Power & Democratic Life
Power & Democratic Life
In the 12 years since an IATP report debunked the industry claim that corn and soybean exports help reduce global hunger, both exports and hunger are still on the rise. What has changed in that time, and what hasn’t?
Julia Olmstead, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, 2011
FETRAF is a trade union and movement of family farmers. FETRAF-SUL is a regional organization based in the southern Brazilian states of Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul. FETRAF-SUL has 100,000 members and works with 300,000 union and non-union families.
Through its organizing, FETRAF-SUL has developed networks of economically autonomous farmers (union and non-union) building on-the-farm agro-industries. The farmers add value to their farm products with the agro-industries, taking the transformed products all the way to market. In addition to this, FETRAF has negotiated as a union with the government for credit, housing, and education. (Click here to read an interview with Altemir Antonio Tortelli, general coordinator of FETRAF-SUL).
Green America (formerly known as Co-op America) works to harness economic power—the strength of consumers, investors, businesses, and the marketplace—to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society. It operates as a collaborative and participatory workplace, where staff members reach consensus through democratic decision-making processes on key strategic issues for the organization.
National organizations, state groups and individuals across the country are taking action and calling on our leaders in Washington (and in state capitols) to make elections about voters and volunteers instead of big campaign contributors. The Fair Elections Now website tracks progress on the Fair Elections Now Act, and provides opportunities for you to raise awareness and demand change.
by Herbert Girardet and Miguel Mendonça
(Devon, England: Green Books, 2009)
This national organization works to build up the green economy and provide access to green jobs across America. It not only puts green-collar jobs at the center of its agenda, but also seeks to ensure that every community has access to the opportunities provided by the new economy.
Natural Resources Council of Maine is a nonprofit membership organization protecting, restoring, and conserving Maine's environment, now and for future generations. They work to improve the quality of Maine's rivers; to reduce toxic chemicals threatening the health of Maine families and wildlife; to decrease air and global warming pollution, and to conserve Maine lands. NRCM harnesses the power of the law, science, and the voices of more than 12,000 supporters statewide and beyond.
Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund was formed to provide free and affordable legal services to community based groups and local governments working to protect their quality of life and the natural environment through building sustainable communities. Increasingly, that means teaming up with people and their municipal representatives to mount campaigns that challenge the legal clout of corporations to overrule decisions made by citizens for their communities.
GRAIN is an international, non-governmental organization that supports local farmers and social movements in sustainable, biodiversity-based food systems. Focused on Asia, Africa and Latin America, GRAIN has established a decentralization process to protect the world’s food supply through independent research and analysis.
La Via Campesina is a network of 148 farming organizations in 69 countries that promotes small-scale, sustainable agriculture as a catalyst for social justice. The movement bases its actions on the belief that small farmers are capable of producing food for their communities and feeding the world in a sustainable and healthy way. This site of the international peasant network has reports, statements, action alerts, and updates on the campaign to cool the planet through its vision of food sovereignty.
Timothy A. Wise and Sophia Murphy, Global Development and Environment Institute and Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, 2012
by Randolph Hester
(Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2006)
by Vandana Shiva
(New York: South End Press, 2005)
by Miguel Mendonça
(London: Earthscan Publications, Ltd, 2009)
IATP works locally and globally at the intersection of policy and practice to ensure fair and sustainable food, farm and trade systems. The Trade and Global Governance program promotes democratic institutions, human rights, a healthy environment, and fairer global rules in food and agriculture. IATP supports the notion of food sufficiency as a means to frame a new model for agriculture that strengthens the Right to Food and promotes concrete policy reforms to support resilient, local food systems and sustainable agriculture.
by Van Jones
(New York: Harper Collins, 2008)
Set of 4 DVDs, plus booklet, Deccan Development Society (DDS) Community Media Trust, P.V. Satheesh and Michel Pimbert, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the Deccan Development Society, London, 2008.
This project connects more than thirty leading youth organizations across North America to organize for the passage of 100 percent clean energy policies in high schools and on college campuses. Its network is building a movement of young people for a just and sustainable future.
by Archon Fungm and Erik Olin Wright
(Brooklyn: Verso, 2003)
by Bill Moyer, JoAnn MacAllister, Mary Lou Finley, and Steven Soifer
(Jackson, TN: New Society Publishers, 2001)
by Mark R. Warren
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001)
by Sam Kaner, Lenny Lind, Catherine Toldi, Sarah Fisk, Duane Berger, Michael Doyle
(San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007)
In a one-hour PBS special airing November 18, 2010, Host David Brancaccio visits communities across America using innovative approaches to create jobs and build prosperity in our new economy.
by Gianpaolo Baiocchi
(Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005)
Participatory Ecological Land Use Management (PELUM) is a network of smallholder farmers in East, Central and Southern Africa that works to improve the livelihoods of farmers and the sustainability of farming communities by promoting policies, skills and research for ecological land use management.
Presbyterian Hunger Program
Real Food Challenge is an exciting effort to leverage the purchasing power of university campuses in order to transform the food industry into a just and sustainable food system. The campaign aims to increase the amount of "green" foods purchased by colleges to 20 percent by 2020.
Sierra Club is the oldest and largest grassroots environmental organization in the United States. With over 1.3 million members, the organization focuses on reversing global warming and increasing our renewable energy resources.
by Benjamin Barber
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004)
by Robert Reich
(New York: Knopf, 2007)
Sustainable Connections works with local, independently owned businesses that have the autonomy to make any transformational change in their business that they can imagine… reexamining where we buy goods and services, how we consume energy, grow and distribute our food, build homes, and even, how we define success in business.
by John Keane
(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009)
by Matt Leighninger
(Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2006)
by Richard Wilkinson
(New York: New York: Bloomsbury, 2009)
Documentary chronicling the development of the UMASS permaculture garden, one of the nation's first student-led gardens created on a 1/4 acre campus grass lawn.
by Beth Simmone Noveck
(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2009)
Project for Public Spaces (PPS) is a nonprofit planning, design and educational organization dedicated to helping people create and sustain public spaces that build stronger communities. Their pioneering Placemaking approach helps citizens transform their public spaces into vital places that highlight local assets, spur rejuvenation and serve common needs.
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