A Conversation with Michael Hardt, at the Taft Research Center.

Time of the Writer Festival, 14-19 March. More details here.

Want to know what a sustainable climate-change-proof agricultural system might look like? Here’s an example from Cuba, in an academic paper written by my friend, comrade, and former boss, Peter Rosset, together with folk from Cuba’s peasant agriculture movement. The article’s free to download (for now), but the key parts from the abstract are: Keep Reading »

Some good news – the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has scored a major victory in Southern Florida. Read about it on their site or, if you prefer, the New York Times.

Here’s a piece that I wrote for The Guardian about the global rise in food prices. Think of this inflation as a neutron-bomb-style inflation: a kind that goes after workers, but leaves their homes and places of work intact. Trouble is that the responses to this inflation that might protect the poor – government feeding and public works programmes – are the ones in the deficit hawk’s cross-hairs. It’s entirely possible to balance a budget and have large public works, but that means taxing the rich. In this political climate, that’s unlikely. So, watch out for more food rebellions in 2011. Keep Reading »

I’m doing a bit of work on the Black Panther Party’s School Breakfast program, and came across this terrific 1969 radio interview with children and Black Panther activists. You’ll need 20 minutes and the free Real Audio player. Click here to listen.

I don’t normally post other folks’ articles but this is a particularly important piece on the US involvement in the Haitian rice racket, written by one of the most vital and urgent voices from Haiti, Beverly Bell. More below the fold.
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Fred Kaufman has written a terrific piece about Domino’s pizza. The pizza industry calls itself “the world’s most popular food”. As with almost everything else about the industry’s narrative, this is a claim that isn’t quite true, but rests on stretching their small but flexible worldview across the rest of the planet. The staple food for over half the world’s population – mainly in Asia – is rice. Lactose intolerance among Asians hasn’t, however, stopped the pizza industry from falling over itself to get a slice of the market. Read more here.

For some reason, I’d thought I’d posted this already, but since I can’t seem to find it, and since the next round of climate change talks are about to start, it’s worth repeating.

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Despite my views on religion, I found this incredibly moving. It’s a message from members of the Abahlali baseMjondolo shackdwellers movement in South Africa, appealing to friends in the Church to support the shackdwellers in their upcoming trial – and you can find out more about that, and how to pitch in to the legal fund for that trial here. If you missed S’bu Zikode’s US tour, in which he explained the broader shackdweller’s struggle, you can watch him here and here. But the letter below doesn’t really need an introduction. Keep Reading »