For many years, the Cultures of Resistance Network has been committed to the movement for a free Palestine. We have been proud to work with leading activists, lawyers, musicians, and filmmakers who are taking courageous stands to end the Israeli occupation, combat genocide, uphold international law, protect human rights, promote Palestinians’ right to self-determination, and secure a just peace in the region.

On May 30, 2020, CoR Network founder iara lee hosted a virtual discussion to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Israeli attack on the Mavi Marmara, part of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. The flotilla was an effort to bring humanitarian aid to the illegally blockaded Gaza Strip, and the largest boat in the flotilla was the Mavi Marmara. In the early morning hours of May 31, 2010, Israeli commandos boarded the Mavi Marmara and opened fire on civilians, killing nine passengers (a tenth passenger died later from his injuries) and wounding dozens more. You can watch the discussion below or on YouTube.

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The post Join the Struggle for Justice in Palestine first appeared on Cultures of Resistance.

The post Take a Stand for Indigenous Rights first appeared on Cultures of Resistance.

Nearly a half century after its people were promised freedom by departing Spanish rulers, Western Sahara remains Africa’s last colony. Since 1975, Morocco has occupied the area, refusing to give its residents a vote on independence. Armed conflict between independence groups and the Moroccan military were suspended following a UN-brokered ceasefire in 1991. However, the referendum on self-determination promised by this agreement never took place. Tens of thousands of Sahrawis have fled to neighboring Algeria, where more than 125,000 refugees still live in camps that were intended to be temporary. 

On November 13, 2020, in response to a peaceful protest by Sahrawis, Morocco broke the three-decades-long ceasefire by launching a military operation in a United Nations-patrolled buffer strip. Since then, military exchanges have resumed. Then-US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Morocco’s claim over Western Sahara only inflamed tensions further. 

Given the current state of crisis in Western Sahara, local activists have called for international solidarity to defend human rights. In recent years, young artists and activists have risked torture and disappearance at the hands of the Moroccan military by standing up for their freedoms and demanding the long-promised referendum on freedom. In civil society, filmmakers, poets, painters, and musicians have used their creativity to promote the cause of self-determination. If you want to join in international efforts to support a free Western Sahara, below is information on how you can take action:

Inform Yourself

One of the biggest problems in building international solidarity with Western Sahara is awareness. Very few people around the world are aware of the conflict because it receives little attention in the mainstream media. Here are some useful resources to familiarize yourself with the struggle and keep up on new developments:

• Two documentary films provide context and history about the conflict. In 2015, Cultures of Resistance Films director iara lee created a documentary called Life Is Waiting: Referendum and Resistance in Western Sahara in an attempt to provide important background about this issue. One reason for the media blackout of the Western Sahara conflict is the powerful influence of Moroccan lobbying in the international community. This influence was highlighted in the the documentary Sons of the Clouds (2012), directed by Javier Bardem, which also serves as an excellent introduction to the Sahrawi struggle.
• One of the best sources of news on the conflict is Jadaliyya, which publishes regular updates and news stories about Western Sahara. For additional analysis, we recommend the writings of Dr. Stephen Zunes, a leading scholar of US Middle East policy and strategic nonviolent action who has a collection of several dozen articles, from 1989 to the present, that astutely evaluate ongoing developments.
• Check out Western Sahara Resource Watch to dig into the resource side of the conflict and learn about how foreign powers and corporations are profiting from the occupation.
• As you get more informed, share your knowledge. Have some friends over to discuss one of the articles or films listed above. Organize a panel on your campus or in your community center. Post about the conflict on social media. Do what you can to make more people aware!

Make Connections

A next step toward increasing your involvement is getting in touch with groups that support the Sahrawi people and letting them know that you’re interested in their work. For activists who are on the ground struggling daily against repression and violence, just knowing that people around the world are standing in solidarity is vital.

