Image of people working on a farm for a Teach-out. Text reads: Make the greatest impact by becoming a Monthly Sustainer #Seeding Solidarity

JANUARY 2022 CAGJ E-News

CAGJ logo with text: Monthly E-Newsletter

CAGJ Monthly E-Newsletter | JANUARY 5, 2022

HEADLINES | CAGJ HAPPENINGS | TAKE ACTION | CAGJ NEWS & ANALYSIS | COMMUNITY CALENDAR | Get Involved! Upcoming CAGJ Meetings


Happy New Year from Community Alliance for Global Justice

May 2022 Bring Abundance, Joy & Food Sovereignty

Thank you CAGJ Members for your end of year support!Image of people working on a farm for a Teach-out. Text reads: Make the greatest impact by becoming a Monthly Sustainer #Seeding Solidarity

We begin 2022 with gratitude to our Members for donating so generously to start the year on sustainable footing. We’ve raised close to 10K through our #SeedingSolidarity campaign, including both one-time donations and a full year of donations from our 12 new and renewed Sustaining Members! We are still $500 short of our 10K goal: If you would like to help us get there, please donate today, and consider a monthly gift (click ‘I want to contribute this amount every month’), or make a donation of any size, we greatly appreciate all support, which we will put towards our Food Sovereignty organizing, carried out locally, regionally, nationally and transnationally! We are committed to creating joy and abundance in 2022, in community with our members and supporters.

Support for our African partners in wake of canceled trip

AGRA Watch planned to send two representatives – Heather Day and Noël Hutton – to Kenya in December for the annual meeting of AFSA, Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa. However, due to the emergence of the new Covid variant, we made the very difficult decision to cancel. However we were able to turn that disappointment into support for three of our African partners:

    • Thanks to everyone who donated to help us raise $2000 in addition to CAGJ’s solidarity donation of $500 to send to two longtime partners in Kenya, GBIACK – Grow BioIntensive Centre of Kenya – and Growth Partners Africa/Kenya Food Rights Alliance.
    • Big thanks to everyone who supported Noël’s fundraising for her trip, who agreed to instead send those funds to our dear comrade, Mariann Bassey, who is in urgent need of support to fund surgery. Mariann came to our 2014 Summit, and is a key food sovereignty activist in Nigeria and with AFSA (she acted as Chair for several years). Please donate to support her GoFundMe campaign.

We are also very grateful for the travel support we received from RSF Small Planet Fund!


CAGJ HAPPENINGS

Seed privatization threatens farmers in Africa
Watch Rich Appetites, Short Film #2,”Seeds”, to learn more
Screenshot from "Seeds" video with Africa covered by money bags.We are very excited to announce the release of the second episode of our short film series, “Rich Appetites: How Big Philanthropy is Shaping the Future of Food in Africa”. The new short film is entitled “Seeds” – Watch now, on the film website and Vimeo!

“Seeds” exposes the Gates Foundation’s role in promoting laws that commercialize seeds in Africa and beyond, allowing corporations to commodify, control, and profit from the fundamental building blocks of agriculture–posing a serious threat to farmers and farmer-led seed systems in the process.

AGRA Watch provides an annotated script with links to sources available for each film (see episode 2 script here), and is producing a study guide for the series as well. You are also invited to review the full interview (excerpted in the film and available here) with Bern Guri of CIKOD, on Ghana’s Plant Varieties Protection Law.

TUES January 18, 6:30 – 8:00 PM PST
Monthly Food Justice Project Meeting
Orientation for new Members at 6pm: RSVP
Please register to receive the ZOOM link.

This month we will bring in the New Year celebrating all that we accomplished in 2021, hear updates from our Solidarity Campaign partners – Got Green, Familias Unidas por la Justicia Farmworker Union, Community to Community, UFCW 21, Indigenous fish protectors fighting GE salmon, and WA Fair Trade Coalition – and look forward to what 2022 will bring, including Rise Up Summer School! Organizing will begin soon for Summer School, so let us know if you want to join the Organizing Collective (email [email protected]), and you can participate by attending monthly FJP meetings. We look forward to seeing you soon!

