Small Farmers. Big Change.

 For Immediate Release

Largest North American Fair Trade Conference Seeks to

Transform Global Community

Fair Trade Futures Conference to be held in Quincy, MA, Sept 2010

Washington DC (March 16, 2010) – From September 10-12, 2010, the Fair Trade Futures Conference will bring together entrepreneurs, students, advocates, faith community members, concerned citizens, and interested individuals for the largest Fair Trade event in North American history.

Among the keynote speakers include Kevin Danaher, co-founder of Global Exchange, and representatives from four producer organizations in the field of agricultural products and handmade items.

The Quincy, MA conference, being held at the LEED-certified Marriott Hotel, provides a forum where Fair Trade-minded individuals can learn how to advance the Fair Trade movement in the U.S. Attendees can participate in dozens of workshops, debates, discussions, social activities, and an exposition of more than 50 Fair Trade vendors. Residents of five continents will come together to learn and debate about Fair Trade’s holistic approach to business and poverty alleviation.

“For more than 60 years, Fair Trade Organizations have offered high quality products that create tremendous, positive change among the artisans and farmers worldwide,” says Carmen K. Iezzi, executive director of the Fair Trade Federation. “With the Fair Trade Futures conference, we look to explore the successes of and challenges in building continued momentum behind Fair Trade in North America.”

The 2010 conference is made possible through the generous contributions of many sponsors and supporters, including Catholic Relief Services, Cooperative Coffees, Equal Exchange, the Fair Trade Federation, the Fair Trade Resource Network, Global Crafts, Green America, Handmade Expressions, the Presbyterian Church of the United States, SERRV International, Ten Thousand Villages Canada, and Ten Thousand Village USA.

-Registration Closes on August 16, 2010

-Special student pricing.

-Complimentary tickets for media with press credentials

Find out more about the Fair Trade Futures conference.

Register for the conference.

Contact:
Carmen K. Iezzi

(202) 636-3547

conference@fairtradefederation.org

About the Fair Trade Federation

The Fair Trade Federation (FTF) strengthens and promotes North American organizations fully committed to Fair Trade. The Federation is part of the global Fair Trade movement, building equitable and sustainable trading partnerships and creating opportunities to alleviate poverty.

About the Futures Conference

The 2010 Fair Trade Futures Conference builds on the successful 2005 Futures conference which attracted more than 750 entrepreneurs, consumers, students, activists, faith community members and others to Chicago, Ill. By convening the 2010 event, eleven leading Fair Trade Organizations provides an opportunity to connect established and emerging Fair Trade supporters in a professional, lively, fun, inclusive, and practical atmosphere.

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The following post was written by Chuck Collins, a friend of mine who is currently Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies. Chuck posted this reflection about the first time he met Shirley Sherrod on Alternet on July 23rd and asked folks to consider reposting and linking on Facebook.

Prior to her appointment as Georgia State Director of Rural Development, Shirley Sherrod was a longtime staff person with the Federation of Southern Cooperatives. The Federation supports small farmers in Georgia to stay on their land by providing advocacy, technical assistance, credit and other services. One of the groups of small farmers whom the Federation supports, Southern Alternatives Agriculture Co-operative in southwest Georgia, provides Equal Exchange with the pecans that we sell as part of our Domestic Fair Trade program. While visiting Southern Alternatives, several Equal Exchange staff have had the honor to meet Shirley Sherrod. We were dismayed to hear about the treatment she has received and are proud to repost Chuck’s reflections about her.

My Meeting with Shirley Sherrod

Lost in the chatter about the firing of Shirley Sherrod and subsequent USDA apology is the unquestionable fact that she had devoted her entire life to economic justice.

In my view, she is a moral giant compared to shameful media celebrities,
like Sean Hannity or Bill O¹Reilly, that wrongly accused her of racism.

I met Shirley Sherrod in 1982, when I was 22 years old.

I was traveling in the South with Chuck Matthei, my colleague at the Institute for Community Economics.  Our organization was a national technical assistance provider to community land trusts for affordable housing, agriculture and land control.

It was hot-as-blazes when we pulled up to a small home and office on a rural byway outside Albany, Georgia.  Chuck knew the Sherrods from civil rights organizing days in the 1960s and 1970s and was trying to prepare his young colleague to meet people he considered as “movement elders.” (Shirley was a movement elder even then!).

