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Social Movements

Landless Workers Movement, founded in 1985 was organized by the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST). The MST has been organizing Brazil's rural poor to include them in the economic and political life of the nation.

 The MST offers the rural poor an alternative, ensuring their welfare and participation in economic development and democracy. It is providing health care and education to landless families. The MST's National Confederation of Brazilian Land Reform Co-operatives is providing agricultural extension services. They assist in organizing production and facilitate marketing the surplus produce of the MST's squatter settlements. This has transformed MST land occupations into productive agricultural co-operatives providing ample food, cash income, and basic services for thousands of member families. Moreover, this social movement has created small industries among the most advanced co-operatives, including a clothing factory in Rio Grande do Sul, a tea processing plant in Parana, and a dairy processing operation in Santa Catarina.

The MST's alternative rural development strategy is challenging the political and policy limitations of the Cardoso government by providing a more just and productive alternative to the dominant system's preferential austerity for the poor.

Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) is a shack-dwellers' movement in South Africa. The movement grew out of a road blockade organized from the Kennedy Road shack settlement in the city of Durban in early 2005 and now also operates in the cities of Pietermaritzburg and Cape Town.  It is the largest shack dweller's organization in South Africa and campaigns to improve the living conditions of poor people and to democratize society from below.The movement refuses party politics and boycotts elections. The key strategy is try to "to recreate Commons" from below by trying to create a series of linked communes.

Via Campesina (from Spanish la vía campesina, the campesino way) describes itself as "an international movement which coordinates peasant organizations of small and middle-scale producers, agricultural workers, rural women, and indigenous communities from Asia, Africa, America, and Europe". They are a coalition of over 148 organizations, advocating family-farm-based sustainable agriculture and were the group that first coined the term "food sovereignty". Food sovereignty refers to the right to produce food on one's own territory. The organization was founded in 1992 by farmers from Europe and Latin America and its had its original headquarters in Belgium. It then moved to Tegucigalpa, Honduras.The headquarters office of Via Campesina is now in Jakarta, Indonesia. Organized worldwide into nine regions, the group has members throughout the world (in 69 countries). It receives support from various charities, foundations and public institutions around the world.

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