Student/Farmworker Alliance: Summer Encuentro & Call for Donations

**Please Forward Widely**


Hey Folks,

Time for another Student/Farmworker Alliance update from Immokalee, Florida.


1) Update on Summer Encuentro- Register Now! Spaces filling up fast!

Join students and youth from around the country for a week of skill shares, reflection, community-building, trainings, and a two-day national strategy session as we plan for the next phase of youth activism after the historic and precedent-setting victory of the Taco Bell boycott. The Encuentro will take place in Immokalee, FL, from August 1-7.

Trainers include: the Beehive Collective, the Ruckus Society, Art and Revolution, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the Root Cause Coalition (Miami Workers Center, LIFFT, and Power U), smartMeme Strategy and Training Project, United Students Against Sweatshops, Student-Labor Action Project, Young Workers United, School of the Americas Watch, National Youth and Student Peace Coalition, and more!

In addition, there will be plenty of time for informal networking, live music, silkscreening and other hands-on art, film screenings (featuring films such as The Take, The Corporation, and The Fourth World War), and, thanks to generous donations from several independent and radical distributors and bookstores, a mini bookfair to help support the Encuentro and get some cool books and other goodies into the hands of our participants.

We can't stress enough the importance that everyone (even trainers and folks very close to the SFA) who is considering coming down for the Encuentro register ASAP. Please take a moment today and answer the registration questions (http://www.sfalliance.org/encuentro.html) and send them back to: organize [at] sfalliance.org. Registration lets us know how many folks we have to arrange food, housing and scholarships for; helps us to ensure a diverse and representative group of participants; and overall makes things much easier for us organizers on the ground. Thanks!


2) Donations Urgently Needed; PayPal button and fundraising letter now available!

Help make the first-ever National Student/Farmworker Alliance Summer Encuentro a success! We need funds for housing, transportation, and food as well as for travel and registration scholarships. This summer's Encuentro looks to be a great opportunity to build and strategize for the next phases of the struggle for fair food, fair wages and farmworker justice, but we need your help to make it happen. The Encuentro website (http://www.sfalliance.org/encuentro) now features a PayPal button where you can make a secure and quick donation to the SFA. All donations to the SFA are tax-deductable.

You can also send checks or money orders made out to:

Student/Farmworker Alliance
PO Box 603 Immokalee, FL 34143

Whether or not you are personally able to donate, there are other ways to help: You can forward this message far and wide; We have also made a fundraising letter available that you can download
(http://www.sfalliance.org/resources/fundletterhead.doc) and use to approach local professors, organizations, and others for donations.

Donating to the SFA at this time will help us not only to make the Encuentro an amazing, unforgettable and worthwhile experience, but will also help us as an organization to stay afloat for the months and years to come. We greatly appreciate your help!


3) Solidarity

In the midst of increasing anti-immigrant hysteria, particularly in but not limited to the southwest US, we encourage folks to check out http://www.borderhack.org, http://www.solidarityacrossborders.org, and http://www.deletetheborder.org for actions and resources this summer and beyond... "Against borders and the wars they cause, against capitalism, neoliberalism and empire... for freedom of movement, the right to stay, autonomy and human dignity..."

Also, this summer, the G8 (Group of 8 imperialist countries) will be having its meeting in Scotland. Check out http://www.dissent.org.uk/ and http://www.noalg8.contrapoder.org.ve/ for resources and actions related to the G8.

Last but not least, check out the SEAC Activist Training Camp and the Roadless Summer campaign against the NAFTA Superhighway at http://www.seac.org/atc/ and http://www.roadless-summer.org/, respectively.


We hope to see you in August, and again kindly ask that you forward this message widely.

In unity, solidarity, and hope,

The Student/Farmworker Alliance
Immokalee, FL
(239) 657-8311
http://www.sfalliance.org


*An encuentro is a meeting, conference, or "encounter," a safe space where participants can share ideas and experiences. Following the uprising in Chiapas, Mexico on the eve of the signing of NAFTA, the Zapatistas called for an international encuentro for companeros from all over the world to gather and discuss the significance of the grassroots rebellion and possibilities for creating a new and better world. Our call for an Encuentro lies within this tradition.


"We declare: That we will make a collective network of all our particular struggles and resistances- an intercontinental network of resistance against neoliberalism, an intercontinental network of resistance for humanity. This intercontinental network of resistance, recognizing differences and acknowledging similarities, will search to find itself with other resistances around the world. This intercontinental network of resistance is not an organizing structure- it has no central command or hierarchies. We are the network, all of us who resist..."