CAGJ Monthly E-Newsletter | September 11, 2017
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CAGJ Monthly E-Newsletter | September 11, 2017
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September E-News:
Come to SLEE Dinner October 21, and support its success now!
CAGJ HAPPENINGS
TAKE ACTION
CAGJ NEWS & ANALYSIS
Northwest Tribes Condemn Farmed Salmon COMMUNITY CALENDAR
Get Involved! Upcoming CAGJ Meetings:
Food Justice Project: 3rd Tues/month, 6:30 - 8:30, at CAGJ's office - for more info email us.
AGRA Watch: time varies, for more info email us
Join us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter
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Join CAGJ for 11th Annual SLEE Dinner!
Keynote by local farmer Ari de Leña, "Farming for Cultural and Ecological Resilience"
 SAT Oct 21, 5 – 9:30pm
CAGJ's annual Strengthening Local Economies, Everywhere!" (SLEE) Dinner will take place at University Christian Church, and as always, we’ll have a delicious Fair Trade and locally-sourced meal, music, a silent auction and a great keynote, “Farming for Cultural and Ecological Resilience” given by local farmer, Ari de Leña.
Learn more about our amazing keynote, Ari de Leña
Ari de Leña operates Kamayan Farm, a vegetable, medicinal herb, and education farm in the Snoqualmie Valley where she strives to do work that connects food, medicine, and culture. Ari will share how she works to build cultural and ecological resilience by healing the trauma and displacement embedded in the U.S. agricultural system.
Be A SLEE Organizer! Volunteer or Intern with CAGJ
SLEE is volunteer and intern-powered! Right now we need help with outreach to farms and bakeries, as well as creative projects like producing a video about CAGJ. Many volunteers are needed the day-of and the day before as well – please sign up today by emailing Andrea, and learn more about volunteer roles here.
Donate to our Dessert Auction
Love baking? Love Food Justice? Great! Donate a dessert to the SLEE Dessert Auction! Contact [email protected] for more info.
SLEE Community Meeting: Come learn more about CAGJ and SLEE volunteer opportunities at the Wed, Sept 27 SLEE Community Meeting, 6:30-8:30pm, dinner provided! More info here.
CAGJ T-SHIRTS AVAILABLE NOW FOR PRE-ORDERS AT DISCOUNT!
The shirt’s art and design is by Heather Elder, printed by TS Designs. Super soft, 100% certified organic cotton fiber, made in the USA. The text reads “Community Alliance for Global Justice” above the art, and “Strengthening the Global Food Sovereignty Movement” below. Order your shirts in two different styles from our website! http://cagj.org/buy-new-slee-2017-t-shirts/ CAGJ HAPPENINGS TUES Sept 19, 6:30 - 8:00PM
Food Justice Project Meeting in September
New volunteer orientation at 6pm! Please RSVP.
FJP Meetings are a great way to get involved in CAGJ! At this meeting, we will share updates about the GE salmon campaign and follow up actions on the labeling bill with our members of congress. We’ll also discuss ways to plug into our ongoing solidarity campaigns. Meetings are held 3rd Tuesday/month at CAGJ’s Office in the ID, 606 Maynard Ave. S. Rm 102, Seattle. All are welcome! For more info, email Food Justice Project Co-Chair, Christina.
Join CAGJ for SLEE Community Meeting
Dinner provided by CAGJ! Location: University Christian Church Library (location of SLEE) - 4731 15th Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98105. RSVP’s appreciated but not required – email us: [email protected]
This CAGJ Community Meeting is an opportunity to learn more about our food sovereignty organizing, to meet other food justice folks, and to plug in to volunteer opportunities for our upcoming SLEE Dinner. SLEE is CAGJ's annual Dinner, where over 300 foodworkers, farmers, and people curious about food justice come together to share a Fair Trade and locally sourced meal, and learn from local community partners how to take action. In 2017 CAGJ celebrates 16 years of organizing, and 11 years of hosting SLEE! Volunteers make the dinner happen every year! We will share photos and stories from past SLEE Dinners, and hopefully inspire you to get involved in this year’s event. Learn more about volunteer and intern opportunities here.