“Reverend and Mrs. Sherrod were leaders in the Albany movement,” Chuck explained to me.    ”Shirley had been active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and had worked with Rev. King on desegregation struggles in the deep South.”

“The Sherrods,” Chuck explained with obvious respect, “had devoted their lives not just to civil rights protections but also to reversing several generations of black land loss in the rural south. They were interested in nonviolent action for civil rights, but were also greatly influenced by Gandhi’s ideas of nonviolent economics and village economics.”

The Sherrods were co-founders, in 1965, of a bold initiative called New Communities, Inc.  With help from Bob Swann and the Institute for Community Economics, they had acquired almost 6,000 acres of land to develop a land trust for housing and small farmers.

The Sherrods greeted us at their door and graciously welcomed us their kitchen table, serving us cold lemonade. We talked about the history and fate of New Communities. Later, we walked sections of the land and visited at some of the farm projects.

The vision for New Communities was that the organization would retain ownership of the land but lease the land for homes, farms and business. With the larger structure of support and financing, individual black families and farmers would be less vulnerable to losing their land.

Part of their inspiration was the Jewish National Fund.  The founders of New Communities had traveled to Israel to explore models of land tenure, like the kibbutzim, that held land in common for community advancement and development.

The Sherrods were gracious, but distraught.  The New Communities vision, by 1982, was on the ropes.  The hopes of raising large grants and resources for community development had been dashed. Ronald Reagan was President and his U.S.D.A was refusing to provide needed financing for farmers and support for irrigation projects at New Communities.

A large national insurance company held the remaining New Communities mortgage and was threatening to foreclose.  We strategized about ways to hold on to land by the agonizing process of selling off of portions.

Over the following years, I talked to Shirley and Charles on the phone in our unsuccessful efforts to prevent the loss of New Communities. It was heart-wrenching to hear the stress in their voices and I remember wishing we could do more.  Shirley went on to work with the Federation of Southern Cooperatives to provide technical assistance to farmers.

In 2009, a lawsuit fully vindicated the Sherrods.  The court decision acknowledged racial discrimination on the part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the years 1981 to 1985. New Communities was awarded $13 million for loss of land and income.  The Sherrods were each awarded funds for their personal pain and suffering, anguish that I personally witnessed.

The community land trust movement continues.  The National Community Land Trust network provides support for existing and emerging community land trusts.  At the last network convention, Shirley Sherrod was inspiring as the keynote speaker.

In my mind, Shirley Sherrod is someone to lift up and celebrate. I hope that the recent attention drawn to her will lead to a fuller telling of her contribution to economic justice.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Monday, July 12, 2010

WHAT CONNECTS YOUR CARROT TO THE CLIMATE CRISIS?

– New film showcases impact of industrial agriculture on global warming –

New York, NY – A new online film from WhyHunger, “The Food and Climate Connection: From Heating the Planet to Healing It,” highlights the impact of today’s global food system on the climate and how a community-based food movement around the world is bringing to life a way of farming and eating that’s better for our bodies and the planet. Featuring interviews with farmers, community leaders, and sustainability advocates, the film highlights how the industrial food system is among the greatest contributors to global warming and how sustainable farming practices can pose a powerful solution to the crisis.

“Industrial crop and livestock production is wreaking havoc on our planet and our health,” says Anna Lappé, author of Diet for a Hot Planet and featured in the film. “But the good news is sustainable farming methods can help cool the planet, foster food system resiliency, and promote biodiversity and healthy eating—all at the same time.”

Sustainable farming practices build soils rich in carbon and organic matter, creating more robust crops and land that is better able to withstand floods and droughts. Sustainable farming methods also reduce dependence on fossil fuels and petrochemicals and stores more carbon in the soil, helping reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

“Our leaders rarely discuss the food system and the climate crisis, yet food and agriculture directly and indirectly contribute to as much as one-third of total global emissions,” says Christina Schiavoni, director of the Global Movements Program at WhyHunger. “We cannot address climate change without addressing the food system.”

The film’s producers, including Schiavoni, Siena Chrisman and Monica Gagnon, and director Sara Grady, hope it will be a useful educational tool for communities and policy makers and inspire policies that will phase out fossil-fuel dependent agriculture and incentivize community-based and agroecological farming.