As always, new volunteers are invited to our orientation via ZOOM at 6pm: Please email us to let us know you’re attending the orientation. All are welcome! For more info, email the Food Justice Project.

CAGJ’s Print Zine Now Available for Order!
Our Food, Our Right 3rd Edition: “Recipes for a New Normal”
OFOR 3 CoverAvailable on sliding scale: $15 – $30: Order on CAGJ’s website!

Our latest zine features art, stories, and recipes from over 30 contributors. Explore illustrations, personal narratives and poems from Indigenous Alaska, Punjab, Puerto Rico, and the Pacific Northwest. Enjoy comic strips, block prints, and instructions for creating a fortune teller. Savor recipes for tea, truffles, soups, salmon, lumpia and more. These illuminating pieces stitch together food justice narratives that offer insights into the challenges of 2020. The murder of George Floyd galvanized us, while the global Covid pandemic, ongoing climate crises, and intense election season forced us into a new normal of chaos and uncertainty. By centering (re)connection with land, culture, and community, we invite a vibrant vision for working together to build a more just and generative world with food sovereignty for all. Cover art courtesy of Morgan Brown. See the beautiful content in the digital version of the zine, and go to CAGJ’s online store to order today!

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TAKE ACTION

Support the “End the Pandemic Now” Resolution
Contact your Representative and Share on Social Media
Watch December’s Emergency Briefing on Omicron & the “End the Pandemic Now” Plan where we heard from public health experts and policymakers about how the Omicron variant is demonstrating once again that the COVID pandemic will not end anywhere until vaccines, test kits and treatments are readily available throughout the world. Crucially, we also heard how Reps. Jan Schakowsky, Rosa DeLauro and other congressional champions’ new “End the Pandemic Now” Resolution (H. Con. Res. 60) lays out a clear road map for increasing global production of the supplies needed to save millions of lives and bring the pandemic to a close.

To help build momentum behind the End the Pandemic Now plan and get it implemented as quickly as possible, we need your help today:

LEARN MORE: CAGJ organizer Noël Hutton was recently featured in Source New Mexico regarding vaccine inequity and the intellectual property waiver proposal at the WTO.

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CAGJ NEWS & ANALYSIS

How CAS Fellows are Discrediting Agroecology… and Failing at it
Blog Post by AGRA Watch Intern Na Haby Stella Faye
December 7, 2021 – The mainstream media often portrays agroecological practices in a belittling way. At best, they are described as utopian; at worst, as damaging to the international economic system. This contributes to the dismissal of these practices as niche and prevents their serious consideration as models for the transformation of agriculture. Thus, it is important to unpack and understand these narratives. In this vein, I analyse how Cornell Alliance for Science (CAS) fellows portray agroecological alternatives and the people who support them. Continue reading.

Nutrition for Growth Summit 2021 – what growth, and for whom?
Blog Post by guest author Helene Schmutzler
December 8, 2021 – The Nutrition for Growth Summit 2021 was a continuation of business-as-usual: the neoliberal capture of high-level political events to promote Western-led and finance-focused pseudo-solutions. The Summit took place on December 7-8, 2021, as the culminating event of the #NutritionYearofAction. The N4G Summit is an international, multi-stakeholder conference that promotes nutrition-related issues. The Summit takes place every few years; the first was held in London in 2013, the second in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, and the third in Tokyo this year, after being postponed a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, the Summit offered mostly meaningless and empty political rhetoric, from expressions like “leave no-one behind” and “we must act now”, to endless self-praising about how bold the actions and commitments from the Summit attendees were, arguably representing “unprecedented political will.” Of those commitments that were made, one aspect stood out: they align with the N4G Summit’s highly finance-focused agenda. The neoliberal, Western-supremacist notion of “development” and financial fixes has struck once again in high-level politics. Continue reading.