Book Release: No Table Too Small, By Laura Titzer, former FJP Co-Chair
Location: Third Place Books – Seward Park
Unfortunately, we work and live in a world that is growing more divisive every day. Most of us are taking notice to this. No Table Too Small shows how there are six primary capabilities that can show us how to engage fully in changing the food system. This book is about learning to love relentless incrementalism in change and how the six capabilities provide a path. It is set within the food system, but can be used in any system. The book goes through what can be likened to a dance between art and attitude of change, leaving ego at page one. “The time has come for the food movement to build fewer walls and more bridges. Laura Titzer's thoughtful and plainly spoken book gives us a clear roadmap to a more productive and sustainable future.” – Mark Winne. Check out the book website www.notabletoosmall.com for more info and RSVP on Facebook.
At CAGJ’s August Food Justice Project meeting, we took the time to go around and share our feelings and reflections on the events that had taken place in Charlottesville. In order to build on the conversations and ongoing work to link racial justice with our food justice organizing, we drafted this statement.
Community Alliance for Global Justice stands in solidarity with the activists who experienced horrific violence carried out by white supremacists throughout last week’s acts of domestic terrorism in Charlottesville, Virginia. As an anti-racist organization, CAGJ’s work for food sovereignty and justice are dependent on the success of the Black Lives Matter movement and the eradication of white supremacy, anti-Semitism, and fascism from our society. The corrupt food systems that we challenge every day in our activism for healthy, ethical, and sustainable food are directly linked to the history of slavery and racism being confronted right now in Charlottesville.
We must understand the linkages that build our movement: our unsustainable and unjust food systems are based in the physical and political exploitation of black people in this country. For hundreds of years, oppressive slave labor and indentured servitude formed the backbone of the US agricultural economy and created a platform for the privileges Americans benefit from today. Currently, our agricultural economy and food systems continue to be buoyed by people of color, especially immigrants, at their expense. We must step up to condemn and change policies that are complicit with white nationalism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of racism and xenophobia. To better understand how food justice links with racial justice, we’ve included some helpful resources below. Please read the full statement and find links to resources on our website: http://cagj.org/2017/08/cagj-statement-on-charlottesville-and-food-justice/
TAKE ACTION
In July, Senate Bill 1528 – Genetically Engineered Salmon Labeling Act, was introduced. WA Senator Cantwell is a co-sponsor of the bill, and CAGJ’s Food Justice Project sent her thank you letter. Senator Murray is the high-ranking member of the Committee that must approve the bill for it to move forward, but she has yet to make any public statements on supporting the labeling requirement. Read more here. Now we need to get Senator Murray to support SB 1529!
Submit your concern directly to Sen. Murray’s office using this online contact form and copy/paste the message below – or alter it to your own words!
Dear Senator Murray,
As a community organization working for food justice, we support the right to know about genetically modified and engineered foods. We therefore urge you to co-sponsor S.1528 – Genetically Engineered Salmon Labeling Act.
In 2011, you championed taking a cautious approach to genetically engineered salmon and its potential threats to public health and our invaluable aquatic ecosystems. We feel this was necessary and important work. Thank you for speaking out and taking a stand.
We hope that you will continue to be an advocate amongst your colleagues for a mandate to label GE salmon if it ever goes to market, specifically by supporting Senate Bill S.1528 alongside Senator Cantwell. Millions of U.S. citizens and consumers clearly feel it is our right to know about how the food that is marketed to us is produced, so that we can make choices not only about the health of our bodies, our families and our communities, but to have some say about what kind of food system we have, and how it impacts the environment.
Finally, we are committed to support the tribal sovereignty of Native Northwest peoples, and the co-management of Northwest fisheries by Treaty Tribes and U.S. state actors. Northwest tribes have already organized to pass multiple resolutions urging federal agencies to stunt GE salmon production and distribution before industry and state actors make good faith conferrals with the governments of the Northwest treaty tribes. We hope you will bring this perspective into your advocacy.
Sincerely,
Food Justice Project members of Community Alliance for Global Justice
Submit to: https://www.murray.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contactme
The Gates Foundation is funding the spread of GM maize throughout Africa, and the project is shrouded in secrecy. Individuals are called upon to please sign this open letter to the governments of 5 African countries implementing the WEMA project to hold them accountable to sharing information publicly. #foodsovereignty & #smallfarmers over #GMOs!
The WEMA project is part of efforts to build a private sector-driven seed industry in Africa and spread the adoption of hybrid maize varieties. Hybrid seeds are capturing African markets at a rapid pace and represent an average of 57% of maize seed grown on the continent. Learn more about WEMA in this report from the African Centre for Biodiversity: The Water Efficient Maize for Africa Project: Profiteering not Philanthropy.
