GEO folks organized demonstration and Teach-in/Speak-out in Mexico.

Permanent link to this article: http://geo.coop/node/585

By Traci Kuratomi, current Fulbright Fellow in Argentina

In 2001, Argentina was devastated by an economic crisis that led to widespread deindustrialization and unemployment levels of 21 percent. As factories closed, thousands of people suddenly found themselves jobless and without the possibility of finding work. Worse, the factory owners who declared bankruptcy often owed their workers months of wages and failed to provide workers severance pay.

Like many of you reading this, I drink Equal Exchange (EE) coffee at home and wherever else I can, and am happily aware that EE is both itself a worker cooperative and draws its coffee supply exclusively from small agricultural cooperatives throughout Latin America, Africa, and Asia. But - again, like many of you - until recently I knew next to nothing about these other co-ops, aside from some few sentences and photos on EE coffee bags.

Analyzing & Debating a New Economy from the Perspective of Workers & Self-management

Mexico City, June 9-11, 2011

Dear Friends,

We urgently need your voice NOW! Someone is trying to steal our land, and we need you to write in our support!

We normally don't write this kind of emergency letter, but this time it's critical that you know now, pass the word, and respond. The volume of international response will have a strong effect. There is a sample letter below with an email address.

Michael A. Lebowitz. Built It Now: Socialism for the 21st Century. Monthly Review Press, 2000.

What would a humanist, participatory "socialism for the 21st century" look like? In this short book, Michael Lebowitz shares his vision and asserts that the Chavez administration has embarked on transforming Venezuela into such a society through its Bolivarian Revolution.

For a total of twelve months between 2003 and 2005, I lived and worked with the Unemployed Workers' Movement of Solano (MTD-Solano) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was an experience that fundamentally changed the way I think about community organizing and activism; I continue to search for ways to put those ideas into practice. This article is an attempt to share these experiences, and to let you know about a new video-workshop tool that aims to deepen the exchange between organizers around the world.

By Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis

On March 19, 2003, we were on the roof of the Zanon ceramic tile factory, filming an interview with Cepillo. He was showing us how the workers fended off eviction by armed police, defending their democratic workplace with slingshots and the little ceramic balls normally used to pound the Patagonian clay into raw material for tiles. His aim was impressive. It was the day the bombs started falling on Baghdad.