The Social Forum — which convened in Detroit just last month — “is a movement building process… [that] provides spaces to learn from each other’s experiences and struggles, share our analysis of the problems our communities face, build relationships, and align with our international brothers and sisters to strategize how to reclaim our world.” It’ll be another three years before the US Social Forum convenes again, but in the meantime the process of the Social Forum is ongoing — as people from different movements, backgrounds and regions continue to deliberate and act upon solutions to the economic and ecological crisis.
An essential component of this process are People’s Movement Assemblies (PMA). PMAs are gatherings of people (25, 250 or more) that come together to collectively identify community issues, discuss solutions, and commit to actions.
Before the USSF2010 in Detroit, the Greater DC Social Forum (organized largely by attendees of USSF2007 in Atlanta) convened a DC People’s Movement Assembly. The Greater DC Social Forum will now convene another DC-area People’s Movement Assembly on August 7th, at 11AM at Plymouth Congregational UCC (5301 N Capitol Street NE). Attendees of USSF2010 will share the experience and ideas that they brought back from Detroit — however, this event is open to anyone who wants to work towards a better greater DC. (You can RSVP on Facebook here.)
At the pre-Detroit People’s Movement Assembly here in DC, some attendees had conversations about food justice issues—but there was not yet a PMA group self-organized around the subject. Well I am pleased to report that the signs of food justice movements across the country are strong! The challenges we face are great, but so are our opportunities. (I previously blogged about food sovereignty in Detroit here.) The USSF2010 Food Justice PMA assembled a diverse and exciting set of people, ideas, and proposals — consolidating it all into one statement to be shared with the broader Social Forum.
So, with hope that food justice/sovereignty will become an active thread of the Greater DC Social Forum process, I’m happy to share the Food Sovereignty People’s Movement Assembly resolution below. Let’s consider this document as we continue our conversation on August 7th and beyond.
Statement from the People’s Movement Assembly on Food Sovereignty, US Social Forum 2010
Over a half-century ago, Mahatma Gandhi led a multitude of Indians to the sea to make salt—in defiance of the British Empire’s monopoly on this resource critical to people’s diet. The action catalyzed the fragmented movement for Indian independence and was the beginning of the end for Britain’s rule over India. The act of “making salt” has since been repeated many times in many forms by people’s movements seeking liberation, justice and sovereignty: Cesar Chavez, Nelson Mandela, and the Zapatistas are just a few of the most prominent examples. Our food movement— one that spans the globe—seeks food sovereignty from the monopolies that dominate our food systems with the complicity of our governments. We are powerful, creative, committed and diverse. It is our time to make salt.
A movement for food sovereignty – the people’s democratic control of the food system, the right of all people to healthy, culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems - is building from every corner of the globe.
We find that our work to build a better food system in the Unites States is inextricably linked to the struggle for workers’ rights, immigrant’s rights, women’s rights, the fight to dismantle racism in our communities, and the struggle for sovereignty in indigenous communities. We find that in order to create a better food system, we must break up the corporate control of our seeds, land, water and natural resources.
Because at a time of record harvests and record profits we have over one billion hungry people on the planet; because poverty is the root cause of hunger; because the world’s oceans are being polluted and plundered, because industrial agriculture contributes one third of all greenhouse gas emissions, because increasing inequality, poverty, hunger, a global land grab, and environmental destruction are threatening the livelihoods of family farmers, farmworkers, fisherfolk, and marginalized communities worldwide; and because community based food systems and agroecological farming can cool the planet, build resilience to climate change, and eliminate poverty;
We therefore commit to re-building local food economies in our own communities, to dismantling structural racism, to democratizing land access, to building opportunities for the leadership of our youth, and to working towards food sovereignty in partnership with social movements around the world;
We call on others in the US to demand an end to the global land grab, to end both corporate and military land occupations, to demand fairer trade, aid and investment policies, land reform, and support for sustainable peasant and community agriculture and sustainable community fisheries;
We endorse actions that include: the liberation of land and water resources for the production of food and sustainable livelihoods; the creation of new structures for cooperative ownership of land and food production, processing and distribution; the integration of labor rights, immigrant’s rights and food justice; the valuing of women as primary food providers, and the denouncement of false solutions and false partnerships addressing climate change, hunger and economic development;
We demand a world in which everyone has control over their food and no one has to put food in their mouth that hurts people or the environment.
Organizations and individuals among us have therefore committed to the following actions:
- Launching a campaign for food sovereignty as a right of the people
- Growing and harvesting as much food as we possibly can everywhere
- Liberating land through reclaiming urban and rural spaces for the production of food for communities; demanding the use of public lands for food production
- Participating in a global campaign against land grabs, in which corporations and governments grab up the lands of communities
- Carrying forward the people’s agenda coming out of the Cochabamba climate summit — including popular education around food and climate justice and promoting sustainable agriculture as a solution to climate change
- Standing with the people of Haiti, Palestine, Honduras, and other countries whose food sovereignty is threatened by political, military, and/or corporate occupation
- Hosting collective meals in our communities as a way of connecting people across generations and cultural backgrounds and as a tool for dismantling racism in the food system
- Forging new models of collective control of land and waterways; assuring legal protection of the commons
- Building the leadership of the next generation; providing opportunities for urban and rural youth to have a future in food and farming
- Rejecting GMOs and other forms of the corporate takeover of our food systems
- Creatively and strategically working to dismantle the corporations who have hijacked the world’s food systems
- Affirming the sovereignty of indigenous peoples in North America and throughout the globe
- Committing our food movements in the US to be active participants in the global movement for food sovereignty and to work to stop our government and corporations from practices that undermine food sovereignty globally.
- Challenging US food and agricultural aid and development policy (e.g., Monsanto and USAID’s recent “donation” of seeds to Haiti)
- Working towards a people’s food and farm bill based on principles of food sovereignty
- Hosting community seed exchanges
- Engaging communities in popular education on GMOs and the role of corporations in our food system
- Engaging communities in popular education on community nutrition and public health
- Creating more community farmers markets that are accessible and affordable to all; affirming everyone’s right to food that is good, safe, healthy, and fair
- Helping everyone understand where their food comes from and who helped bring it to their table
- Highlighting the common struggles between farmers and farmworkers in the US and their counterparts throughout the world
See the official page for this document here. And join us on August 7th to discuss what comes next.
Can you tell us more about the organizations that came up with this statement of principles, and who stands behind them? The list is broad in covering both domestic and international topics.
Hi Haley –
This statement has come out of the US Social Forum process, specifically the People’s Movement Assembly on Food Sovereignty. It’s my understanding that these statements represent the collective positions of the community of organizations participating in the Social Forum process, but that there is not necessarily consensus behind each part of each statement among every participating organization.
In other words, the declaration in the first part of the statement reflects a vision that is commonly shared among participants in this process. Some of those participants have declared that they will pursue various actions and objectives in line with those stated principles. But that doesn’t mean that every organization that promotes food sovereignty as part of this process has to subscribe to (or even have any position whatsoever on) any of the specific items in that bulleted list. This is a movement, and it can be messy, but there appears to be room for all kinds of perspectives and ideologies within it. At least, I sure hope there is
Was looking to re-connect with the People’s Movement Assembly and found myself here…we were present almost every morning in the food caucus tent at the US social forum where many themes of the common groound of food sovereignty formulated the final resolution…there was a wide diversity of groups that participated in the discussion…we reference you to the Inside Oyotunji edition on the US Social forum that gave you direct quotes from the campanistas from Hondurus, farmers from Texas, Haiti, Why Hunger, GFJI and many, many others!