The Haitian Platform to Advocate Alternative Development (PAPDA) is a coalition of nine Haitian popular and non-governmental organizations which work with the Haitian popular movement to develop alternatives to the neo-liberal model of economic globalization. When the Haitian government moved to privatize certain industries, PAPDA worked with the unions and the business community to create strategies that would improve production and minimize cost without privatization. The coalition has worked with the agricultural sector to devise ways of producing and selling indigenous Haitian crops and protecting Haitian farmers from cheap imported grains.

The Artibonite region is Haiti's rice bowl, and it could not be clearer as I traverse this lush valley. The rice fields rival those of Southeast Asia, spanning a breathtaking distance and then finally dissolving into a steep ring of mountains. A peasant working the fields is an understandably common sight around here. The more disturbing (and even more common) sight, however, is the rice imported from the US ("Miami rice") that is sold to Haitians in local marketplaces. It is unthinkable that Haitians would be forced to buy rice from the North at prices that they cannot afford in the very place they grow it.

From Jacmel on the tropical blue Caribbean coast we drove up into the southern mountains to Cap Rouge. The main road had been washed away by floods and the route we took was a deeply potholed mix of dirt and gravel making for a very bumpy ride. We were in a rented SUV but saw scores of mopeds (mini motorcycles) carrying anywhere from 3 to 5 people along with their goods navigating the steep climb up the mountains with far more dexterity and speed than us.

Last week Hurricane Noel brought torrential rains and catastrophic floods to nearly the entire nation of Haiti, along with vast swaths of the rest of the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico. The terrible human cost of the storm in Haiti is only now becoming clear.

We need your donation today to help the people of Haiti recover from this disaster and rebuild their lives and their communities.

The hardest hit by this catasrophe are Haiti's poorest, who were already living on the edge of deadly poverty.

“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.

Please join Grassroots International at the United States Social Forum, Atlanta, June 27-30, 2007. The US Social Forum is more than a conference, more than a networking bonanza, more than a reaction to war and repression, more than a collection of local solutions. It's an important moment to further build the global movement for social justice.

Recuerdos de la tierra Bolivariana! Memories from the land of Simón Bolívar!

We made our way from the Maiquetia airport by way of a 3 hour bus ride on winding roads through the Venezuelan Andes and arrived in Caracas on Monday evening - only 16 hours after leaving Boston! The excitement of the Social Forum of the Americas could already be felt on the streets of Caracas. Thousand of people had begun arriving from distant corners of South, Central and North America and even some from Europe. Some came by air, but many more came by bus, traveling many miles and many hours to be able to participate in this incredible gathering of people from urban and rural community organizations, social movements — including networks working on trade issues, small farmers and landless workers, indigenous peoples, industrial and service workers, women, youth and students, housing and homeless groups.

More than 300 peasants from the departments of the South, the West, the Center and the Artibonite were assembled the 22 of August, 2005, in Petite Rive, Artibonite for the 214th anniversary

On July 14, the body of Haitian journalist and activist Jacques Roche was found. Roche had been kidnapped, tortured and killed. (Read the Reuters report here.)

This week, a coalition of human rights organizations, alternative development groups, public health advocates, women's groups and other civil society organizations have issued a statement emphasizing Roche's contributions as an activist--for example, he organized traveling art and photography exhibitions to educate communities and to encourage resistance to privatization and free trade schemes like Haiti's Zona Franca on the border of the Dominican Republic, which replaced some of the last productive, fertile land on the Maribahoux plain with sweatshops.

Haitian civil society organisations' declaration on the Interim Cooperation Framework process

14 June 2004