Birthing Justice, Birthing Hope

Among income inequality, seemingly endless wars, and debilitating climate change, it is difficult for many to imagine a path to a better way. In fact, throughout the industrialized North and the global South, solutions to these great challenges are in various stages of construction -- and much of the lifting is being done by women. Grass-roots women’s movements -- progressing often almost without money or access or institutional power -- are emerging and offering alternative and empowering visions.

Other Worlds has partnered with the National Catholic Reporter to publish a 12 part series, titled "Women: Birthing justice, birthing hope."  The columns, collected and edited by Beverly Bell, feature empowered women who offer alternative visions as they birth a new and more just world order.
 

First hand account of organizing women in Nigeria - By Emem Okon
Port Harcourt, Niger Delta, Nigeria -- I am a community mobilizer with a passion for mobilizing women for action, for peace, and for their rights. I work with Kebetkache Women Development & Resource Centre in oil-impacted towns and villages -- that is, in areas where oil companies are drilling -- in the Niger Delta.

Here we have Shell, we have Chevron, we have ExxonMobil, among others. Two problems are neglect of the region in terms of development and also the degradation of the environment by the oil companies. There are serious cases of oil spills and gas flaring -- horribly toxic for the environment and the people. We’re not getting anywhere in getting the oil companies to clean up. Read More

The Link to Humanity: Giving as a Way of Life - By Coumba Touré
“African values” refers to a universal positive way of life. We are African, but we share our values with all those who want to share the dignity of the human being.

A word that we use a lot in Bamana is maaya, or humanity. When you say that somebody has maaya, you mean they are human and they are connected to humanity. There is a song that says that what makes us human is a cord that we all hold. Every time someone breaks it, it is broken for all human beings. Each of us has to make sure that that cord doesn’t break in our name. Read More

A former slave fights slavery - By Helia Lajeunesse
For an update on how Helia and the women of KOFAVIV are recovering from the earthquake, please see the National Catholic Reporter website.
Port-au-Prince, Haiti -- The restavek system is modern slavery. If the child doesn’t work hard enough, they beat him or her. The child can’t eat with the family, and usually just eats scraps. The child sleeps on the floor. They don’t pay the child. They never used to send the child to school. The family views that child as an animal.

This horrible system is due to the economic situation. Families with a lot of kids may not be able to afford to give the child even food, so they send him or her to the home of someone else in the hopes that that person can provide better care. Let me give you an example from my own life: I had five children. They lost their father, and I couldn’t feed them. I was obliged to give four away, even though the youngest was only 3 years old. I only kept one who wasn’t even a year old then.  Read More

 
Water is where everything intersects - By Marcela Olivera
There have been a series of policies implemented in Bolivia intended to privatize our natural resources. One of these directly impacts people's everyday lives; it's the move to privatize water by giving multinational corporations contracts on municipal and on all sources of water supply. In Bolivia there was a huge public outcry against this in 2000 and 2005, and in the end we were able to reverse the policy. Now that's the official, romanticized version of what happened, but nobody sees what's happened since then.

Water issues are related to other, urgent things that are happening now in Bolivia. Water is the one issue where everything intersects; it crosses over into political and economic issues in every region and in every country. People's struggles over water are also about having their voices heard, having better living conditions. I think it's really important that we get that. Even the fact that Evo Morales is president of Bolivia now is really a result of the water war that broke out in 2000. Read More

People of the sun - By Melody Gonzalez
Farm work is very dignified work, but people are not getting paid what they deserve or being treated like full human beings.

My grandfather always went back and forth between Mexico and the United States, working mostly in agriculture. Meanwhile my dad was back home in Michoacán, working to support the rest of the family, since he was the oldest of nine children. He only got to go up to the sixth grade, and even most of the time he was supposed to be in school he was working. When my dad finally turned 18, my grandfather brought him over. They worked in agriculture together, mostly picking raspberries and cucumbers. As a child I remember my dad always saying, “Who is the one who has to get up so early to break his back? Those damned Americans don’t want to do this work, and look how they pay us to do it.” Read More

 
With every new day, you struggle for a better tomorrow - By Ilda Martins de Souza
My parents lost their plot of rural land in the '60s; the landowner expelled them. After that, we didn’t have anywhere to live. I was young, and I went to São Paulo to try to make money to buy land for my father. I never could, since it was difficult to work and make enough money to buy land.