• An excellent source for information about ongoing campaigns supporting the Sahrawi people, as well as for latest news on developments in the region, is Nomads: Human Rights, Cultural Roots, and Media. Based in Madrid, Spain, Nomads is a Cultures of Resistance Network grantee that supports Sahrawi-led cultural, media, and human rights projects in the refugee camps in Algeria and occupied Western Sahara. The group aims to strengthen the struggle for justice, peace, human rights, and self-determination of the indigenous population of Western Sahara by supporting local capacity-building. Check out their Facebook page to get started finding campaigns that you can support!
• Another Cultures of Resistance Network grantee, the Nushatta Foundation for Media and Human Rights, has been doing media activism and human rights advocacy in Western Sahara, as well as in the Sahrawi refugee camps in southwest Algeria, since 2013. The group records human rights abuses and then produces news articles and artwork to help spread awareness of the incidents on social media. Its members are young Sahrawis who have experienced illegal detention, torture, kidnapping, harassment, and other injustices at the hands of the Moroccan authorities. Get in touch with Nushatta to see how you can help with publicizing their campaigns!
• If you’re interested in learning about a broader range of Sahrawi resistance groups, check out CEAS-Sáhara (Coordinadora Estatal de Asociaciones Solidarias con el Sáhara), a network of over 200 groups. The CEAS website (in Spanish) is a great launching pad for getting involved in campaigns. Some of the efforts they are involved with include organizing rallies in support of freedom for Western Sahara and writing for freedom for political prisoners.
• You can run for human rights with the Sahara Marathon, a solidarity race for the refugee children of Western Sahara. In 2021, the race will be virtual—you can run it anywhere in the world!
• Western Sahara Action Forum provides information, analysis, and campaigns—available in English, French, and Spanish. To support the groups leading the resistance on the ground, more and more international activists are forming solidarity campaigns in their countries. Consider joining up with others in your area to figure out how you can collectively take action.
• A number of countries already have online hubs that can help you get in touch with people who might be in your area. Among them are the Amis du Peuple du Sahara Occidental (France) and the Western Sahara Campaign (UK). In addition to providing another way to make contacts, these groups can provide you with lots of resources. Connect with a group that speaks your language and find out how you can join!

Make Art Against Occupation

Whether through film, poetry, photography, or painting, artists and journalists have long fostered a culture of resistance in occupied Western Sahara.

• One of the projects that the Cultures of Resistance Network has been involved with is the FiSahara International Film Festival. The largest gathering of Western Sahara artists and activists, the festival takes place every spring in the Dakhla refugee camp in Tindouf, Algeria. The annual festival brings regional and international cinema, as well as international media attention, to the Sahrawi refugee community living in the camps. It even helped inspire Spanish actor Javier Bardem’s documentary Sons of the Clouds! Moreover, the festival is a site of education and organizing for Sahrawi artistis and activists, both from the refugee community and the diaspora. In addition to film workshops that take place during the festival, FiSahara acts as the basis for a year-round film school that provides hands-on training to young refugees so that they can tell their own stories and create films for their communities. Want to be a part of this incredible political and cultural experience? Head to their website to contact them and find out how you can support their work. For a taste of FiSahara, check out this short clip about the 2019 festival:

• Poets in Western Sahara and in the Sahrawi diaspora have launched collaborative projects like Generacíon de la Amistad Saharaui (Sahrawi Friendship Generation), which is both an anthology of poetry and a hub for activism.
• ARTifariti has created a space for artists and activists to meet, collaborate, and create. If you like what these artists are doing, reach out to them!
• Groups like Sandblast help promote the voices of the indigenous Sahrawi through the arts. Sandblast is the only arts and human rights charity based in the UK that works with the people of Western Sahara. It is primarily concerned with raising awareness about the conflict in Africa’s last colony, highlighting the Sahrawi people’s struggle for self-determination and empowering their voices through the arts. The organization was founded in 2005 by Danielle Smith, who became involved with the Sahrawi refugee community in southwest Algeria in 1991.
• Are you a writer? An artist? A filmmaker? Whatever your talent, channel the Sahrawi spirit of resistance in your own work and help spread the word about this issue. If you’re not an artist but you’re inspired by the work on this page, use your reading groups, community spaces, and social media to share it and amplify the voices of the Sahrawi movement!

Consider Traveling to Western Sahara

One important way that the solidarity movement has spread awareness has been through traveling to Western Sahara. Given the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as the return to armed hostilities in the territory, it is currently difficult to travel to Western Sahara, but you can monitor the situation and see when it becomes feasible to visit again. In the past, there have been several ways you could travel to the region and work with Sahrawi artists and activists:

• The FiSahara Film Festival coordinated travel to the festival from Madrid and housing with families in the refugee camps outside Tindouf, Algeria.
• Artifariti offered an art residency program, also in Tindouf. Get in touch with them to learn how you can take part and if they plan to resume their programs after the pandemic!

Donate

Groups like the FiSahara Film Festival count on financial donations from abroad to sustain their efforts, but there are many ways to contribute to the cause besides giving money:

• You can host a small fundraiser—perhaps a film screening or poetry reading, in person or virtually!
• You can donate equipment, ranging from DVDs and cameras to memory cards and projectors.
• You can also donate your services, helping translate from Spanish or Arabic into English and other languages, for example.
• Reach out to the groups above to find out how you can volunteer!

