that bill to Congress in mass rally.  They have not responded but they have not been able to put their law into place either.  We also participate in Caribbean Food Sovereignty Via Campesina group.

Doudou Pierre _?__, from Haiti
Organization is 37 years old, organization of struggle that came as result of crisis in Haiti. I am involved in National network working on Food Sovereignty and part of national Papay Congress and Via Campesina Food Sovereignty Commission.  Our struggle requires global solidarity and struggle. We are here in many locations around world, but our struggles are so similar and our adversaries are the same.  Situation now is that we be able to export our food to US – now we are invaded by food produced in US..  In Haiti we have big battle going on, fighting occupation of our country by international forces, and invasion of Monsanto with their seeds trying to do away with small farmers. 95% of our production is organic, does not use chemicals.  Monsanto’s invasion threatens to take away that healthy agriculture.  No one in the world can live without eating, so this battle is against corporations who want to take away our right to healthy food.  Our coalition begin fighting bi-fuel plantation. We had to re-direct our struggle against much bigger threat of Monsanto. On June 4 we had large mobilization to protest seed “donation” of Monsanto, alot of international solidarity at that march. That battles is not finished – Monsanto has a lot of money, and they can do whatever they want with our complacent government. We are asking for international solidarity to support our struggle.  The greatest threat are the multinational companies, so we really need everyone to join this battle. I have seen being here that all Americans don’t fit into sterotype that everyone is US is very happy with the economic system. So we say globalize the struggle and that will help us globalize the hope.

January 12th earthquake caused a state of vulnerability in Haiti, lots of international solidarity, but alot of people have come to exploit situation. We bless all who came in good faith, but we curse those who came to exploit us.  We curse Monsanto for thinking that this earthquake was an opportunity to exploit Haiti, with a poison gift.  The “gift” of hybrid seed is enough to plant the whole country. Even though it is a donation, it creates dependency in future. In 1986 we were invaded by the dumping of rice on Haiti by the US, so people had to abandon their fields, it destroyed production of rice in Haiti. They said ‘down with Monsanto!’

QUESTIONS:
What can we do to  buy fair tomatoes?
-CIW focussed on Whole Foods…
-Whole Foods is only grocery store that has reached agreement with us, but what we always encourage you to do is buy your tomatoes from local stand.
-Pushing for local farmers being able to put their brand on their food.

What are strategies for confronting corporate control?
-Ben: US companies only understand the dollar.  The movement is getting to the point that withholding our dollars could make a difference – boycott.
-Youth organizing – Youth in Today’s Agricutlure – Without Us, Who Eats?
-Worked on last Farm Bill: got 30 sections in Farm Bill to help local agriculture.  A strategy to decide on in Farm Bill is whether we have big campaign to change the whole thing at once – difficult to take on big issues in big long campaign…
-Create network of orgs internationally

How can we strengthen political education?
-Highlander Center of Tennesse was the epicenter to political education during Civil Rights.  We could
-We need political education – Via Campesina has training centers in Latin America, why not in US?
-We should cross-list trainings that already exist

How do we connect local food organizing with global justice organizing?
-Use local food organizing as springboard for education and ultimately action.

6/23/10, by Reid Mukai, CAGJ Co-Chair

Workshops:

Fighting for Fair Food

Organizing on a Shoestring Budget: Getting the Word Out Cheap

Why Get in the Game?: Civic Engagement From a Grassroots Community Perspective

PMA: Food Sovereignty

The first workshop of the day that I dropped in on was Fighting for Fair Food, moderated by Luca Benitez, an organizer for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. He described the origin of his group as they mobilized Latino, Mayan and Haitian immigrant workers starting from the town of Immokalee, Florida’s largest farmworker community in 1993. He outlined their intense struggles through the 90s, organizing work stoppages, hunger strikes and marches, leading up to the group’s Anti-Slavery and Fair Food campaigns. Through 2007 and 2008, CIW made headlines by winning struggles against McDonalds and Burger King, pressuring them to commit to better oversight on workplace safety and abuse cases and fairer wages. I knew Benitez would also be in a workshop I was planning on attending later in the week so I left halfway through to catch a workshop located nearby called Organizing on a Shoestring Budget: Getting the Word Out Cheap, moderated by Progressive Omaha. I joined the group while they were discussing a recent flashmob action against British Petroleum on BP Bridge in Chicago using black umbrellas and Twitter. This led to the topic of culture jamming and pranks, with examples ranging from Abbie Hoffman’s dumping dollar bills onto the floor of the New York stock exchange to more recent actions by the Yes Men and Billionaires for Bush. Since that workshop ended a bit early I dropped in on a workshop in progress across the hall called Why Get in the Game?: Civic Engagement From a Grassroots Community Perspective. In their workshop they were also discussing the usage of the full spectrum of technology as potential organizing tools. An example was a protest in response to a BART police officer who shot an unarmed man that was organized largely by text messaging. In the closing remarks, they emphasized the fundamental importance of relationships and that social media should be treated as an extension of real relationships.

