2362 Bancroft Way
Berkeley, CA 94704
USA
Lessons from the Landless: Food Sovereignty, Occupation, and Public Universities
What is the connection between occupations, food sovereignty, and public education? The Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil has some answers! As important educational spaces, their occupations challenge the capitalist orientation of agricultural education in the conflicts between agribusiness and agroecology, private property and the public good. A leader from the MST will facilitate a discussion on how occupations of University farmland in Brazil and California can create bridges for important exchanges of experience and help build the Food Sovereignty movement.
Joelci Dannacena has been a militant organizer with The Landless Rural Workers Movement of Brazil (MST) sector of the MST for over twenty years, with degrees in economics and cooperative administration. Her main tasks have been the organization of agroindustries for the produce of agrarian reform settlements. She is currently hosted here in the Bay Area as one of several young organizers sent by the MST to deepen relations with US-based movements for food sovereignty, agrarian reform, and anti-oppression.
Joelci will introduce the MST and explain why they struggle for land, agrarian reform, and the transformation of society. Then she will talk about the current MST occupation of farmland owned by the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil. (http://www.mstbrazil.org/news/students-declare-support-landless-families-occupying-esalq-area).
She welcomes and invites all those interested in food sovereignty and justice to join in discussion, especially those who have participated in Occupy the Farm and the local food sovereignty struggle over the Gill Tract Farm at UC Berkeley.
Also present will be:
– Gustavo Oliveira, a PhD candidate in geography at UC Berkeley. He has worked as translator for La Via Campesina since 2009 and currently participates in the Friends of the MST solidarity network in the US.
– Rebecca Tarlau, part of the national coordinating committee of the Friends of the MST in the United States and also a scholar of the MST Education system. She is currently a Postdoctoral Scholar in Education at Stanford University.