How the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy enriches billionaires whilst exploiting undocumented working migrants
👇👇👇 An explainer thread on CAP from a racial justice perspective👇👇👇
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
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?
Environmental experts at @GreenpeaceEU, @BirdlifeEU and @EEB have pointed out how the current CAP is an unsustainable environmental disaster.
@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.
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.
“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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.