The OTHER Wall

Talk about horrible, inhumane ideas. Construction has begun on a Gaza-style wall in Rio de Janeiro that is designed to cut off several favelas from expanding into nearby forest land, simultaneously causing further segregation between the slums and other neighborhoods in the city.

Wall construction, with condominiums in background. Photo from O Globo

"By year-end the Rio de Janeiro state government wants to build almost 7 miles (11 km) of walls to contain 19 communities. It will spend 40 million reais ($17.6 million) and have to relocate 550 houses, Lazzoli said." Read full story here.

That money could be used for upgrades that residents actually need in public services, health, education, and police reform. It's 2009, you would think officials would have enough basic economic sense to know that the massive unmet demand for low-income housing will not magically disappear if you build a wall.

This is another example of abuses that favelados continue to endure, even after the democratic transition turned them from a persecuted underclass without any substantive rights into ostensible "citizens" with votes.

Just another symbol of how democracy is often woefully insufficient to protect the basic interests of the marginalized urban poor.

Women, Land, and Agribusiness

(A past-due post in honor of International Women's Day, March 9th.)

Did you know that only 2% of the world's land is owned by women?

This statistic comes from an article in the Seattle Times, where Tim Handstad argues that increased land ownership among women increases their status in home and in society, lifts families out of poverty, and leads to secondary benefits like better nutrition for the household, increased food security, and better disease prevention.

I went digging for more stats on global land ownership because this strikes me as just the tip of the iceberg. How much land do men own? What about corporations, governments, and heads of state?

I couldn't find the answers to most of these questions. (If you know where this can be found, please let me know!) Though in an ironic twist, I did find a source that estimates the largest personal landowner in the world to be a woman - Queen Elizabeth II, who comes in at 6,600 million acres valuing perhaps 17.6 trillion pounds, or 1/6th of the world's dry surface.

My inclination is that a surprising percentage of land is actually owned by large and increasingly transnational corporations. This is definitely the case in Brazil, where the Landless Worker's Movement (MST) has shifted it's political focus over the last 25 years from targeting large private landowners to international agribusiness.

To commemorate International Women's Day, hundreds to thousands of Brazilian women of the MST and Via Campesina occupied the Ministry of Agriculture, a shipping port, and at least two large industrial farms. They argue that the government should focus on agrarian reform and small farms, many for women, instead of catering to industrial agribusiness.

They also argue that the mono-cropping eucalyptus for pulp, an activity occurring at the occupied sites, destroys natural habitat, creating topsoil loss and ultimately desertification. An anecdote here: a public defender in rural São Paulo state won an immediate suspension of eucalyptus plantation in his area. While visiting some of his contacts I was recruited to translate the suspension notice into English because the companies involved were foreign with English-speaking employees. I didn't get much background on the case, but local residents were up in arms about the spread of eucalyptus in their areas.

1 year anniversary and a statement of belief

Dear friends, family, mentors, and general readers,

I want to thank you for following my blog over the last year, as today is the one year anniversary! As you may (or may not) know, I started this blog to keep in touch with my 'idea community' in the states while developing my Fulbright research on democracy and housing rights in São Paulo, Brazil.

Now that I am back in the U.S. and trying to link the struggle for housing rights in Brazil to movements stateside, the blog has evolved into a strange fusion of topics: (1) Urban democracy and housing struggles in São Paulo, (2) ditto in the Midwestern United States, and (3) the occasional reflection on my personal attempts to fuse a useful life's work on these issues from bits of academia, community organizing, political action, and professional training.

I realize that you may only be interested in one or two of these areas, so I have created labels to assist readers in filtering for the content they want. To the right you will see categories for "U.S." "Brazil" "News and Information" "Reflection and Analysis" and "Community or Group Profile." Click at will! Also, if you have any suggestions for how I can make the blog more enjoyable/navigable for your own reading interests, please comment on this post.

As an added bit to commemortate, I am including a personal statement of belief, which I wrote a few days ago for a job application. It sums up fairly well my central conclusions on the current social reality, as I developed them over the last 6-ish years.

I believe that everyone deserves a life where they can control the decisions and processes that determine their fate. A just society is a society where this holds true for all citizens.

I now believe we live in a society that is rightly called unjust for the existence of the opposite: whole segments of our population do not control the trajectory of their own lives. Instead, this is determined by the workings of large institutions, and by extension, a relatively small group of people involved in their navigation.

Ending injustice thus requires fundamental change in how social institutions function. In some cases it may even call for their wholesale dismantling. This cannot occur if we rely on those typically in power for change; it can only be done by building power among those suffering from various degrees of un-control, and recruiting their allies.

Finally, I believe that success in this effort requires that people suffering from injustice actively determine how to use the power that comes from uniting them in organization. They must realize in the movement what they are otherwise denied in society – control over their own lives and direction. In other words, injustice must be fought by practicing its opposite.