Panel on Cooperatives, Food Sovereignty from Brazil to Kadıköy

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Panel is being organized by Kadıköy Retail Society on cooperatives and food sovereignty with the participation of national coordination member of the Brazil Landless Workers Movement (MST), Marina dos Santos on March 5.

Marina dos Santos will speak on cooperatives, rural and city relation, and food sovereignty in the panel organized by MST at Caddebostan Cultural Center on March 5 at 2 p.m.

MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra); is one of the biggest dissident movements in the world. It is a struggle in which around 1,700,000 organize a collective life, and develop alternative ways to the existing system ranging from education to health.

The MST was born through a process of occupying latifundios (large landed estates) and become a national movement in 1984.  Over more than two decades, the movement has led more than 2,500 land occupations, with about 370,000 families - families that today settled on 7.5 million hectares of land that they won as a result of the occupations. Through their organizing, these families continue to push for schools, credit for agricultural production and cooperatives, and access to health care.

Currently, there are approximately 900 encampment holding 150,000 landless families in Brazil.  Those camped, as well as those already settled, remain mobilized, ready to exercise their full citizenship, by fighting for the realization of their political, social economic, environmental and cultural rights.

Kadıköy Retail Society has been founded by principle of working directly with small-scale producers, promoting social solidarity by sharing rather than consuming, (BK/TK)