Landless Workers Movement The Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (known by its Portuguese acronym, MST) is the largest social movement in Latin America and one of the most successful grassroots movements in the world. We visited an encampment outside Rio, where a community of 94 peasant families have been waiting for two years to move onto a piece of land that is owned by the Brazilian government. They are extremely poor, often hungry, but well-organized and determined to get land on which they can grow crops to feed their families. Outside Porto Alegre, we visited a settlement where 100 families from the MST successfully moved onto a piece of land five years ago. It is now a prosperous farming community with fine houses, where the families grow corn, rice, and other crops and raise chickens, pigs, and cows.

Photos of MST encampment outside Rio and MST settlement outside Porto Alegre

Link to web page for Friends of the MST

Se Essa Rua Fosse Minha (If This Street Were Mine) The name of this organization that works with street children comes from a very well known Brazilian children's song ("if this street were mine, I would have it paved with shiny stones"). They provide meals, classes, and other opportunities for the children, including the Social Circus, where (thanks to a partnership with Cirque du Soleil) the children learn acrobatics, tightrope walking, juggling, etc. They are trying to change the image of street children, so that people think of them not as criminals but as children.

Notes from meeting with Antonio Cesar Marques and photos of the circus performance

Web page for Se Essa Rua Fosse Minha

AfroReggae Cultural Group The slum community (favela) of Vigario Geral became notorious in 1993 -- 21 residents were killed when a group of hooded and armed men attacked the community, shooting indiscriminately. The attack was reportedly carried out in revenge for the killing, two days earlier, of four military police officers who were allegedly murdered by drug traffickers based in the favela. Charges were brought against 33 policemen.

The AfroReggae Cultural Group was organized as a way to turn young people away from drugs and violence. We visited their headquarters, saw a music video from their musical group Banda AfroReggae, watched a performance of the band made up of young people (with tin cans for drums) and toured the favela.

AfroReggae Cultural Group

Amnesty International information about Vigario Geral massacre

Consulta Popular We met with Cesar Benjamin, one of the coordinators of Consulta Popular. Over pizza and beers, he gave us some background about the organization.
Here are my notes from that conversation

World Social Forum

From an article at openDemocracy by Paul Kingsnorth: "It's not clear exactly what it is, but at Porto Alegre, everyone could feel it: something is in the air. A tide turning, a paradigm slowly shifting. Whatever it is, suddenly and inexplicably it seems that the future really could lie in the hands of the people gathered in Brazil, and not in the creaky, unstable, divisive cult of global corporatism championed by the delegates in New York. "

Here are some of the things I took part in and learned about:

Photos from the march on the opening day of the World Social Forum

Notes from a panel I attended on Globalization and the Environment

Never a dull moment