After a private screening for funders, media, and non-profit leaders in New York City last week, the film is now available online at WhyHunger’s Food Security Learning Center along with educational resources. The film will be shown as part of Lincoln Center’s “Green Screens” program on Thursday, July 29, 2010. For additional information about the film, please call Lisa Ann Batitto at 212-629-0853.

Interviews available with:

Christina Schiavoni: (212) 629-9788
Anna Lappé: (917) 476-4896

This week, Ms. Evelyn Nassuna, the Uganda Country Program Director of our partners Lutheran World Relief (LWR), testified before Congress about a pending U.S. development program.  In her comments, Ms. Nassuna stressed that work to support small-scale farmers is key in reducing poverty and hunger, and that the best programs are designed through consulting local communities and empowering women.  She noted, “Mrs. Bisaso and Mrs. Kate did not improve their families’ livelihoods overnight, and, to be honest, they still face challenges. But they have more stable access to food than ever before, and their diets (and those of their families) continue to improve.”

The testimony Ms. Nassuna of Uganda gave in the District of Columbia mirrored the comments made by Peruvian coffee farmer Arnaldo Neira earlier in California.  During an interview on KECG radio, Mr. Neira noted, “Well, we don’t only cultivate coffee, right? We also grow other products; we grow food for ourselves more than anything, and with our organized work we are trying to find the food security for the main family orchards and school orchards. This allows the diet for our children to be more balanced, and rich in vitamins. And well, we also have, apart from the growth of coffee, we also have fruit, and all mostly for self consumption – a lot of cultivation of bananas, yucca, and some beans.”

Testimony before Congress or running for office (which Mr. Neira has done) are important political acts. However, we can be mindful that although political elections occur every other year, every DAY we are voting with our dollars for the kind of economy and kind of world we want to build.   With the food we buy, the donations we make, and/or the political campaigns we fund, we are electing what kind of world we want to financially support.

When we choose to vote with our dollars to support small-scale farmers and their cooperatives, magical things happen.  The coffee you drink funds food security.  Your cup of tea galvanizes neighbors to come together and decide, democratically, how best to invest the co-op’s earnings.  The chocolate bar you melt in your ‘smore underwrites a seminar on organic production.

Reading the words of Ms. Nassuna or Mr. Neira, or hearing Mr. Del Gavillo, it is natural to want to support their work.  That we have the opportunity to support, through our everyday purchases, the work of them and their neighbors is beyond fair — it is a blessing.

By Nicholas Reid, Equal Exchange Natural Foods Sales Representative

Equal Exchange has credited co-ops with building Fair Trade coffee and making the alternative trade system possible, by keeping farmers organized in developing countries, and connecting them to consumers through co-ops like Equal Exchange and their local food co-ops. This October, while we celebrate Co-op and Fair Trade Month, and consider the values and successes of these two movements that are so intrinsically connected, Equal Exchange would like to push ourselves even further. The support and collaboration of co-ops is crucial to the future of organic coffee.

Declining yields due to soil exhaustion and global warming are threatening specialty coffee production, and the livelihoods of thousands of farming communities that rely on it. Once charged with making coffee cultivation economically viable for small-scale producers, Equal Exchange now asks co-ops to support those farmers in their efforts to adapt, innovate and invest in the future of high-quality, organic coffee.

The history of commercial farming in Latin America (and in the United States) is one of extreme short-sightedness, environmental destruction and an ever-increasing reliance on chemical and technological inputs. One need only look at the former sugar plantations of northeast Brazil, now deserts and agricultural wastelands, or the destruction of local communities and ecosystems that banana cultivation led to in Central America, to see that modern agriculture effectively raped the soil of nutrients, destroyed local flora and fauna that sustained the land, and nearly ended the possibility of human existence in those areas.

Specialty coffee grown by small-scale farmers is inherently a more sustainable form of agriculture than large scale plantations, but it, too, has felt the pressure of the corporate race to the scientific bottom. Regardless of our progress in the last 20 years, small farmers are struggling to compete, and scrambling to maintain healthy, productive farms and soil. Without the benefits of the three insidious sisters of modern chemical fertilizers (NPK) and carcinogenic pesticides, organic farmers are experiencing declining output and soil exhaustion. Traditional fertilizer techniques in composting and mulching are falling short.

