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	Food sovereignty by War on Want, Health, Poverty Action United Kingdom   The Global South is being drained of resources by the rest of the world and it is losing far more each year than it gains. Africa alone loses $192 billion each year to the rest of the world. This is mainly in profits made by foreign companies, tax dodging and the costs of adapting to climate change. Whilst rich countries often talk about the aid their countries give to Africa, this is in fact less than $30 billion each year. Even when you add this to foreign investment, remittances and other resources that flow into the continent, Africa still suffers an overall loss of $58 billion every year. The idea that we are aiding Africa is flawed; it is Africa that is aiding the rest of the world.   This money that Africa loses each year is over one and half times the amount of additional money needed to deliver affordable health care to everyone in the world. If the rest of the world continues to raid Africa at the same rate, over the next 10 years $580 billion will be lost by the African people.   Many of Africa’s loses directly benefit rich countries. They are a result of policies and practices that drain Africa and keep its people in poverty. These include tax dodging, unfair trade policies and the practices of multinational companies, and the brain drain of skilled workers.   http://www.healthpovertyaction.org/campaigns/honest-accounts/ http://jubileedebt.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Honest-accounts_Briefing.pdf http://www.globalpolicy.org/   Food sovereignty. (War on Want)   There are more than 870 million people living in hunger. But this is not a consequence of poor global harvests or natural disasters. Hunger on this scale is the result of a global economy in which hundreds of millions of small farmers, fisherfolk, pastoralists and indigenous people have faced ruin through the hijacking of the global food system by large agribusiness and food retailers.   The global food system is in crisis. Decisions about what is produced, what is consumed and who has access to food are defined by multinational corporations that control the entire food chain. These companies have continued to make billions even as record numbers of people go hungry. In the midst of the food crisis, companies such as Cargill, Unilever and supermarket chain Tesco have reported record profits.   The dominant model for dealing with the food crisis is to address the ‘food security’ needs of countries and peoples. This model - backed by the UK government and many British NGOs - is based on market solutions to the problems of world hunger, with food treated as just another commodity to be traded on global markets. It is a model based on free trade in agricultural commodities, on corporate-owned technology and on greater private sector control of food production and distribution. It is a model that has failed.   Together with its partners in Brazil, Sri Lanka and Mozambique, and in the wider movement of La Via Campesina, War on Want is committed to the alternative model of "food sovereignty", an approach to the food crisis that prioritises people"s right to food, agro-ecology and a global food system free of corporate control. These pages provide an introduction to the concept of food sovereignty, as well as many examples of how it has enabled local communities to fight off hunger.   http://www.waronwant.org/overseas-work/food-sovereignty http://www.waronwant.org/news/latest-news/17964-food-sovereignty-under-attack-by-corporate-interests Visit the related web page
	50 Years Later: Why We Must Remember by Peter Edelman Talk Poverty, NAACP, agencies USA   Last week we celebrated the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the greatest and most important advance in civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. The week before we marked the horrible murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner in Mississippi, as part of a remembrance of the 1964 Freedom Summer.   We have to remember all of it. So many American children growing up today – even college and graduate students – know nothing of it. They have probably heard of Dr. King, but that’s about it.   We have to remember the murders and the lynchings just as we have to remember the Holocaust. History does repeat itself. There is no certain immunization against going backwards, but the best chance of preventing retrogression is to remember, to be vigilant, and to be ready to act when we see signs of it appearing.   And we have to remember the achievements. Now is a time when many people despair of continuing progress toward justice in all of its forms – racial, economic, and social.   We need to remember the courage – of the people of Mississippi and residents of other Jim Crow states, and also those who came from elsewhere to fight for change. These are people who put their lives on the line to confront awful injustice that seemed to be permanently entrenched.   We need to remember the power of movements that expressed the power of many – really the only kind of power that can fight the power of money and bigotry today.   We need to remember that progressive politics made into law by elected officials can truly be the art of the possible, not merely a continuing exercise in futility. We need to remember that deep and corrosive injustice need not take the explicit form of state-mandated segregation. Mass incarceration, predatory lending and other strategies of residential segregation, horrible public schools, and more – these are the structural and institutional forms of racism in the 21st century.   I went to Mississippi with Robert Kennedy in 1967, where we saw extreme malnutrition that bordered on starvation – the ultimate result of which was the food stamp program we have today. The near-starvation is gone but severe and persistent poverty persists. The political class in Mississippi has discovered that – even with the right to vote and the fact of numerous African-American elected officials – assuring the continuance of deep poverty helps to keep the real power equation as it is.   To a great degree in Mississippi and elsewhere, the racism of the 21st century is one laced with a new apartheid of poverty and exclusion – one that also encompasses the people of Appalachia, of Indian reservations, and of towns like Port Clinton, Ohio where deindustrialization has engendered the same loss of hope and social disintegration.   One powerful point that Ta-Nehisi Coates makes in his must-read Atlantic article, ‘The Case for Reparations,’ is that 18th century rebellions against slavery included both slaves and white indentured servants, until the white power structure figured out how to pry the whites away from their interracial alliance.   The civil rights movement was, among other things, an endeavor of black and white together – a bonding based on a joint fight against evil even though the partners were not similarly situated in their suffering.   We need to once again find that kind of politics: one that cuts across racial, ethnic, and class lines to pursue those issues directly affecting the daily struggles of the people at the heart of the movement; and one that simultaneously maintains and articulates the identities and unique histories of people of color. Neither will suffice by itself.   This, too, is part of the proper commemoration of the events of half a century ago.   * Peter Edelman is a Professor of Law at the Georgetown Law Center, and the Faculty Director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality.   http://talkpoverty.org/2014/07/10/50-years-later-must-remember/ http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/ http://www.centerforsocialinclusion.org/how-policy-creates-racial-health-disparities/   http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/tackle-racial-disparity-wisconsins-capital-community-leaders-start-young/ http://www.aecf.org/m/resourcedoc/AECF-RaceforResults-2014.pdf http://datacenter.kidscount.org/ http://www.aecf.org/resources/data-snapshot-on-high-poverty-communities/ http://www.naacp.org/
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