After Selfa spoke, Lara of the Beehive Collective took the morning's discussion of globalization one step further. Using a hand-drawn Beehive banner, Lara engaged the high schoolers in a nuanced yet accessible discussion about Plan Colombia. It was the first time the students had heard of the program through which the US government funnels over half a billion dollars of military aid to Colombia every year under the pretext of eradicating cocoa supplies. Many critics charge the drug war is simply a smokescreen for government and corporate interests in extracting the region's rich biodiversity and valuable natural resources such as petroleum.

After the Colchester stop, the tour crew was on the road again, this time barreling towards Johnson State College. Along the way, we saw this New England variant of the "Panther Crossing" signs sprinkled throughout the wetlands and cypress swamps of southwest Florida.

(Moose crossing... is this for real??)

After being treated to a great homemade lunch by Johnson State students, it was on to campus for an afternoon of presentations in Latin American and environmental studies courses. Stephen of Ag Missions began with a discussion of Latin American social movements struggling for food sovereignty and the serious threats posed by structural adjustment policies and "free trade" agreements which pry open "developing" markets to corporate agribusiness. This process often displaces millions of campesinos and subsistence farmers who can no longer sell surplus crops to local markets because of the glut of dirt-cheap foreign imports.

Unable to scratch out a living and displaced from their land, many former farmers make the dangerous trek north to the US in search of work. Many end up in places such as Immokalee, a town comprised of thousands of young immigrant workers from Mexico and Central America. seeing this link, the Johnson State students were thrilled to learn about the history and successes of the CIW. As was the case at each tour stop, people were fired up about the Taco Bell boycott victory and eager to get involved in the next phase of the struggle for fair food, an encouraging sign as the CIW and its allies move forward.

Later that evening in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, (Dave Dellinger's old stomping grounds), the North Country Coalition for Justice & Peace hosted the tour as part of its fall series on Latin American social movements. The event was held in front of a capacity audience inside a gorgeous, recently-renovated library (it's actually a registered National Historic Landmark). Per usual, Selfa rocked the house and her story was complemented by a discussion of the CIW's campaign for fair food and rounded out with the Beehive Collective's intense imagery depicting struggles over globalization.

The exotic experience was short-lived, however, as the snow melted before we arrived in South Royalton, a quintessentially quaint Vermont town founded in 1789.

The afternoon event at Vermont Law School was to be our final presentation together. Selfa, by now a seasoned tour pro, addressed the law school students about her union's efforts to create a regional union label so that consumers in the US and Europe can intentionally purchase bananas picked by unionized workers with improved wages, working conditions, and job security. While slightly different, this idea obviously overlaps with the growing Fair Trade movement as well as the CIW's fast-food campaign, efforts that bring workers and consumers directly together to address gross economic inequalities.

For those who don't know, the School of the Americas is a US-run military training facility linked to decades of torture, repression, and chilling human rights abuses throughout Latin America. From Argentina to Chile to Mexico and beyond, SOA graduates have been responsible for crushing social movements (peasants, unions, indigenous people, teachers, students, etc.) and inflicting terror on civilian populations to defend military dictatorships, protect foreign investment, and maintain "business as usual" as defined by US policymakers thousands of miles away.

While commemorating the many massacres and atrocities tied to the SOA -- as this Colombian man did on Saturday -- there is also a growing movement in the US and abroad to move beyond grief and towards change by shutting down the School of the Americas once and for all. Many people view the SOA as a linchpin in a larger effort to stand in meaningful solidarity with social movements throughout the hemisphere, the very movements who suffer the worst violence and repression by SOA graduates.

After the short yet powerful rally, we jaunted over to the Langdon Street Cafe, a worker-owned collective in Montpelier with surprisingly good tamales and not-so-surprisngly good apple cider. Here it was time to say our goodbyes as the crew split up: some folks continuing with the tour to Long Island, others heading to Baltimore, and others (well, one other) heading back to sunny Florida to prepare for the caravan from Immokalee to Ft. Benning. See you at SOA!

