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 CAGJ Monthly E-Newsletter | OCTOBER 4, 2022
 

OCTOBER E-News
Join FUJ's Farmworker Solidarity Tour!
 
CAGJ HAPPENINGS
THURS 10/13 Food Sovereignty Prize
TUES 10/18 Monthly Organizing Meeting
SUN 10/30 WFTC Spooky Trade Trivia
CAGJ, African Farmers' Organizations featured in US Media
 
TAKE ACTION
Support Farmworkers' demands!
Have you sent a letter to USAID yet?
 
CAGJ NEWS &
ANALYSIS
ETC Group's Food Barons 2022
QR Codes for GMO Labeling
Critique of Gates COVID response
US launches effort to end hunger by 2030
 
COMMUNITY CALENDAR
Local events

 

Get Involved! Upcoming CAGJ Meetings:

Monthly Organizing Meeting:
3rd Tues/month, 6:30 - 8:30; for more info email us.
 
AGRA Watch:

time varies, for more info email us


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Sign up here for AGRA Watch Listserv
 
 
SUN Oct 9 - FRI Oct 14
Familias Unidas por la Justicia Farmworker Solidarity Tour
Creando el Mundo Que Queremos

Farmworker union Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ) is embarking on a Washington-wide Farmworker Solidarity Tour, “Creando el Mundo Que Queremos”, Creating the World We Want. The tour, which will stop in Seattle this SUN Oct. 9 and MON Oct. 10, aims to:

  • Inspire and activate farmworkers and allies to take up action, and connect struggles across movements, especially around issues of labor, land, immigration, housing and climate change.
  • Raise awareness about the harms that the Farm Workforce Modernization Act poses to migrant farmworkers across the United States with the goal of preventing its passage in the Congress.
  • Organize communities across Washington state to demand a Climate Emergency, following the lead of Thurston County, who made a declaration in 2021.

Learn more about specific events and stops on the tour website: fujsolidaritytour.com

Please help us spread the word about Seattle events!

SUN October 9, 2022

MON October 10, 2022

  • 8am Location TBA: Breakfast and Teach-in about the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, led by FUJ members.
  • 9am Action at the Gates Foundation led by AGRA Watch, a campaign of Community Alliance for Global Justice

Please help raise funds to support the tour! Donate directly via FUJ paypal account: paypal.com/paypalme/WaSiSePuede. OR mail checks made out to FUJ to 275 W. Rio Vista Ave. Suite 3, Burlington, WA 98233.

Please see Taek Action section below for how YOU can take action in solidarity with farmworkers, regardless of whether you can attend the tour events. If you have any questions, please contact FUJ directly via Marciano Sanchez: [email protected]


CAGJ HAPPENINGS

THURS OCT 13, 9AM PDT/12PM EDT/4PM Ghana
Virtual Ceremony: Food Sovereignty Prize
Join the ceremony honoring Food Sovereignty Ghana & Western Organization of Resource Councils (WORC)!
Register Here for the virtual event emceed by Malik Yakini of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network
Now in its 14th year, the Food Sovereignty Prize is given annually near World Food Day to a domestic and international organization advancing food sovereignty – the right of all peoples to access healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their food, fishery, and farming systems. It stands in contrast to the corporate-funded World Food Prize, which perpetuates the myth that society can produce its way out of hunger and the climate crisis with biotechnology and synthetic inputs.
Free registration: Join us to hear the 2022 honorees' stories and to celebrate their efforts to realize Food Sovereignty – Black Food Sovereignty, Indigenous Food Sovereignty, and Food Sovereignty everywhere!

