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An interview with visual artist Anuja Dasgupta, whose practice sits at the intersection of eco-art, ethnobotany and community. Using plant-based emulsions, cameraless photography, and repurposed wood, she creates art that refuses to represent the land, …

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, May 1, 2026

The eight-hour workday. Voting rights. Desegregated buses and schools. Every hard-won right Californians depend on today came from people who organized, refused to accept the status quo, and fought back.

In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions made a declaration: in five years, workers across the country would strike on May 1 for an eight-hour workday.  No guarantee of success—and no central command to make it happen. The idea spread anyway, city to city, carried by ordinary workers who organized locally and walked off of the job together. At Haymarket Square in Chicago, workers paid for that defiance with their lives. The movement grew anyway. They won, and May 1 became the international workers’ celebration, May Day.

That is the spirit that drives Public Advocates. For 55 years, we have combined civil rights litigation, policy advocacy, and deep partnership with grassroots communities to challenge the laws and power structures that lock low-income communities and communities of color out of good schools, stable housing, and reliable transit. We do this because rights declared on paper mean nothing without power behind them—and power is built through sustained organizing and coordinated struggle over time. That is how we win resourced schools, renter protections, and transit systems that serve the people who need these most.

That work has never been more urgent.

California is the fourth-largest economy in the world. The people who built it—teachers, nurses, farmworkers, transit workers, essential workers of every kind—are being pushed out of it. The Tenant Protection Act, the state’s primary shield against extreme rent hikes and unjust evictions, expires in 2030. Tens of thousands of affordable homes sit approved but unfinanced. Students in under-resourced school facilities are still denied what the law guarantees. This is not a series of policy failures. It is a system working exactly as it was designed—to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few rather than spreading it to include the people who make this state run.

We know it can be different today because we have seen it. In Minnesota years of cross-racial organizing produced the 2023“Minnesota Miracle,”— a single legislative session that delivered a billion dollars in affordable housing, free school meals for every child, expanded voting rights, paid family leave, and protections for workers and immigrant communities. This past January 23, that same coalition drove a massive ICE presence out of Minneapolis through peaceful community action. It didn’t happen by accident. It happened because people built power—across race, across issues, across years—together.

That is the work of May Day. That is the work of Public Advocates.

This May Day we recommit to the California that should exist—where the people who built this economy can afford to stay here, where every child has a school worthy of their potential, and where no community’s future depends on the goodwill of those in power.

Power isn’t given. It’s built. We’re building it.

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Public Advocates Inc. is a nonprofit law firm and advocacy organization that challenges the systemic causes of poverty and racial discrimination by strengthening community voices in public policy and achieving tangible legal victories advancing education, housing, transportation equity, and climate justice.

The post Statement: Public Advocates Stands with Workers and Communities Fighting For a Just California on May Day appeared first on Public Advocates.

April 30, 2026—LAist reporter Mariana Dale spoke with Senior Staff Attorney Alicia Virani about Miliani Rodriguez v. California, Public Advocates’ lawsuit challenging California’s inequitable distribution of Prop 2 school modernization funds. Virani explains why the firm filed a motion for a preliminary injunction in March—and why low-wealth districts facing asbestos, leaks, and toxic mold can’t afford to wait for the next bond measure. A hearing is scheduled for May 20.

Read the Story

The post LAIST: California voters greenlit billions of dollars to fix schools. How much has it helped? As schools age, the requests for modernization funding exceed the funding available.As schools age, the requests for modernization funding exceed the funding available. appeared first on Public Advocates.

This profile is part of an ongoing series that introduces members of CalCAN’s newly formed Stewardship Council. The Stewardship Council serves...

The post CalCAN Stewardship Council Profile: Thomas Nelson appeared first on CalCAN - California Climate & Agriculture Network.

For years, farmers and ranchers in the state have been facing rising costs of inputs. Now, as a consequence of the...

The post New Bill Aims to Support CA Farmers Facing Fertilizer and Water Shortages  appeared first on CalCAN - California Climate & Agriculture Network.

The guest blog by Michael Happ of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) below provides an overview of what...

The post USDA’s new Regenerative Agriculture Initiative: A step forward or greenwashing? appeared first on CalCAN - California Climate & Agriculture Network.

On April 8, dairy producers and advocates from CalCAN and the California Dairy Campaign met with more than twenty legislative offices...

