Many social movements from across the Americas were in Trinidad for the 4th People’s Summit to articulate their demands for moving the hemisphere towards economic (including trade) and climate justice, food sovereignty, human rights, and an end to militarization. They represented movements of women, peasants, indigenous peoples, labor and those struggling for environmental justice.
As more cases of Swine Flu are reported across the globe, two kinds of opportunism seem to be spreading as well. First, non-profits spin the story to seek funding or media coverage for whatever portion of their work might overlap with the rising pandemic. Some are more relevant-and actually engaged-than others. Second, businesses might use the health scare for their own purposes.
In Egypt, pigs are being slaughtered to "prevent" the spread of swine flu in a country where even a single case of the illness has not yet been confirmed.
Today I attended a panel at Harvard featuring authors of the Lancet Special Series Health in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. They discussed and suggested reasons for the rapidly deteriorating health of those living in Gaza and the West Bank, including a lack of access to food and medicine. These vital resources remain blocked by obstacles such as the Wall in the West Bank and inaccessible borders in Gaza. Panelist Mitchell Plitnick, the U.S.
Saulo Araujo, Grassroots International Program Coordinator for Brazil & Mesoamerica, and I traveled to the People's Summit of the Americas with the Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA). The HSA is composed of networks, social movements and organizations from across the Americas that are primarily opposed to free trade. Its beginnings were in the Belo Horizonte, Brazil People's Summit in 1997 in anticipation of the Santiago, Chile Summit of the Americas.
Progressive social movements from across the hemisphere met in Trinidad from April 15-18 for the IV People's Summit, a parallel event to the Summit of the Americas.
Led by local trade unions and the Assembly of Caribbean Peoples, the IV People's Summit happened at a critical moment in the Americas.
The promises of economic prosperity through free trade agreements have left many across the Americas without the basic means of decent living. The unemployment rate in the United States is over 8%. Further south, severely affected by the same failed policies, small-scale farmers have been turned into food beggars in larger cities in the Latin American and Caribbean regions, and millions have been forced to migrate in search of economic sustenance.
Two new reports are available from Other Worlds, a multi-media education and organizing collaborative.
Last month I was in Istanbul to participate in the People's Water Forum that was being held simultaneously with (and challenging) the World Water Forum. The latter is organized by water corporations through their front, the World Water Council, and with the support of multilateral financial organizations like the World Bank and the World Trade Organization.
A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) found that genetic engineering has not significantly increased crop yields in relation to other agricultural technologies.
In an April 14th, 2009 press release, Doug Sherman, author of the report and biologist in the UCS Food and Environment Program, commented "The biotech industry has spent billions on research and public relations hype, but genetically engineered food and feed crops haven't enabled American farmers to grow significantly more crops per acre of land ... In comparison, traditional breeding continues to deliver better results."
My colleague, Saulo Araujo, Program Coordinator for Brazil & Mesoamerica, and I are in Trinidad for the 4th People's Summit of the Americas (April 15-18, 2009). Being held in conjunction with the 5th Summit of the Americas, the People's Summit was coordinated by local Trinidadian social movements and civil society organizations, particularly labor unions (for e.g. the Federation of Independent Trade Unions and NGOs and the Oilfield Workers Trade Union), as well as transnational networks such as the Assembly of Caribbean Peoples and the Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA).
"A new bill before the U.S. Senate stands to completely overhaul the way the U.S. offers agricultural development and food aid to the developing world. This bill, the Lugar-Casey Global Food Security Act, aims to reform aid programs to include a stronger focus on long-term agricultural development and the restructuring of aid agencies to better respond to crises. While this renewed focus is commendable, the Lugar-Casey bill also mandates funding for genetically modified crop research as a major underpinning of its food security strategy. Just as food aid expands markets for U.S. grain even as it destroys markets and farm livelihoods abroad, the agricultural development aid in the Lugar-Casey Global Food Security Act will open markets in Africa and elsewhere to the U.S.
When it rains, it pours. This week has seen a deluge of global food and trade strategies, all of which may deeply impact food and agriculture policies for Grassroots International, our partners and our allies.
Family farmers and other food justice activists will mark April 17, the International Day of Peasant's Struggle, with a protest against corporate speculation on agricultural commodities which is behind the global food crisis now threatening the livelihoods of millions of farmers. This action is in solidarity with La Via Campesina, the world's largest umbrella movement of family farmers, Grassroots International's ally the National Family Farm Coalition, rural workers and indigenous peoples.
Specific demands include:
Since 1996 April 17 has been declared by La Via Campesina "International Day of Peasants' Struggles." This day commemorates the slaughter by the Brazilian police of 19 peasants of the landless movement (MST) while they mobilized to get access to some land. Thirteen years later, the struggle for recognition of peasant rights remains a priority of the Via Campesina, one of Grassroots International's partners.
According to the Via Campesina's press release,
Last December, I had the good fortune to be able to attend and participate in the 2nd international strategy meeting of the Economic, Social, & Cultural Rights Network - ESCR-Net, which is a global coalition of movements and NGOs that are struggling for or working on economic, social and cultural rights. The four day meeting took place in Nairobi, Kenya, in conjunction with a special gathering of social movements and grassroots groups.
The Oaxaca State Coffee Producers Network (CEPCO), one of Grassroots International's partners in Mexico, works with largely indigenous coffee-growing families to fortify their economic wellbeing. CEPCO has been instrumental in strengthening organic coffee production among members and in diversifying the local economic base in an effort to ensure that local indigenous communities can stay on their traditional collectively owned land.
Since late spring of 2008 I have been playing an active role in the work of the U.S. Working Group on the Food Crisis. This broad network of farmer, fisher, farmworker, labor, faith, food and hunger and policy advocacy organizations has echoed the call of global social movements and civil society to implement a clear and simple set of principles included in the findings of the 2008 International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) and join the community of nations supporting the right to food.
The G20 meetings in London are drawing a lot of attention in the media and around the world. Typically, much of the mainstream media attention is focused either on the pomp sideshow (the Queen and Michelle Obama's hug) or the small portion of the protestors that broke windows and equipment in the RBS offices (which bolsters mainstream media's emphasis on sensationalism and their ability to dismiss genuine global protest against the destructive policies of governments and multilateral institutions).
Sunday marked Land Day in Palestine and around the world. Land Day is an annual commemoration of the events of March 30, 1976, when the Israeli army and police killed six unarmed Palestinian protesters and injured 96 others during a peaceful protest in the Galilee. More than 300 people were also arrested in the demonstration opposing the Israeli authorities' seizure of 5,500 acres as "closed military zones."
Since returning from Gaza where I went on a Grassroots International program trip that coincided with the International Women's Delegation co-sponsored by Code Pink, Grassroots International and others, I am finding it very difficult to write. I sit at night staring blankly at my more than a hundred pages of notes and find the personal testimonies from the War too horrific to have actually happened or to exist between the pages of my beat-up notebooks. I spend hours sorting through thousands of photographs and stop every now and then to remind myself that the images are part of my recent experience and responsibility now and not some archives from Sabra or Shatila or Jenin or Beirut that somehow made their way onto my hard drive.
Not for the world's people for sure. And especially not for the increasingly thirsty billions who lack acess to clean and safe water for drinking, cooking, and growing food; or for those that have been displaced by huge mega dam projects or suffered from water diversions for agribusinesses and bottled water corporations. This was amply evident when the World Water Forum (WWF) denied permission to the United Nations General Assembly President, Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann (from Nicaragua) to speak at its 5th gathering in Istanbul, Turkey this past week.
