Welcome to the US Food Sovereignty Alliance
Posted: October 23, 2012 at 9:56 pm
The US Food Sovereignty Alliance (USFSA) works to end poverty, rebuild local food economies, and assert democratic control over the food system. We believe all people have the right to healthy, culturally appropriate food, produced in an ecologically sound manner. As a US-based alliance of food justice, anti-hunger, labor, environmental, faith-based, and food producer groups, we uphold the right to food as a basic human right and work to connect our local and national struggles to the international movement for food sovereignty.
The USFSA is Now Accepting Nominations for the 2013 Food Sovereignty Prize
Posted: April 29, 2013 at 6:27 pm
The Food Sovereignty Prize 2013 Call for Nominations
“Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.”
The U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance is proud to announce that it is accepting nominations for the 2013 Food Sovereignty Prize. Since 2009, the Food Sovereignty Prize has been awarded to an organization – rural or urban – that advances the cause of food sovereignty through education and direct, collective action. Prize winners must also have implemented programs and policies that prioritize the leadership of women, indigenous peoples, people of color, migrant workers and other food providers in the global food movement.
The 2013 Fifth Annual Food Sovereignty Prize will be awarded by the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance (USFSA), a US-based collaboration of food justice, anti-hunger, labor, environmental, faith-based, and family farming and fishing organizations. The USFSA works to connect local and national struggles for food justice with the international movement for food sovereignty to uphold the right to food as a public good and basic human necessity.
The Deadline for Nominations is May 20.
To see the full Call for Nominations and submit a nomination, visit www.foodsovereigntyprize.org. (French and Spanish versions available.)
To see the past recipients of the Food Sovereignty Prize, visit www.foodsovereigntyprize.org/the-honorees/.
To learn more about Food Sovereignty, visit www.foodsovereigntyprize.org/about-fs/.
For questions, write to foodsovprize@gmail.com.
USFSA Acts for Food Sovereignty All Across the Country on April 17, International Day of Peasant Struggles
Posted: April 17, 2013 at 1:36 pm
We, members of the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance, express our solidarity with Via Campesina International and allies in the US and worldwide in this day of April 17, the International Day of Peasant Struggle.
On April 17, 1996, nineteen landless peasants, members of the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST) were brutally murdered in El Dourado dos Carajás, state of Pará by the police. From 1980 to 2003, 212 peasants and rural workers’ union leaders have been killed in the same state in Brazil and justice has been served only in a small portion of those cases.
Along with our brothers and sisters, the US Food Sovereignty Alliance pays homage to the victims of the massacre of El Dourado dos Carajas and many others who have fallen to the repression and criminalization of the peasant and indigenous peoples’ struggle for land rights.
The struggle for justice, land rights and food sovereignty from Detroit, Michigan to Oakland, California to Immokalee, Florida is ever present in our lives. Today, on April 17, we join Via Campesina International and the MST in a day of action to defend peasants’ rights to land and food sovereignty.
Globalize the struggle, Globalize the hope.
Actions, events, and campaigns YOU can support for April 17, International Day of Peasants’ Struggles
- April 9, Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York (ROC-NY) joined a meeting of Darden Restaurant executives in New York City to tell them that consumers want to eat at a restaurant that treats its workers with dignity, as part of the ROC’s Dignity at Darden campaign: http://www.dignityatdarden.org/.
- April 14, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and its allies in New York City staged the “Pigtail March for Justice” to make Wendy’s pay a fair wage for farmworkers and join the Fair Food Campaign. Take action with the CIW here: http://www.ciw-online.org/action.html.
- April 17, 12pm EDT/9am PDT Conference call with Alexandre Conceição, member of the national coordination committee of the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST). The US Friends of MST is organizing this learning call about the land struggle in Brazil as a contribution to the work of families and individuals who are also fighting for the same goals in the United States. Sign the petition to support the MST: http://www.mstbrazil.org/.
- April 17, join an Urgent Response Team to protect Honduran campesinos struggling for land amid violence. Both Spanish and English speakers are needed to call and pressure Honduran officials to uphold basic human rights. Organized by COPINH (Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras), email Stephen Bartlett to join this Urgent Response Team at sbartlett (at) ag-missions (dot) org.
- April 19, the Family Farm Defenders will hold a demonstration at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to protest speculation and corporate greed that are putting small farmers out of business in the US and plunging small-scale farmers into poverty around the globe: http://familyfarmers.org/.
- April 20, Detroit Food Justice Task Force protests against racism, poverty, land, and political takeover by an Emergency Financial Manager at Flagstar Bank, one of the leading banks responsible for thousands of evictions – 70 cents out of every dollar Detroit receives goes to repay loans that have been accumulating for almost 50 years.
- May 1, International Workers Day and Immigration Marches throughout the country.
- May 5, March for Dignity, Fighting for the rights of immigrants, farm workers, and real immigration reform, Bellingham WA, with Community 2 Community – De Comunidad a Comunidad.
