Unequal power breeds an epidemic of poverty, inequitable development, environmental degradation and other forms of injustice. The antidote to these ills is a network of vibrant and democratic social movements, which have the creativity and power to create a very different world, a world where justice flourishes.

Grassroots supports social movements by nurturing leadership (especially among women and youth) and by helping our partners train and organize their constituents, build alliances and advocate with decision-makers.

On November 9, 1989, the German people knocked down the Berlin Wall.

The Berlin Wall had been erected on August 13, 1961 dividing the people of Berlin into two sectors. One sector was controlled by the US and its allies, and the other was controlled by the Soviet Union. German people were not free to cross from one sector to another. Families and friends were separated by the wall for 28 years. During this period of time, about 5,000 escape attempts were made to reunite with relatives, friends or to seek better economic opportunities. Nearly 300 people died attempting to cross the wall.

Global food prices have almost doubled in recent years, in large part due to U.S. policies, and now nearly 1 billion people worldwide - including 50 million here in the U.S. - are facing hunger. Keep reading to find out how you can take action for change.

The food crisis is not a crisis in the availability of food.  In fact, there is more than enough food to feed everyone in the world.  Over the last 20 years, world food production has risen steadily at over 2% a year, while the rate of global population growth has dropped to 1.14% a year.  

Grassroots International and the National Family Farm Coalition announce the release of a new popular education tool that can help you understand and fix the world food crisis: Food for Thought and Action: A Food Sovereignty Curriculum.

It's been said that "you are what you eat." In the face of a global food crisis, it's clear that we've been forced to swallow far more than what's on our plates. Our global food system is broken, with nearly a billion hungry people around the world and millions more forced from their failed farms as industrial agriculture privatizes and despoils our water, soil and biodiversity.

"N'ap forme" are the first words that I hear after stepping into an open-air training center high in Haiti's Central Plateau after a nail-biting plane ride across the mountains in a four-seater Cessna. The training center is run by the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP), a Grassroots International partner. N'ap forme is the Kreyol way of saying we are training, literally, we are forming ourselves.

Members of Grassroots International's partner La Via Campesina -- an international network of peasants, indigenous peoples, fishers, pastoralists, women, and youth -- gathered in late June in Jakarta, Indonesia to defend their right to exist, and called for a UN Convention on the Rights of Peasants. (Below, see their final declaration)

Under intense threat from the expansion of agro-fuels in South America and Indonesia, militarization in Colombia and South Korea, and increasing food prices, rural families are voicing a predicament that affects all communities.

Our partners in Guatemala have told us: the current food crisis will continue unless we guarantee the land, water and seeds rights of communities necessary to grow food. The same message is being echoed in Brazil, Mexico and many neighborhoods in the U.S.

In two separate statements, Guatemala's National Peasant and Indigenous Coordination (CONIC) and Brazil's Small Producers Movement (MPA) put forth food sovereignty as a solution to the crisis: the right of communities to produce food for local markets and for consumers to have access to local healthy foods. Both organizations denounce the expansion of industrial agriculture and growing control of agribusinesses for contributing to the hunger of urban and rural communities.

The road to Jacmel is paved with good intentions - in fact, it is the best-paved road in all of Haiti. I was told that the road was built by France as a friendship gift to Haiti, but Haitians don't see it as enough repayment for all that France has taken from Haiti since colonial times. Centuries ago, when France herded African slaves to Haiti to work in the sugar cane plantations, they filled the slave ships returning to France with Haiti's precious tropical timber. Thus began Haiti's deforestation, from which it has never recovered.

In times of war and institutionalized terrorism, examples of solidarity between people in the United States and the Global South give us hope for a better world. In fact, it is only through solidarity with people that we will never actually meet that we can build the "global movement for social justice".

Here is a case that has re-energized us at Grassroots International this end of year.

Last spring, Grassroots made a brief presentation to students of Boston's Philbrick School about our work to support rural communities throughout the globe to reclaim their rights to land, water and food.

Isabella Kenfield and Roger Burbach of Center for the Study of the Americas have written an article with more details about a vicious, deadly attack on activists from the Via Campesina and the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Parana, Brazil on October 21.

A peaceful protest against genetically-modified seed testing turned into an a bloody shooting that resulted in the death of a local leader and the wounding of eight other activists i.

The gunmen, who were carrying illegal firearms including automatic weapons, worked for a security company hired by Syngenta, one of the biggest producers of seeds and agricutural chemicals in the world.