Global warming, a global problem that disproportionately affects higher altitudes and subtropical regions, exactly where the majority of our coffee and cacao farmers operate, is exacerbating the problem. Changing weather, rainfall and temperature patterns are threatening coffee cultivation (and traditional agriculture, in general) around the world. The future of specialty coffee is perilous at best; organic production is threatened even further.

We, at Equal Exchange, believe it is our responsibility to support our farmer partners as they invest in modern, sustainable agricultural methods and adapt to climate change. We know we cannot rely on Monsanto or Cargill; big business cannot solve these problems. With that in mind, we have partnered with agronomists at the CESMACH co-operative, who approached Equal Exchange with a proposal for a soil fertility project in the communities in which they work.

The first round of the project, funded by Equal Exchange and carried out by CESMACH, concluded in the summer of 2010. It involved taking soil samples in the coffee communities of the co-op, to analyze the nutrient profiles. Armed with an overview of the health and deficiencies of the soil in each community, Equal Exchange and CESMACH are preparing to implement the next round of the project, which will be funded through food co-op sales in October (see below).

The second phase of the project will explore the potential to produce organic fertilizer to meet the specific needs of each community, using locally available, low-cost inputs. The goal is to develop guidelines for composting (and other alternative agricultural techniques) that individual farmers can use. In the long run, the hope is to develop more centralized services for soil improvement and progressive agriculture, such as a facility to manufacture fertilizers for members (and potentially to sell locally). Not only are we excited about the impact on small-scale, organic coffee production in Chiapas, but for the overall agricultural capacity in those communities: the ability to grow more food and more products to sell locally and abroad, and develop scalable models for all our partners around the world.

This October, the Equal Exchange coffee you buy at your local food co-op is funding sustainable advances in agriculture in Mexico, literally making the earth richer and securing organic coffee production for the long term. Examples of visionary collaborations like these are what make cooperative Fair Trade so inspiring. The products we consume have the potential to produce something incredibly powerful: to make farming communities stronger, and to build a healthier planet. We have the ability to buy a pound of excellent coffee and make a direct investment in a brighter future. That is Small Farmers. Big Change.

In honor of the co-ops that make these transactions possible, Equal Exchange is raising money with our co-op partners to invest in this inspiring initiative that epitomizes the value of co-operatives. For each product sold to co-ops in the month of October, Equal Exchange will donate 20 cents (up to $10,000) to the second phase of a soil fertility project in southern Mexico, spearheaded by the CESMACH co-operative. We hope that our efforts will not only result in higher yields and income for the co-op members, but will also create healthier ecosystems in coffee farming communities, and will build a sustainable model for soil rehabilitation for all the co-ops with which we work.

The following post was written by Cindy Eason, Food Service Sales Representative

Hi! My name is Cindy and I’m a Food Service Sales Rep and a new worker-owner track employee at Equal Exchange. I’ve been here for just about six months. The initial whirlwind of the new job is coming to a close and I am finally able to take a step back and evaluate what brought me to Equal Exchange in the first place and share a bit of newbie insight on some of the cool things I’m learning about Equal Exchange along my journey thus far.

While I’m new to Equal Exchange, I’m not new to coffee. My love of coffee is what led me on this path to Equal Exchange. I was a barista for a long while and I loved every minute of it – I loved working in cafés and crafting quality beverages for my customers. I loved learning new things about coffee – the way it’s harvested and processed, the way it’s roasted, the many ways it can be brewed and prepared. I loved practicing my skills every day and trying to perfect the art of espresso drinks! What has been great about being at Equal Exchange these last few months is that I still get a chance to play on the espresso machine in our Quality Control lab – I try to pull at least a few shots every day and spend a couple of hours in there on Fridays practicing my latte art so I don’t get too rusty! No, I promise I’m not trying to make you jealous– I’m just making a point to say that coffee is the path I took to Equal Exchange (and as a result, my love of coffee seems to be stronger than ever before!). But contrary to some of my early assumptions, coffee is not the only path that leads to Equal Exchange.

