Massive protests have disrupted global summit meetings from Seattle to Quebec City and from Gothenburg to Genoa. These demonstrations let the world know that resistance to globalization remains strong and vibrant. Not as clearly heard, though, are accounts of local communities organizing popular collective actions to resist those same institutions and policies of globalization.

Focusing on four countries -- Mexico, Guatemala, United States, and Canada -- the narratives in this volume tell of peoples' collective struggles for environmental, economic and social justice. They deal with: indigenous peoples struggles against violence and coercion in Guatemala; Guatemalan refugees mobilizing in exile; environmental education for sustainable agriculture in Mexico; organizing waste pickers of Mexico; the resistance efforts to better working conditions of telemarketing operators; improving seniors housing; and the ways people of color have taken community actions to change oppressive environments in New York City.

In all cases the focus is on the meaning and usefulness of individual acts of resistance and their relationship to collective action: the ways people cope with difficult working conditions and how these acts help to change, not only the working conditions, but the workers themselves.

Where does our food come from? Whose hands have planted, cultivated, picked, packed, processed, transported, scanned, sold, sliced, and cooked it? What production practices have transformed it from seed to fruit, from fresh to processed form? Who decides what is grown and how? What are the effects of those decisions on our health and the health of the planet? Tangled Routes tackles these fascinating questions and demystifies globalization by tracing the long journey of a corporate tomato from a Mexican field to a Canadian fast-food restaurant. Through an interdisciplinary lens, Deborah Barndt examines the dynamic relationships between production and consumption, work and technology, biodiversity and cultural diversity, and health and environment. A globalization-from-above perspective is reflected in the corporate agendas of a Mexican agribusiness, the U.S.-based McDonald's chain, and Canadian-based Loblaws supermarkets. The women workers on the front line of these businesses offer a humanized globalization-from-below perspective, while yet another "globalization" is revealed through examples of resistance and local alternatives. This revised and updated edition highlights developments since the turn of the millennium, in particular the deepening economic integration of the NAFTA countries as well as the growing questioning of NAFTA's consequences and the crafting of alternatives built on foundations of sustainability and justice.

This collection of compelling and original research makes connections in Canada, the US and Mexico among women who work in fast-food restaurants, supermarkets and agricultural production. The fourteen chapters take a critical look at how the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has affected these women's working and living conditions, sharpening our understanding of how the workplace has been restructured in order to fulfill consumer demands for tomatoes, exotic flowers and fruits, as well as fast-food burgers and fries. Food activists in Latin America, the US and Canada propose alternatives to counteract the oppressive conditions of free trade and globalization.

This compelling collection of inspiring case studies from community arts projects in five countries will inform and inspire students, artists, and activists. VIVA is the product of a five-year transnational research project that integrates place, politics, passion, and praxis. Framed by postcolonial theories of decolonization, the pedagogy of the oppressed articulated by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, and the burgeoning field of community arts, this collection not only analyzes the dynamic integration of the critical and the creative in social justice movements, it embodies such a praxis. Learn from Central America: Kuna children s art workshops, a community television station in Nicaragua, a cultural marketplace in Guadalajara, Mexico, community mural production in Chiapas; and from North America: arts education in Los Angeles inner-city schools, theater probing ancestral memory, community plays with over one hundred participants, and training programs for young artists in Canada. These practices offer critical hope for movements hungry for new ways of knowing and expressing histories, identities, and aspirations, as well as mobilizing communities for social transformation.
Beautifully illustrated with more than one hundred color photographs, the book also includes a DVD with videos that bring the projects to life."