80,000 people manifested for social and environmental justice during People’s Summit

More than 80,000 men and women formed a sea of ??people in downtown Rio de Janeiro. The global mobilization called by the Joint Group of the Peoples’ Summit and by various movements was the hallmark of raising the voices of people around the world against the cheap theater staged during the official conference Rio +20 by heads of state and large corporations, incapable of promoting social and environmental justice.

The leader of Via Campesina, Joao Pedro Stedile, called the audience to form a historical pact: “We propose the covenant of Rio de Janeiro of people fighting, to return to our places of origin and to struggle everyday against the right enemies.” Stedile said that the big polluters, who usurp the natural resources and destroy life on Earth, are well known. It is capitalism, transnational companies likeMonsanto, Cargill and the banks!”

The leader of the Movement of Landless People alert that as capitalism is in crisis the capitalists are greedier. “They want to take over all the world’s resources, to protect themselves from the crisis and then, with the privatization of land, water and even air (with carbon credits), they can resume their cycles of theft”. However, when seeing the magnitude of the manifestation, never seen in the country since 1989, expressed the hope that new times arrived in which the people, “tired of the politics of neoliberalism, will walk on their own legs.”

The cries of all communities, movements and people fighting were heard throughout the manifestation. They marked the end of the exploitation of labor and natural resources until exhausting them, and the start of the construction of new paradigms such as agroecology, the rights, cultures and peoples’ demands. Bringing what he called a revolutionary heat of the Caribbean people, Camille Chalmers from Haiti, was emphatic in demanding the end of colonialism in countries like Curacao and Puerto Rico, and the neo-colonialism suffered by Haiti and screamed, “UN troops should leave Haiti now! “

Thousands of men and women, peasants, urban, from all ends of the earth echoed against the “Green Economy” proposals from banks and heads of state what they called as “capitalism masquerading as sustainability”. Initiatives such as REDD, or even the farce of carbon credits, are rejected by the people. The solutions already presented and practiced by the peoples of the world “to cool the planet” are family farms and a new economic framework.

For Elizabeth Mpofu, who came from Zimbabwe in the delegation of the International Via Campesina “Rio +20” should be called “Rio -20”! The green economy is no solution, because it only serves multinationals, does not respect human rights neither the people. It creates an agenda of destruction. We will destroy this agenda. The militant exemplified that the concentration of land is one of the most serious problems the world, citing the recent case of Paraguay where peasant leaders fall who go against the big landowners.

During the great act, the UN official event was remembered, highlighting the prestige of the major economies of the North for the “government toadies of Imperialism,” which are in the Rio +20. The assignment was questioned by the Brazilian government of a contribution of ten billion US dollars to fund the rescue of European banks in crisis. In total, adding up the contributions from other countries of the G-20 will be detached 456 billion USD of public funds for the crisis of capitalism.

While diplomats and heads of state of a hundred countries met to draft a single document (which does not provide penalties for polluters neither targets), a great number of civil society organizations promote the Peoples’ Summit for Social and Environmental Justice in defense of commons. In addition to large street demonstrations, debates were organised about the actual causes of the crisis, the solutions already practiced by the people and agendas and units to fight in the near future.