What does community control of housing mean? How can we take housing off of the speculative market to keep it perpetually affordable, while maintaining resident control? Come discuss these questions together and learn from some existing strategies.
Join Cleveland Owns on Thursday, July 25, 6-8pm
RSVP here to get the location on Cleveland's east side.
Do you have a team and idea for a worker-owned cooperative business you’re looking to turn into reality? If so we encourage you to apply to join this state-wide cohort with sponsorship from Cleveland Owns.
Please find more information about the 14-week course that will commence in August at this application form!
Register: CPT Summer Reading Circle | Freedom Is a Constant Struggle
Let’s read together Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the foundations of a movement by Angela Davis
‘Freedom is a Constant Struggle’ is a compilation of speeches and essays by feminist scholar and political activist Angela Davis. As a prison abolitionist and Black woman in the United States, Davis leans into an intersectional understanding of movement organizing and guides her work by pulling together several global struggles including Ferguson and the Black liberation movement alongside Palestine and the anti-colonial movement. In the book’s forward, Dr. Cornel West attests that “her ubiquitous lecturing, marvelous teaching, and courageous solidarity in every corner of the globe keep candles of hope burning in the cold and chilling days of neoliberal hegemony.”
Join us for conversation of hope in our summer reading circle, as we move through the book over the course of four weeks and learn from each other through response and discussion that stems from the text.
Purchase a hard copy at your local bookstore, lend from your local library, purchase online, or view an online PDF.
Church Women United became the first major faith-based organization in several years to endorse the Wendy’s Boycott in support of CIW. NFWM is pleased to have worked with CWU and will continue to encourage their efforts to help CIW spread the message of the Fair Food Nation and to assist NFWM as we continue to add locations to our Wendy’s map. Let’s keep this campaign going!
Learn more about the Fair Food Program at https://fairfoodprogram.org/
The farming families of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó in the Urabá region of Antioquia Department have suffered many tragedies over the past 27 years: murders, sexual violence, massive displacements, destruction of homes, usurpation of land, and burning of crops.
During April and May, Germán Graciano, the legal representative of the Peace Community, received phone calls with death threats. In mid-April, paramilitaries held a meeting with local leaders of community action boards in the township; at least one paramilitary threatened the extermination of the community. Threats reemerged after June 10 when a federal jury in Florida found Chiquita Brands liable for the killings of eight men (banana workers) between 1997 and 2004 and ordered Chiquita to pay their families $38.3 million in damages. Chiquita Brands has a history of abuses linked to its operations in the Urabá region of Antioquia Department, where the Peace Community has been located for the past 27 years. Seventeen years ago Chiquita admitted to paying more than $1 million to the paramilitaries who killed the banana workers.
We are urging that authorities in Colombia review the various precautionary and protective measures ordered since 1997 for the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the Constitutional Court of Colombia.
The summer heat has started. A "heat dome" recently brought triple digit temperatures to parts of the Western United States in early June – with temps topping 110° in some areas. It's the first major heat wave of what's expected to be another abnormally hot summer. Farm workers and other outdoor workers desperately need a federal heat standard.
See this urgent alert from United Farm Workers (UFW). Click here to take action to protect farm workers now!
Public Citizen's Trade Justice project has a new in-depth report called Corporate Colonization of Latin America: How ISDS Harms Indigenous Communities, which explores ISDS’s colonial roots and the disproportionate harm it has caused to Indigenous peoples across Latin America. The report is available now both as a website and as a PDF, so give it a look and please consider sharing it on social media or on any lists!
To release the report, earlier this month we hosted a special delegation of Latin American Indigenous leaders in Washington, DC to speak with policymakers, diplomats, and civil society about the adverse impacts of corporate trade policy on their communities.
The Northeast Ohio Worker Center (NEOWC) and the Young Latino Network have partnered to host monthly wage theft clinics to educate and empower workers in the region. Wage theft, which includes unpaid overtime and misclassification of workers, is a significant issue, costing workers billions annually. The NEOWC, established in 2019, aims to support non-unionized workers by educating them about their rights and connecting them with legal services. The clinics provide bilingual support and help workers understand and exercise their labor rights, including protections against discrimination and wage theft, regardless of immigration status. The NEOWC offers various resources and referrals to assist workers in advocating for fair treatment in the workplace.
It is imperative that the government of Colombia provide effective protection measures to land rights and human rights defenders who are in situations of risk—and respond immediately when they report specific threats.
Narciso Beleño Belaides, age 62, was a well-respected peasant leader and dear friend of Community Peacemaker Teams (CPT-Colombia), a close partner of IRTF. For more than three decades, Narciso worked to defend campesino families and their farm lands in southern Bolívar against the presence of paramilitary groups that isolated and forcibly displaced communities in the region. He was recognized for his constant fight for the rights of peasant communities and the preservation of the San Lucas mountain range, which is currently being disputed by armed groups such as the Gulf Clan (paramilitaries) and the ELN (rebel group).
Narciso was a member of the National Agrarian Coordinating Body (CNA) and was the current president of the Agromining Federation of Southern Bolívar (FEDEAGROMISBOL). For several decades, FEDEAGROMISBOL has suffered attacks by paramilitary groups through threats, disappearances and murders, as well as by state agents in the past.
On the evening of April 21, Narciso was entering his home in the El Recreo neighborhood, an urban area of the municipality of Santa Rosa del Sur, Bolívar Department. Armed men were waiting for him. They shot him four times.
Just hours before he was shot to death, Narciso had denounced the Gulf Clan paramilitaries for a new incursion into the area that began April 18.
State-sponsored violence, in collusion with the interests of private corporations, continues to take its toll on campesino communities.
On February 29, 1,500 agents of the Honduran National Police carried out violent evictions against three campesino cooperative bases of the Landless Peasant Movement of Yoro Department (MCSTY): El Bálsamo, Agua Blanca Sur, and La Sarrosa. Police used heavy machinery to destroy corn plantations, fired gunshots, used physical violence against farmers and their families, and made arrests. Almost 20,000 quintales of food, including basic grains and vegetables, and an estimated 300 blocks of crops were destroyed, directly affecting about 1,500 people. These farmers, who had been in the process of recovering their lands for the previous ten months, now find themselves in a situation of extreme vulnerability.
Furthermore, these evictions reportedly favor the interests of the sugar company Azucarera del Norte SA (Azunosa), which has acquired land titles through intimidation, fraud, and violence since the early 1990s. To date, Azunosa has presented 15 criminal accusations against several members of MCSTY and another 40 against members of the regional chapter of the National Central of Farm Workers (CNTC-Progreso).
We are urging that the Supreme Court of Justice, the National Congress, and the Agrarian Security Commission review agrarian reform laws and give the green light for the National Agrarian Institute to proceed in transferring land titles to campesino associations. In addition, we are urging that the National Human Rights Commissioner and the Human Rights Secretariat assume a more proactive role in protecting the rights of campesino communities, beyond simply registering these violent eviction operations.
