The Free

Seeds Collective plants Life and Abundance in Communities Eng/Esp

from Kaosenlared, by Nicolás Esperante, translation thefreeonline, illustrations added

Argentina. Seed collectivization: life and abundance in the hands of the communities

# #FortaleciendolaAgroecología

| Despite having come with the impulse of the neoliberal governments -which thirty years ago settled in the region-, the industrial model implemented in the agroforestry zone of northeastern Argentina ran into a fundamental resistance factor: the Organic Agriculture Network of Missions. (la Red de Agricultura Orgánica de Misiones.)

A group of farmers, associations and NGOs that understand that production and sustainability are not contradictory terms. We review the history of RAOM and its activism in favor of agroecology in the province and in the region, through the testimony of Gerardo Segovia *.

The province of Misiones, located in the Mesopotamian region, received the impact of the 1990s with the same fate as the rest of the Southern Cone: the monoculture model and its consequent technological package arrived to install the practices that neoliberalism imposed as a plan of looting natural resources in the region.

In the province -one of the smallest in the country, but with enormous water resources and unique biodiversity-, the proposal focused on strengthening a forestry-industrial, tourism and energy plan based on large dams, and on the forestry model of monocultures, planting large areas of pine.

Faced with this growing scenario, in May 1993 the first Organic Agriculture Conference was organized at the Eldorado Agrotechnical School. In those four days of workshops and debates, says Gerardo, “the need arose to create a network that communicates, that articulates the number of farmers who were dispersed in the province and who were developing what historically they knew how to do, which was working with crops that are compatible with the forest and with natural cycles, and that fought for an agroecological development model ”.

Misiones.. Argentina

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20 Nov 1970- Women storm Miss World as 100 million viewers Learn Feminism

‘The spectacle is vulnerable,’ proclaimed the pamphlet Why Miss World? And so it proved to be on 20 November 1970, when activists from the nascent women’s liberation movement deployed rattles, chants, banners, flour, smoke bombs, stink bombs, ripe tomatoes and bundles of cascading leaflets to disrupt the 1970 Miss World pageant at London’s Albert Hall, in front of a global television audience of a hundred million people.

from ·Red Pepper with thanks.. illustrations added

Why Miss World? Misbehaving

A new edited volume emphasises that the personal is political and highlights the power of spectacular direct action, says Alice Robson

Misbehaving: stories of protest against the Miss World contest and the beauty industry tells the stories of those who took part in the action in their own words, but does much more than merely record the night’s events, with writers sharing what brought them to the movement and how it changed their lives. In doing so, it contributes to our understanding of 1970s struggles, and to questions that resonate beyond that historical moment.

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Kill the Bill: Travellers/Gypsies to be ‘ethnically cleansed’ by the British draconian law

Travellers will be ‘ethnically cleansed’ by the British government’s draconian law proposals that criminalise their way of life

by Chris Sweeney @Writes_Sweeney via RT

Horses graze in a field next to travellers during the horse fair in Appleby in Westmorland, Cumbria

Most of the controversy over the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill has raged around its effect on protests, yet very little attention is being given to how it will decimate a historic way of life for thousands of people.

Britain is more divided than at any other time in living memory. There are protests about protests, exemplified by the wave of reaction following the police action at the public vigil for murder victim Sarah Everard.

It has also been heightened by a mammoth piece of legislation engineered by Home Secretary Priti Patel, The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. Predictably, there’s been a backlash, mainly because it allows the police to control the start and end times of demonstrations even if they only have one member, which some feel is an eradication of the right to protest.

But hidden deeper are less discussed powers that target the Gypsy, Roma and Travelling (GRT) community in Britain. GRT people have been in the UK since 1515 and their numbers are estimated at around 120,000 today, but some put this as high as 300,000.

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