Category Regional organizer

Nov 3 2017

“Across the Americas” Nov 4th Event Program – Join Us!

Across the Americas: A Toolkit for Change – Sponsored by Witness for Peace Southwest

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Saturday November 4th, 2017 – 2 – 6pm, L.A. Workers Center, 1251 S. St. Andrews Place, Los Angeles, CA 90019

2:00pm -2:15pm – Registration and Refreshments

2:15pm – 2:30pm – “Across the Americas: A Toolkit for Change”, Latin American and Caribbean struggles for self-determination and sovereignty in context by Witness for Peace Southwest. How can we strengthen our movements against US economic, political and social aggression? How can we build solidarity between grassroots movements across the Americas, Diasporas and other migrations? How can we be accountable to movements across Latin America and the Caribbean from our community spaces in the US?

2:35pm – 3:05pm – “Demanding Nature: How natural resource issues and climate change are pushing social change in Latin America” – workshop facilitated by Rachel Brunhke, high school educator and Witness for Peace Southwest Regional Board Member  

3:05pm – 3:15pm – Announcements and icebreaker – WFP Mexico International Team 2017 Report on Mexican grassroots movements in Oaxaca, roots of migration, organized resistance to US economic models and US solidarity from team members Saraí Jiménez and Laura Krasovitzky

3:15pm -3:45pm – “Cuba: Impacts of US Foreign Policy on Cuba” – presentation with Lee Schlenker and Cat Walker, Witness for Peace International Team Members in Cuba w/ Q&A moderated by Malia Everette, founder of  socially responsible travel company Altruvistas and Southwest Regional Board Member

3:50pm – 4:50pm – Documentary screening of “Berta Vive!” with Honduran filmmaker Katia Lara, the documentary follows the life and work of Berta Caceres, Lenca indigenous leader of Honduras and co-founder of the Civic Council of Indigenous and Popular Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), in the wake of Berta’s assassination March 2016 w/ Q&A moderated by Melissa Cox, WFP National Delegations Coordinator, long-time filmmaker and former WFP International Team member in Colombia.

4:50pm – 5:00pm – Announcements and icebreaker – WFP Colombia International Team 2017 Report on Colombian grassroots movements, US based solidarity and recent civic strike in Afro-Colombian and Indigenous majority territory in Buenaventura, Colombian Pacific Coast from team members Gilberto Villaseñor and Samantha Wherry

5:00pm – 5:30pm – “Resistance to State Repression and Corporate Privatization in the Context of Honduran 2017 National Elections” and congressional updates on HR 1299 Berta Caceres Human Rights in Honduras Act with Bryan Rogers, WFP International team member in Honduras

5:35pm – 6:05pm – “People’s Power and Participatory Democracy in Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution: Solidarity in Times of US Intervention”– Robin Garcia, Ph.D candidate at Claremont Graduate University in Cultural Studies and WFP Southwest regional board member and Jeanette Charles, WFP Southwest Regional Organizer and Decolonial Delegations Program Coordinator

6:10pm – 6:15pm – “Across the Americas: A Toolkit for Change” closing

6:15pm – 10:00pm – Dia de los Muertos Celebration: conversation, dinner, dance, music and food

WFP invites all community members and participants to partake in the LA Workers Center’s annual Dia de los Muertos celebration honoring ancestors from across the Americas, African Diaspora and Indigenous nations. There will be a variety of community food vendors with traditional dishes for sale accompanied by live musical acts, dance and follow-up conversation with our event speakers and workshop facilitators.

