Cross-posted from Food First

By Tanya Kerssen, Food First Research Coordinator and leader of upcoming delegation Bolivia: Llamas, Quinoa, and Andean Food Sovereingty

We’ve been hearing a lot about quinoa lately.[i] While US consumers prize it as a delicious ‘super-food,’ there is growing anxiety about the impact of the quinoa boom in the Andes, and particularly Bolivia, the world’s top producing country. The media has focused primarily on the fact that global demand is driving up the price of quinoa, placing it beyond the reach of poor Bolivians—even of quinoa farmers themselves—leaving them to consume nutritionally vacuous, but cheap, refined wheat products such as bread and pasta. By this logic, some suggest, northern consumers should boycott the ‘golden grain’ to depress its price and make it accessible once again. 

“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: César Chávez, 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.”

By Tory Field and Beverly Bell

The first group of protestors at Occupy Wall Street publically delivered 23 complaints, outlining the ways in which corporations control our daily lives. Number four asserted, “They have poisoned the food supply through negligence and undermined the farming system through monopolization.”

Buenos Aires

January 28, 2013

Argentine Workers’ Central Union(CTA)

Press Release

In the framework of the People’s Summit [Cumbre de los Pueblos], which took place in Santiago, Chile from January 25-27, social movements and organizations, among them the CTA, called on the governments that are part of the Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) to remove all of MINUSTAH’s [The United Nations Mission for the Stabilization of Haiti] military troops from Haiti.

By Tory Field and Beverly Bell

“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: César Chávez, 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 delegation representing the Dominican organizations COOPHABITAT, CODECOC, and the Red Urbana Popular spent a week in Haiti on a solidarity visit for exchange, discussion, and to help further propel the Haitian right to housing movement towards a viable alternative. During their stay, the delegation met with various Haitian organizations including the Collective to Defend the Right to Housing, and visited Grace Village and Mega 4, two displacement camps in Port-au-Prince. The delegation was lead by Pedro Franco, the Coordinator of the International Alliance of Inhabitants for Latin America and the Caribbean, Coordinator of the Zero Evictions Campaign and director of COOPHabitat (the Cooperative for Social Housing and Habitat Production) in the Dominican Republic. On January 12, 2013, the anniversary of the Haiti earthquake, the delegation celebrated a Bi-National Day of Solidarity and Struggle with displaced Haitians and grassroots groups.

Today, February 7th, 2013, marks the anniversary of the fall of the brutal Duvalier regime in 1986. Former dictator, "Baby Doc" Jean-Claude Duvalier, who for 15 years succeeded his father "Papa Doc" Duvalier, returned to Haiti in January 2011 and was promptly charged with corruption, embezzlement, murder, torture, exile, arbitrary detention and destruction of private property.

In January 2012, a judge ruled that Duvalier would not face charges of crimes against humanity and would stand trial only for financial crimes. Survivors and victim's families' formally requested for that decision to be overturned, and a court hearing today will determine whether or not Duvalier will indeed face trial for the crimes against humanity committed during his dictatorship.

With the following appeal to mobilize, Haitian social movements plan to protest in front of the courthouse