That evening, the tour arrived at Plymouth State University, where students from the Nicaragua Club had organized a stop. Above, students – very few of whom were already familiar with the CIW – listened carefully as the story of the boycott victory unfolded. After the presentation, the SFA table was a hub of activity as dozens of students filled out postcards to send to the CEOs of McDonald's, Burger King, and Subway calling on them to "meet or beat" the CIW's agreement with Taco Bell.

Day 4 pushed the tour crew to its physical limits as it was packed with plenty of traveling and three separate presentations across the states of New Hampshire and Vermont!

And speaking of traveling, pictured above is the Beehive Collective's very own tour bus, La Tortuga. The interior, which is by far its most impressive feature, was refurbished by a friend of the Bees known simply as "Uncle John." (NB: Uncle John's portfolio also includes tour buses for the quintessential 80s rock bands Rush & Yes. Thankfully, neither of these bands were coming through La Tortuga's sound system... no offense to all those Rush & Yes fans out there.)

And in what would become an ongoing theme and inside joke of the Abundant Life tour, we made sure to gas up our caravan at a Citgo station before hitting the road. After all, if you have to buy gas, you might as well support Venezuela's democratic revolution.

And after another scenic drive, Day 4's whirlwind officially began at Colby Sawyer College for a lunchtime gathering. No, we weren't actually presenting in this old barn (which is now the College's main library) but this picture was too good not to share.

After Colby Sawyer, it was on to Dartmouth College for a well-received afternoon event...

...before wrapping up the day in Montpelier at Bethany Church. Vermont has a rich history of town hall meetings, and Wednesday night's intimate event captured this feeling as the assembled community members listened to Selfa's stories from Guatemala and connected it to the other presentations by SOA Watch, the Beehive Collective and SFA.

Interestingly, Montpelier is the only state capitol in the US without a McDonald's, and Vermont was the last state in the country to receive WalMart. Perhaps there's something the rest of the country can learn from a state that values family farms, local economies, and direct democracy over industrial agribusiness, GMOs, and endless seas of identical fast-food restaurants (a monoculture all its own).

On Day 5, the tour crew hit the college town of Burlington, Vermont for several classroom visits and other presentations. In this picture, Selfa addresses a highly engaged Spanish literature class. This was the first stop on the tour where translation was not required, and Selfa wasted no time in describing the impressive organizing efforts by rank-and-file banana workers even in the face of tremendous violence and paramilitary repression.

(On another note, there are apparently no fast-food restaurants on the University of Vermont campus. Hmmm... so fast-food chains haven't always been a universal fixture of campus life.)

Why, it was none other than Linda Trocki, Vice President & Director of Research for the Bechtel Corporation! After frantically and unsuccessfully looking for a pie (just kidding, of course), we settled in to listen to Ms. Trocki discuss the coming threat – and lucrative opportunities – posed by global climate change.

While she conceded there will certainly be some "losers" in this process (say, the entire country of Bangladesh), Trocki cheerily reminded us that it won't all be Exodus-style plagues and locusts. In fact, she predicted that there will be certain economic benefits to melting polar ice caps. And from increased reliance on nuclear power to new trade routes and opportunities for oil and gas development in the Arctic (apparently that irony was lost on her), she assured the assembled math and engineering students that Becthel stands to profit generously from these challenges.

During the Q&A, Trocki skillfully evaded questions about Becthel's role in the occupation of Iraq. She also downplayed questions about a Bechtel subsidiary's privatization of the entire water system of Cochabamba, Bolivia in January 2000, causing massive price increases and forcing many families to literally choose between food and water. A popular uprising, which was met with intense government repression, forced Bechtel out of Bolivia in April 2000. To learn more about Bechtel and the Bolivian Water War, click here.

The juxtaposition between the message of the Bechtel executive and the Abundant Life tour could not have been sharper and is symbolic of a larger struggle that is playing out across the world, from Immokalee to the streets of Argentina and Hong Kong. This is a struggle over the process of globalization itself that is guided by very divergent priorities, values, and voices.