While high quality specialty coffee is the meat & potatoes of the operations here, what has been really interesting to me is discovering that there are a variety of reasons why folks make their way to Equal Exchange. And that heterogeneity is part of what makes us a unique, diverse and multi-talented gang. For example, for some of us the path here was paved by the fact that Equal Exchange pioneered the Fair Trade movement in the United States, creating Big Change in the lives of small farmers and changing the way coffee is traded. For others, it’s Equal Exchange’s commitment to sustainable and organic farming practices that enticed them to seek this place. Some wanted a job where they would know that they were making a difference on both a small and large scale. For others, still, it is the worker-ownership business model – the co-operative business model – that called them to be a part of Equal Exchange. For a variety of reasons (including reasons listed in
an earlier blog entry by Aaron Dawson), I want to elaborate on this last path a little bit more.

For my entire adult life, I have only ever been a part of the traditional business model. The extent of my co-op membership and base of knowledge has been limited to credit unions and a sporting goods store. Since starting at Equal Exchange my understanding has deepened, and I am learning about what it means to be a member of a worker-owned cooperative.  The more I learn about this alternative way of doing business, the more excited I am to be here and I want to share that excitement with others.

For those of you – like me – who may be new to the co-operative movement, you may not know that there are Seven Co-operative Principles. These principles serve as a guideline for putting one’s co-op values into practice, and co-ops around the world typically operate around these seven core values. In case you’re curious, here are the seven principles:

First Principle: Voluntary & Open Membership

Second Principle: Democratic Member Control

Third Principle: Member Economic Participation

Fourth Principle: Autonomy & Independence

Fifth Principle: Education, Training & Information

Sixth Principle: Co-operation among Co-operatives

Seventh Principle: Concern for the Community

I feel very fortunate to be able to see these seven principles in action, every single day. I can see them in the way my fellow workers want to be here, contribute financially to be here, and take responsibility in their time here. The principles are evident in the many ways Equal Exchange as a co-operative shows concern for the community (both locally and globally), and strengthens the cooperative movement by aligning itself with other local, national and international partners. And finally, Equal Exchange by nature is a learning institution, and that is one of the principles (the fifth one, in fact).

Two Co-op Principles in particular have excited and intrigued me the most in my short time here: Democratic Member Control and Education and Training & Information. I’d love to share with you a small glimpse of what those look like:

2nd Principle: Democratic Member Control:

In my short while here, I’ve had the opportunity to observe democratic member control in its finest forms: elections for board membership, elections for worker-owner coordinator, and worker-ownership votes. I’ve observed worker-owners participating in goal setting, policy and decision making, as well as worker-owner meetings where worker-owners have stood up and expressed how they feel on a particular topic or issue. I’ve seen worker-owners reflect on last year’s goals, take ownership of both successes and failures and open themselves up for the community to address questions and/or concerns. In its simplest form, democratic member control means that each member of this co-operative has equal voting rights (one member, one vote) and has a voice that can be heard if they have something to say. Democratic Member Control is evident in the fact that each level of the organization is organized democratically and meetings are held in a democratic, respectful and efficient fashion. And I’m amazed every day that the beauty in this democratic member control is the active participation in it. Worker-owners want to actively engage in this democracy and that is invaluable in a workplace. It’s not something you get to see every day outside of these walls, and it’s definitely something I wish everyone could see and experience.

5th Principle: Education, Training and Information:

This is perhaps the strongest of the seven principles that I’ve been able to witness and actively participate in during my short time here. Every Thursday morning, we have what’s called Exchange Time – a presentation/discussion/activity of sorts presented to all staff on a variety of topics – kind of like a classroom, where people take notes and ask questions. Some recent Exchange Time topics have included an overview of the role of our Board of Directors, a trip report from a tea delegation to India, a discussion about the economics of Fair Trade, and trip reports focusing on coffee quality from Colombia and Uganda – just to name a few. It’s a fantastic opportunity to learn from your peers, because we all have some knowledge to share with one another. The added beauty of these Exchange Times is that they are all recorded and can be checked out of our library at any time. And yes, it’s true! We have a library – the library houses hundreds of books, magazines, videos and other reference tools ranging in topics from coffee production & preparation to group facilitation and everything in between! Equal Exchange is truly an educational space and a community of teachers and learners. The old adage is true around here, “you learn something new every day”.