Sep 26 2017

“Por las Américas: Un kit de herramientas para la transformación” – Evento de Acción Permanente por la Paz – 4 de noviembre

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2:00pm – 6:00pm, talleres y presentaciones
6:00pm – 8:00pm, cena y música
Sábdo 4 de noviembre 2017

La Casa Roja – 1251 S. St. Andrews Place – Los Angeles, CA 90019

Está listx para una revolución? Quiere aprender de otros movimientos a nivel local e internacional? Acción Permamente por la Paz estará organizando un día de actividades, talleres, intercambios y foros sobre las luchas populares por las Américas. Nuestros equipos internacionales, miebros de la mesa directiva y aliadxs presentarán sobre las luchas de los pueblos indígenas, afro-descendientes, mujeres, jovenes, trabajadorxs, campesinxs y otros movimientos en Cuba, Colombia, Haití, Honduras, México y Venezuela entre otros. 

Analizaremos como nuestras comunidades en Los Ángeles y la región (California, Arizona y Nuevo México) están moblizandose en diferentes frentes desde la lucha para enfrentar el cambio climático, la lucha por los derechos migrantes, la violencia del estado y la brutalidad policiaca. Aprenderemos de las luchas a favor de las dietas saludables y decoloniales, recuperación de tierras y derechos humanos. 

Todxs saldarán del evento con más información y más “herramientas” para construir un movimiento dinamico e inovador en contra de las violaciones de derechos humanos que estamos enfrentando en todas nuestras comunidades. 

Donación sugerida para la conferencia: $10, para la cena: $10, para ambas actividades $15. Nadie será rechazadx por falta de fondos. 

Habrá cuidado de ninxs por pedido. Evento bilingue. 

Rifa, libros y artesanía a la venta!!!!

Para más información: jeanette@witnessforpeace.org o southwestwfp@gmail.com or call 805-669- VIVA (8482)

Website: http://www.wfpsw.org Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/WFPSW

Sep 26 2017

Join WFPSW for “Across the Americas: A Toolkit for Change” this November 4th

 

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2:00pm – 6:00pm, Workshops
6:00pm – 8:00pm, Dinner and Music
Saturday November 4th, 2017
The Red House
1251 S. St. Andrews Place
Los Angeles, CA 90019

Ready for a revolution? Want to learn from other movements organizing locally and internationally? Join Witness for Peace Southwest for an afternoon of discussions, presentations and engaging workshops on grassroots organizing across the Americas. Our international teams, board members and allies will present on current issues facing Indigenous, African-Descendants, women, youth, workers, farmers and other communities in Colombia, Cuba, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Venezuela and more.

We will also look at how our communities in Los Angeles and the greater region (California, Arizona and New Mexico) are organizing in the areas of climate change, immigration rights, against state sanctioned violence ad police brutality, and in favor of decolonial and healthy diets, farming and land rights among others. Everyone will leave with more information, more “tools” to build a dynamic and innovative movement against the onslaught of human rights violations being committed against our communities across borders.

Witness for Peace (WFP) is a politically independent, nationwide grassroots organization of people committed to nonviolence and led by faith and conscience. Witness for Peace’s mission is to support peace, justice and sustainable economies in the Americas by changing U.S. policies and corporate practices that contribute to poverty and oppression in Latin America and the Caribbean. WFP was founded in 1983 as the US backed Contra War in Nicaragua was underway.

WFP organizes: international delegations to document human rights abuses ties to US government funding and US corporate practices; speaker’s tours across the country with grassroots voices from Latin America and the Caribbean; hosts local events and solidarity gatherings and, collaborates on congressional work to shape US policy in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Suggested donation $10 for conference, $10 Dinner or $15 for both. No one turned away for lack of funds.

Child care available upon request. Bilingual event.

Raffle, books and artesania for sale!

For more information and to rsvp email: jeanette@witnessforpeace.org or southwestwfp@gmail.com or call 805-669- VIVA (8482)

Website: http://www.wfpsw.org Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/WFPSW

 

 

 

Dec 26 2016

In the Spirit of Giving, support WFPSW

 

Dear WFPSW supporter,

Mil gracias. Thank you so much for your accompaniment, contribution to and unwavering solidarity with Witness for Peace Southwest (WfPSW) and our partners throughout Latin America. As WfPSW Regional Organizer I am very excited to share the work we have done this last year. As we begin 2017, we ask for your continued support at this critical time for solidarity across movements in the US, Latin America and the world.

