In Memory of Charity Mahouna Hicks, Detroit Global Peace, Human Rights and Environmental Sustainability Leader
"This is about waging love; we love ourselves, we love our children, we love the earth, we love all of life. So This is not a protest this is actually an act of waging love. The love we are talking about is the love of life not the love of death." ----Charity Mahouna Hicks
MISSION
T
he Mission of Local2Global Advocates for Food Sovereignty is to spark a collective awakening of the need to transform our food, agriculture and socioeconomic systems to truly democratic, healthy, just, fair and sustainable systems where the people have supreme control over their food and agriculture. These systems will create livelihoods with dignity for farmers, food and farm-workers alike. They will ensure sufficient amounts of healthy, nutritious, culturally appropriate food for all. This is food sovereignty. http://fssg.blogspot.com/2012/01/food-sovereignty.html
Local2Global envisions an inclusive, bottom-up coalition of the world’s communities, working together in solidarity and mutuality, to build citizen and true democratic power to actualize healthy, just, fair and sustainable food, agriculture, and socioeconomic systems. We envision that those communities most deeply and negatively impacted by our human food, agriculture and socioeconomic systems will play a central role in this transformation. Local2Global envisions the world’s diverse communities, working together to build just, strong and authentic relationships, moving from individualism to community-centeredness, walking our talk and being the values in which we say we believe: peace, love, justice, fairness, child-centered, youth leadership, female equality and leadership, elderly leadership, family oriented, and sustainability. Local2Global will spark this collective awakening by providing the public information which raises its consciousness, as well as highlights examples of successful work to create and to be this transformation. Such examples include many numerous and beautiful community centered projects such as: Plum Village, the work of global peace leader, Thich Nhat Hahn, and his Zen Buddhist communities, http://plumvillage.org/; Siglo XXIII, International Institute for Cooperation Amongst Peoples, the work of El Salvadoran Peace Leader Marta Benavides, nominated for a Nobel; the Cuban Sustainable Agriculture Movement which won the Right Livelihood Award in 1999, known as “the Second Nobel; the Zapatista Movement in Chiapis, Mexico, Family Farm Defenders, a wonderful grassroots organization of dairy farmers founded by compassionate and visionary dairy farmer, John Kinsman, and the Praxis Project, a US based nonprofit movement support intermediary and an institution of color that supports organizing and change work at US local, regional and national levels. Local2Global will seek to assist in sparking this collective awakening through its radio show, Food Fight! Waging Love!, its blog, publishing thoughtful consciousness raising articles through traditional and social media channels, giving talks, its project promoting the Cuban Sustainable Agriculture Movement, and its work specifically aimed at informing and facilitating the grassroots community organizing of those communities most directly and negatively impacted by these systems through social and traditional media. WHO WE ARE
Maria Whittaker, Program Director
Maria is a locally to globally known food sovereignty advocate. http://rootsandremedies.org/2013/06/07/look-whos-coming-to-rr-maria-whitaker/. She is the producer and founder of Food Fight! Waging Love! Community Radio Program, which highlights examples of humanity's greatest work to build peace and food sovereignty. She also founded KC Food Justice, a nonprofit vehicle for all of the diverse communities of Greater Kansas City, with a central role for those most directly and negatively impacted, to build their collective strength from the bottom-up, using grassroots, door to door, community organizing. She started a "Black Food Sovereignty" initiative to organize and inform those local to global communities that are the most directly and negatively impacted by human food, agriculture and socioeconomic systems. Maria practiced poverty law, representing indigent individuals in landlord tenant matters, especially evictions and employment discrimination law. Whittaker taught business and international business law at the Ohio State University. Maria graduated from Harvard University and the University of Chicago Law School. She studied international law at the London School of Economics. After falling in love with sustainable agriculture as a volunteer at Kansas City's Cultivate KC, Ms. Whitaker, who had practiced horticulture for many years, returned to graduate school to study sustainable agriculture and environmental policy at the University of Michigan School for Natural Resources and the Environment. She studied Intensive Urban Agriculture at the Institute for Tropical Agriculture in Havana, Cuba, INIFAT. She speaks French, Spanish, Swahili and some Mandarin Chinese. Kathryn Gilje—Consultant on Strategy and Fundraising