In partnership with Food Justice Solidarity Campaign partner, Got Green, CAGJ is seeking volunteers this fall season to do community education about how the recently-passed Sugary Beverage Tax will reinvest in communities! Sign up to volunteer 1-2 hours at a local farmer’s market near you to pass out fliers and talk about the tax, Fresh Bucks, and how Got Green is working to close the food security gap. Script and materials provided. This is an important step in making sure communities are aware of the benefits of the tax. Read more background here. To sign up, please contact Simone about your availability.
United Food and Commercial Workers Local 21 (UFCW 21) is organizing a campaign to stop the expansion in Seattle of Portland-based New Seasons Market, an aggressively anti-union grocery chain. Check out this op-ed by a UFCW 21 organizer, and visit New Seasons Makes Us Sick! to sign UFCW 21’s petition in support of grocery workers at New Seasons Market, learn more about the campaign, and to find union alternatives near you. UFCW 21 is our Food Chain Workers Solidarity Campaign partner and CAGJ supports UFCW 21’s New Season’s campaign as coalition member.
CAGJ NEWS & ANALYSIS Northwest Tribes Condemn Farmed Salmon after Cooke Aquaculture Net Pens Failure and Release of Atlantic Salmon in Washington
Building off our campaign amplify Northwest Tribal opposition to GE Salmon, CAGJ was very concerned to learn of the recent release of hundreds of thousands of Atlantic salmon into the Puget Sound due to failure of pens operated by Cooke Aquaculture. In the Seattle Times, Jewell Praying Wolf James, a Lummi tribal master carver, said the spill felt like a repeat of history. “There are fewer and fewer Puget Sound chinook and coho returning to the spawning habitat, it is open and available, and becomes ripe for colonization, just like what happened to us,” James said. “And private corporations are making a large profit off it. It is like when the settlers came.”
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/after-atlantic-salmon-spill-fish-farms-future-under-attack-on-both-sides-of-border/
In “Being Frank: No Place Here for Atlantic Salmon”, a statement by Lorraine Loomis, chair of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, (this column represents the interests and concerns of treaty Indian tribes throughout western Washington), she states, “Washington is the only U.S. state on the West Coast that allows Atlantic salmon farms. In British Columbia, dozens of Atlantic salmon farms dot the coastline and are a focus of increasing public protest because of pollution and disease concerns. Atlantic salmon fish farm net pens should not be confused with Pacific salmon enhancement net pens in which young hatchery fish are held for a short time to acclimate before being released. Neither should they be confused with other pens for rearing native species such as sablefish. These fish are screened regularly for fish diseases and do not endanger our precious Northwest natural stocks. It wasn’t a question of if but when Atlantic salmon would escape from the four fish farm operations that Cooke operates in western Washington. We can only hope that these fish aren’t any more successful than those that have previously escaped. Between 1996 and 1999, more than 500,000 got loose in Puget Sound. Ironically, Cooke was mounting an effort to expand its operations to a site near Port Angeles even as fish were escaping from its Cypress Island facility. We think that proposal – now in the permitting stage – should be thrown out and the rest of the company’s Atlantic salmon farms should be permanently closed. The risks of their continued operation are just too great. These Atlantic salmon fish farms don’t belong here. We don’t want them in our waters. There is no place for them.” Read the whole statement.
Learn more:
MON SEPT 25 4 - 8PM
Join Organic Seed Alliance for a Community Field Day and Variety Tasting
Come taste new varieties of organic produce and learn about the latest research in the field. In addition to the variety tasting, local chefs will serve appetizers that showcase the culinary potential of what’s growing in ourtrials. Our research farm is located at Finnriver Cidery, which will be open for no-host tastings and purchases. The field tour will be from 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. with the variety tasting and chef showcase following from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Location: OSA’s Research Farm, 124 Center Rd., Chimacum, WA 98325 Cost is FREE. More info.
SAT OCT 14, 12 - 6PM
Anti-Racism Workshop: Allies to Immigrants
The second of three workshops 350 Seattle is hosting to advance us on ending racism in our work supporting climate justice. Led by Tara Villalba, Sweetwater, and others. In this workshop we will explore how our economy benefits from displacement and migration; the impact of displacement policies (including those in our past), war, colonization, and global poverty policies; and the current fronts of struggle for immigrants/migrants/
4705 W Marginal Way SW, Seattle, Washington 98106. More info.
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CAGJ is unveiling a new T-shirt at the