Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, while we eat, hopefully, we will be thinking about the food, where it comes from, who produces it and at what cost.
Food Is Different: Why the WTO Should Get Out of Agriculture, a great book by Peter Rosset a book everyone who cares about food should read.
The dedication of the book is to Lee Kyung Hae, a Korean farmer who took his life in protest against the WTO on September 16, 2003 at the farmers protest march in Cancun Mexico. He is pictured on the cover, atop the barricades that separated the marchers from the trade negotiations. Free Trade, opposed by the small farmers of Korea and the rest of the world because it meant an end to their way of life, sacrificed to corporate domination.
He took his own life just a few yards from where we stood amongst the other protesters near the barricades. I stepped aside as they carried him past me on a stretcher, but had no idea what happened till I heard later that night that he had died in protest.
Many people have and will continue to discredit his act, write him off as a crazy or some sort of fool. While I didn't know him personally, I have spent lots of time with peasant farmers like Lee Kyung Hae and the one thing I have learned from them, farming is about much more than making money, it is life. They are ready to do anything, to protect their farms, their families, their way of life.
Most farmers I know here at home, (myself included) have a strong attachment to our farms, the land, our heritage, but it is a life or death attachment to very few of us. These peasant farmers are different, they have the passion, they will die for what they believe.
Those who would write Lee Kyung Hae off do not understand the commitment, the connection, the interdependence these farmers have with each other and their communities. I remember back in the 60's during Vietnam, every so often we heard about a US soldier who threw himself on a live hand grenade to save the lives of his comrades, his brothers; it's like that.
Peasant farmers have told me of those who stood in front of bulldozers in their attempt to stop Plan Puebla-Panama, the giant transportation project linking Central and South America to the North, another part of the corporate effort to extract the wealth of the South.
These peasant farmers are willing to sacrifice their lives for what they feel is the greater good. Perhaps there is no thought given to a spontaneous act of sacrifice, perhaps there is, I don't know. I do know that in order for a human to overcome the strongest instinct we have, self preservation, there needs to be an extremely urgent life altering issue at stake.
Food, ones farm, ones heritage, ones family, these are the issues Lee Kyung Hae gave his life for. He, like all the peasant farmers in Cancun, was determined that the World Trade Organization, the WTO, would not sell out Korea's farms, families and their right to produce food to a parasitic group of multinational corporations intent only on making a profit. They knew if the trade provisions of the WTO were enacted they would loose their right to feed themselves and their families, their right to grow the food their ancestors had grown; the food that maintained their heritage as well as their lives.
Lee Kyung Hae's sacrifice was a very visible and selfless act, yet every day peasant farmers around the world give up something, their land, their rights their ability to feed themselves, their food sovereignty.
How could we have let our world slip so far? Why do people need to die for their right to feed themselves? At what point did the profits of multinational corporations become more important than the lives of people?
Food is different, we need to understand that people are willing to die for their right to farm, to grow what they want to feed their families and communities. While few are inclined to make the ultimate sacrifice, we need to think about how important food really is. It is life and death for many. Good food, local food, food that supports the farmer, nourishes the eater and supports the community, that is what Lee Kyung Hae died for.