One hundred years ago, Clara Zetkin, director of the German Social Democrat Party, successfully proposed the establishment of March 8th as International Womens Day. This historic reference alone would be enough to mark the date in its primary sense: struggle. It was on this path that women so often went out into the streets in every part of the world: for the right to vote, to equal wages, to denounce the daily violence that they experienced, from domestic humiliation to the most brutal physical violence.

Join the International Day of Peasant Struggle: Say ‘No!’ to Corporate Control of Agriculture and Food!

To commemorate the International Day of Peasant Struggle on April 17th 2010, the international peasant movement La Via Campesina calls upon member organisations, allies and supporters to unite against transnational corporations (TNCs), which seek complete control over food and agriculture systems around the world.

La Via Campesina launched a petition suggesting that the Mixed Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPMI) recently installed to criminalize the fight for agrarian reform and the MST should be used to investigate agribusiness crimes.

Small farmer Juarez Vieira Reis goes up in Court against one of the leaders of Congress' Rural Bench, who took his lands seven years ago.
by Eduardo Sales de Lima of the Sem Terra Editorial Staff

By Chris Tilly, Marie Kennedy, and Tarso Luís Ramos

The Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) of Brazil, which has mobilized more than a million Brazilians to occupy and farm large landholdings, was cautiously optimistic when Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva of the Workers Party won the presidency in 2002. “We campaign for Lula,” remarked MST organizer Jonas da Silva (no relation) during the campaign, “even though we are critical of him for shaping his discourse for the middle class.” In the country with perhaps the most unequal land distribution in the world, electing a pro-worker, pro-poor president marked a potential turning point.

The end of year is time to take stock of activities over the year now, assess the progress and the difficulties and begin planning for the coming next year.

2009 will be remembered in history as the year of the great capitalist crisis that hit financial markets around the world. A crisis that began in the U.S., but has swept many countries, rich and poor, breaking stock exchanges, banks, businesses, and especially collapsing the ideological hegemony and certainties of the big capitalists in their god - the Market; the so-called neo-liberalism.