 

 
TUES OCT 18, 6:30 - 8:00 PM PST
NEW: CAGJ Monthly Organizing Meeting
Orientation for new Members at 6pm: RSVP

Join us on the third Tuesday of each month for CAGJ’s Monthly Organizing Meeting (MOM)! MOM is taking the place of Food Justice Project meetings, in order to create space for folks to learn about all of CAGJ’s organizing - Food Justice, AGRA Watch and Trade Justice - in one place! Our monthly meetings provide an opportunity to build community, learn about CAGJ’s and our Solidarity Partners’ projects, and contribute to our campaigns and events. It will be a space to learn collectively about food system issues through conversations with each other and invited guests, as well as a time to create art, share food/recipes, and create movement joy.

In October we will hear about how to engage in promoting the actions called for during the WA-wide Tour of Farmworker union Familias Unidas por la Justicia, including calling on Gov. Inslee to declare a climate emergency and how to protest the Farm Workforce Modernization Act. And we will get up to date on recent developments in the Block Corporate Salmon Campaign, as well as making space for the interests of the collective in moving this space forward!

As always, new folks 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 [email protected]

SUN Oct 30, 2-4pm PDT
WFTC Invites you: Spooky Trade Trivia

You're invited! The Washington Fair Trade Coalition is hosting their annual fundraiser on Sunday, October 30th outside the IAM Local 751 hall in Seattle, and CAGH has a table! Please join us for a variety of Halloween activities including spooky trade trivia, a costume contest and a variety of other tricks and treats! RSVP here! We are so excited to come together in person for the first time since 2019 to talk fair trade, update you on what is going on in the trade world, and have space to chat and connect! Individual tickets range from $20-$50, depending on personal capacity! Purchase your tickets here! If you would like to purchase a half table (4 seats) or full table (8 seats) on behalf of your organization, please email [email protected]. Please note that this event will be held outdoors (under tents). Please RSVP here. And please share the event on Facebook and Twitter!

CAGJ Executive Director and African farmers’ organizations featured in US media critical of Gates Foundation and AGRA
Seattle Times: "Gates-funded 'Green Revolution' in Africa Has Failed, Critics Say"

On September 8, 2022, the Seattle Times published excellent and critical coverage of the Gates-funded Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), including quotes by CAGJ’s Heather Day and many close movement allies. Read it here. Additionally, Million Belay of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) recently commented on the ongoing food and hunger crisis in the Horn of Africa on Democracy Now! Watch the episode hereFor a running list of critical reporting and op-eds published recently in the African, US, and international press, see US Right to Know’s tracking page here.


TAKE ACTION

Take Action to Support Farmworkers
Please support these calls to action from Familias Unidas por la Justicia as they embark on their statewide WA Tour!
 
1. Tell your representatives to oppose the Farm Workforce Modernization Act: Sign the petition! FUJ’s demands: Oppose the bill and grant immediate amnesty for all immigrants. No piecemeal legislation if it isn’t comprehensive immigration reform. Reform should be based on keeping families together here and abroad. Policy should not seek to expand H2A program or control labor.
 
2. Tell Gov. Jay Inslee to: Declare a Climate Emergency in Washington State! FUJ’s demands: Establish emergency protocols for farmworker protection in the face of climate change to include paid proactive rest breaks, cooling areas with shade and accessible water stations.  Enact emergency protocols at a heat threshold of 75 degrees Fahrenheit; at 80 degrees, enact protocols and hazard pay; at 90 degrees stop work and still compensate workers for the hours lost. Call Inslee's office: 360-902-4111

3. Tell Labor and Industries Director Joel Sacks: Opt-in to the HEAL act and adopt an environmental justice analysis to L&I’s rule-making. Email Sacks: [email protected]
 
Have you sent a letter to USAID yet? It’s not too late!
AGRA Watch campaign in solidarity with African farmer organizations

Please help us amplify and reiterate demands that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) stop funding AGRA and invest instead in African-led, agroecological alternatives. With the African Green Revolution Forum taking place this week (Sept 5-9), there is even more urgency to tell USAID and other donors that industrial and pro-corporate agriculture is NOT the way forward!

TAKE ACTION
  • Send an automated email to USAID here.
  • Please share the link with 5 of your friends!