I mentioned at the beginning of this long babble that I’m on the worker-owner track right now. What that means is that I have work to do and a curriculum to follow. It means that now is my time to listen, learn, ask questions and present myself as a potential future worker-owner. Now is the perfect time to reflect about these very things: like what it means to be a worker-owner in a co-operative, and how I fit in to that model. It’s an exciting time of discovery and learning – both myself discovering Equal Exchange, and the worker-owners of Equal Exchange discovering and learning more about me. It’s especially exciting because it is becoming clearer to me that once you’re in it, you’re in it with each and every one of your fellow worker-owners,
and together you own it. And I’m truly looking forward to exploring what that path looks like when the time comes.

Maude Barlow: ‘The World Has Divided into Rich and Poor as at No Time in History’
July 2, 2010 by Democracy Now!

As world leaders gathered in Toronto for the G20 summit last week, leading activists from around the world joined thousands in Toronto’s Massey Hall to oppose the G20 agenda. Maude Barlow was one of the key speakers at the event. She heads the Council of Canadians, Canada’s largest public advocacy organization, and is a founder of the Blue Planet Project. This is a part of what she had to say.

MAUDE BARLOW: On the eve of this G-20 gathering, let’s look at a few facts. Fact, the world has divided into rich and poor as at no time in our history.

*The richest 2% own more than half the household wealth in the world.

*The richest 10% hold 85% of total global assets and the bottom half of humanity owns less than 1% of the wealth in the world.

*The three richest men in the world have more money than the poorest 48 countries.

Fact, while those responsible for the 2008 global financial crisis were bailed out and even rewarded by the G-20 government’s gathering here, the International Labor Organization tells us that in 2009, 34 million people were added to the global unemployed, swelling those ranks to 239 million, the highest ever recorded.

Another 200 million are at risk in precarious jobs and the World Bank tells us that at the end of 2010, another 64 million will have lost their jobs.

By 2030, more than half the population of the megacities of the Global South will be slumdwellers with no access to education, health care, water, or sanitation.

Fact, global climate change is rapidly advancing, claiming at least 300,000 lives and $125 billion in damages every year. Called the silent crisis, climate change is melting glaciers, eroding soil, causing freak and increasingly wild storms, displacing untold millions from rural communities to live in desperate poverty in peri-urban centers.

 Almost every victim lives in the Global South in communities not responsible for greenhouse gas emissions and not represented here at the summit.

The atmosphere has already warmed up a full degree in the last several decades and is on course to warm up another two degrees by 2100. In fact, half the tropical forests in the world, the lungs of our ecosystem, are gone. By 2030, at the present rate of extraction or so-called harvest, only 10% will be left standing.

90% of the big fish in the sea are gone, victim to wanton predatory fishing practice. Says a prominent scientist studying their demise, there is no blue frontier left. Half the world’s wetlands, the kidneys of our ecosystem, have been destroyed in the 20th century. Species extinction is taking place at a rate 1,000 times greater than before humans existed.

According to a Smithsonian science, we are headed toward a biodiversity deficit in which species and ecosystems will be destroyed at a rate faster than nature can replace them with new ones.

Fact, we are polluting our lakes, rivers and streams to death. Every day, two million tons of sewage and industrial agricultural waste are discharged into the world’s water. That’s the equivalent of the entire human population of 6.8 billion people. The amount of waste water produced annually is about six times more water than exists in all the rivers of the world. We are mining our ground water faster than we can replenish it, sucking it to grow water guzzling chemical-fed crops in deserts or to water thirsty cities who dump an astounding 700 trillion liters of land-based water into oceans every year as waste.

The global mining industry sucks up another 800 trillion liters which it also leaves behind as poison and fully one-third of global water withdrawals are now used to produce biofuels, enough water to feed the world.

Nearly three billion people on our planet do not have running water within a kilometer of their home and every eight seconds, somewhere in our world, a child is dying of waterborne disease.

The global water crisis is getting steadily worse with reports of countries from India to Pakistan to Yemen facing depletion. The World Bank says that by 2030, demand for water will outstrip supply by 40%. This may sound just like a statistic, but the suffering behind that is absolutely unspeakable.

Fact, knowing there will not be enough food and water for all in the near future, wealthy countries and global investment pension and hedge funds are buying up land and water, fields and forests in the Global South, creating a new wave of invasive colonialism that will have huge geopolitical ramifications. Rich countries faced by food shortages have already bought up an area in Africa alone more than twice the size of the United kingdom.