On the one hand, there are the Bechtels, McDonalds, and Monsantos of the world. Under a veil of selfless benevolence, these corporations and their allies in government are aggressively preaching a gospel of privatization and enclosure, displacement and repression... in short, a continuation of the past 510 years of colonization seductively masked by the shimmering glow of corporate logos and the illusion of "progress."

On the other hand, an explosion of grassroots movements from every corner of the planet is clamoring "Another world – another globalization – is possible!" These movements embrace many different worldviews and experiences but are united by their quest for, as the Zapatistas say, "one world in which many worlds fit." This globalization-from-below is challenging the profit-driven values of the dominant system and choosing a future of diversity and abundance over scarcity and homogeneity. It is this struggle which lies at the very heart of the many movements represented on the Abundant Life tour.

See the updates for Days 6-8 in Vermont!

DAYS 1 & 2: MASSACHUSETTS

The one-person SFA tour "crew" left southwest Florida with high hopes of catching a glimpse of New England's famed fall foliage, a rare and mysterious concept to residents of Immokalee's sub-tropical climate. However, as you can see in this photo taken on Sunday on a small farm outside Rutland, MA, heavy fog obscured much of the brilliantly colored forests.

But the trip didn't begin on a farm or in the fog. Before heading to central Massachusetts to hook up with the Abundant Life tour – which kicked off last Wednesday in Boston – there was some business to attend to in Amherst, MA, a college town known for its progressive politics if there ever was one.

The first of two excellent Amherst events was an afternoon panel discussion at the University of Massachusetts titled "The Roots of Victory: Innovative Approaches to Labor Rights & Civil Rights." For a sunny and unseasonably warm Saturday afternoon, the event drew a great turnout of over 50 students crowded into a windowless room deep in the bowels of the Campus Center building. The discussion was organized by faculty and students of the University's renowned Labor Studies program and featured and an impressive array of Southern-based organizations struggling for human rights...

...from farmworker organizations such as the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (above, CIW member Lucas Benitez addresses the well-informed audience about the CIW's early history, the Taco Bell boycott victory and next steps in the campaign to transform the fast-food industry)...

...to members of Student/Farmworker Alliance who discussed an invaluable lesson of the boycott: the vital role of youth in supporting worker-led campaigns to hold transnational corporations accountable for abuses in their supply chains. This lesson rings especially true with fast-food corporations who spend billions of dollars every year to hawk their products to young consumers between the ages 18 and 24, a demographic that a McDonald's marketing executive recently referred to (in a slightly creepy manner) as their company's "sweet spot."

"I'm lovin' it," indeed.

The panel also featured two women who have made immense strides towards racial and economic justice in the South. First, Ashaki Binta (right) of Black Workers for Justice and United Electrical Workers-I50 described her work in North Carolina's public and private sector to build a strong base of self-organized workers with leadership indigenous to local communities (sound familiar?). From dynamic worker education campaigns to non-majority unionism, Black Workers for Justice and UE are doing some truly impressive work in this "right to work" state which ranks 50th in the US in unionization rates, an ugly legacy that dates back to anti-worker policies enacted during the height of Jim Crow.

Next, legendary activist and octogenarian Anne Braden of Louisville, KY addressed the room. Anne, who many of you may remember from last year's "Our World, Our Rights" conference as part of the 2005 Taco Bell Truth Tour, has been very supportive of the CIW's work over the past few years and Saturday was no exception. Anne began her remarks by praising the worker-led boycott as a "great victory for the people of this country" and a potential "turning point" for social movements within the US. Anne also complimented the work and analysis of SFA, nothing that historically "when things move in this country, it's because the young people are moving," drawing parallels between some of today's youth movements and the Black freedom struggles and antiwar movement of the 1960s.

Later Saturday evening, the UMass panelists were honored before several hundred attendees of the Greensboro Justice Fund's 25th Anniversary Celebration at the Northampton Center for the Arts. Greensboro Justice Fund is a small educational organization and foundation that has generously supported SFA (which operates on a shoestring budget) along with dozens of other isolated grassroots groups doing cutting-edge work in the South against nearly insurmountable odds.

Executive Director Marty Nathan began the evening, appropriately titled "Courage from the Past, Strength for the Future," with some background that's worth repeating for those who may not know the history of the Greensboro Massacre.

