<div dir="ltr"><div>Hello all, and thanks to the other contributors, and to
Margaretha for asking me to contribute.<br></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In general, I’m interested in these same questions and
issues and have tried mostly to develop relational human-centered work (a.k.a.
“organizing”) to address them. I’m also interested in doing this across
geographical scales, without reifying one scale as the only or proper space for
engagement. Thus I appreciate Valentine’s concern for the concrete question of “how
to practice relating to the communities of more distant soil”, and offer some
recent experiences that may relate.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I was privileged to be a delegate to the 7<sup>th</sup>
International Conference of La Vía Campesina this past July. For those who
aren’t familiar, LVC is the world’s largest social movement of food producers,
including ‘peasants’, indigenous groups, fishers, and ‘family’ farmers, and the
conference is its preeminent decision-making space. The movement is a heterogeneous
agglomeration with a distinctive politics and hybrid cosmovision.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Some observers have proposed that LVC’s politics and cosmovision
– founded on twin concepts of agroecology and food sovereignty – offers a new
vision for modernity. That vision is fundamentally about dismantling the
nature-society dichotomy, as the process of food production embedded in place
and in longstanding (yet dynamic) culture brings to the fore immediate,
physical and spiritual interrogations of the (false) division between human and
non-human natures. Jason Moore and others have argued this division has underpinned
the extractive period of the Capitalocene, and I would concur. <span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">My experience at the LVC conference showed me an imperfect
but inspiring process of dismantling that divide, within our ‘local’
communities and between them, as an ever-expanding circle of solidarious
relationships. Agroecology serves LVC – and can serve others, perhaps – as a
means to build human-serving agroecosystems that are also constitutive of
human/nonhuman alliances.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Simultaneously interpreted between 13 or more languages, the
conversations amongst 500 delegates from 80 countries revolved around ending
capitalism, advancing (human) justice and the rights of nature, and defending indigenous
and campesino ways of life under threat. The conversations advanced an agenda
and strategy for the movement, but equally they offered spaces of encounter, of
simple mutual listening. <span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Combined with the ‘mystica’ (an LVC ritual of sharing of our
different (rural) cultures in song, dance, theater and music), the ostensibly
political direction of the conversations to me seemed at its core to be about “relating
to the communities of more distant soil”, as a precondition for developing a
powerful and effective oppositional movement to the structural violence of
capitalist modernity.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I will close here, so as not to go on too long, by arguing
for seeing the slow and concrete building of shared affinity, solidarity and
(political) alignment as key tasks for creating a more-than-human
post-Capitalocene. While we may not yet have the volunteer interpretation force
necessary to bring our non-human allies into our human-centered conversations,
if we are building up from communities of practice – whose lives and worldviews
are steeped in an everyday co-construction of life with non-human allies – a
new politics and vision, and organization to bring these about, I am confident
that we will be on a better path towards healing.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Thank you for listening,<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Antonio<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br></p>
</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Oct 5, 2017 at 6:21 AM, margaretha haughwout <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:margaretha.anne.haughwout@gmail.com" target="_blank">margaretha.anne.haughwout@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br><div dir="ltr">Greetings -empyre- soft_skinned_space,<br><br>I'm so happy to introduce Antonio Roman-Alcalá, a friend who is active in agroecology, solidarity movements, and urban policy. He hails from the San Francisco Bay Area, where I've been inspired by a number of his projects. Not only is he an incredible organizer, but he is also a great cultivator of multispecies relationships, with a great wealth of knowledge. Antonio has generously agreed to write in about agroecology, his work, and give us a report back from his attendance at Via Campesina this summer.<br><br>Antonio Roman-Alcalá<br>Antonio Roman-Alcalá is an educator, researcher, writer, and organizer based in Berkeley, California who has worked for just sustainable food and political systems for the past 15 years. Antonio co-founded San Francisco’s Alemany Farm <a href="http://www.alemanyfarm.org/" target="_blank">http://www.alemanyfarm.org/</a>, the San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance <a href="http://www.sfuaa.org/" target="_blank">http://www.sfuaa.org/</a>, and the California Food Policy Council <a href="http://www.rootsofchange.org/who-we-are/networks/california-food-policy-council/" target="_blank">http://www.rootsofchange.org/<wbr>who-we-are/networks/<wbr>california-food-policy-<wbr>council/</a>, and his 2010 documentary film, In Search of Good Food <a href="http://www.insearchofgoodfood.org/" target="_blank">http://www.insearchofgoodfood.<wbr>org/</a>, can be viewed free online. He holds a BA from UC Berkeley, and an MA from ISS in The Hague. Currently, Antonio maintains the blog <a href="http://antidogmatist.com" target="_blank">antidogmatist.com</a> <a href="http://www.antidogmatist.com/" target="_blank">http://www.antidogmatist.com/</a>, teaches with the Urban Permaculture Institute <a href="http://www.upisf.com/" target="_blank">http://www.upisf.com/</a> and at UC Santa Cruz, conducts activist-scholar research <a href="https://iss.academia.edu/AntonioRomanAlcala" target="_blank">https://iss.academia.edu/<wbr>AntonioRomanAlcala</a>, and leads the North American Agroecology Organizing Project. He is also in search of new land to farm – a tough prospect in the urbanized and gentrified San Francisco Bay Area!<br><br>Warmly,<br>-Margaretha<br><br>--<br><a href="http://beforebefore.net" target="_blank">beforebefore.net</a><br><a href="http://guerrillagrafters.org" target="_blank">guerrillagrafters.org</a><br><a href="http://coastalreadinggroup.com" target="_blank">coastalreadinggroup.com</a><br>--</div>
<br>______________________________<wbr>_________________<br>
empyre forum<br>
<a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.<wbr>edu.au</a><br>
<a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://empyre.library.cornell.<wbr>edu</a><br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><span style="font-size:12.8px">Antonio Roman-Alcalá, MA</span><br></div><div>Thinker, Writer, Doer</div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><a href="http://antonioromanalcala.com" target="_blank">antonioromanalcala.com</a></span><br></div><div><a href="http://antidogmatist.com" target="_blank">antidogmatist.com</a></div><div><div style="font-size:12.8px">+1 (415) 571 6660</div><div style="font-size:12.8px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8px">recent peer-reviewed articles:</div><a href="http://www.ephemerajournal.org/contribution/looking-food-sovereignty-movements-post-growth-theory" target="_blank">Looking to food sovereignty movements for post-growth theory</a> (2017)</div><div><a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01436597.2016.1142366" target="_blank">Conceptualizing components, conditions, and trajectories of food sovereignty's 'sovereignty'</a> (2016)</div><div><a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14747731.2015.1033199?journalCode=rglo20" target="_blank">Broadening the land question in food sovereignty to Northern settings: the case of Occupy the Farm</a> (2015)</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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