I write you from Central America, Honduras specifically. Here, over the last two years, I have accompanied an unique process with WFP to launch our international program. For us, and our partners, it has been a difficult yet beautiful and necessary struggle to make this happen.  We currently have two international team members on the ground and have organized four delegations in the last year opening opportunities for US based organizers, people of conscious and other interested individuals to engage with Honduran indigenous, African descendants, women, youth and union leaders among others. Next year, WFPSW will host two delegations to Honduras: Radical Organizing Across Difference (March 17th-26th) and The Fight for Reparations (June 25th-July 7th).

I began as WfPSW RO late summer 2015. Since then, I have worked alongside our international teams, national staff, national and regional board members as well as with our grassroots membership to re-build our region from our 2014-2015 hiatus. At WFPSW, we look to take down the walls that divide our peoples, challenge policies that repress our communities and build just, humane societies.

Throughout the year, we have hosted several events from our 2016 inaugural dinner with report backs from Cuba, Venezuela, Honduras, Colombia and Mexico in addition to participating in initiatives against US militarism and occupation such as International Peace week in San Pedro, California. We have also supported campaigns in solidarity with greater Cuba-US relations and commemorative events honoring the people’s driven Cuban Revolution.

Since the spring, our region has also supported larger cross-organizational campaigns for justice. The assassination of Berta Cáceres on March 3rd devastated millions across the globe. We have continued to accompany the Lenca people even more and have campaigned in favor of the Berta Cáceres and Human Rights in Honduras Act (HR 5474) calling for US military divestment in Honduras – similar congressional demands have not been made since the late ‘80s.

Over the summer, we have added one new member to our growing regional  board: Robin Garcia, long-time activist originally from Los Angeles, California. Robin’s work spans across the Americas where she has dedicated her time to working in grassroots journalism and alternative media such as teleSUR and working with Venezuela’s multimedia movement. Robin started in July and we look forward to building more with her in the future.

In the fall, we organized an impressive five state, 11 city tour with two young Venezuelan queer organizers: Maria Gabriela del Pilar Blanco and Paola Martucci Gomez. They witnessed firsthand the harsh realities facing Black and Brown communities across the greater US West region and shared their tales of triumph with the Bolivarian Revolution. Moreover, they gave their own accounts of the challenges currently facing the revolutionary process including: a violent opposition bloc, international media manipulation, economic blockade, sharp drop in global oil prices and the truest hurdle of all, building XXIst century socialism. Their talks were beyond inspiring and engaged autonomous community spaces, universities and grassroots organizations in needed conversations about imagining, creating and sustaining alternatives.

While we are uncertain what the political and economic future holds for our communities and our countries, here at Witness for Peace Southwest, we are certain that our commitment to social justice and solidarity must not waver. Now, more than ever, we depend on your continued support in all facets of our organizing.

We hope to see you on our delegations in Honduras, Cuba, Venezuela and Colombia next year!

We want to make a stop in your community during our next speaker’s tour!

And, as always, your continued financial support is received in the deepest of gratitude and greatest appreciation. Make a donation today! Become a sustaining donor!

Every contribution makes a difference, from $5 to $100. Make a donation once a month or one time.

You can make your tax-deductible donations via our PayPal account using the following email address: southwestwfp@gmail.com or mail a check to Witness for Peace Southwest @ PO Box 1781 Ojai, CA 93024.

In solidarity, peace and justice,

Jeanette

WfPSW Regional Organizer: jcharles.wfpsw@gmail.com & wfpsw@witnessforpeace.org, 805.669.VIVA (8482)

Jan 3 2016

WfPSW 2016 New Year’s Message!

