That is encouraging. Anything you'd like to add before we wrap this up?
I'm finishing a book right now with a colleague that will be published by Rethinking Schools, called A People's Curriculum for the Earth. We're collecting some of the best writing on teaching for environmental justice that has been published in Rethinking Schools magazine, and that has been submitted by educators around the country. The final piece in the book is a role play I'm about to teach with a number of other teachers here about La Via Campesina, the largest social movement in the world, with about 200 million people in its member organizations. (But try finding a mention of it in a commercial textbook.) In working on the role play, I've come to see much more clearly how all this work is connected. The vision of agro-ecology, local production, resistance to Monsanto and genetically engineered seeds, treating food as a part of culture, rather than simply as a commodity in a global market -- everything that La Via Campesina calls food sovereignty " it's all connected. Food is a climate issue, it's a jobs issue, it's an economic equality issue, it's a public health issue and on and on. Working on this has been a reminder that when we deal with one issue, it's linked to others. I find that very hopeful.
Why do you find that hopeful, Bill? How can people learn more about La Via Campesina? I'm intrigued and I'm sure our readers will be as well.
I find it hopeful because sometimes it seems that the world is more and more a collection of injustices. When we think of mountaintop removal coal mining, privatization of water, theft of indigenous lands, oil spills in the Gulf, defunding of public education and on and on " it can feel overwhelming. But when we approach any one of these issues deeply, and search out the connections, we find that the solution to one problem is the solution to others. La Via Campesina has a website, http://viacampesina.org/en/. I learned about it through Food First, which is based in Oakland. Food First has played an important role in popularizing the work of La Via Campesina, and also leading "food sovereignty" trips around the world to meet with peasant activists. A few years ago, I went on one of these to the Basque Country in Spain, hosted by EHNE, the Basque Peasant Union.
I bet that was a wow of a trip.
Yes. EHNE activists were all about building ties between small farmers and consumers, and also fighting land grabs by high speed railroads. But they saw their work as part of a worldwide movement of peasants. They were local activists in the deepest sense, but they saw themselves as part of a much broader movement against privatization and capitalist globalization; and for solidarity and democracy.
It sounds fabulous. And I can't wait to read your new book when it comes out. Save me a copy, please. Thanks so much for talking with me today and for your efforts to make Scholastic Inc. do its ethical duty as a trusted name in our schools.
Thanks, Joan. Will do. And thanks for your important work, too.
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