The Movement for Community-Led Agroecology
On June 20, Grassroots International held our second solidarity encounter of 2023 on The Movement for Community-Led Agroecology. The event featured a deep and lively discussion between Ana de Ita Rubio of CECCAM (Mexico) and Gabriela Linares Sosa, from the Zapotec community in Oaxaca and a representative of UNOSJO (Mexico), facilitated by Grassroots International’s Senior Solidarity Program Officer for Latin America, Jovanna Garcia Soto.
The speakers discussed what agroecology means to them and its connection both to Indigenous cosmovisions and to grassroots struggles for climate justice and food sovereignty. They then discussed the role of political formation and the significance of the emergence of agroecology schools in the movement to reclaim agriculture from large-scale agribusiness. They closed with a discussion of why we should be embracing agroecology to address the ecological crisis we face instead of the kinds of false solutions that Gopal Dayaneni and Nnimmo Bassey presented and critiqued in the first Solidarity Encounter, held last month, on Ecological Crisis: False Solutions and Climate Justice Frameworks. The recording of that first session can be found below.
The next Solidarity Encounter in our series will be held on July 26 and will be a discussion on Grassroots Feminisms with the Sector de Mujeres, a network of 33 organizations in Guatemala, focused on building a powerful movement for all women — including Mother Earth. The final Solidarity Encounter of the year will be held in October and will be a dialogue between adrienne maree brown and Devin Atallah on healing justice in Black Feminist and Palestinian liberation movements. More information and a registration link for these Solidarity Encounters can be found here.
The Solidarity Encounters are live, participatory events. We welcome our community — and anyone interested in learning more about the work we do — to join the Solidarity Encounters and deepen your knowledge and solidarity. The goals of these events include community-building and collective knowledge-creation, so we especially appreciate it if you can come at the time the event is being offered, leave your cameras on, and participate actively — even if you are very new to the topic being discussed!