The post Dairy Producers Show Policymakers that AMMP Funding is Critical to Meeting Methane Reduction Goals and Staying Viable in California appeared first on CalCAN - California Climate & Agriculture Network.

The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) is inviting expressions of interest from qualified, Africa-based firms to provide social media consultancy services for a period of 12 months, renewable based on performance.
AFSA is Africa’s largest civil society network, uniting 48 member organisations across 50 countries and advancing agroecology and food sovereignty for over 200 million people across the continent. As we scale our digital presence, we are seeking a creative, experienced, and mission-aligned social media partner to help amplify our work.

The consultancy covers two key areas. The first is the promotion and digital campaign management of AFSA’s four major Pan-African flagship campaigns — My Food Is African, Agroecology4Climate Action, Seed Is Life, and Defend Our Land, Restore Our Soil. The selected firm will be expected to develop campaign strategies, produce short-form videos, design visual assets, manage content across platforms, and deliver regular performance reports.

The second area covers the production and promotion of AFSA’s newly launched podcast, The Battle for African Agriculture, hosted by AFSA General Coordinator Dr. Million Belay. The consultancy will manage end-to-end weekly episode recording, professional audio and video editing, multi-platform promotion across YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok, as well as audience growth and analytics reporting.

Interested firms are required to submit a company profile, portfolio evidence of previous campaigns and podcast production experience, team and influencer profiles, a pilot social media plan, and a detailed budget proposal.

Proposals must be submitted to afsa@afsafrica.org by 27 April 2026 at 23:59 East Africa Time, with the subject line: EOI – Social Media Consultancy for AFSA Campaigns & Podcast. For technical inquiries, please contact kirubel.tadele@afsafrica.org.

For full details on the scope of work, submission requirements, and evaluation criteria, please refer to the Terms of Reference (TOR) attached.

This first quarter 2026 edition of the AFSA Newsletter captures a period of intense reflection, sharpened advocacy, and strategic action across Africa and beyond. From Lilongwe to Dakar, Garuga to Cartagena, AFSA and its members engaged critical questions shaping the future of African food systems, including school meals, land justice, seed sovereignty, public agricultural finance, cross border agroecological trade, territorial markets, and citizen mobilisation. Across these interventions, one message stands out clearly: the struggle for food sovereignty is not only about production, but also about power, policy, markets, culture, and the right of African people to define their own food futures.

In these pages, readers will see how AFSA continued to link grassroots realities with continental and global advocacy. This edition highlights the adoption of the Lilongwe Declaration on agroecology based school and college meals, AFSA’s participation in ICARRD+20 in Colombia, the launch of a major report on the African Development Bank’s role in reshaping African agriculture, renewed calls to centre farmers in regional seed policy processes, and important internal moments of alignment through the AFSA staff retreat, the Citizens Working Group on Agroecology meeting, and the TAFS annual review workshop. It also documents growing momentum in public campaigns and movement spaces, including the #MyFoodMyIdentity online campaign and continued efforts to strengthen agroecological trade, territorial markets, and African food cultures.

What this edition reflects most of all is AFSA’s continued commitment to building a food systems movement rooted in justice, resilience, dignity, and African knowledge. Whether confronting corporate capture, defending land and seed rights, supporting local markets, or reshaping public narratives around food, AFSA’s work remains anchored in the conviction that Africa’s food future must be led by its farmers, communities, women, youth, and social movements. We invite you to read, reflect, and continue walking with us as we strengthen the movement for agroecology and food sovereignty across the continent.

Organizations representing workers in informal employment – waste pickers, home‐based workers, street vendors and domestic workers, including migrant workers – recognize the social and solidarity economy (SSE) as a critical pathway to improving livelihoods, strengthening collective organization and advancing decent work. This is particularly important given that women are disproportionately represented in informal employment due to structural inequalities, including limited access to opportunities and persistent gender and cultural biases.

For global networks such as HomeNet International (HNI), International Alliance of Waste Pickers (IAWP), International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF), StreetNet International (SNI) and Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), SSE entities including cooperatives, associations, mutuals and self‐help groups have served as practical economic infrastructures through which workers organize production, stabilize incomes, access resources and strengthen their collective voice.

We are concerned that growing global uncertainty is placing renewed strain on international cooperation at a time when multilateral efforts, including those of the International Labour Organization (ILO), remain essential to advancing decent work for workers in informal employment.