Happy New Year!
¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

We are organizing for a world where many worlds fit, as the Zapatista movement has echoed since January 1, 1994. Their uprising, launched on the New Year, marked another chapter in Latin America and the Caribbean’s revolutionary spirit with the likes of the Cuban and Haitian Revolutions. As we too begin another new year, we remember their legacies and continue to tread along shared paths.

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“I am Latin America…a people without legs that marches on…”

At Witness for Peace Southwest, we usher in 2016 with renewed hopes for a more just and humane world. We move forward while we reflect on another year of hard work in the struggle to change US policy actions in Latin America and to strengthen our growing solidarity. Changes have been underway here in the SW and we know we are better for them!

In 2016, join us on our international delegations to Cuba and Venezuela over the summer and for New Years. Exchange with grassroots organizations domestically along the Mexico-U.S. border and in Puerto Rico this March and November. Become a trained delegation coordinator or design your own customized delegation for your school, church, community or organization!

In 2016, work with WFPSW to organize speaker’s tours events in your area, host local WFPSW chapter meetings and congressional visits on key issues facing Latin America and the Caribbean. Also, consider submitting materials for our newsletter.

Contact me, Jeanette Charles, your Regional Organizer, directly at jcharles.wfpsw@gmail.com or (805) 669-VIVA to get involved, ask questions or simply to build community.

And finally, please consider making a donation to WFPSW. Our work is sustained by the commitments of individual activists, believers, teachers, workers, students, freedom fighters, organizers and everyone in between across the Southwest. Checks can be made out to Witness for Peace Southwest and mailed to PO Box 1781 Ojai, CA 93024. You can make secure tax deductible donations here. And consider becoming a monlthy sustainer supporting peace, freedom and justice in the Americas.

 
In peace and solidarity, 

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Jeanette Charles
WFPSW Regional Organizer

PS. Remember to like our Facebook page and join our group! 

Nov 28 2015

WfPSW Welcomes a New RO!

WFPSW welcomes a new Regional Organizer!

Introducing Jeanette Charles!

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Jeanette comes to WFPSW with loads of Latin America and Witness for Peace experience. For 2 years now Jeanette has served on the Witness for Peace Southwest board of directors. Jeanette is a journalist, organizer, popular educator and queer woman of color raised in working class Black and Brown Los Angeles. The basis of her continued work draws from histories of resistance and revolution across the Americas especially from the legacy of the Haitian Revolution and other Black maroon led rebellions. Members of Jeanette’s paternal family left Haiti during the Duvalier dictatorship as part of a great exodus of Haitians in the 1960s and 70s. Jeanette self-identifies as Black/African descent and specifically as a daughter of the Haitian diaspora. Jeanette is fluent in English and Spanish and grew up in a largely Mexican/Central American neighborhood. In the last five years Jeanette has lived in Venezuela and has extensive travel and cross cultural experiences throughout the Americas.

Most recently, Jeanette worked as a journalist for the Latin American based international news channel, teleSUR in Quito, Ecuador. Much of Jeanette’s analysis is attributed to the delegations and political exchanges she has organized with the Chiapas Support Committee to Haiti, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico and Honduras with grassroots movements. Jeanette’s senior thesis was on the Honduran Resistance to the Coup in 2009-2010 where she spent several months on the ground researching and establishing relationships with organizers and community leaders documenting people’s struggles. Jeanette is currently pursuing a PHD from the Bolivarian University of Venezuela.

In the United States, Jeanette’s work has focused primarily on building Black and Brown unity and organizing against mass incarceration as well as state violence.

Jeanette is starting off as part time staff with Witness for Peace Southwest until funds are raised to increase Jeanette’s hours as a full time organizer. Jeanette is exited to plan a full calendar of events, delegations to Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Honduras and Cuba and bring speakers from Latin America in 2016. The board of directors of WfPSW welcomes Jeanette!

Feel free to welcome her and ask her how you can get involved. Jeanette’s email is jcharles.wfpsw@gmail.com or call 805-669-VIVA.