Music Benefit for a Green Guatemala

The Farmers Solidarity Project a non-profit based in Highland Park is hosting a fundraiser on July 18, 2009 at the Reformed Church of Highland Park at 5:00pm. In August a delegation of volunteers will be going to Guatemala to work with CONIC, a social movement organization that fights for land reform, food sovereignty, and indigenous rights. We will be helping plant trees and set up computers for schools and farmer cooperatives. Proceeds from the event will support the cost of supplies.

Cost: Suggested donation of $5 for children 12 and under; $10 for students/seniors/low-income; $15 for adults; vendor tables $20.

Performers Include: Human Adult Band, Jazz Trio (Miles Cheang, Kaz Araki & Drew Edwards); Isabel Ruano, Highland Park Jazz Quartet.

It will be a fantastic evening of excellent music, Guatemalan food, and lots and lots of fun for the whole family. Here is an opportunity to pull our resources together, join us in our efforts to enrich the lives of indigenous Latino communities at home and abroad.  For more information contact wkramer@access4less.net.

In much of the developing world, family farms and cooperatives are critical to fighting poverty and supporting sustainable development. Families can support themselves, send their children to school, and create local jobs for others. However, in recent years, the rapid expansion of corporate agribusiness has demolished small family farms, increasing poverty and migration. Trade agreements like the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and the World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) Agreement on Agriculture, are expected to deepen these problems.

To protect their way of life from extinction farmers around the world have built strong grassroots organizations. Peasant farmers have built one of the strongest social movements in the world today. This movement has demonstrated the capacity to organize and mobilize at the grassroots level against corporate power in food and agriculture, free trade, groups like the WTO, the World Bank, and the International Monitary Fund.

Farmers around the world face desperate times, partly due to U.S.trade and agricultural policies.  Some are driven to suicide (over 100,000 in India) and others migrate to cities or other countries in search of work. But they are also building national and international movements to fight for fair trade and agricultural policies.  And they form, as one observer noted, “the most important source of democratic transformation in national and international politics.”

For more information, you can contact William Kramer, at wkramer (at) access4less.net
On behalf of family farmers in Latin America and across the globe, we thank you.

Locations of Local Farmer’s Markets

Below is a map of locations of farmer’s markets in and around the Greater New Brunswick and Rutgers area.