Across the world, workers in informal employment face severe decent‐work deficits: unstable incomes, limited access to social protection, restricted bargaining power and persistent barriers to formal recognition as workers. Today, 58% of the global workforce (representing two billion people) are informally employed – in sectors such as waste picking, home‐based work, street vending, domestic work and care services.

For these workers, the social and solidarity economy represents far more than an aspirational concept. For millions of workers in informal employment, SSE entities function as concrete pathways to improve incomes and livelihoods. Through cooperatives, associations, mutuals, self‐help groups and other collective economic organizations, workers are able to coordinate production, reduce costs, stabilize incomes, access solidarity‐based finance and build forms of social protection where formal systems remain inaccessible. These collective and solidarity‐based economic arrangements are particularly crucial for women in informal employment, who face structural inequalities, lower incomes, greater exposure to violence, harassment and discrimination, and a disproportionate burden of unpaid care work.

The experiences of workers in our sectors demonstrate how collective economic organization strengthens workers’ bargaining power with municipalities, governments, employers and enterprises. By pooling resources, knowledge and infrastructure, SSE entities help workers overcome structural barriers that would be impossible to address individually. They do this while reinforcing democratic governance and collective representation.

Our organizations have welcomed the recognition of cooperatives and the wider social and solidarity economy in international labour standards, such as ILO Recommendation 193 on the Promotion of Cooperatives, 2002, and Recommendation 204 concerning the Transition from the Informal to the Formal Economy, 2015. The 2022 ILO Resolution concerning Decent Work and the Social and Solidarity Economy and the 2023 and 2024 UN resolutions to promote the social and solidarity economy also reflect important milestones in recognizing the role of collective economic models in advancing decent work. In addition, the 2025 ILO policy guidelines for the promotion of decent work in recycling highlights the importance of SSE approaches in supporting workers in informal employment, particularly waste pickers.

Leadership within the UN system, particularly through the ILO’s work with its constituents and partners, has played a critical role in furthering research, policy dialogue and international cooperation to advance the social and solidarity economy. We greatly appreciate the partnership that has developed over the years between
our global networks and the ILO, including its Cooperative and Social and Solidarity Economy Unit, and we look forward to continuing and deepening this collaboration in the years ahead.

In the context of tightening fiscal space, competing priorities and heightened global uncertainty, it is essential that the progress made in recognizing and supporting the social and solidarity economy not only continues but expands.

The social and solidarity economy should not be understood as a marginal or secondary approach to economic development. Rather, it represents a set of existing economic practices through which workers in informal employment collectively build more stable livelihoods, strengthen their rights, and contribute to more inclusive and resilient economies and societies.

In this sense, promoting and defending the social and solidarity economy is intrinsically linked to advancing gender equality, not only by expanding women’s economic opportunities, but by contributing to the transformation of structural conditions of exploitation and discrimination that underpin both informal employment and gender inequality.

Maintaining and strengthening policy, legal and programmatic support for the social and solidarity economy within the ILO’s mandate and across the broader multilateral system is essential to ensuring that pathways toward decent work for millions of workers in informal employment remain grounded not only in market mechanisms but also in solidarity, democratic participation and collective economic organization.

We urge governments, workers’ organizations, international institutions and development partners to boost the policy and institutional frameworks that will enable the social and solidarity economy to deploy its full potential.

HomeNet International is a global network of membership‐based workers’ organizations that represents more than 1.3 million home‐based workers, from 71 organizations spread across 30 countries.
Visit www.homenetinternational.org.

The International Alliance of Waste Pickers (IAWP) is a global union of 50 waste picker organizations, representing more than 460,000 workers across 34 countries. The IAWP is committed to advancing the rights and strengthening the organizing efforts of waste pickers.
Visit www.globalrec.org.

The International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF) is internationally recognized as a Global Union Federation. Made up of 93 affiliates from 70 countries, the IDWF serves a membership of over 675,900 domestic/ household workers. Most are organized in trade unions and others in associations, networks and worker cooperatives.
Visit www.idwfed.org.

StreetNet International is a global organization of committed informal traders, with the goal to promote and leverage an autonomous and democratic alliance of street vendors, market vendors, hawkers and cross‐border traders. StreetNet International is present in more than 50 countries and represents over 700,000 members worldwide.
Visit www.streetnet.org.za.

Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) is a global network focused on empowering the working poor, especially women, in the informal economy to secure their livelihoods. We believe all workers should have equal economic opportunities, rights, protection and voice. WIEGO promotes change by improving statistics and expanding knowledge on the informal economy, building networks and capacity among informal worker organizations and, jointly with the networks and organizations, influencing local, national and international policies.
Visit www.wiego.org.

