 February 2004
American Friends Service Committee Peacework Magazine Sara Burke, Managing Editor Sam Diener, Editor Pat Farren, Founding Editor 2161 Massachusetts Ave. Telephone number: Fax number:
pwork@igc.org Peacework has been published monthly since 1972, intended to serve as a source of dependable information to those who strive for peace and justice and are committed to furthering the nonviolent social change necessary to achieve them. Rooted in Quaker values and informed by AFSC experience and initiatives, Peacework offers a forum for organizers, fostering coalition-building and teaching the methods and strategies that work in the global and local community. Peacework seeks to serve as an incubator for social transformation, introducing a younger generation to a deeper analysis of problems and issues, reminding and re-inspiring long-term activists, encouraging the generations to listen to each other, and creating space for the voices of the disenfranchised. Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC. |
Occupy, Resist, Produce: Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement Charlotte Casey originally wrote this piece, excerpted here, for Green Focus, the newspaper of the Green Party of California. In existence for only 18 years, the Landless Workers Movement, known by their Portuguese acronym, MST, has settled over 300,000 rural workers on land where they can produce food for their families and their communities. Noam Chomsky has called the MST "the most exciting popular movement in the world today." Brazil has the second highest concentration of land ownership in the world and huge tracts of land lay idle. The MST takes advantage of a clause in the Brazilian constitution that requires land to be productive. They advocate agrarian reform but do not wait for it to be granted by the government. They organize landless peasants to occupy large tracts of privately held land and then lawyers begin the legal negotiations required to gain title to the land. Motivated by their slogan "Occupy, Resist, Produce," families know that the legal battle is a small part of the struggle. -Forces opposed to agrarian reform are responsible for innumerable death threats and thousands of assassinations against MST members. Despite repression, the MST helped elect Lula de Silva and continues to flourish. Excerpts from 
Previous Article Next Article
|
|
|