March Toward a Better World
(part of a global day of action–download poster at bottom of article)
Saturday, January 26, Burlington, VT 2:30
Starting from the UVM Davis Center to Downtown Burlington
March to Unite the common themes of:
Troops Home Now!
Health Care is a Right
Climate Justice Now!
Many Struggles, One Movement!
Social movements from around the world have called for an international mobilization on January 26, 2008. We call on Vermont organizations to be part of this international struggle against war, racism, sexism and corporate rule which produce violence, exploitation, poverty, hunger and ecological disaster and deprive people of human rights. We believe in the slogan of the World Social Forum, from which this call emerges, “another world is possible,” and we call on Vermont organizations and individuals to act together for another world.
We invite organizations and individuals in Vermont to undertake throughout the week of January 21-27 creative actions, activities, events and convergences focusing on the issues of their choice, and we call for one united, public demonstration on Saturday, January 26 in Burlington.
We recognize that workers, veterans, people of color, women, youth and the LBGT community are disproportionately affected by these crises. The unjust war in Iraq uses working-class people and people of color as cannon fodder, and its costs starve public services and public education. Our healthcare “system” leaves 63,000 Vermonters uninsured, overworks and underpays front-line healthcare workers, and cannot even care for our returning veterans. The brunt of climate change will be born by people of color, indigenous peoples and countries of the Global South, with Hurricane Katrina being a perfect example of the lethal intersection between poverty, racism and global warming. We are committed to make sure that voices from the groups and communities most affected by these crises are heard in this action.
Sponsored by: Iraq Veterans Against the War, Vermont Workers’ Center, Global Justice Ecology Project, Central Vermont WILPF, Peace and Justice Center, Student Labor Action Project (SLAP)
FOLLOWING THE MARCH:
4-6pm on Saturday, January 26
GLOBAL WARMING PANEL
featuring international climate justice activists from Europe:
Larry Lohmann, The Corner House, author of Carbon Trading: a Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatization and Power
Jutta Kill, FERN, activist working on climate change and protection of forests and forest peoples’ rights
Contois Auditorium, Burlington City Hall (corner of Church and Main Streets, Burlington)
(Snacks and Beverages will be served)
Larry Lohmann has worked since 1997 with the Corner House, a research and solidarity organization based in the UK (https: www.thecornerhouse.org.uk). During the 1980s he lived and worked in Thailand, teaching and working with local environmental groups. He has degrees from Cornell and Princeton and has been a visiting fellow at Yale University. Lohmann is co-author of Pulping the South: Industrial Tree Plantations and the Global Paper Economy (1996) and Whose Common Future? Reclaiming the Commons (1993) and co-editor of The Struggle for Land and the Fate of the Forests (1993). His articles on globalization, racism, environmental conflict in Southeast Asia and the discourses of population and neoclassical economics have appeared in journals such as Science as Culture, New Scientist, Asian Survey, International Journal of Pollution and Environment, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Development Dialogue, Red Pepper, Foreign Policy in Focus, Development Today, Environmental Conservation, Comciencia, and Watershed, as well as in numerous scholarly books. Over 350,000 copies of his latest book, Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatization and Power (2006) have been downloaded from the internet.
Jutta Kill is the Climate Change Campaign Coordinator campaigner for FERN, the Forests and the European Union Resource Network. Created in 1995, FERN works to achieve greater environmental and social justice, focusing on forests and the rights of forest dwelling peoples. Ms. Kill maintains SinksWatch, a project that monitors the development of carbon offset projects around the world and proposes just and effective alternatives to offset trading. Since 2005, she has been working to document the impacts on local livelihoods in the communities that are most directly affected by recent European Union biofuel initiatives.
Top Right: March at the G8 protest in Rostock, Germany 6/07. Photo: Langelle/ GJEP
1:26_poster_color.pdf