The post Defending the Social and SolidarityEconomy Amid Global Uncertainty appeared first on International Alliance of Waste Pickers.

Hi there

After a brief period of hiatus we’re very happy to announce that we will be returning to regular programing on May Day, May 1 at 1pm EST for a webinar on protecting workers’ safety in the climate crisis.

Our panelists, to be announced shortly, will speak about the vital work trade unions do to protect workers from rising temperatures, new pollutants and other stresses on the job and what they are doing to ensure that their members are safe.

We will have a Zoom link to RSVP shortly but if you would like to discuss joining the panel, please reach out to convener@greeneonnet.ca

See you there.

Our Guests:

Alex Callahan: National Director of Health, Safety and Environment with the Canadian Labour Congress.

 Anne Tennier: President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety 

Roger Duffy: Health & Safety Representative Canadian Union of Public Employees

Registration info:

You are invited to register for a Zoom webinar!

When: May 1, 2026 01:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Topic:  Green Economy Network

Register in advance for this webinar.

See you there

The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) launches a new report asking a critical question: Is the African Development Bank (AfDB) financing food systems that truly serve Africa’s people?

Based on an analysis of 20 AfDB-supported agricultural projects, this study, researched by Dr Keiron Audain for AFSA, reveals a troubling pattern. Despite strong rhetoric around food security and climate resilience, a significant share of AfDB financing continues to reinforce agro-industrial models built on monocultures, synthetic inputs, and corporate value chains. Meanwhile, farmer-managed seed systems, agroecological practices, territorial markets, and Indigenous knowledge remain underfunded and marginalised.

The report exposes persistent gaps in transparency and participation. Communities are frequently consulted but rarely empowered to shape decisions. Investments that affect land, livelihoods, and diets are too often designed without meaningful co-creation with the smallholder farmers who feed the continent.

At a time when Africa faces escalating climate shocks, biodiversity loss, and food insecurity, public finance cannot continue to support systems that deepen dependency, degrade soils, and concentrate power in corporate hands. Africa does not need a blind expansion of industrial agriculture. It needs investment in agroecology, crop diversity, resilient seed systems, and local food economies that strengthen sovereignty and community control.

This report is not just an analysis. It is a call to redirect agricultural finance toward justice, ecological integrity, and food sovereignty. AfDB and African governments must ensure that public resources build resilient, community-rooted food systems rather than entrenching models that undermine them.

Protect Our Land, Restore Our Soil: Collective Territorialities for Land Justice, Pastoralist Futures, and Ecological Restoration

As civil society organisations, social movements, faith-based actors, Indigenous Peoples, pastoralist and peasant organisations from Africa and across the Global South, we come to ICARRD+20 at a moment of deep crisis and urgent possibility.

Twenty years after the first International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development, rural communities across the world continue to face dispossession, land concentration and ecological destruction. Despite global commitments to end hunger and poverty, land and food systems are increasingly controlled by corporate and financial interests, while communities that produce food remain marginalised and insecure.

Across Africa and other regions, customary and collective land systems are being undermined in the name of development, conservation, climate mitigation and large-scale investment. Carbon offset projects, extractive industries, agribusiness expansion and speculative land markets are accelerating dispossession, soil degradation and social inequality, often excluding communities from territories they have governed collectively for generations. At the same time, agribusiness corporations and financial investors are driving the rapid expansion of factory farming and industrial livestock production across Africa, concentrating land and resources, degrading ecosystems, and undermining pastoralist and small-scale livestock systems essential to food sovereignty.

Pastoralist communities are among those most severely affected. As 2026 is the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, this conference must recognise pastoralists as central to sustainable food systems and ecological resilience. Policies that restrict livestock mobility, privatise communal rangelands or convert grazing lands to agribusiness, conservation or carbon-offset projects undermine pastoralist livelihoods while intensifying conflict, poverty and environmental degradation. Yet pastoralism remains one of the most climate-resilient land-use systems in drylands. Through mobility and communal rangeland management, pastoralists sustain livelihoods, supply vital meat and milk production, and maintain ecological balance in areas where crop farming is often unsustainable.

Meanwhile, communities defending their territories face criminalisation and violence. Women pastoralists and small-scale producers, youth, and Indigenous Peoples remain excluded from decision-making processes, despite being central to food production and environmental stewardship.