Kathryn Gilje is Executive Director of the Ceres Trust and lead consultant for Strategic Currents, LLC. Kathryn previously was director and co-director of the Pesticide Action Network North America. Kathryn co-founded and co-directed Centro Campesino, a membership organization of migrant agricultural workers, rural Latino/as and allies in southern Minnesota. She was senior associate with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, focused on marketing sustainable agriculture and U.S. farm policy. She spent several years on small farms in Minnesota, raising chickens, milking goats and promoting access to healthy, local and fair food. Now, she raises bees and vegetables in Oakland, California. Her training comes from the Organizing Apprenticeship Project, Farm Labor Organizing Committee and through Hispanics in Philanthropy at the Kellogg School of Management. She studied agronomy and environmental science at the University of Minnesota. Kamau Franklin-- Consultant on Grassroots Community Organizing and Constitutional Law
As an activist attorney, Kamau has worked on a variety of legal areas including criminal, civil and human rights issues. His legal work included two-years as the Racial Justice Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where he was one of the lead attorneys on a federal class action lawsuit against the New York City Police Departments notorious stop and frisk tactics and racial profiling. His community activist work in New York for over fifteen years was focused on grassroots campaign organizing and building grassroots institutions. He has worked on various issues including community cop-watch programs, freedom schools for youth and alternatives to incarceration programs. Kamau has also written articles for various on-line publications, including Left Turn, and Organizing Upgrade on organizing and activism and U.S. foreign policy. Kamau is married to Edget Betru and has a daughter, Maya Betru-Abiodun, and they live in Atlanta. Donna Morrow Wolfe, Food Fight! Waging Love Community Radio Program Host. Donna is a longtime Kansas City Community Activist and the host of Kansas City Community Radio KKFI 90.1 Community affairs Urban Connections program. KC Food Justice's littlest organizers. They pass out fliers and go door to door in their neighborhood; their faces beaming as they run (not walk) with the fliers balled up in their little fists, climbing steps, going back and forth. Photo: KC Food Justice's littlest organizers. They pass out fliers and go door to door in their neighborhoods; their faces beaming as they run (not walk) with the fliers balled up in their little fists, climbing steps, going back and forth. CONTACT US
Maria Whittaker, Program Director
Tel: 913 945 1333
Email: [email protected]
Mailing Address: 7001 Seaview Avenue, Suite 160-648, Seattle, WA
Websites:
http://fssg.blogspot.com
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Local-to-Global-Advocates-for-Justice/167704669946634
http://foodhealthenvironmentaljustice.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Food-Health-and-Environmental-Justice-Coalition/342600635852243
http://foodfightwaginglove.blogspot.com/
http://cubansustainableagriculture.blogspot.com/
http://blackfoodsovereignty.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/CubanSustainableAgriculture/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Black-Food-Sovereignty/710497129001018
https://www.facebook.com/groups/156042257764078/
Organizational Status
Local2Global Advocates for Food Sovereignty (L2GAFS) is the Kansas Chapter of Family Farm Defenders (FFD), dba L2GAFS and has 501(c)(3) status through its chapter affiliation with FFD. L2GAFS is registered as a nonprofit corporation in the State of Kansas. Family Farm Defenders is a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation based in Madison, WI. http://familyfarmers.org/
BOARD MEMBERS
Alonzo Samuels
Humphrey Omukuti
Brianna Perril
Maria Whittaker
Aba Ifoema
Gina Giazzoni
Andre Mathews
Willard Tillman
Rhonda Janke, University of Kansas Horticulture Professor
Sonja Robinson, RN
Charity Hicks, In Memoriam
ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS
Marta Benavides, Founder, Siglo XXIII, International Institute for Cooperation Amongst Peoples
Matt Quinn, IT Director KC Harvesters
Ajamu Webster, ED KC Black United Front
Dr. Ife Kilimanjaro, Development Director, Eastern Michigan Environmental Action Council
Lora McDonald, ED MORE2
Dr. Clovis Semmes, Profess
