Statement of Grassroots Global Justice Alliance to the Social Movements Assembly

3rd Americas Social Forum
Guatemala City, Guatemala
October 11, 2008

We want to first thank the Guatemalan Facilitation Committee, the Hemispheric Council and the people of Guatemala for your tremendous efforts to make this forum possible. We also want to acknowledge companer@s from social movements throughout the Americas for your resistance and successes in the face of extremely difficult conditions.

We submit this statement as reps of GGJ, as part of the ongoing and growing movement in the U.S. As members of the movements that have organized the mass migrant marches, the US social forum, we submit this in the spirit of making connections based on people to people relationships, rather than US government or corporate interventions. Similar struggles connect us across very different contexts.

Yesterday President Bush announced that the financial crisis is a global crisis that will require a global response. It looks like he just figured out what we all know. We want to acknowledge that we share the crisis of capitalism and the resistance to it. We also want to acknowledge that the US exists as it does today only through appropriation of indigenous land and genocide, a level of wealth based on the slavery of African peoples, and international expansion. It continues to survive by the exploitation of people around the world. Our commonality lies in the conditions of a colonial project that has never ended, even within the US. We hold in our hearts the urgency of survival through shared resistance. The advances of movement building here in the global south benefit, inform, and inspire our movements. We are excited to build a strategic solidarity, that integrates our struggles and strategies through shared leadership. The financial system depends on the massive displacement of peoples, militarization and criminalization, and the exploitation of natural resources, land and people.

While the world is told that anyone can achieve the American dream we know that people of color are criminalized and force into poverty conditions, and prisons, an expanding industry, act as a form of social control and as a form of exploited labor.

While the world is told that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are securing freedom and democracy, we know that this endless “war on terror” is an actual source of terror through the occupation and restructuring of communities, military base expansion war on drugs, on every continent, in every community, in our homes, and in our very bodies.

While U.S-based multinational corporations do not respect borders, U.S. borders are sites of tremendous and deadly violence.

While the U.S. government says that it exists for protection and security, we are witness to the U.S. impulse to exploit the most vulnerable moments of disaster in order to unleash its greed on the most impoverished through land grabs, privatization of public health and housing and imprisonment.

We know the difference between the lies and the hard truth of our histories.

We come here not as representatives of the U.S., but as members of social movements fighting on multiple fronts from many nations. As member organizations of the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, connected to hundreds of communities and thousands of people.
We resolve to:

1)Oppose the mining industry on native lands in North America as well as mining operations destroying lands throughout the hemisphere. We call for a moratorium on new fossil fuel developments and megahydro dams. We will build sustainable practices in the U.S. through combatting unsustainable consumption and waste of energy at the expense of people, land, and global well being. And we will continue to learn from alternative models of our compañer@s in the south.
2)We will fight for legalization and the rights of all migrants and immigrants living in the U.S., including the 12 million undocumented people, specifically,
1.We demand the use of remittances, shut down the detention system and stop the criminalization of migrant workers.
2.As the US border exists to control our land, body and minds we commit to tear it down completely through coordinated mobilizations of communities living on all sides.
3)As poverty increases through the expansion of disaster capitalism, we commit to secure quality education, affordable housing, accessible health care, living wages, and right of return of displaced people.
1.Simultaneously we will fight for equitable and sustainable labor and living standards for people across the hemisphere.
2.We call on massively increased support for Haiti and islands in the Caribbean that have been devastated by climate change.
4)We resolve to
1.Support trade policies that advance human rights, democracy, food sovereignty, environmental justice, economic justice and the sustainability of the planet.
2.Support efforts which promote policies based on the concepts of complementarity, cooperation, solidarity, reciprocity, prosperity and the respect for the sovereignty of every nation.
5)We resolve to ending the wars and occupations of the U.S. empire by deepening relationship among and coordinating with anti-war forces in the U.S. and internationally. We call for the release of all political prisoners including Leonard Peltier, The Cuba 5, Puerto Rican Freedom Fighters, and Mumia Abu Jamal among others.

We also live with the repression of Homeland Security. State violence increases against young people, poor people, LGBT and people of color through heavy militarization of our schools and communities. We commit to fighting for economic and racial justice on these fronts.

We are energized by the struggle for gender liberation and reproductive justice through the women's, trans and queer movements, sex worker movements, and we stand in opposition to patriarchy and U.S. Christian fundamentalism and its impacts across the world. We stand in solidarity with women's organizations targeted by governments, including the Nicaraguan government that represents the contractions that still exist among governments, even on the left.

Given this particular moment in history, the crisis of the U.S. financial sector, and the intensified assault on many people across the globe, we commit to finding strategic opportunities to build effective movements regardless of who wins the Presidency. We know, like you do, that it is social movements that strengthen the potential for fundamental transformation and the creation of new economic paradigms.

U.S. imperialism threatens our humanity and we commit to forging relationships and alliances throughout the Americas to preserve and strengthen our humanity.

We have the opportunity to connect movements, activate new forces, and surge forward towards collective liberation!