Support Grassroots Media: Contribute to Toward Freedom

Dear Readers:

We hope you've been visiting our online magazine regularly. If not, you might have missed some of the most trenchant coverage of "disaster capitalism" in Haiti available anywhere. We were especially pleased when web editor Ben Dangl's article a week after the earthquake - Profiting from Haiti's Crisis - went viral on the web. One reason for its popularity, I think, is because it explained so clearly the root causes of the overpopulation in Port-au-Prince neighborhoods that were hit so hard by the earthquake.

Quoting Brian Concannon, the director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti

Those people got there because they or their parents were intentionally pushed out of the countryside by aid and trade policies specifically designed to create a large captive and therefore exploitable labor force in the cities; by definition they are people who would not be able to afford to build earthquake resistant houses.

Since then 12 more TF articles have followed, several written by Haitian organizers like Chavannes Jean-Baptiste and Patrick Elie, and US writer Beverly Bell.

Donate Online

We're proud of our ability to follow a fast-changing story as it's happening, and of the far flung network of grassroots journalists we have developed over the years - largely with your help. We are sending this letter to ask for your support again, as we organize public events aimed at spreading awareness and sharing activist tactics across borders.

One recent example was a discussion and video screening by the editors of the inspiring book Venezuela Speaks! Voices from the Grassroots, a collection of interviews with activists and movement leaders from this dynamic country as it goes through historic changes. In March, at the Left Forum in New York City, we organized a panel discussion, "Lessons from Latin America for a US in Crisis." Attended by 80 participants, it examined activist strategies in Argentina, Colombia and Bolivia that could be applied in the US to fight the impacts of the economic crisis.

TF is currently organizing an event at the upcoming US Social Forum in Detroit regarding the movement against impunity in North and South America. This discussion will address the following vital question: Can former high level government officials in the US and Latin America actually be prosecuted for crimes they committed while in office?

A panel of authors and lawyers will review the options and describe the emerging world-wide accountability movement. TF associate Charlotte Dennett, author of the new book The People V. Bush, will participate, along with Colombian activist and radio journalist Mario Murillo, Katherine Hughes-Fraitekh, the Executive Director of Peace Brigades International, and others.

If you contribute $30 or more to TF, we'll send you a copy of Dennett's book The People V. Bush: One Lawyer's Campaign to Bring the President to Justice and the National Grassroots Movement She Encounters Along the Way as a thank you. The late Howard Zinn described it as "a clarion call for the people to confront the crimes of government, for democracy to come alive."

We deeply appreciate your past support and solidarity, and urge you to continue. Please send your contribution today. The body politic surely needs TF!

Thank you,

Robin Lloyd

TF Publisher

Donation Options: