[Berkeley, CA] Celebrate International Day of Peasant Struggle!

Celebrate International Day of Peasant Struggle!
**Social Movements & the Struggle for a Sustainable Environment**
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GUEST SPEAKERs:
Roger Burbach
Director, Center for the Study of the Americas (CENSA)
&
Juan Reardon
National Coordinator, Friends of the MST (FMST)
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An update on Brazil's Landless Workers Movement (MST), Bush/Biofuels and the New Axis of Hope, the alliance between environmental & social justice movements in the Americas, struggle for Food Sovereignty, organized peasant response to global agribusiness, opposition to genetically engineered crops and more...
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Wednesday, April 18th 2007
Doors open at 7:30pm
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La Peña Cultural Center
3105 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley ~ Donations Accepted ~
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Event Co-Sponsors:
Friends of the MST, FoodFirst, Global Exchange, International Forum on Globalization, Marin Interfaith Task Force on the Americas, Oakland Institute, Pesticide Action Network of North America, and the Center for the Study of the Americas

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BACKGROUND:

The 17th of April is the International Day of Peasant’s Struggle, established after the massacre of 19 landless peasants belonging to the Landless Movement (MST) in Brazil on the 17th of April 1996 during the second conference of La Via Campesina in Tlaxcala Mexico.

The Eldorado dos Carajás Massacre -
On 17 April 1996, military police began clearing landless protesters from the PA-150 highway at Eldorado dos Carajás in the state of Pará. An hour later 19 people lay dead, many shot at close range; some hacked to death by the protesters’ own farm tools.

After a complex legal battle, 127 military police and 19 higher ranking officers went on trial in June 2002. All were absolved with the exception of Col. Mario Pantoja and Major José Maria Oliveira, both of whom remain at liberty while they fight a second appeal against their sentence.

The Eldorado dos Carajás case is emblematic of the culture of impunity in Pará state. Ten years after the massacre, not one of those involved have been imprisoned. Inept police investigation, woefully inadequate forensic research, and the failure to offer protection to witnesses who received threats have dogged the judicial process at every step along the way. Neither the then state governor of Pará, Amir Gabriel, nor the Secretary of Public Security, Paulo Sette Câmara, who gave the orders to “clear the people