Via Campesina's world wide call for action

Please join Seattle's Community Alliance for Global
Justice CAGJ in
responding to the Via Campesina's world wide call for action on

Saturday 17 April 2010 - the International Day of Peasant Struggle

Noon Saturday April 17th

Where: University District Farmer's Market

CAGJ is planning street theater to commemorate the International Day of
Peasant Struggle on April 17th.  Via Campesina encourages organizations
around the world to take action and unite against corporate control of
the
global food system.

Through street theater, which will be filmed and posted online, we will
be
educating the community about the links between the Gates Foundation,
Monsanto and other agri-corporations, and the US government, and how
these
chains are being broken as we speak by small farmers in the US and
around
the world!

Call for Participants and Audience

One or possibly two cars will be driving to Seattle from Olympia on
saturday
morning. Call Brenda at 360 878 7833 for more info about rides.

CAGJ still needs help: please email us at
contact_us@seattleglobaljustice.org)

Read on to learn more about La Via Campesina's call to action:

17 April 2010 - Join the International Day of Peasant Struggle

To commemorate the International Day of Peasant Struggle on April 17th
2010,
the international peasant movement La Via Campesina calls upon member
organisations, allies and supporters to unite against transnational
corporations (TNCs), which seek complete control over food and
agriculture
systems around the world.

On April 17th 1996, nineteen landless Brazilian peasants who were
defending
their right to produce food by demanding access to land were massacred
by
the military police. Since the massacre at El Dorado dos Carajás, every
year
on this date actions are organised around the world by farmers'
organisations, communities, student groups, non-governmental
organizations
and activists, in order to demand food sovereignty and peasants' rights
to
produce food.

The year 2009 ended with three international summits: the Food and
Agriculture Organization World Summit on Food Security in Rome, the
World
Trade Organisation Ministerial Conference in Geneva and the United
Nations'
Climate Summit in Copenhagen. At each event, TNCs displayed their
intention
to control food and agriculture systems, markets, lands, seeds and
water-indeed all of nature-worldwide. TNCs such as Monsanto Company,
Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland and Nestlé deployed armies of lobbyists
at
these events to shape policies to their benefit.

For example, US-based Monsanto Company is lobbying to receive public
subsidies for Roundup Ready soybeans, which are genetically-modified to
resist glyphosate (sold by the corporation as Roundup), the most widely
used
herbicide in the world. Monsanto claims Roundup Ready soybeans reduce
climate change because resistance to Roundup means the soybeans can be
grown
without ploughing the soil (which releases carbon dioxide), known as 'no
tillage' or 'conservation tillage' agriculture. Monsanto argues that it
should therefore be eligible for carbon credits from the Clean
Development
Mechanism of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change.

Yet the reality is that Monsanto and other TNCs are some of the primary
contributers to climate change and other environmental crises, because
they
promote an unsustainable model of industrial agriculture.

Additionally, TNCs exacerbate poverty and economic recession, worldwide.
As
they consolidate their control over lands and agricultural markets, TNCs
expel small farmers and peasants from their lands and reduce employment
opportunities in rural areas, thereby swelling urban slums with even
more
desperate and unemployed families.

TNCs are making huge profits while hunger and poverty are on the rise.
Thus,
an offensive against TNCs is now a priority for La Via Campesina. Our
movement envisions a world in which TNCs such as Monsanto, Cargill,
Carrefour and Walmart, and their destruction of nature and humanity,
will
cease to exist. To replace them will be billions of peasants on small
and
medium-sized farms, producing healthy food for local and regional
markets,
preserving biodiversity, protecting water aquifers, sequestering carbon
and
revitalizing rural economies.

To mark the 17th of April 2010, La Via Campesina calls upon its members
and
allies to join forces and increase resistance against TNCs, and to
amplify
the voices and rights of peasants worldwide.

--

Brenda Biddle
PhD Program in Anthropology
The Graduate Center of the City University New York
Resource Faculty Evergreen State College