After the workshop, I met with Shankara (a friend from the Solidarity house/office and anti-Monsanto activist from New Delhi) for lunch at a nearby restaurant, then we walked over to the tent village area of the USSF for a People’s Movement Assembly (PMA) on Food Sovereignty organized by Agricultural Missions, which Heather and Travis were already attending. At the assemblies, different organizations and individuals converge to connect issues, create a shared vision and strategize for collective action. At our particular assembly we formed break-out groups that focused on different aspects of the food sovereignty issue. The different topics included “Labor Rights Struggles”, “Urban Agriculture and Rural Agriculture”, “Smashing Corporate Control“, “Agriculture and Class/Race Struggles”, “Land Liberation and Natural Resource Protection”, “Health Effects of Food”, and “Food, Energy and Climate Change”. The group I participated in was “Smashing Corporate Control” which was facilitated by Shankara. Among the many ideas that came from the session were:

• challenge corporate personhood law
• target laws allowing ownership of seed strains
• international collected action against specific corporate target
• mobilize against biofuel ag
• statement of solidarity with indigenous agricultural communities
• form treaties between indigenous groups domestically and internationally

After the PMA session, Heather, Travis, Shankara and I returned to the Cobo building. Shankara went home from there while the rest of us made use of the internet access in the building and later met with Maria. At 7pm our group returned to the site of the PMA for a post-assembly pizza and beer party, where we met Dena Hoff and other friends. They suggested a good place for dinner and though we already ate we joined them for more beer. Later that evening a dramatic monsoon-type lighting storm occurred, making a long and eventful day even more memorable.

6/24/10, by Reid Mukai, CAGJ Co-Chair

Workshops:

Converging Storms: The Crisis of Energy and Food, Climate and Environment, and Capitalism and War

The Global Justice Game

Organizing for Power and Collective Liberation

Today was the first day that the workshops I planned on attending were to be held at Wayne State University instead of the Cobo building. Though I thought it would make scheduling which workshops to go to easier, things did not always go as planned. The first workshop I attended was moved to another building on the opposite side of the campus so I had to walk a long way quickly to get there on time, but it was an interesting one called Converging Storms: The Crisis of Energy and Food, Climate and Environment, and Capitalism and War, facilitated by Jason Negron Gonzales of the Justice and Ecology Project. Through a brief powerpoint presentation he described civilization’s dependance on oil which, though a relatively short period in history, has made things temporarily more convenient for (some) humans but has had a disasterous effect on the planet and natural ecosystems. Jason then gave an overview of some of the main crisis civilization is confronting, including fresh water scarcity, chemical and waste pollution, climate change, food security, and threats to cultural/biological diversity. As part of a solution, he envisions a global framework for a just transition for all to a sustainable civilization. Steps towards a just transition include:

Resistance – movement building

Resiliance – surviving and thriving

Restoration – respect for nature and integration into web of nature.

Reimagining – transformative narrative for transition towards vision.

As part of these steps he suggested learning from nature (ie. mutually beneficial relationships, balance, limitations, zero waste), struggling for healthy food for all (healthy food systems are those rooted in cultural traditions, run by community, organic, and traded fairly), clean water for all, establishing healthy transit, green jobs, affordable green housing, clean energy, and a decentralized democracy.

The next workshop that I was supposed to go to sounded really promising and was called Linking Our Struggles: Exploring How Local Action Can Be a Pathway for Internationally Solidarity. Unfortunately when I got to the workshop location there was a sign posted indicating it had been cancelled. I looked through the schedule to find an alternate choice (that was somewhat nearby) and found that it too had been moved to a different building. Since I was running out of time I looked through the building I was in for a good workshop and saw a sign for The Global Justice Game organized by Lisa Albrecht for the group MRAP. It turned out the workshop actually was a game and a form of popular education in which participants roleplay various fractions of a political struggle. Lisa described many variations of the game but the one she prepared for us involved a clothing corporation, worker’s union, an anti-sweatshop student group and a college faculty board. To win the game, each faction had to reach their own goals. For the faculty board it was to retain positive image and attain foundation money, for the student group it was to pressure the board not to buy sweatshop products, for the union it was to unionize sweatshop labor and improve working conditions, and for the corporation it was of course to maximize profits. To achieve these goals each group had to form relationships with the other groups, sometimes honestly and sometimes by concealing information or lying. I happened to be in the group representing the union and enjoyed that role, though the people playing the corporation seemed to have the most fun, even using direct quotes from BP CEO Tony Hayward.

The final workshop I attended that day was Organizing for Power and Collective Liberation, facilitated by Lisa Fithian of Alliance of Community Trainers. She began by stating there is no one right way to organize because it’s a process determined by the people in the group. She highlighted the need for awareness and ability to anticipate situations through her experiences in direct action and through physical excersizes such as having us stand in a circle and then attempt to get to the opposite side as quickly as possible without bumping into anyone. We then went back in the classroom where she went over basic definitions such as power (the ability to act), strategy (overrall plan), and tactics (what you do to implement plan). We discussed power dynamics in society such as things that decrease power and why the establishment supports many such things (ie. fear, division, distraction, television, etc.). She saw the role of organizer as way to help people overcome fear of consequences by having them question if choices are oppressing or liberating, let them know risks, and to let them make their own decisions. In her experience, people are swayed by positives more than negatives, so focusing on solutions is more likely to move people than pointing out the problems, though some people will also be more willing to act in times of crisis. She ended her presention by suggesting actions should ideally have a strategy, be creative, fun, participatory and imaginative (imagination is the most powerful organizing tool).

After I was done with the workshops of the day, I caught a bus to the Cobo building to once again use the internet, check my email, as well as to check out more of the tables in the exhibition hall, where I met up with Heather and Travis. From there we took a “people mover” monorail train to the Greek Town section of the city where we joined Caitlin and Masha for dinner at a Greek restaurant. We all walked back to where Travis had parked and carpooled back to our respective solidarity houses.

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.

Note: You know how much you paid for your tool better than we do but in case you can’t remember the numbers in parentheses are what they sell for at Gardener’s Supply/Lowe’s online.  The price is listed so you may claim the tax deductible donation.

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.

More information from the Organic Farmers Action Network:

Stop Genetically Engineered Alfalfa
Call your Members of Congress Today

Despite overwhelming public opposition, USDA is considering lifting the ban on genetically engineered alfalfa. Approval of GE alfalfa is likely to lead to genetic contamination of organic and non-GE alfalfa, causing economic harm to organic farmers and further reducing all farmers’ seed options.

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Representative Peter DeFazio (D-OR) are circulating a Congressional ‘Dear Colleague’ letter in the House and Senate, asking USDA to maintain the ban on genetically engineered alfalfa. Contact your Members of Congress TODAY and urge them to sign onto this letter.

Contact Info

Phone Rap

Additional talking points are below. Let us know how your call went – contact Tracy Lerman, OFRF Policy Organizer: tracy@ofrf.org.

Background

In 2005, environmental groups successfully sued the USDA over its deregulation of genetically engineered alfalfa, arguing that USDA did not consider the environmental impacts of this crop. The courts banned GE alfalfa and ordered USDA to conduct an Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS, for the crop.

USDA released its draft EIS for GE alfalfa in late 2009. Their EIS admits that, if GE alfalfa is approved:

• GE Contamination of non-GE and organic alfalfa crops will occur.
• GE contamination will cause negative economic impacts for organic and non-GE alfalfa farmers.
• Foreign export markets will be at risk due to rejection of GE contaminated products.
• Farmers will be forced to use more toxic herbicides to remove old stands of alfalfa.

Unfortunately, USDA has decided that these impacts are insignificant and intends to de-regulate GE alfalfa anyway.

Tell Your Congress Member that you DO NOT support the deregulation of GE alfalfa, because:

• GE contamination of non-GE and organic crops would be inevitable.
• You won’t buy products that are GE-contaminated.
• Alfalfa is a major food source for livestock. GE alfalfa would destroy the integrity of organic dairy.
• You support rights of farmers to grow crops of their choice — GE contamination makes that impossible.
• GE crops increase pesticide use, harming human health and the environment.

More Information

Congressional ‘Dear Colleague’ letter urging USDA to ban GE
Extensive backgrounder from the National Organic Coalition
Ten Good Reasons why GMOs are not Compatible with Organic Agriculture