Yakama Nation seeks food sovereignty in new farming venture with weighty history
Story from KUOW by Anna King
It’s a race against winter to load heavy pallets of squash on the 1,500-acre Inaba farm. Four generations of his family has farmed this land, but now Lon Inaba and his family are selling it – not to just anyone. They’re selling it back to the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation. Continue reading.

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COMMUNITY CALENDAR

WED January 5 – FRI January 7
Oxford Real Farming Conference
The Oxford Real Farming Conference has developed over the last twelve years to become the unofficial gathering of the real food and farming movement in the UK. Working with partners, the conference brings together farmers, growers, activists, policy-makers, researchers and all those who support agroecology, including organic and regenerative agriculture and indigenous systems. Join us for ORFC 2022 ONLINE – a packed virtual programme with 135 sessions and 500 speakers over three inspiring days of movement building, knowledge sharing and strengthening community. Get tickets.

TUES January 11, 5 – 6pm Pacific Time
“To End a Plague” Conversation with Author Emily Bass & Dr. Joia Mukherjee
Join author Emily Bass and Dr. Joia Mukherjee from Partners in Health for an exclusive conversation about Emily’s brand new book, “To End A Plague.” This book uncovers the movement that ignited in 1998 to successfully repeal global policies that put drug company profits over the lives of the poor, and win life-saving treatment for millions of people with AIDS around the world. These revolutionary activists stood up to big pharma and the World Trade Organization, got President George Bush to care about this issue, and launched global solutions to a pandemic that was claiming millions of lives. We have so much to learn and draw upon from this movement as we are mounting our own fight against COVID-19 and pandemics of the future. More information.

WED January 12, 7:30PM – 12:30AM Pacific Time
Speak-EZ Social Lounge
Cafe Racer, Capitol Hill (Seattle)
Speak-EZ social lounge is a space where art meets activism. A space where folx passionate about justice and healing come to connect. Where we can dream up new realities together. We welcome all free spirits, liberated souls, radical minds, and compassionate hearts to come vibe and align our frequencies. Volume 2 will feature Hip Hop performances by Rell Be Free and Vitamin D, live DJ sets by JENNGREEN and Black Family Radio, and will be hosted by Dadabassed. Each of these artists will share a piece of their story with the audience and open up space after their set for dialogue around the area of justice they’re passionate about. Come for the art, stay for the community! More information.

TUES January 18, 6PM Pacific Time
Town Hall Seattle: A Contemporary Look at Asian American Activism
Can we transform our society through unruly resistance, defiant love, and radical care? Two highly respected and widely-published scholars, Diane C. Fujino and Robyn Magalit Rodriguez, think it’s possible. In their new book, Contemporary Asian American Activism: Building Movements for Liberation, they bring together stories of lived experiences, lessons, and triumphs from grassroots Asian American organizers and scholar-activists fighting for transformative justice. In the struggles for prison abolition, global anti-imperialism, immigrant rights, affordable housing, environmental justice, fair labor, and more, twenty-first-century Asian American activists are speaking out and standing up to systems of oppression. Fujino and Rodriguez come together to celebrate victories, assess failures, reflect on the trials of activist life, examine movement-building in the long term, and inspire continued mobilization for the years to come. Collectively, the stories shape a vision of a more just future that’s forged when many different races — and multiple generations — come together in solidarity. More information.

TUES January 25, Monthly Virtual Series
Building Beyond Nice Racism: Catalyzing Institutional Change in the Food System
This virtual learning series in 2022 is open to student, faculty, organizational, agency, and community leaders who are seeking a deeper understanding of structural and institutional racism in our food system. The series is designed to provide a pathway to action to help dismantle the attitudes, practices, and structures that hold racism in place as a step toward creating a more equitable system that works for everyone. This five part series runs January-May 2022 and will include two-hour sessions on the following dates: January 25, February 22, March 22, April 26, May 24. More information on registration coming early January 2022.


GET INVOLVED!

AGRA Watch
Time varies, for more info email us

Contact us with any questions!

Sign up here for AGRA Watch Listserv

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