In the fall of 2019, I moved back to Seattle after graduating college and pretty immediately got involved with CAGJ. I felt compelled by Food Sovereignty’s call for a full transformation, an overhaul, a promise of a way out of the neo-liberal food system, entirely. Food sovereignty rejects assimilation into capitalism. Instead, it beckons a new world.
Energized by this vision, I decided to volunteer with CAGJ. I felt grounded by the community amidst the wild techification of my hometown. CAGJ became my organizing home during the pandemic, allowed me to experience my transformative first campaign win, and taught me about the process of justice and that another world is possible.
CAGJ needs your support to continue offering people like me the opportunity to become organizers! Please donate generously today.
My organizing home during the pandemic
Soon after I joined CAGJ the pandemic slammed down upon us but organizers did what we do best, which is activate in the face of fear.
So many projects sprang forth from the nest of CAGJ during that time – Rise Up! Pandemic Summer School and the emergence of the Organizing Collective, the third edition of Our Food Our Right, solidarity fundraising for Familias Unidas por la Justicia, and even an CAGJ offshoot prison+ police abolition reading group.
Lockdown CAGJ was a space for a lot of us young organizers to dive into shifting systems of power as best as we could. And though many of the Organizing Collective have moved into other projects, as I have, it’s one of my coolest friend groups – everyone is still organizing. And there’s something to say for that.
CAGJ creates spaces for young people and old to join together to build community that makes a difference. Please become a Sustaining Member today – donate however much you can every month – to help these seeds continue to grow!
Major Campaign Win to Block GMO Salmon
After volunteering for a year, I was accepted into the fold as an intern liaison for Block Corporate Salmon, one of CAGJ’s steadfast coalition partners, who has been holding down the struggle to stop AquaBounty Inc. from threatening salmon species extinction, ecosystem imbalance, and Indigenous sovereignty by growing genetically-modified salmon.
For a few months we were on the verge of convincing one of the big three US food producers to commit to not sourcing or selling AquaBounty’s salmon. And we won. It was my first campaign win, and that win that transformed me from someone who believed in grassroots organizing to someone who knows it works.
Working on that campaign showed me that behind the outward wins is months, even years, of relationship-building, fundraising, learning graphic design, and researching. What is behind the wins is the process of justice. Through the people, coalitions, and movement space of CAGJ, I learned to believe in the process of justice.
And this month we celebrate the ultimate campaign win: the AquaBounty company has gone defunct! Which means that, for now, we’ve defeated GE salmon.
Another World is Possible
There is an Arundhati Roy quote that Heather uses as her email signature:
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
Every time I read it, it reminds me why we are doing what we are doing- it splits open my computer screen with it’s spell, promises that transformation is incremental, it is sometimes bursting but most times subtle, and importantly, that although the future we are creating can’t always be seen from here, it is being created- the process of justice.
A grouping of tree saplings looks nothing like the old growth forest it is bound to become. But each time you decide to show up to that rally; or to dig up your lawn and plant native prairie; or donate a little bit to CAGJ or to sit with your grief and cry, and cry; or to call your senators and tell them Free Palestine...
You don’t see the world you’re creating when you’re deep in the systems of oppression that have tried to convince us that that’s all there is. But that’s not all there is.
You are shifting the soil, you are planting the sapling.
Thank you for shifting the soil with CAGJ! Plant a sapling by donating today.
Lisa Colligan
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