Now I don’t think I exaggerate if I say that our world has never faced a greater set of threats and issues that it does today. So what are the twenty leaders who have gathered here, some already here and the others coming in tonight, what are they going to talk about over the next two days? By the way, their summit costs $1 million a minute. By the way, we figure it’s going to be closer to $2 billion when it’s finished and the annual budget to run the United Nations is $1.9 billion. I assure you, they are not going to tackle the above issues in any serious way.

The declarations have already been drafted, the failures already spun. Instead, this global royalty who have more in common with one another than they do with their own citizens and are here really to advance the issues and interest of their class are also here just to advance the status quo that serves the interest of the elite in their own countries and the business community or the B-20, the new term, a community that will get private and privileged access to advance their free market solutions to these eager leaders.

The agenda is more of the bad medicine that made the world sick in the first place. Environmental deregulation, unbridled financial speculation, unlimited growth, unregulated free trade, relentless resource exploitation, tax cuts for the wealthy, cuts to Social Security and a war on working people. In other words, savage capitalism.

Now let’s look at our own country here and the assault that has been launched on the work of generations of Canadians toward a just society. Stephen Harper’s government has cut the heart out of any group that dissents, from First Nations people, to women, to international agencies and church groups like KAIROS, Alternative, and the Canadian Council for International Cooperation.

AMY GOODMAN: Maude Barlow, one of the major speakers at the event at Massey Hall on Friday night. Three thousand people packed-in to the Toronto event. This was at the same time the G8 and then the G20 met. Between 900 and 1,000 people are believed to have been arrested, the largest mass arrest in Canadian history. Among them, many journalists. More than a billion dollars it’s believed were spent on so-called security, the most expensive security event in Canadian history.

by Aaron Dawson, Interfaith Customer Service Manager

At Equal Exchange, we talk a lot about co-ops but we don’t always talk about our co-op.

That is why last November, our Marketing Director, Dia Cheney and I led an exercise with the worker owners of Equal Exchange: we asked them to list what they valued about working at a worker owned co-operative, and what made the experience different from working at another type of organization. The original goal of the exercise was to help worker owners find ways to talk about what is so special about our organization and help them feel more comfortable talking to others about our co-op. Clearly, our broader goal was that worker owners would help spread the word about the benefits of working for a co-op and share the excitement we feel about owning our own organization.

One exciting realization that we got coming out of that meeting was that all of the talking points we developed during that meeting fit pretty neatly within the framework of the Seven Co-op Principles, with the exception of Principle 1: Open & Voluntary Membership and Principle 6: Cooperation amongst Co-operatives. In the end though, despite getting some great stuff that seemed to fit pretty well within the co-op principles and getting people thinking about what it really means to be a part of a worker co-op, we felt we were still missing the piece about how to get the worker owner voice out there to the public!

Thus, on May 6^th, the day before our Annual Worker Owner Meeting (the meeting in which the worker owners vote for Equal Exchange Board members and other co-op representatives), Dia and I, along with the help of others in the organization, planned a follow up event.

And what an event it was! We took the worker owner talking points and printed each one onto a laminated green paper leaf.  We then created a five branched tree using brown construction paper. Each branch represented a different co-op principle, and it had two big roots, one with the different types of co-ops that we work with (producer, consumer, worker, etc…) representing Principle 6: Cooperation amongst Co-operatives, and the other root which all the worker owners signed to represent Principle 1: Open and Voluntary Membership. We then distributed the leaves and had the participants decide which Co-op Principle each talking point leaf represented.

During the second part of the meeting, we asked each person in the room commit to a different “co-op challenge”, where everyone in attendance committed themselves to doing one or two things to help get the word out about worker co-ops and co-ops in general. Some of these commitments included: contacting a local school to get them to include education materials on co-ops, do a presentation about co-ops at a local church or university, or write a piece about working in a worker cooperative on our blog.

At the end of these exercises, we read out our commitments and then put up the leaves on the co-op tree. As you can see by the photo, it was certainly a successful exercise. And hopefully the other result that comes out of this exercise is that you will be hearing more from us about us and about the unique organization that we work for; and… well, I get to cross off one commitment from my own list with this piece!

… at La Montanita Food Co-op in Santa Fe!