For several years Grassroots International has had a collegial relationship with Carlos Marentes of the Sin Fronteras Border Agricultural Workers Project in El Paso, Texas. Carlos is also a leader of the Via Campesina - North American Region and chair of the Via Campesina's international commission on Migrations and Rural Workers. The Via Campesina understands that most migration is a consequence of the corporate-led global trade model that has exacerbated rural impoverishment in many already poor countries.

In the United States, migrant and immigrant workers make up the majority of the people who tend the crop fields, harvest, transform and transport our food goods.

On November 9, 1989, the German people knocked down the Berlin Wall.

The Berlin Wall had been erected on August 13, 1961 dividing the people of Berlin into two sectors. One sector was controlled by the US and its allies, and the other was controlled by the Soviet Union. German people were not free to cross from one sector to another. Families and friends were separated by the wall for 28 years. During this period of time, about 5,000 escape attempts were made to reunite with relatives, friends or to seek better economic opportunities. Nearly 300 people died attempting to cross the wall.

More than 500 men and women farmers and leaders from 70 countries will gather in Mozambique from October 16 to 23, 2008 to attend the 5th International Conference of the Via Campesina. Grassroots International is providing support for its partners, including members from Brazil, Haiti, Central America and Mexico, as well as a delegation from Indonesia, to participate in the international event. Two staff members from Grassroots International will also attend part of the conference, which will focus on Food Sovereignty and the current agricultural crisis. The Via Campesina's press release outlines more details of the conference.

Members of Grassroots International's partner La Via Campesina -- an international network of peasants, indigenous peoples, fishers, pastoralists, women, and youth -- gathered in late June in Jakarta, Indonesia to defend their right to exist, and called for a UN Convention on the Rights of Peasants. (Below, see their final declaration)

Under intense threat from the expansion of agro-fuels in South America and Indonesia, militarization in Colombia and South Korea, and increasing food prices, rural families are voicing a predicament that affects all communities.

The Nyeleni communications team just sent us a link to a very inspirational video, a trailer for a documentary on the global food sovereignty movement and Nyeleni 2007, the Forum for Food Sovereigty.

The video is subtitled in Spanish, but for those who don't speak Spanish, many of the interviews were conducted in English.

Are you ready? Or are you still tallying up the costs to the commons from the first Green Revolution?

What single bill – albeit with a great many tentacles – currently sits before Congress and will define the future of so much of the commons – our land use, soil and water quality, the future of our rural communities?

Look no further than the tip of your fork: the Farm Bill.

Michael Pollan, in the New York Times magazine, April 22, 2007, described it this way: “This resolutely unglamorous and head-hurtingly complicated piece of legislation…sets the rules for the American food system – indeed to a considerable extent, for the world’s food system.”

“Our Youth is not the Future, Our Youth is the Present” – Julian Moya, Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP), Albuquerque, New Mexico

“We cannot choose the historical conditions we find ourselves in, but we can choose how we respond to them” – Ajamu Baraka, Director, U.S. Human Rights Network, Atlanta, Georgia

These two quotes, among many other hopeful messages I heard at the U.S. Social Forum (USSF) from June 27 to July 1, 2007 in Atlanta epitomized for me the USSF – what it stands for and envisions in terms of a different kind of United States. Both represent the truth embedded in the official slogan of the USSF – Another World is Possible; Another US is Necessary.

This morning, in the National Congress of Paraguay, members of the Observatory Mission in Paraguay organized by the Campaign for the Demilitarization of Americas (CADA) are participating in the Roundtable: "Remilitarization and the U.S. Military Presence in the Region". Since the signature of the Bi-national Agreement that gives immunity to U.S. troops in Paraguay, the country is under international watch of social movements and regional governments.

Yesterday, July 16, a delegation of 20 human rights activists and scholars from Latin America and Europe began a visit to the areas affected by the increased U.S. militarization in Paraguay. The group is planning to interview peasants, indigenous peoples, urban communities and human rights organizations about the effects of military exercises in rural and urban areas and the increasing criminalization of social movements in the country.

The Network for Human Rights Defense and Justice, a Grassroots International partner, is participating in the delegation that is expected to conclude its visit on Thursday, July 20th with a press conference to lay out its findings.