Cultures of Resistance

Recently, the Cultures of Resistance Network team had the opportunity to bring together experts from three of our favorite groups to discuss these connections and to talk about the challenges and hopes of today’s global movement for peoples’ food sovereignty.

With factories dumping hazardous chemical byproducts into them, rivers that provide life and livelihoods for people in every part of the world are at risk. Read on to learn about how Greenpeace is fighting to protect these precious ecosystems and the communities that depend upon them.

For the last three decades, the Oakland-based think tank Food First has been on the forefront of the fight for food justice. Learn about how their research, analysis, and advocacy efforts shape agriculture policy debates and assist social movements working for food sovereignty.

Until quite recently, farming had not changed much for thousands of years. Human and animal power was responsible for tilling the soil and harvesting crops, and nearly all food was produced in close proximity to where it was consumed. A number of developments in the twentieth century changed all that.

The policies imposed upon the West Bank and Gaza strip by the Israeli occupation have created widespread food insecurity for the Palestinian people by blocking access to natural resources and undermining livelihoods. However, local civil society groups are responding with community-based solutions to strengthen access to nutritious food and clean water while introducing new livelihoods opportunities to marginalized groups.

Too often grant-making organizations are over-involved in influencing the priorities of the organizations they face. The CoR Network has long been impressed by the work of Grassroots International, which provides a model for bottom-up grant-making. Learn more about how their support helps protect indigenous food cultures in Latin America.

Slow Food International, with its myriad local chapters, or "conviviums," works to protect communities' abilities to produce their own ecologically safe and economically fair foods, while preserving indigenous cuisines from multinational agribusiness. Click here to read more about this growing campaign for food sovereignty and sustainability.

The Cultures of Resistance Network supports efforts to make trade fair and to ensure that farmers and other producers in the global South receive just wages for their work.