Landless Workers Movement (MST) of Brazil under attack
The Lula government has unleashed a wave of repression against the MST, the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement. The MST is the largest non-violent social movement in the Americas. Renown Brazilian author-activist and Dominican friar, Frei Betto, calls for a return to the rule of law, and denounces Lula’s criminalization of the social movements that once swept the former unionist into the Brazilian presidency.
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by Frei Betto, writer, author of “Calendário do Poder” (Calendar of Power) (Rocco).*
One of the great attributes of Lula’s government is the non-criminalizing of social movements which were repressed during Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s government even by calling in army troops. If Lula were to treat them as a police matter and not as a political one, he would be condemning his own past.
Terra Preta Forum on the Food Crisis, Climate Change, Agrofuels and Food Sovereignty: Platform For Collective Action
Response to the attempted takeover of global food systems by corporations as a "solution" to the food and climate crises.
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Terra Preta:* Forum on the Food Crisis, Climate Change, Agrofuels and Food Sovereignty
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND CIVIL SOCIETY MAKE THE DIFFERENCE!
WE ARE THE DIFFERENCE!
1 - 4 June, 2008
National Family Farm Coalition Farm Bill Policy Statement
Public policy must be fashioned to protect and strengthen the future of our food supply, environment, public health, and rural communities. A new U.S. farm bill and international trade agreements must reverse the current policy that uses taxpayer dollars as a substitute for income not provided to farmers through the low prices paid by multinational corporations for products from our nation’s farms and ranches. Family farms must help prevent global warming and be an essential source of renewable energy with respect for local control. Low commodity prices and high taxpayer expenses combine to exacerbate the nation’s budget and trade deficit, create cheap feed that encourages destructive industrial production of livestock, and spread the curses of unhealthy diet and low farm income abroad while destroying economic opportunity on family farms and in rural communities here at home.
Basta! Land and the Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas, Third Edition
$16.95 paperback
¡Hoy decimos basta! Today we say, enough!
On January 1, 1994, in the impoverished state of Chiapas in southern Mexico, the Zapatista rebellion shot into the international spotlight. In this fully revised third edition of their classic study of the rebellion’s roots, George Collier and Elizabeth Lowery Quaratiello paint a vivid picture of the historical struggle for land faced by the Maya Indians, who are among Mexico’s poorest people. Examining the roles played by Catholic and Protestant clergy, revolutionary and peasant movements, the oil boom and the debt crisis, NAFTA and the free trade era, and finally the growing global justice movement, the authors provide a rich context for understanding the uprising and the subsequent history of the Zapatistas and rural Chiapas, up to the present day.
Benedita da Silva: An Afro-Brazilian Woman's Story of Politics and Love
$15.95
As told to Medea Benjamin and Maisa Mendonça
Forward by the Reverend Jesse Jackson
In this engaging memoir, Brazilian cabinet member Benedita da Silva shares the inspiring story of her life as an advocate for the rights of women, people of color, and the poor, and argues persuasively for economic and social human rights in Brazil and everywhere.