[Featured image courtesy of Iara Lee.]

The post Sahara Libre! first appeared on Cultures of Resistance.

There’s a quiet revolution taking place in farms and kitchens across the small West African country of Burkina Faso. As food has moved towards the pre-processed and microwavable, people have become more and more detached from their meals’ origins and ingredients. However, an international movement pushing back against these trends is developing. In place of fast food, people now demand “slow food.” Slow food recovers the traditions of food preparation and celebrates diversity, rather than standardization. With an emphasis on culture, the movement focuses on growing, making, and eating food as a community.

When some people think of slow food, they think of a movement that’s about people in wealthy countries who are enjoying elaborate meals in expensive restaurants. But despite this common perception of slow food as a craze reserved for upscale urban centers, slow food is actually a grassroots movement coming from below, rooted in indigenous communities and building ties with food producers in the global south. In West Africa, where the movement is growing, slow food means defending food security, breaking from large-scale industrial agriculture, and preserving traditional, sustainable agriculture practices. At the Cultures of Resistance Network, we’re proud to be involved with international organizations like Slow Food and Via Campesina, which are both creating rich networks of people and groups working in West Africa and beyond to promote sustainable and ethical food practices.

In Burkina Faso, a small, landlocked country in West Africa, the slow food movement is taking root, spreading from the capital of Ouagadougou to small villages. In spring 2016, a caravan organized by Via Campesina allies traveled from Burkina Faso to Senegal, linking together the struggles for the human rights to food, land, water, and seeds. A year later, in February 2017, Slow Food organized Terra Madre Burkina Faso, West Africa’s first gathering of food communities. For years, the organization has been working to map the country’s local food products and create school and community food gardens, but this campaign is just one of the many slow food initiatives underway in Burkina Faso. Below are a selection of other grassroots efforts in the country that offer lessons for the rest of the globe. For a complete list of Slow Food‘s efforts in Burkina Faso, click here.

La Saisonnière Educational Garden

Ouagadougou lies in the center of Burkina Faso’s over-105,000 square feet of land. With a population of about 2.7 million, the city is growing rapidly. From 2007 to 2014, the population increased by over 50 percent, according to the New York Times.

On the outskirts of this burgeoning metropolis lies a chemical-free community garden run entirely by women. La Saisonnière, an organization in Ouagadougou, works to guarantee the economic and social rights of Burkinabé women. One of its major projects is the Nongr-Maasom community garden, tended to by about fifty women. Chemical fertilizers were once used in the garden, but the women now use natural products, including fertilizer, compost, and manure. This switch from chemical to natural is helping to restore the soil’s health and produce better harvests. The women each choose the vegetables that they wish to plant. After they’ve produced enough to feed their families, the women sell their surplus harvest at a nearby market. About 300 children also use a portion of the garden as an open-air classroom, where they are taught the basics of sustainable agriculture.

Génération Revenu

In the northeastern town of Yako, a new restaurant is celebrating local food and preserving indigenous traditions. Run by the Génération Revenu association, which works on agricultural projects, the restaurant’s proceeds support small farms in the town. In this part of Burkina Faso, the best-selling product is the desert date, which is harvested by about a dozen women in the community. At the restaurant, the typical dish is guelbom, which is made with the condiment soumbala, fermented sorrel seeds (a type of herb), dried fish, and millet flour. Next door, Génération Revenu also runs a shop selling local foods. If you were to visit, you would find cookies made with baobab and jujube fruit, soaps made from desert dates, and seasonings like soumbala and liikalga.

Watinoma

On any given day at Watinoma‘s community center in Koubri, about fifteen miles southeast of the capital, you might find kids engaged in educational projects, adults learning traditional textile methods, or artists giving musical or story-telling performances. A member of Slow Food‘s network and based in Italy, Watinoma is working to impact food and agriculture practices in Burkina Faso through community involvement. In addition to the many activities at its community center, the organization also created and runs numerous local gardens. It even started a school of its own for local children from ages six to twelve. 160 students now attend the school at no cost.

Get Involved

From eating locally and examining your own food consumption to standing in solidarity with food activists in other parts of the world, there are many different ways that you can get involved with this international movement. To get started, you can:

• Join one of Watinoma‘s volunteer projects in Burkina Faso! You might help out at the organization’s primary school or tend to one of the community gardens.
• Head to Slow Food’s Get Involved page to learn more about the movement, become a Slow Food member, and join campaigns to save endangered food products.
• Find a Via Campesina organization in your town and connect with food justice and slow food activists around the world.

[Featured image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.]

The post Slow Food Revolution: Burkina Faso first appeared on Cultures of Resistance.