Earth Day Teach Ins

Rights Action is pleased to promote these educational events with Joy Agner:

GUATEMALA: Weapons of a Contemporary War: Neoliberal "Development" Projects and
Communities' Defense in Rural Guatemala

Since the signing of the 1996 "Peace Accords", Guatemala has been fertile
ground for major "development" projects. Despite their euphemistic
title, these projects are often carried out at the expense of the poor
indigenous Mayan population and cause extreme cultural, physical, and
environmental degradation.

The purpose of this tour is to explore, through the case study of one Mayan
village contesting a large hydroelectric dam, what the effects of such
projects are, how the global north is promoting and benefiting from
these mega-projects, what human rights violations are involved, and how
(as citizens of the United States) we can work to support just change.

WHO: Joy Agner
lived for ten months in 2007 in the rural Mayan village Santa Maria
Tzeja with the support of a Fulbright Fellowship, a program designed
with the purpose of promoting peace through research. Her primary
focus was how indigenous communities resist harms that come from major
development projects (such as personal threat, displacement, loss of
land, loss of cultural identity, etc.).


WHAT:
Joy Agner says: "I want to tell the story of the proposed Xalala
hydro-electric dam project and petroleum extraction in the Ixcan region
of the Quiche department, while discussing the systematically
exploitative role of the U.S. in Guatemalan affairs. Because of the
dire human rights situation in Guatemala and the nature of these
projects, several of my informants felt at risk speaking
about resistance to the dam. But they did so because they felt it was
important to spread this information and use it for activism."

* * * * *

LENNY LEIS: SUSTAINABILITY AND GRASSROOTS ORGANIZING

Please join Jenny Leis in celebrating grassroots changemaking! After six
years of sustainability/community organizing in Portland, Jenny took a year
to explore the role of “full time cross-pollinator among grassroots
movements”, beginning by weaving through Portland, Tucson and Boston, and
then through East and Southern Africa after the 2006 World Social Forum in
Nairobi.


Jenny is overflowing with stories from her travels of successful grassroots
sustainability organizing models, ranging from permaculture education in
elementary schools in devastated, post-dictatorship Malawi to a
locally-powered, globally-impactful organization of “slum dwellers” to South
African high-density informal settlements (shanty towns) retrofitting
themselves into eco-villages to lessons from Zimbabwe, where they are
currently facing many of the conditions that are predicted for our post-oil
economy.


Jenny Leis is a community facilitator, enthusiastic speaker and spark for
creative community action. Jenny has now returned to the Portland community
to spark conversations and action about local “cross-pollination,” and dive
deeper into her work with The City Repair Project and Tryon Life Community
Farm. She is thrilled to share these tales with Portland’s critical mass of
changemakers, and hear feedback so that together we can foster better
cross-issue communication among changemakers here and afar. She can be
contacted at jennyleis@riseup.net or 503-548-8459. Also, check out:
http://journeydejenny.blogspot.com.