A Critical Moment for Indigenous Rights in Brazil
There are currently 33 proposed laws in Brazil's National Congress threatening Indigenous rights. But Indigenous people are mobilizing with mass resistance.
Lydia Simas, Author at Grassroots International
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Rooting the Movement: The Importance of Political Education/Formation
In 2017 Grassroots International launched the Global Peasant Solidarity Movement Building Initiative, a series of projects coordinated in collaboration with our partner the Landless Workers Movement/ Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST). This initiative, now in its second year, supports international social movements as they strengthen the infrastructure of regional learning centers, independent media production and popular communications trainings, political education, and global solidarity.
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Celebrating International Women’s Day and Reclaiming Feminism for the Grassroots
Today women around the world are calling for transforming society away from one based on the exploitation and disenfranchisement of women – rooted in patriarchy, white supremacy and capitalism – to one that values women everywhere. March 8th's International Women's Day remains an important part of this movement.
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Brazil at the Crossroads: Organizing for Land and Water Rights in Dangerous Times
The second year under Brazil’s parliamentary coup is now underway. Despite the political corruption and backlash against social movements, Grassroots International partners refuse to accept the dismantling of previous gains and are creating new systems to survive.
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“The dam killed… it continues to kill”: Mariana dam disaster survivors, two years on
Solidarity Program Officer Lydia Simas spoke to two survivors of the 2015 Mariana dam disaster -- the greatest environmental disaster in Brazil's history. Maria and Raiane, activists in the Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB), talked about the ongoing struggle to hold mega mining corp Samarco accountable.
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Celebrating and Funding Women’s Leadership Around the World
We support projects that promote women’s leadership and that lift up the struggles of indigenous and peasant women around the world. In celebration of International Women’s Day (and every day!), here are some of the projects we are proud to have supported recently…
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The Meeting of Afro-Brazilian Culture and African Activists in Bahia
Grassroots International supported an international learning exchange with our partners and allies, including: We Are the Solution (WAS) in Senegal, Guinea, Ghana; La Via Campesina’s Women’s Commission in Honduras; and IDEX partners from the Surplus People Project in South Africa, Ñepi Behña in Mexico and AFEDES in Guatemala. The purpose of the exchange was to learn and exchange experiences with movements in Brazil.
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Learning Without Borders, With Struggle and Hope: Our Time with MCP
In September 2016 eleven of our partners, grantees and allies flew to Goiás, Brazil to participate in a learning exchange of peasant movements that Grassroots International organized along with our friends at IDEX/Thousand Currents.
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Lessons from Feminist Organizing School
In May I participated in the first-ever World March of Women-US Chapter Feminist Organizing School. This training engaged World March of Women-US (WMW-US) member organizations – including Grassroots International -- around issues of feminism and gender justice. For me, this was an exciting opportunity to meet in person many of the women I’d interacted with on conference calls over the past year.
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Mothers in Resistance – ¡Berta Cáceres Vive!
Berta Cáceres – indigenous, environmental, and human rights defender and fierce feminist who was assassinated in Honduras on March 3rd, 2016 – was, among so many other things, a mother in resistance. She inherited this from her mother, who was an inspiration to her, and she passed this down to her own daughters and son.
Berta’s mother, Austra Bertha Flores Lopez, worked as a midwife and served as mayor of their town and then governor of their state. She taught her daughter about fighting for justice from the time she was a child. During the period of intense violence of the 1980s, Austra took in and cared for refugees from El Salvador, showing her children what real solidarity looks like.
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Supporting Movements in Honduras Following the Assassination of Berta Cáceres
This month Grassroots International has been able to make several grants to movements in Honduras that are organizing in response to the assassination of Berta Cáceres, an indigenous environmental leader who was killed on March 3. Plus, we’ve added our voice (and thousands more!) to calls for justice for Berta and her community – and several financiers have pulled out of the controversial dam project threatening the Lenca peoples’ sacred and beloved Gualcarque River.
