Put People First! PA Statement of Solidarity with Quilombo Campo Grande, MST
Context: Landless Workers Movement, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) in Portuguese, is a mass social movement in Brazil, formed by rural workers and by all those who want to fight for land reform and against injustice and social inequality in rural areas. Quilombo Campo Grande is a housing settlement of the MST.
Put People First! Pennsylvania condemns the illegal and inhumane eviction of Quilombo Campo Grande by the military police and Governor Zema in the interest of Capital. We express our solidarity with the 450 families displaced by the eviction and salute their brave resistance in the face of the barbaric attacks of the police. The destruction of homes and a school, the razing of crops, and the violent removal of 450 families during the deadly Covid19 pandemic are crimes against humanity.
Over the last three years, two members of Put People First! PA were hosted at Quilombo Campo Grande as part of our studies at the Escola Nacional Florestan Fernandes (ENFF). Our experience there shaped us politically and ideologically. We experienced the generosity of the families, the pedagogy of the students and teachers at Escola Eduardo Galeano, and the agroecological practices of the growing cooperatives, which care for the land and provide sustenance for the community.
Quilombo Campo Grande is a powerful achievement of the MST and of the poor and dispossessed of Brazil, which has helped develop and advance the struggle of the poor and dispossessed around the world. We carry the spirit of Quilombo Campo Grande with us in our struggle in Pennsylvania.
We wish for a speedy recovery for those who were injured in the attack and for the health and safety of the whole community during the pandemic. We are with the families of Quilombo Campo Grande as they fight to retake their land and we are with the MST as the struggle continues for land, agrarian reform and socialism.
Viva Quilombo Campo Grande!
Viva MST!
“Education does not change the world.
Education changes people.
People transform the world.”