Equinox: Racial Justice Initiative Profile picture
Jul 15, 2021 11 tweets 6 min read Read on X
How the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy enriches billionaires whilst exploiting undocumented working migrants

👇👇👇 An explainer thread on CAP from a racial justice perspective👇👇👇 Image
Land & food justice has always been connected to racial justice. Historically, it has been weaponised against racialised communities. From:
- exclusion of property rights
- exploitation of racialised labour
- colonisation of the Global South for aggressive food plantations Image
The Common Agricultural Policy or “CAP '' plays a part in this. CAP is an incredibly powerful policy that determines:
🍎 how we grow our food,
🍏 how sustainable this is for the environment
🍊 who benefits most from subsidies - workers who grow our food or land-owning elites? Image
Environmental experts at @GreenpeaceEU, @BirdlifeEU and @EEB have pointed out how the current CAP is an unsustainable environmental disaster.

birdlife.org/europe-and-cen…
@GreenpeaceEU CAP is also unjust to most farmers.

CAP subsidies are not determined by how sustainable or productive your farms are but by how much farmland you own.

A whopping 80% of direct payments go to only 20% of elite land-owning farmers. Image
@GreenpeaceEU This enriches land-owning oligarchs.

nytimes.com/2019/11/03/wor… Image
@GreenpeaceEU Whilst land-owning oligarchs are enriched, the actual workers on farms who cultivate food are hyper exploited.

The majority of workers on these CAP subsidised farms?

Migrant labourers. Racialised people.

euronews.com/2020/07/17/inv…
@GreenpeaceEU These migrant workers (often from the Global South) are exploited, forced to work unpaid hours, with very little water or safety protection, some fainting and vomiting from exhaustion.

Many live in dire housing conditions & face verbal, physical and even sexual abuse.
@GreenpeaceEU The working conditions of those employed by these farms are not even mentioned in CAP.

This year 300 organisations argued that direct payments from CAP should be conditional on respect for working conditions. This has yet to be addressed by the EU.

euractiv.com/section/agricu…
@GreenpeaceEU Our food systems are built on the expertise, cultivation and labour of racialised people and migrant workers.

However, land-owning individuals & corporations benefit from the EU’s biggest subsidies.

This is how racial inequality is built into the system. Image

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Equinox: Racial Justice Initiative

Equinox: Racial Justice Initiative Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @Equinoxrji

Nov 16, 2023
To understand the roots of violence in Israel/Palestine we must take a decolonial approach.

But what does this mean?

It starts with understanding settler-colonialism. Image
“People without a land for a land without people” is often used to describe Israel’s creation.

When in reality the land already had people: Palestinian people.

That is because the goal of all settler-colonies is to erase and extinguish Indigenous people. Image
Settler colonialism is a particular type of colonialism.

It's hallmarked by large-scale immigration of settlers moving to land with the aim of dispossessing and replacing the indigenous people whilst creating a state that benefits settlers.
Read 30 tweets
May 22, 2023
"NGOs have tamed a generation of activists.

They’ve given up grand visions of social change & mass recruitment in favor of writing grants & wooing foundations; ceded control of the movement to executives in boardrooms..." @incitenews

What is the "NGO-isation" of resistance? Image
NGO-isation is the professionalisation, bureaucratisation, and institutionalisation of services that used to be fulfilled by governments or organised by mass movements.
The NGO-isation boom began in the late 1970s with the rise of neoliberal policies.

Countries began to privatise essential public goods and services like energy, housing, healthcare and education.
Read 22 tweets
May 11, 2023
Narratives about the debt crisis in Global South countries typically present it as a technical issue or the fault of “corrupt” or “incompetent” governments.

This intentionally erases colonialism in creating Global South debt, & how it is utilised as a form of neo-colonialism. Image
There is a debt crisis in the Global South, worsened since the pandemic.

Much of the debt spiral has been governments taking out more debt to service old debts.

foreignaffairs.com/china/developi…
Much of the debt accrued by countries in the Global South has its origins in colonialism.

The first President of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara, called debt neocolonial at the Organization of African Unity in 1987.

(A few months later, he was murdered in a coup backed by France) Image
Read 24 tweets
Dec 2, 2021
It's time the #EU condemns France's escalating persecution against Muslim people and anti-racism human rights defenders.

Thread below 👇🏾on how France is attacking the rights and freedoms of Muslim people.
Last week, two French Ministers attacked the EU Commissioner for Equality Helena Dalli for meeting with Muslim student youth organisation FEMSYO.

The issue?

Telling the Commissioner about their experience of Islamophobia and outright hate in Europe.

An example of the racism FEMSYO faced was during the European Youth event.

Far-right students harassed FEMSYO representatives, even screaming "Europe is white and Christian".

euractiv.com/section/non-di…
Read 17 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(