There are thousands of people taking on the long and dangerous journey to the U.S. border every year to escape violence, poverty and persecution in their home country. Here, they are met with a wall of forms and policies and categories to fit into in order to cross the border in hopes of eventually receiving legal status in the U.S. The U.S. immigration system is turning immigration into a matter of paperwork and legal procedures, rather than a matter of solidarity and humanity. Join our second Border Focus Webinar this month to learn about xenophobic immigration policies like Alternatives to Detention (ATDs) and the new asylum process being proposed by the Biden administration. Get an update on Temporary Protected Status (TPS), current immigration trends at the U.S. southern border, and detention. Together, let us fight to end the racist and xenophobic immigration policies that prevent people from living a safer life. Let’s work toward building a more welcoming and solidary society!
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Webinars: News & Updates
The border is closer to us than we think. With about 50% of the state being within the Border Patrol’s 100-mile border zone and sharing a border with Canada, Ohio is impacted in many ways by immigration enforcement. Many Ohio residents, despite having lived in the state for many years, with a job and a family, still have to fear being arrested or detained, often simply based on racial profiling. Join us for this webinar as part of the IRTF Border Focus Month to get an overview of immigration enforcement in Ohio. Our statewide campaign has been successful in ending ICE contracts at two county jails. Hear some lessons learned from those efforts. But two county jails (Seneca and Geauga) are still making money from contracting jail cells to ICE. Let's work together to end racialized immigration enforcement and detention in Ohio!
We are excited to share with you the video recordings of the The Lessons from Central American Resistance and Diasporic Solidarity event. During this event, representatives from several solidarity organizations, including Lulu Matute of SOA Watch, reflected on our recent collaborative Congressional delegation to Central America.
Join Equal Exchange’s tea team for a journey into the world of tea! Learn more about why our alternative trade model is so important for tea farmers in an industry still dominated by plantations. Then, experience a selection of teas through a guided tasting as we learn about the crop and the farmers behind each blend.
Consumer support and advocacy has been absolutely crucial to Equal Exchange since our founding in 1986. Over the decades, consumers have organized with Equal Exchange to gain placement in grocery stores across the US, organized distribution of Equal Exchange products in their communities, and spread the word about our alternative trade model to friends, family, and neighbors to help build our alternative trade economy. Our multistakeholder model would not be possible without the active participation of Citizen-Consumers like you. Join us for our next new member orientation to meet the organizing team, learn more about Equal Exchange, and get involved in the Citizen-Consumer community! Now is a great time to get involved for the first time or to get involved again if it’s been a little while.
Annual Membership Meeting - Cleveland Peace Action and Cleveland Peace Action Education Fund
“Cultivating Peace with Justice in a Militarized World”
Keynote speaker: Greg Coleridge
Annual election of board members and officers
Wednesday, May 18, 2022
Join other Citizen-Consumers for monthly meetings to connect as a member of this community, engage in shared learning, and hear updates from Equal Exchange. If you are not already a member consider applying now to join our community!
Worship Resources are out! Join us in a special day of Prayer and Action!
Register here
Registration is now open for congregations and individuals to participate in a special day of prayer and action this Easter season! CPT has prepared resources to be used during worship on May 8th, the Fourth Sunday of Easter.
When Equal Exchange started in 1986, we purposely set out to build both a new and more equitable model of international trade and a rare-in-the-U.S. democratic business. We broke many of the conventional rules of the market with the goal to trade fairly with farmers and build democratic supply chains. The concepts of fair trade and alternative trade were barely known at that time. Today, while we are a much larger organization with more than 100 worker-owners and a significant national and international scale, we are still living our original wild-eyed dream and breaking conventions with every purchase we make from our trade partners in coffee, bananas, cocoa, and tea.
For the next six Fridays, AFGJ will be sponsoring a series of “Happy Hours”, each one an hour long, and featuring different social and political leaders who will help us understand Colombia’s elections and popular movements. These “Happy Hours” will not be your regular webinars where speakers give formal presentations followed by further discussion. Instead, the hosts and guests will share some social time together, conversing, as we learn details about the personal histories and lives of our guests interwoven with tales of struggle and discussions about their dreams and hopes for a New Colombia. Each show will also provide a chance for our guests to share some of the music, poetry, and other cultural expressions of resistance that help them keep their spirits up.