GJF was born in 1980 as the fight-back vehicle for the families of the dead, injured and the falsely arrested of the November 3, 1979 Greensboro Massacre. On that day, forty Ku Klux Klansmen and American Nazis attacked and shot into an anti-Klan gathering of men, women and children, killing five young union and community organizers and wounding ten others.

In 1985, the Greensboro Justice Fund, heading a larger legal coalition, won the Greensboro Civil Rights Suit against the KKK, Nazis and involved police. The small judgment was paid by the City of Greensboro, and some of the proceeds were used as seed money to return more than $500,000 in 350 grants over the next 20 years to grassroots groups doing frequently dangerous work throughout the South.

UMass student and former SFA summer volunteer Marc Rodrigues accepted a plaque on behalf of the SFA network for its "contribution to a more just world." This award is quite an honor and a humbling reminder of the work that remains to be done when one considers the brutal repression and subsequent struggle for justice that gave birth to the fund.

After all the awards were dispensed, it was time for the evening's keynote address. With a keen sense of humor and a razor-sharp wit, Anne Braden addressed the capacity audience about the legacy of the Greensboro Massacre, the nation's current political climate, and the crucial importance of the struggle against racism and white supremacy in the US, a struggle that Anne believes has not yet fully begun.

In this picture, Anne – who, along with her late husband Carl, is one of two people in US history to be indicted twice for sedition in the same state (Kentucky, for those keeping score at home) for her anti-racist activities – receives a standing ovation from the packed house.

The next day, the SFA tour crew-of-one left the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts and hooked up with the Abundant Life tour in Worcester, MA. Above, Stephen Bartlett of Ag Missions translates for Selfa Sandoval at a post-Mass presentation at an area Catholic Church. Selfa shared some of her experience as a worker and union organizer on a large Del Monte banana plantation. Recognized in 1947, her union (SITRABI) is the oldest in what she referred to as her "pained country of Guatemala." For the hundreds of thousands of mostly unorganized workers who toil in Guatemala's export-driven banana industry, the vast majority are forced to survive on subsistence wage of less that $5 a day. And although the Constitution guarantees Guatemalans the right to organize and form unions, this right is routinely violated on the ground by US-based corporations who call the shots in the campo. From blacklists to firings to worse, repression is a constant threat for workers who dare to speak out on the job, a thread that connects the terror of the Greensboro Massacre with the terror of grinding poverty that is a daily reality for hundreds of millions of people throughout the Americas.

Members of the wildly creative Beehive Design Collective provided some additional context for Selfa's remarks by explaining their graphic representation of corporate globalization and the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas. This particular poster was an important popular education and organizing tool for activists inside the US leading up to the November 2003 Root Cause march and anti-FTAA mobilization in Miami. It was also a rather timely discussion given the massive street protests and spectacular failure of hemispheric "free trade" talks in Argentina last week. (Wahoo!)

After an intimate small group discussion at the church, it was off to the Massachusetts countryside where the tour crew (which was finally a "crew" in the legitimate sense of the word) visited a 270 acre farm practicing sustainable agriculture through a holistic, integrated land and livestock system. Farms like this – which used to be the agricultural norm prior to the wildfire spread of chemical fertilizers and pesticides following World War II, a process that went global during the so-called "Green Revolution" of the 1970s – are springing up all over the world as practical alternatives to the destructive agribusiness model which requires ever-larger farms and ever-increasing chemical "inputs" (all while poisoning the land, jeopardizing human health, displacing small-scale farmers throughout the world, and creating a constant downward pressure on farmworker wages that breeds unfathomable working conditions, including forced labor and modern-day slavery in the most extreme cases).

And on a final note, what farm would be complete without piglets suckling on the proverbial teat (or rather, in this case, a literal teat). With an admirably determined focus on their feasting, which can be a surprisingly competitive activity at times, these little critters were getting some much-needed nourishment, completely oblivious to their high-profile and climactic role in the first installment of the SFA tour update.

Up next... New Hampshire: Live free or die!

See the updates for Days 3-5!