- Support the Food Chain Workers Alliance Minimum Wage Campaign by signing their petition here: http://foodchainworkers.org/?page_id=2329. Also, read their report, “The Hands That Feed Us” and join “the Welcome Table!”
- Sign this petition to support family fishers in New England before April 29.
- Visit www.viacampesina.org and their map of 100s of actions around the world for April 17.
USFSA Stands with Farm and Food Chain Workers Marching Today but Working Everyday to Defend Workers Rights and for Just Immigration Reform
Posted: April 10, 2013 at 2:36 pm
A Solidarity Message of the US Food Sovereignty Alliance (USFSA) to Farm and Food Chain Workers – Working and Marching to Defend Workers Rights and for Just Immigration Reform.
Washington DC – April 8th – 10th, 2013.
April 9th, 2013
Dear Compañeros and Compañeras,
The USFSA represents a national alliance of more than 25 organizations working for food sovereignty, food justice, human rights and the rights of all workers in the food system, from the fields to the table. We are confident that these days of advocacy work and mobilization will represent not only a step forward for the movement to defend the rights of immigrants, migrant workers, farmworkers, and food chain workers, but also for all of us who are struggling for a more just society.
Read the rest HERE.
USFSA Condemns Killing of Honduran Peasants – Demands an end to US aid to Honduran Government
Posted: February 7, 2013 at 3:16 pm
The paramilitary assassinations, death threats and human rights abuses against peasant and indigenous organizers who defend their land from land-grabbing “agro-oligarchs” in Honduras is worsening Last week two more peasants were murdered. Please endorse and circulate this letter denouncing these crimes. Email info (at) usfoodsovereigntyalliance (dot) org to sign your organization on.
Spanish version. Check out Food First’s blog post about the violence against peasants in Honduras.
Post the letter from the USFSA on the State Department and White House Facebook pages: http://www.facebook.com/WhiteHouse; http://www.facebook.com/usdos
Tweet the USFSA letter @whitehouse @StateDept, using these hashtags: #Honduras #Aguán #PalmOil #Obama #Campesinos
THE U.S. FOOD SOVEREIGNTY ALLIANCE CONDEMNS THE KILLINGS OF PEASANTS BY HONDURAN PARAMILITARY FORCES AND DEMANDS A MORATORIUM ON U.S. SUPPORT FOR THE HONDURAN REGIME
On February 2, 2012 in the Aguán Valley of Honduras Juán Peres and Willian Alvarado, members of the Peasant Movement for the Recovery of Aguan (MOCRA), were assassinated by paramilitary forces. That same day paramilitaries surrounded the house of Rodolfo Cruz, also of MOCRA, threatening him and his family. These murders were committed by heavily-armed paramilitary units at the service of large landowners. On the 3 of February, with no provocation, a police checkpoint assassinated Naúm Dicua and wounded a companion. On the same day, hundreds of villagers protested in front of the County courthouse in Sabá, Colón and called upon the Mayor and county president to impart justice. Police fired shots and tear gas, repelling the crowd.
Close to 60 peasants and indigenous leaders have been assassinated since president Porfirio Lobo assumed power in fraudulent elections following the 2009 coup d’etat that deposed president-elect Manuel Zelaya. Most of these killings have taken place in areas that are subject to large “land grabs” that have been systematically displacing the Honduran peasantry.
2012 Food Sovereignty Prize acceptance speech by MUCA (Unified Peasant Movement of Aguán, Honduras) from Food First on Vimeo.
Women have also been threatened, as a form of intimidation of other peasant women and their families. On October 23, 2012, Carla Yadira Zelaya, spokesperson of the Unified Peasant Movement of Aguan (MUCA) was kidnapped at 6:30am in a bus stop in the area of El Carrizal. Carla was blindfolded while her captors interrogated her for three hours about whereabouts of MUCA’s leadership, before she was thrown out of the car.
We call upon the Department of State and the White House to communicate to the Honduran government the seriousness of the systematic violations of human rights of Honduran leaders and members of organizations involved in land disputes.
We urge you to implement the recommendation in the letter sent by Representative Hank Johnson (GA) and 57 other Congresspersons to the Department of State and the Department of Justice on January 25, calling for a credible investigation into the DEA-instigated killings of civilians in Ahuas, including a youth and two pregnant women.
In addition, the leader of Afro-Indigenous communities also mentioned in that letter, Miriam Miranda, is, we have just learned, under death threat. The Honduran government must be informed that these threats are intolerable to the U.S. government, and that Honduran officials need to take measures to protect them.
We call upon the U.S. to initiate a moratorium on continued military and security cooperation with the Honduran government until the scandalous violations of human rights can be diminished in that country that now has the highest murder rate in the world, and is considered by many to be a “failed state”. The blood of innocent Hondurans is staining the hands of the U.S. government and the US people.
Signed,
The US Food Sovereignty Alliance
Food First
Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance
Community Alliance for Global Justice
Agricultural Missions
WhyHunger
