On April 17, 1996, members of the Landless Workers‘ Movement MST were shot dead by the military police of the state of Pará with impunity. This incident shocked the whole world and provoked massive resentment, especially in rural communities. La Via Campesina responded with solidarity actions and demands for justice, mobilising peasant communities not only in Brazil or Latin America but all over the world. It declared April 17 as the “International Day of Peasant Struggles” to keep the peasant resistance alive in memory.

This year, owing to the massive lock down in many countries due to the spread of Coronavirus, we are calling for creative mobilisations.

#StayHomeButNotSilent

A moment of crisis like this reveals that our interrelationship with each other as humans is important. We are much more interconnected with each other than this brutal economic system leads us to believe. However, to protect the health and integrity of our members, friends, and allies, we are not issuing a call for land occupations, mass marches, public talks, public forums or film screenings this April 17, 2020.

BUT:

• Stay at home, and pledge not to remain silent. Now is the time to carry out creative struggles from within the confines of our farms and houses.
• Let us transform the windows, the terraces, the gardens and fields into our demonstration squares, turn our pots and pans into drums of resistance.
• Let us make our banners of denunciation! Let our walls speak and show our strength and resistance amid this scenario of crisis and capitalist hegemony.
• Let us build solidarity and think about how to share with the community, neighbourhood or friends and how to help the most vulnerable people.
• Let us pledge to consume food from local peasant cooperatives and communities, and not from the transnationals! Go to the local markets, buy directly from the producer and your neighbourhood shops and promote humanist values.

Be our communicator and take to social networks! Make videos, photos or audio reports to know that the same struggle and resistance unite us in all corners of the world! We are in this, together! Send them to lvcweb@viacampesina.org to be published in our media. Download our communication materials here: https://cloud.viacampesina.org/s/WEYDjzq2fRo2yp7

READ THE CALL-FOR-MOBILISATION