CAGJ NEWS & ANALYSIS

Food Barons 2022: Crisis Profiteering, Digitalization and Shifting Power
September 7, 2022 - ETC Group
ETC Group’s 2022 update of corporate concentration offers a snapshot of the world’s Food Barons – the biggest players up and down the industrial food and agriculture chain. Corporate concentration has reached a point of extreme oligopoly - this is one of the key findings from this new report. This is an essential guide which is packed full of stats, trends, top 10’s, lists and surprising information that we are hoping can be a useful resource for activists, reporters, policymakers etc. You can read and download it here.
Victory! Court Rules "QR" Codes Alone Unlawful for GMO Food Labeling
September 14, 2022 - Center for Food Safety
A U.S. District Court has held that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)'s decision to allow genetically engineered (GMO) foods to only be labeled with a "QR" code was unlawful, and that USDA must instead add additional disclosure options to those foods under USDA's National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard. This decision marks a key step toward ending the food industry's deceptive and discriminatory GMO food labeling practices. Read more.
 
How Bill Gates and partners used their clout to control the global Covid response — with little oversight
September 14, 2022 - POLITICO
Four health organizations, working closely together, spent almost $10 billion on responding to Covid across the world. But they lacked the scrutiny of governments, and fell short of their own goals, a POLITICO and WELT investigation found. Read more.
 
US launches effort to end hunger by 2030 by expanding benefits and access to healthy foods
September 27, 2022 - Nina Lakhani, The Guardian
The Biden government has launched a new strategy to end hunger in the US by 2030 through the expansion of benefits such as free school meals and food stamps. According to Raj Patel, public policy researcher at the LJB school in Austin and author of Stuffed and Starved, the strategy seeks to expand social safety nets to prevent hunger but fails to address why people are falling into poverty in the first place. Read more.

COMMUNITY CALENDAR

Recurring opportunities to support food justice organizing in Seattle:
 
Get to know Beacon Food Forest by volunteering at 10am on the 3rd Saturday of every month! You can learn more about volunteering here.
 
WED Oct 12, 10AM PST
Big Tech's "Digital Trade" Agenda & Racial Justice: How Big Tech's "digital trade" agenda would shield it from liability from discriminatory algorithms and more.
RSVP for Oct 12th. The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) is a new trade proposal that, if enacted, would set rules governing roughly 40% of the global economy. Don't know much about it yet? You're not alone. Please join WA Fair Trade Coalition this fall for the final event of a 3-part web briefing series that addresses how labor, reproductive rights, and racial justice issues may be impacted by Big Tech's agenda for the proposed pact. Presenters include representatives of the AFL-CIO's Technology Institute, SEIU Local 2015, Rethink Trade, UltraViolet, ACLU Washington and more. We need to ensure transparency and public participation in the IPEF negotiations so that any final deal benefits working people and the planet -- not just big corporations.
 
Can't make the briefings? You can still make a difference by sharing this invitation with others and by clicking here to stop Big Tech's "digital trade" attach on jobs, wages and worker rights. And RSVP here for Oct 12th.
 
SAT Oct 22, 4-6pm PST
Join For The People online at Harvest Fall Fundraiser & 5 Year Anniversary
Our theme for this event, “Harvest”, is celebrating FTP’s 5 years in operation. Harvest is traditionally a time to come together and enjoy the fruits of our labor, celebrate the abundance of Mother Earth, and prepare the land for winter and the coming spring. Mother Earth shows us our role in the rhythms of nature at harvest time so we’ll be in those rhythms as we share how we plan to move forward in defending her. We’ll have guest speakers, hear updates from our Organizers, and give our community a chance to reconnect with each other. Harvest is a family friendly event. Location: Online via Zoom. Tickets and more info here.

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Community Alliance for Global Justice
1322 S Bayview St, Ste 300
Seattle, WA 98144