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International Women’s Day – Celebrating the Life of Berta Cáceres
This year Grassroots International is dedicating International Women’s Day – March 8 – to Berta Cáceres, courageous indigenous Lenca leader and coordinator of the Civic Council of Indigenous People’s Organizations in Honduras (COPINH). Just days ago we learned that Berta was assassinated in her home. A leader in the Lenca community, Berta helped organize a powerful movement to stop the construction of the Agua Zarca dam and to protect the Gualcarque river basin. For more than a year the Lenca people maintained a human blockade to stop trucks from entering the dam construction site and thus halted its construction.
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Celebrating Women Farmers of West Africa
Women farmers of West Africa hold a piece of Black history and ancestral knowledge to be celebrated and honored this and every month. In Africa women produce the majority of food consumed locally, and for centuries they have been the guardians of seeds, passing on local strains from generation to generation. Grassroots International is supporting rural women farmers associations in five countries in West Africa - Ghana, Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso and Guinea - to build connections between local associations and to strengthen the voice of rural women farmers regionally.
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Historic Flooding in India Shows Destructiveness of Climate Change
Monsoon rains are a key part of the ecosystem in India, with whole regions depending on the seasonal monsoons for their water throughout the year. But this season’s monsoon brought a downpour of historic magnitude in the state of Tamil Nadu, destroying tens of thousands of homes and livelihoods.
This is what the destructiveness of climate change looks like.
Tamil Nadu usually gets around 13 inches of rain in the summer and around 18 inches of rain in the fall. This year following average summer rains came unprecedented rainfall starting in late October, and it just didn’t let up. In just a single day in early December Tamil Nadu received an unbelievable 21 inches of rain.
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Boston Showing of “This Changes Everything” Sells Out, Inspires Action
Earlier this month Grassroots International hosted a screening of the film This Changes Everything, a powerful documentary by Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein about the connections between climate change and our current economic system. Based on Naomi Klein’s book (This Changes Everything: Climate vs. Capitalism), the documentary poses the question, “What if confronting the climate crisis is the best chance we’ll ever get to build a better world?”
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Women of the Americas March in Peru
With drums, solidarity, art and action, members of the World March of Women gathered in Cajamarca, Peru this October. This gathering of one hundred women from Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Quebec, United States and Venezuela marked the fourth regional meeting of the World March of Women of the Americas. This also marked the first regional meeting that included representation from the newly formed US chapter of the World March of Women (of which Grassroots International is a member).
The regional meeting consisted of building analysis and strategy, sharing stories and culture, and taking to the streets to march in solidarity with the struggles of the women of Cajamarca.
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Black Lives & Climate Justice: From Haiti to New Orleans to Boston
Scores of people – showing a great diversity of races, ages and backgrounds – packed into the room to look together at the connections between climate justice and Black Lives Matter, and how these movements present themselves in the experiences of Haiti, New Orleans and elsewhere. More people spilled out into the hallway, illustrating how ready people were to hear the powerful words coming from inside: everyone matters and has a role in the struggle for human rights and the survival of the planet.
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Talking about Women, Grassroots Training and Social Change
Over the last decade, thousands of community leaders received training at the Central American Training Center in Nicaragua. This center, run by our partner the Association of Rural Workers (ATC) enables the Via Campesina to offer extensive training to small-farmer leaders from throughout the region in agroecology and building powerful, democratic organizations.
In this video, Maria Jose Urbina, Coordinator of the National Women's Commission of the Via Campesina and the Association of Rural Workers, discusses her work with the ATC, and the importance of land rights for rural workers and women.
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Talking Women, Power and International Feminisms
Earlier this month I had the pleasure of getting to spend time with Maria da Graça Samo and Helena Wong while they were in town for a Grassroots International community event. Graça (from Mozambique) is the International Coordinator of the World March of Women, and Helena is the National Organizer for the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ).