This week Palestinians around the world are commemorating Land Day (begun in 1976) to mark their attachment to, and dispossession from land -- the fundamental issue of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Former Grassroots International Board chair Assaf Kfoury reflects on the re-emergence of the one versus two states debate.
In celebration of International Womens Day on Saturday, we at Grassroots would like to honor 900 peasant women who bravely seized and occupied a vast corporate tree farm in southern Brazil that they believe symbolizes the type of development that is destroying their communities and Mother Earth itself.
It could not have been easy.
The women, members of the Via Campesina, staged thetakeover just before dawn on Tuesday, then proceeded to cut down the corporations trees and plant native trees in their place. At least 50 women were injured by rubber bullets and other material when police forcefully removed them from the 5,200-acre farm. Hundreds of them were reportedly arrested.
Lecture: Land Rights, given by Luis Antonio of MST
Location
Northeastern University School of Law
Knowles 201
400 Huntington Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts 02115
Grassroots International and U.S. Friends of the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (FMST) are delighted to host Luis Antonio Pasquetti, from the National Committee of the Landless Workers Movement (MST), a member of Via Campesina, during his tour in the United States.
It is hard not to be skeptical about Annapolis. As author and activist Alice Rothchild noted in a recent article, "Perhaps a more honest name for the current madness is not the realization of the Road Map, but rather the steady creation of Road Blocks that are rapidly crushing the hopes for a viable two-state solution." A lame duck Bush Administration (in any case not known for its diplomatic efforts) is, after 7 long years of neglect, trying to jump start peace in the Middle East.
The Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), one of Grassroots International's newest partners in Palestine, is organizing an olive harvest campaign directed at bringing internationals in to help Palestinian families access their lands and pick their olives during the upcoming harvest season. This is a great way to express solidarity with the Palestinian people and support their right to stay on the land. Here is the flyer we received from UAWC:
In a few weeks, Guatemalans will cast their votes in the final round of the Presidential elections. They will choose between two candidates, the impresario Alvaro Colom and the army general Otto Perez Molina. So far, it seems that the next president will be elected with a small margin of votes with the two candidates disputing every vote in the capital of Guatemala City, where the election is expect to be decided.
Far in the mountains, the votes of Mayan peasants will have almost no impact on the final outcome of the election. This lack of impact is evident in both political platforms, which fail to address the main issues and concerns of the Mayan population, including landlessness and the dire agrarian situation in the country.
Grassroots International and Spontaneous Celebrations invite you to an evening with physician, author, and activist Alice Rothchild, author of "Broken Promises, Broken Dreams: Stories of Jewish
Peruvian Economist Hernando de Soto has a simple idea that he believes could flood trillions of dollars into the poorest sectors of the world economy: by giving poor people clear legal title to the land they live on and the homes they've built, he says, we could give them the collateral they would need to get bank loans that could help them build businesses and enter the formal economy. The concept has made De Soto a star in the international development world. He's the toast of the World Bank and the darling of Davos, and if his theories worked, he'd be one of the greatest friends that the poor of the world have ever known.
Unfortunately, like a lot of things that seem too good to be true, de Soto's plan doesn't pan out well in the real world.
Every once in a while, in the midst of reports of massacres, political oppression, and natural disaster, we get a welcome reminder of the value of the work that we do here at Grassroots, and of the power of movements and organizations like our partners to find ways to move forward, in the midst of the violence and the chaos of everyday life.
Do you consider agrarian reform to be one of those "1980s" issues? If so, you need to know about the World Forum on Agrarian Reform.
The forum, which has brought together 500 activists and researchers from around the globe, has been taking place this week in Valencia, Spain.
According to a description of the opening of the event:
Bringing GRI's message and the work of our partners to a public high school audience in Providence, Rhode Island is one of those things I wish we could be doing more of. So on Monday morning at the crack of dawn I got up, to lead an assembly or "Pick Me Up" as they called it, at one of the schools of the Met (Metropolitan Regional and Technical Center)–a unique state-funded public school K-12, that is structured around students individualized projects and skills development.
This Saturday a group of hooded gunmen arrived at a small parcel of land in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, and opened fire on a group of children, women, and men who have been living there in a makeshift encampment for the last two years.
Brazil's Landless Workers Movement had identified the land as an un-used, state-owned parcel of land that, under the Brazilian Constitution, should have been distributed to landless workers so that it could be put to work for the good of all of Brazilian society.
More and more in the past two years, even under the worker-friendly goverment of President Luiz Ignacio "Lula" da Silva, landowners and other forces alligned against agrarian reform have resorted to brutal violence to fight the re-distribution of land.
On November 20th a gang of hired gunmen opened fire on the families of Nova Alegria Farm near Felizburgo, Minas Gerais. Violent resistance to the agrarian reform movement led by Brazil's Landless Workers Movement (MST) has been on the rise in the last several years, and the perpetators of the crimes too-often go unpunished. For more information on the details of the attacks, read the statement below from the MST. Find out below how you can help put an end to impunity.
