Now the Sioux Must Battle Big Oil
Residents of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North and South Dakota say they were never consulted about an oil pipeline. Now they’re fighting back.
Grassroots International, Author at Grassroots International | Page 3 sur 12
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5 Food Systems Lessons the U.S. Can Learn from Africa
As food activists work to localize food systems in the United States, small farmers who sell their food locally still produce around 80 percent of the food in sub-Saharan Africa. But that does not mean that farmers and food activists on the African continent can be complacent. Quite the opposite.
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Changing Haiti with PAPDA’s Ricot Jean-Pierre
No social and political changes can be achieved without the men and women who dedicate their lives to the improvement of their communities' living conditions. Ricot Jean-Pierre is one of them. As the program director of our partner the Platform to Advocate Alternative Development in Haiti (PAPDA), Ricot works restlessly to better the lives of Haitians and the country itself – a fight he started at a very young age. Ricot lived his early years under the violence of the Duvalier dictatorship. Very close friends of his and family members including his father directly experienced violence and repression.
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Peanuts and Protest in Haiti Minimize US Surplus Dumping Scheme
Our partner PAPDA joined a delegation of organizations for a meeting on June 29, 2016 with high-level members of the Prime Minister Cabinet and the Minister of Agriculture in Haiti. They discussed the reaction to a letter sent by dozens of NGOs, including Grassroots International, on May 27 to the USDA and USAID calling for the cancellation of the planned USDA shipment of 500 metric tons of peanuts to Haiti.
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Haitian Farmers to the U.S. Government: “No to free peanuts!”
The USDA is planning to ship 500 metric tons of dry-roasted U.S. peanuts to Haiti to feed schoolchildren this fall. Ask Haitian peanut farmer St. Abel Pierre her opinion, and she’ll tell you: she’s worried, and she isn’t alone.
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Free Trade Dismantling Lives, Cultures in Mexico
Since its implementation in 1994 the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has had a devastating impact on our partners and the people of Mexico. The trade agreement has resulted in the destruction of rural livelihoods and the environment, a decrease in jobs and wages, more economic and social inequalities and an increase in human rights violations.
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Organizing Women-Headed Households in Brazil
Since 1989, our partner the Association in the Settlement Areas of the State of Maranhão (ASSEMA) has organized thousands of women-headed rural families in Northeast Brazil to expand access to rights and to improve their quality of life.
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Three Courageous Fathers
This Father’s Day we celebrate three men who courageously strive to overcome adversity and improve the lives of their families and of their communities: Carlos Marentes, Sr., Antonal Mortimer, and Alfredo Lopez.
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Divestment an Appropriate Response to Israel’s Treatment of Palestinians
Portland is hosting an event [the week of May 9, 2016] that could have a significant impact on the search for Middle East peace. If the United Methodist Church General Conference votes to divest from companies that profit from Israel's occupation, all the mainstream Protestant churches in the U.S. will have taken a principled stand for Palestinian freedom through boycott and divestment, joining the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the United Church of Christ and others.
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Brazil’s Largest Hydroelectric Dam Project Suspended by Indigenous Action
April has been an exceptional month for Indigenous groups in Brazil.
On April 19th, which happens to be Indigenous people’s day in Brazil, Ibama, the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, suspended the license of one of the biggest hydroelectric dam projects in Brazil, São Luiz do Tapajós in the Amazon, which was to be started this year. The company building the dam was planning on flooding about 7% of the Mundruku peoples land, which would be unconstitutional once the indigenous status of land is confirmed.
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Celebrating Mothers from the Movements
This Mother’s Day we celebrate three women who find the courage to overcome the great adversity they face as they work to improve the lives of their families and of their communities. Juslene, Esperanza and Samiha are three inspiring mothers who, working with Grassroots International’s partners in Haiti, Honduras and Palestine, are key leaders within their communities.
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Supporting Water Rights Around the World
March 22nd is International World Water Day and it serves as a reminder that water has not yet become a human right, and that millions continue to be denied access to water or have difficulty obtaining a fresh supply on a daily basis.
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Mozambique’s Movement to End Land Grabs
To corporations, the forest is only business. To communities, the forest is everything: trees, medicine, culture, spirituality. Land-grabbing and the removal of communities from forests and land breaks the community, displaces access to food and water, and uproots the connection to nature and local knowledge. If the community structure is broken, if the land – the means of food production – is lost, we lose everything. Land That Can Only Grow Stones In Mozambique, where 80% of the population is campesinos – traditional, family farmers – companies are taking the best, most fertile land and moving people to land that can’t grow anything.
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Climate Justice and Palestine: The New Intersectionality
On February 9, 2016, the US Supreme Court in a troubling example of shortsighted hubris halted Obama’s latest climate change resolutions which had emerged from the December Paris Agreement on global warming, thus also threatening commitments made by other top polluters, India and China. While China has now surpassed the US as the number one polluter, the decades of fossil fuel use by the US stills makes us the largest contributor to the climate crisis. The decision to freeze the resolutions which sought to decrease greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants until legal challenges are resolved, threatens to imperil an already inadequate approach to climate change.
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La Via Campesina, Building an International Movement for Food and Seed Sovereignty
Who we are fighting for is every single peasant farmer – more than 200 million – on the planet. People are eager to join hands in building a global voice. Transnational corporations are pushing policies in African countries for industrial farming and the use of GMO [genetically modified] seeds, while grabbing our land and [stealing] our natural resources. No one should come and tell us how to produce food. In Via Campesina, we believe in controlling our land and seeds and producing the healthy food that we want, the way we want.
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Palestinian Farmers Push for Control of Water
Water is life. Unfortunately, it is increasingly used as a weapon. And it can be a deadly one when political conflict meets drought.
For decades the Israeli government has had varying degrees of legal and coercive control over the Palestinian water supply. Eighty-five percent of Palestinian water resources are controlled by Israelis and all-too-often, wells and other agricultural projects are demolished or confiscated.
The result is a gaping inequity: Israelis have swimming pools, and Palestinians can barely survive.
The average Israeli uses 300 liters of water per day, but Palestinians are limited by bureaucracy and lack of access to 30-70 liters – and the World Health Organization recommends a minimum 100 liters per day.
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African Women Organize to Reclaim Agriculture Against Corporate Takeover
Everybody originated with indigenous ways of living and the way of Mother Earth. The real role of women is in the seed. It is the women who harvest, select, store, and plant seeds. Our seeds come from our mothers and our grandmothers. To us, the seed is the symbol of the continuity of life. Seed is not just about the crops. Seed is about the soil, about the water, and about the forest. When we plant our seeds, we don’t just plant them anytime or anywhere. We listen to our elders, who teach us about the ecological calendar. The seed follows this natural ecological flow. When it bears another seed, that one is planted and the cycle continues. If you cut the cycle of the seed, you cut the cycle of life.
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Decolonizing Our Minds and Our Lands: Reviving Seeds, Culture, and African Strength
Recolonization is happening. There is a second scramble, not just in Africa, but across the global South. Corporations started it. We need to name and shame these corporations – Monsanto, Syngenta, Cargill, and the program promoting them, AGRA [A Green Revolution for Africa] – to take this battle to the next level. The wars [of conquest of Africa] have not actually ended – the artillery has just transformed into a different type against us farmers today. All of us are fighting.