*[Enwl-eng] A Note from Greta Zarro, WBW Organizing Director
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Nov 24, 2021, 8:59:55 AM11/24/21
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to "ENWL-uni"
itself
Dear,
Before I joined World BEYOND War, I didn’t know much
about the extent of the military-industrial complex.
It’s a funny thing that the biggest institutional
consumer of petroleum on the planet & the 3rd
biggest polluter of U.S. waterways — the U.S. military —
is so little discussed. It’s almost so big that it’s
hidden — the metaphoric “elephant in the room.”
I grew up in a small organic food store owned and
operated by my parents in Pittsburgh, PA. Growing up, I
wasn’t exposed much to activism, but through my parents’
store, I learned about the environmental impacts of our
choices and our broken food system. I knew the problems
we were facing as a species and as a planet required
systems-level thinking and policy change, but I didn’t
know about the power of organizing yet.
After college, I took a job with Food & Water
Watch as New York Organizer and became immersed in the
world of community organizing, legislative advocacy, and
coalition building. I was awakened to the efficacy of
using our people power — our strength in numbers — to
put strategic pressure on key decision-makers to enact
the change that we want to see, to put people and the
planet before profit.
But war was never talked about — despite its role as
a leading contributor to climate chaos.
Meanwhile, I moved out of New York City to live
Upstate on a farm. I had realized that as I was
protesting a flawed system that values profit over
people and the planet, I was trapped in the very things
that I opposed. I developed my 2-pronged approach which
combines 1) policy advocacy through grassroots
organizing, using tactics from petitions to rallying to
direct action, with 2) lifestyle changes at the
individual and community level, like gardening and
reducing fossil fuel consumption, to lower your carbon
footprint and reduce dependency on multinational
corporations. This second prong is in itself a means of
civilian based defense, of withdrawing our cooperation
from the system as we become more self-sufficient
individually and communally.
We are striving to live out this 2-pronged approach
at Unadilla Community
Farm, an off-grid organic farm and non-profit
permaculture education center in New York State. We
create a space for the teaching and practice of
sustainable skills, such as organic farming, plant-based
cooking, natural building, and off-grid solar energy
production, alongside community organizing.
Working at World BEYOND War offers me the chance to
work remotely while living off-grid on the farm, to live
out the 2-pronged approach. I see my farming and
anti-war activism as intimately interconnected to expose
the impact of militarism on the environment and teach
practical, sustainable skills like organic farming and
natural building, to withdraw our cooperation from the
military-industrial complex.
Through our distributed organizing model, our
chapters and affiliates take the lead by working on
strategic issues of importance to their local
communities, such as divesting their cities from weapons
or shutting down a military base in their community. As
a global network across 192 countries, we can use our
international reach to amplify local issues and
facilitate strategizing among activists around the
world, contextualizing local campaigns within the
broader call for war abolition.
Should giant war-profiteering
corporations decide what emails you don't want to read?
We don't think so either. So, please stop our emails
from going into "junk" or "spam" by "white listing,"
marking as "safe," or filtering to "never send to
spam."
World BEYOND War | 513 E Main St #1484 |
Charlottesville, VA 22902
USA
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