Funded in part by Grassroots International, the Oakland Institute announces a new report: Voices from Africa: African Farmers & Environmentalists Speak Out Against a New Green Revolution in Africa. This report issues a direct challenge to Western-led plans for a genetically engineered revolution in African agriculture, and presents African perspectives and solutions rooted in first-hand knowledge of what Africans need.
While attending the Via Campesina's Vth International Conference, publisher and author Nic Paget-Clarke caught up with Paul Nicholson.
Nicholson is a member of EHNE (Euskal Herriko Nekazarien Elkartasuna), the Basque Farmers Union in the Basque Country, and a member of the International Coordinating Committee in Via Campesina. EHNE is part of the Spanish COAG (Coordinadora de Organizaciones de Agricultores y Ganaderos), which is part of the European Coordination-Via Campesina, a Via Campesina organization in Europe.
While attending the Via Campesina's Vth International Conference, publisher and author Nic Paget-Clarke caught up with Julio dos Santos Pessego. Pessego is a member of UCASN (União dos Camponeses Sul de Niassa / South Niassa Peasants’ Union) and advocacy project director for UNAC (União Nacional de Camponeses / National Peasants' Union) in Niassa province, Mozambique.
Paget-Clarke's interview with Pessego was published In Motion Magazine. We are also providing a PDF version of their conversation, which has been formatted for printing.
While attending the Via Campesina's Vth International Conference, publisher and author Nic Paget-Clarke caught up with Kalissa Regier. Regier is Youth Vice-President of the National Farmers Union (NFU) of Canada.
Paget-Clarke's interview with Regier was published In Motion Magazine. We are also providing a PDF version of their conversation, which has been formatted for printing.
While attending the Via Campesina's Vth International Conference, publisher and author Nic Paget-Clarke sat down with members of a peasant and small farmers' association in Mozambique in an attempt to learn more about the reality of their situation.
Paget-Clarke's piece was published In Motion Magazine. We are also providing a PDF version of the article, which has been formatted for printing.
While attending the Via Campesina's Vth International Conference, publisher and author Nic Paget-Clarke caught up with Diamantino Nhampossa. Nhampossa is executive director of the União Nacional de Camponeses (UNAC) / National Peasants' Union of Mozambique and a member for Africa of the International Coordinating Committee of La Via Campesina.
Paget-Clarke's interview with Nhampossa was published In Motion Magazine. We are also providing a PDF version of their conversation, which has been formatted for printing.
Human rights and community leaders in Mexico continue to experience threats – including death threats. They ask for help from global activists to protect their lives and their community work.
Current threats follow previous repression, including the unjust prosecution of local organizers of the Civil Resistance against the high cost of energy in the southern state of Campeche.Last December, in response to an emergency action, letters of solidarity with Sara Lopez and Joaquin Aguilar brought authorities in Campeche to the negotiating table.
Your support is still needed.
Human rights and community leaders in Mexico continue to experience threats including death threats. They ask for help from global activists to protect their lives and their community work.
Current threats follow previous repression, including the unjust prosecution of local organizers of the Civil Resistance against the high cost of energy in the southern state of Campeche.Last December, in response to an emergency action, letters of solidarity with Sara Lopez and Joaquin Aguilar brought authorities in Campeche to the negotiating table.
Your support is still needed.
Grassroots International's partners in Haiti have joined with their Global South counterparts to demand an end to forcing countries to pay exorbitant debt to Northern countries whose failed economic policies helped cause the crisis in the first place.
The following is a summary of the Declaration of the Assembly of Movements struggling to overcome Debt domination put forth in Belem, Brazil:
We will be posting updates from the Dessalines Brigade in Haiti. Stay tuned.
Last month, a small delegation of four representatives of Via Campesina-Brazil arrived in Haiti. Their mission is to help the Haitian peasant movement in their efforts to build local sustainable agriculture practices and a popular education curriculum on food sovereignty. Besides solidarity and technical expertise, the delegation also brings agro-ecological seeds produced in agrarian reform settlements in Brazil to share with local families.
Bélém, Brazil, 1 February 2009
No to neoliberal illusions, yes to people's solutions!
For centuries, productivism and industrial capitalism have been destroying our cultures, exploiting our labour and poisoning our environment.
Now, with the climate crisis, the Earth is saying "enough", "ya basta"!
Once again, the people who created the problem are telling us that they also have the solutions: carbon trading, so-called "clean coal", more nuclear power, agrofuels, even a "green new deal". But these are not real solutions, they are neoliberal illusions. It is time to move beyond these illusions.
Climate Change is big business. Literally! Many corporations, including some of the worst polluters, are salivating at the prospects of potentially vast sums of money that could very well come their way in the name of saving the planet. Climate justice activists, including indigenous peoples, are rightly worried that in the rush to "save the planet" governments and international institutions (including the World Bank, for example) will once again put profits before people.
Photo courtesy of Sandra Yu, Detroiters for Environmental Justice
Former deputy speaker of Israel's Knesset and current president of the New Israel Fund Naomi Chazan described her perspectives on the Gaza war and the state of Israeli politics and the peace process in a recent article published in The Nation. "Reflections of a Troubled Israeli" courageously puts forth the vision of a woman who refuses to give up on a more progressive and just Israel, the country she loves; or a just peace between Palestinians and Israelis.
"I simply gotta march, my heart's a drummer; nobody, no, nobody is gonna rain on my parade!"
I remembered the lyrics of this song, first sung by Barbra Streisand I think, as we marched – some 100,000 of us – in a torrential downpour through the streets of Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon in the Brazilian state of Pará. It was the Opening March of the 2009 World Social Forum. Despite the rain, the enthusiasm of the crowds was contagious.
Twelve days ago the United States, and the world, celebrated the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as the country's first African-American president. That the world celebrated as well was evident to many of us even then, but it's even more clear to me here in Belém, in the Brazilian state of Pará, where I am for the World Social Forum, where numerous people from around the world have repeatedly greeted those of us from the United States with a thumbs up sign and shouted "Obama!" celebrating not only his becoming president but, especially, the end of the Bush Administration. Bill Fletcher, Jr., a former Board member of Grassroots International, reflected on this historic moment in the shadow of Gaza - Nikhil Aziz.
It has become clear that the numerous crises we face today are a result of disastrous global governance formulas that try to accommodate powerful interests, instead of addressing the real issues.
And these formulas are getting old. Discredited in the public eye, global institutions led by a handful of nations, and dominated by corporate agendas, are losing ground.
For years, the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC) has been turning food aid that feeds dependency on its head. Their Farm to Table program purchases food for hungry families from local Palestinian farmers to address critical humanitarian needs and provide local farmers with needed income. Like nearly all organizations working in Gaza, PARC's operations came to a swift halt on December 27, 2008, when Israeli Defense Forces began bombing the region. Their buildings were severely damaged, along with the rooftop and backyard gardens at the core of the urban farm program.
Grassroots International's partner, the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC) has long played a crucial role in defending the Palestinian people's human right to land, water and food. One of their goals is to contribute to the achievment of sustainable and integrated rural development in Palestine, and they have been a key actor in building a secular and democratic civil society. Since 1983, they have worked tirelessly with rural and refugee (from the war of 1948) farmers.
Grassroots currently funds PARC's innovative Urban Agriculture program in Gaza, which encourages food sovereignty and security by establishing networks of rooftop and backyard gardens.
For the most part, Gaza has been quiet for the past 10 days. News coverage from the region has faded from headlines as direct conflict between Hamas and the Israeli military halted in the eve of President Barack Obama's inauguration and the subsequent transitions of power.