ICARRD+20 must therefore not be a commemorative event. It must become a turning point.

Our Calls to Governments and International Institutions

Ahead of ICARRD+20, we call on governments, international institutions, and development partners to commit to the following:

1. Recognise and protect collective and customary land tenure systems, including individual and collective land rights as affirmed in CESCR, UNDRIP and UNDROP.
2. Protect pastoralist rangelands and livestock mobility, including cross-border corridors essential for climate adaptation and peace, and prevent conversion of rangelands to inappropriate uses such as monoculture tree plantations.
3. Implement genuine agrarian reform and equitable land redistribution, prioritising landless farmers, women, youth, pastoralists and Indigenous communities, while addressing the historical and political drivers of land degradation and induced land scarcity.
4. End land speculation and financialisation, including large-scale land acquisitions and carbon or biodiversity credit schemes that dispossess communities.
5. Redirect agricultural and climate finance toward agroecology, rangeland restoration and community-led food systems, and integrate pro-pastoralist strategies into National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Promote conservation models that uphold pastoralists’ rights and ensure restoration strengthens pastoralist livelihoods as part of a just green transition.
6. Invest in decentralised infrastructure and services compatible with mobile pastoralist systems, including water, veterinary care, markets, education and health.
7. Guarantee meaningful participation of affected communities, and free prior and informed consent of Indigenous Peoples, in land, agriculture and climate decision-making.
8. Protect land and environmental defenders, and end violence, criminalisation and forced displacement.
9. Establish binding corporate accountability mechanisms for human rights violations and ecological harm across global value chains.

Toward Land Justice, Pastoralist Futures and Ecological Restoration

The future lies not in further commodifying land and food systems, but in restoring community control over territories, securing pastoralist mobility and commons, and supporting agroecological transitions rooted in justice and ecological integrity.

ICARRD+20 must renew global commitments to agrarian reform, land justice, and food sovereignty, led by communities that sustain the world’s food systems and ecosystems.

Land justice is climate justice. Pastoralist mobility is ecological resilience.

Across the world, governments and private actors are shutting down dumpsites in the name of modernization, climate action, or urban order. But for the millions of waste pickers who have sustained recycling systems for decades, these closures do not feel like transitions. They are evictions. They mean losing the right to work, being pushed out of the city, being excluded from decisions that shape our lives, and being blamed for environmental problems we did not create. What is presented as progress often results in repression: sites close overnight, police arrive before social services, and companies take control of materials without acknowledging the workers who made those materials valuable in the first place.

From Africa to the Asia-Pacific, from the Americas to Europe, our affiliates report the same pattern when their workplaces are closed: no consultation, no guarantees, and no place for waste pickers in the so-called “new systems.” Environmental narratives, technical language, and regulatory frameworks are repeatedly used to justify the exclusion of workers—especially women, migrants, and racialized communities who already face multiple forms of inequality. These are not isolated cases; they represent a global political trend that threatens our livelihoods, our dignity, and the continuity of organized waste picker movements worldwide.

We reject the idea that waste pickers are a problem to be removed. For generations, we have diverted enormous quantities of materials from dumpsites, reduced emissions, and protected ecosystems—long before recycling, reusing, and repairing became part of official environmental agendas. Today, despite vast amounts of valuable materials being wasted or captured by corporations, waste pickers are increasingly denied access to recyclables, reusable materials, and repairable goods. A system that discards workers while protecting profits is neither modern nor sustainable.

No dumpsite closure can be legitimate without the full participation of waste pickers from the outset. We demand recognition as workers who need rights, and a decisive role in the planning, implementation, and monitoring of any waste system reforms. Any restructuring must guarantee secure livelihoods, continued access to materials, and real alternatives for those who choose different pathways. Anything less is forced displacement.

We denounce all forms of criminalization and repression. Sudden closures, violent evictions, and narratives that portray waste pickers as obstacles to environmental progress are incompatible with a just and democratic transition.

We draw a clear line: we will not accept closures that erase our work, deny our access to materials, projects that dispossess us of value, or models that treat poor workers as disposable. Our vision is of cities where waste pickers are recognized as environmental workers, with dignified working conditions, stable incomes, political voice, and shared control over the systems they sustain.

We speak with one global voice: Work with us. Invest in us. Recognize us. Partner with us. A world without waste pickers is a world with more waste—and less justice.

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The post Collective Political Statement on Dumpsite Closures appeared first on International Alliance of Waste Pickers.

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