Chiapas Support Committee

Mexico is heavily militarized and the US encourages this militarization through the billion-dollar Merida Initiative (Plan Mexico), a plan to stop drug running across the border. However, much of the Mexican Army is deployed to areas other than the border. These are often areas where megaprojects are planned: airports, super-highways, ports, dams and tourist projects. The extraction of oil, minerals and genetic material also produces militarization and violence. The workshop begins with an artistic presentation by the Beehive Collective about the Plan Puebla-Panama (PPP), now re-named the Mesoamerica Project, a regional development plan that encompasses all the states of Southern Mexico, the countries of Central America and Colombia. A digital (power point) presentation by the Chiapas Support Committee follows about conflicts that have arisen due to megaprojects throughout Southern Mexico, with special emphasis on the stateof Chiapas, where the Zapatistas present a strong resistance to developers. Discussions will focus on developing a shared analysis and identifying different strategies for building a transnational movement against militarization and for supporting communities based on social justice and hiuman rights.

The U.S.-Mexico border is the epicenter of the struggle against militarization and new forms of racial, ethnic, nationality and religious profiling. The border is also the laboratory where neo-liberal projects and initiatives to privatize and control workers, communities and access to rights, services and the natural world are being carried out. Immigrants, which include Indigenous people, workers, communities, families and different nationalities and colors, are bearing the brunt of the attack. The recent Arizona anti-immigrant law, SB1070, is an example of the new economic, social and political compacts and developments being piloted and built on the backs of people of color and immigrants whoe are the most visible at the border. The neo-liberal project of “free” trade, “free” markets and the attack and rollback of rights continues using anti-immigrant initiatives and border security to convince the U.S. working class and other sectors of the U.S to buy into neo-liberal agenda, undermining the rights of immigrants and people of color to create racial divisions and wedges. However, frontline immigrant and border communities are not taking this laying down. This workshop will address several issues & outcomes, including: * Developing a shared analysis and uplifting specific issues of the border regions, human rights community-based organizing (this will include groups from Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, including inviting community groups from northern border). * Creating a power analysis and landscape of how the border communities are linked to interior communities; * Countering and developing alternatives to the politics of militarism and racism fueled by the militarization of immigrant and border communities * Sharing how and what we are organizing for and resisting against:to iIdentify strategies & actions to strengthen grassroots community-based and movement-wide organizing to break out of the neoliberal stranglehold

Mexico is heavily militarized and the US encourages this militarization through the billion-dollar Merida Initiative (Plan Mexico), a plan to stop drug running across the border. However, much of the Mexican Army is deployed to areas other than the border. These are often areas where megaprojects are planned: airports, super-highways, ports, dams and tourist projects. The extraction of oil, minerals and genetic material also produces militarization and violence. The workshop begins with an artistic presentation by the Beehive Collective about the Plan Puebla-Panama (PPP), now re-named the Mesoamerica Project, a regional development plan that encompasses all the states of Southern Mexico, the countries of Central America and Colombia. A digital (power point) presentation by the Chiapas Support Committee follows about conflicts that have arisen due to megaprojects throughout Southern Mexico, with special emphasis on the stateof Chiapas, where the Zapatistas present a strong resistance to developers. Discussions will focus on developing a shared analysis and identifying different strategies for building a transnational movement against militarization and for supporting communities based on social justice and hiuman rights.

The U.S.-Mexico border is the epicenter of the struggle against militarization and new forms of racial, ethnic, nationality and religious profiling. The border is also the laboratory where neo-liberal projects and initiatives to privatize and control workers, communities and access to rights, services and the natural world are being carried out. Immigrants, which include Indigenous people, workers, communities, families and different nationalities and colors, are bearing the brunt of the attack. The recent Arizona anti-immigrant law, SB1070, is an example of the new economic, social and political compacts and developments being piloted and built on the backs of people of color and immigrants whoe are the most visible at the border. The neo-liberal project of “free” trade, “free” markets and the attack and rollback of rights continues using anti-immigrant initiatives and border security to convince the U.S. working class and other sectors of the U.S to buy into neo-liberal agenda, undermining the rights of immigrants and people of color to create racial divisions and wedges. However, frontline immigrant and border communities are not taking this laying down. This workshop will address several issues & outcomes, including: * Developing a shared analysis and uplifting specific issues of the border regions, human rights community-based organizing (this will include groups from Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, including inviting community groups from northern border). * Creating a power analysis and landscape of how the border communities are linked to interior communities; * Countering and developing alternatives to the politics of militarism and racism fueled by the militarization of immigrant and border communities * Sharing how and what we are organizing for and resisting against:to iIdentify strategies & actions to strengthen grassroots community-based and movement-wide organizing to break out of the neoliberal stranglehold