But while I was in São Paulo, since I had been raised in the Catholic Church and religion was very strong and present in my life, I started organizing through going to church. I made a lot of friends there and realized we had similar problems. First, because a lot of us lived in São Paulo and rent was too expensive, we started organizing among ourselves for affordable rent. Then we started to fight to lower utility prices and better our living conditions. I got involved with the struggle at a very early age – I was eighteen – and I really liked it. Read More
 

Not Wasting the Waste - By S. Ushakumari
Zero waste came to Thanal, an environmental justice organization, as an alternative to the current waste-management paradigm. That paradigm is about burning or burying, actually wasting the waste itself.

Tourists like to visit the coastal town of Kovalam, but in the past 10 to 15 years since globalization hit, the state of Kerala has been having problem of plastics and waste excess. The figures showed that the tourist flow was actually going down in Kovalam because of waste. The government had what it thought what was a good idea: burn the waste and make it disappear like a miracle. Read More

We Have Everything We Need: Reclaiming Control of Education - By Shilpa Jain
At Shikshantar, we're trying to support the shift from a money-dominant globalized culture to a more small-scale, relationship-focused culture. We want to encourage people to rethink education and development. Our philosophy springs from the Gandhian principle of Swaraj, which refers to self-rule. It's the links among all beings and the responsibility to take care of one another.

My grandmother never went to school, she never knew how to read or write, and she was such a wise and brilliant woman. She was incredibly creative, could come up with songs and dances and games right on the spot. She had tons of practical knowledge on herbal remedies and healing practices, and she was the most environmentally conscious person I know. Nothing ever went to waste; she would always make something out of anything. Because of her, I started asking about and looking for more of that kind of knowledge. Read More

This Land is My Teacher - By Nayeli Guzman
Damn, I should have brought my beans! I wanted to show you my collection. One of my favorites is called powami, a Hopi ceremonial bean. There’s a really beautiful one called Maine yellow eye, which is all white, and right at the part where the bean sprouts there’s a little yellow moon on there. There’s another one called provider. It’s almost the color of those trees -- wine color -- and the skin is almost like a rainbow. When you put it against the sun, it looks like an oil spill from your car. Man, those beans are so beautiful. We cooked some red Mexican beans for the harvest festival and everyone loved them.

We need to keep the traditions alive. We need to preserve the seeds. We need to preserve the soil. We need to preserve the planet.

Farming was in my prayers for a long time. This land is my teacher, it’s my altar. It’s at the heart of my culture; we’ve always done that. We’ve strayed so far from it that I feel we have to go back, no matter where we come from. I’m just being responsible to the struggles my ancestors went through. They fought for tierra y libertad, which means land and liberty. In fact, we’re still going through that struggle today, with our food and even our genes being colonized. Read More

One system for all: Universal access to health care in practice - By Julie Castro
My interest in health emerged as a way to take action in the fight for social justice. During my medical studies I did internships in Africa and India, and worked in a refugee camp located along the Thai-Burmese border. At the same time I became more aware of the anti-globalization movement, and it appeared to me that it was addressing the structural causes of ill health: inequality at both the global and local level. Today, while I’m working on the fight against AIDS in Mali, I’m also one of those defending the idea that access to public health in France is a right. Read More
 

Challenging globalization head-on: Women respond to poverty - By Mary Ann Manahan
It’s inspiring for many young feminists and young activists like me to see how, in the midst of globalization, the most vulnerable women are using collective action to build their strength. These are people who are considered victims, who’ve faced decades of being battered by wrong agricultural policies and by their husbands, of not being taken seriously. Read More