National Union of Autonomous Regional Peasant Organizations (UNORCA)

By Alisa Pimentel

Among the almost 20,000 activists gathered in Detroit for the US Social Forum this week are several Grassroots International partners and allies. Grassroots International regularly provides funding to our partners and allies to participate in movement-building and leadership development gatherings.

Last month, I traveled to Cochabamba, Bolivia for a number of reasons. The main one was to attend the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. Many of Grassroots International’s partners from Latin America, Asia and Africa were also there – some of whom we supported to attend – and it was a great opportunity for me to meet with them and with many of our allies in one central location. They were all at the conference because for them the climate crisis is immediate in its impact and not some theoretical scenario for the future.

Chances are, the average U.S. resident has no idea that their demand for electricity might require that a Mexican village be flooded for a hydroelectric dam. The question is: if the human cost were known, would we consume just a little bit less?

At Grassroots International, our bet is that a little bit of knowledge would go a long way.  For those who value human rights, that high social and environmental cost is not likely to sit right.

Our unabashedly biased perspective is based upon the way we’ve worked for more than a quarter century: offering financial support to communities around the world whose natural resources have been extracted and despoiled and sharing their stories in living rooms, community centers and across cyberspace.

Driving their tractors and greeting supporters along the way, a group of Mexican farmers recently traveled 1,200 miles over 14 days, protesting the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and demanding that the agricultural section of NAFTA be renegotiated.

Click here for a great photo of the over 200,000 strong march and an article in Spanish from La Jornada.

“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.

Mexico is home to tens of millions of small producers increasingly squeezed off their land by unfair trade policies and public neglect. The National Union of Autonomous Regional Peasant Organizations (UNORCA) is an autonomous, non-profit and non-partisan network of Mexican campesino and indigenous farming organizations advocating for small farmers’ livelihoods and rights.

Since 1985 UNORCA has provided technical assistance in natural resource management, marketing, and implementation of projects and programs for productive enterprises, rural development, human and indigenous rights and agrarian issues for peasant and indigenous peoples’ organizations. They provide support and financing for agricultural, livestock, forestry and fisheries projects.

Editor's note: This week, Maria Aguiar and Corrina Steward are attending the World Social Forum (Foro Soical Mundial (FSM)) in Caracas, Venezuela. The FSM originated as an alternative to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switerzland, where the world's global elite--CEOs and OECD politicians--meet to exchange ideas to improve their nations' systems of commerce.

The FSM, alternatively, is a space for all to participate--social movements, coalitions, NGOs, unions--and the goal is to improve the social, economic and environmental conditions in their communities and around the world.

Corrina's sends her first report from the Forum:

Greetings from Caracas!

I'm writing from our hotel, where FMS delegates from all over the Americas are meeting and mingling, continuing to make connections after a long day of learning, listening and presenting. I have come to the FSM to meet with our partners and to learn more about their struggles for food, water and land. What I have learned so far is that for every local problem, there is a solution when communities unite and build global networks.