The next Paro Agrario and another request for your help in promoting the May 2014 Organized Labour Delegation
Stewart Vriesinga
We --the CPT Colombia Team-- would once again like to enlist your help in promoting the May 2014 Organized Labour Delegation. Attached are two posters that can be used to promote the delegation in your places of work, study, recreation, worship, and activism etc..
Posters can be effective, but tapping someone you know and think might benefit from the experience on the shoulder may be even more effective.
Canada can be described as having entered into a post-industrial era as industry continues to relocate to relatively cheap labour markets offshore. Delegates on this delegation will come to see how job-loss and stagnation at home is directly related to the brutal repression and disregard for the rights of labourers abroad. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Colombia, the most dangerous place on earth to be affiliated with organized labour.
Yet Colombian workers continue to resit and organize. Can they provide the inspiration that will help their wealthier northern counterparts overcome feelings of powerlessness and resignation? Participating in this delegation is one way to find out!
It is looking more and more like this delegation will be arriving during the second Parro Agraio --rural workers and indigenous peoples general strike. The previous Paro Agrario last August included a very broad coalition of campesinos, indigenous peoples, farmers and traditional artisanel miners and resulted in five large demonstrations in Bogotá and in 30 of the 32 major cities, including the departments of Putumayo, Nariño, Cauca, Valle, Boyaca, Cundinamarca, Antioquia and Caquetá. The issues included land tenure, control over local resources, and end to Free Trade Agreements, etc. The government agreed to enter into a an agrarian social contract with interested parties. The popular organizations used the Cumbre Agraria --the Agrarian Summit-- and protest march in Bogota on the 17th of March to reiterate their demands, and has given the government until May to respond before launching a second civil strike.
Our Colombian partner CAHUCOPANA --a grass-roots human rights organization-- is very much part of this movement, and are also the ones who will be co-hosting the Organized Labour Delegation.
Open attachments to see full-sized versions of the thumbnail posters pasted below:
Thanks!
Stewart Vriesinga
of Christian Peacemaker Teams, Colombia
No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption. –Paulo Freire
CONTACT INFORMATION:
Stewart in Colombia:
Cell Phones: Colombia: 313 420 5613; Canada: 647 567 7665
Christian Peacemaker Teams Colombia:
Phone: (57) 7 602 3617
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