Community Voices Heard

CVH Joins Farm Workers to Protest Burger King in Miami

Two members, Ann Valdez and Agnes Rivera, and one Staff, Mike Selick, went to Miami Florida this weekend to join with students, unions, and other grassroots organizations to march in solidarity with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) in a 9 mile march against Burger King. The CIW is demanding that Burger King pay their workers just 1 penny more for one pound of tomatoes. McDonald's and Taco Bell have already agreed to the workers demands but Burger King refuses to negotiate. These workers are working 16 hour days for often only $55. They are living in trailers with 15 to 20 people sleeping wherever they can. Check out the link below to read more about the march or read any of the articles that are attached to this post including an New York Times Editorial by Eric Scholsser, the author of "Fast Food Nation".

http://www.ciw-online.org/2007_BK_March/index.html

Grassroots Global Justice Delegation Travels to New Orleans to Support International Tribunal and Survivor’s Assembly

Two years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, Grassroots Global Justice members will travel to New Orleans to provide logistical support for the International Tribunal and 2nd Survivor’s Assembly. Community Voices Heard and other member groups of the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance will be traveling to New Orleans to provide support.

US Social Forum Report Back

We have recently gotten back from Atlanta Georgia where we took part in the first ever US Social Forum. CVH sent a large delegation of 31 people to Atlanta where we spent 5 days with organizations and individuals from around the country in order to learn more about issues affecting the world we live in as well as how we can organize to change this world. We helped to run three different workshops as well as attending many workshops individually. The attachment is a PDF of our Report Back letter, you can download this to get a more detailed description of our trip.

US Social Forum Workshop Agendas

Here are the agendas for our three workshops for the upcoming US Social Forum. We will be hosting workshops with help from other organizations around the country who work on similar issues as us. We are going to be having a workshop about Public Housing, a workshop with the Pushback Network, and a workshop about building the power of people on public assistance post-Welfare Reform.

CVH Member Quoted in ABQ Journal About US Social Forum

This is an article from the ABQ Journal. The article is about The People's Caravan to the US Social Forum organized by Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP). Community Voices Heard Member Agnes Rivera was quoted in the article. Here is a link to the article on the SWOP blog and attached is the original article from the journal.

SWOP Blog Article

US Social Forum Power Point

Here is a PDF format version of a PowerPoint Presentation that we have created in order to explain what the US Social Forum will be, the history of the Social Forum process, and other logistical information that we thought was relevant. The original PowerPoint had many more colors but this version is scaled down and in black and white to make it a faster download.

"Voices From The Edge" Favella's go to the World Social Forum

Here are two websites that have videos of CONGESCO an organization based on the Favela's of Brazil. Community Voices Heard and CONGESCO has set up a relationship as a result of the two organizations meeting each other at the third World Social Forum (WSF). Check out the websites and watch the videos.

http://www.videosocial.net/english/
http://www.massglobalaction.org/home/voices.htm

Report from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - CVH Spends Time with Congesco

Members of Community Voices Heard recently returned from a trip to Brazil where we spent one-week with an amazing group based in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro– CONGESCO (www.catcom.org/index2.htm Project No. 68 “Voices From the Edge”). The members of this network of community managers serve their communities in different ways: from distributing condoms and providing HIV/AIDS education, to running after school soccer clinics for kids; from teaching elders how to read, to doing projects of school reinforcement; from making art work out of recyclable materials, to teaching dance and theater. You name it, they do it. Each community member does the work not because there is a paycheck that they expect to get, but because it needs to be done, and someone has to do it. Their passion for bringing hope and change to their communities leaves them with no other option.