---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2003 07:15:36 -0500 From: NOWAR <pat@thirdcoastactivist.org> To: nowar@lists.tao.ca Subject: NOWAR - Leader of India's largest movement to speak Hello, all. We have just received news of a unique opportunity to hear an important speaker. Medha Patkar, one of the most respected political activists in the world, will be speaking in Austin the evening of Nov. 4 (specifics below). This is a rare chance to hear directly from someone on the cutting edge of resistance to the reckless uses of state and private power that threaten so many lives and livelihoods. Patkar founded and leads the Naramda Bachao Andolan (Save the Narmada Movement), the largest nonviolent people's movement in India. Over the course of two decades -- through relentless organizing, demonstrations, and hunger strikes -- the movement has been the voice of hundreds of thousands of indigenous peoples and peasants who are losing their land and way of life to large dams on the Narmada River. Like so many large centralized development projects, the benefits of these dams go to a small elite and the costs are borne by ordinary people. The movement has won policy changes in World Bank and other multilateral funding agencies but continues to face hostility from the Indian government and often violent police responses -- and continues to resist through nonviolent civil disobedience. With significant leadership and participation from women, the nonviolent satyagraha (insistence on truth) has refused to back down. Visit http://www.narmada.org to learn more about the struggle. Patkar also spearheads the National Alliance of People's Movements, a powerful network of more than 150 mass-based movements across India. NAPM is a non-electoral, secular political alliance of peasant, tribal, dalit, women and labor groups that are critical of corporate globalization and offer alternative development plans. Patkar's work has been recognized through countless international awards, including the Right to Livelihood Award (known as the alternative Nobel Prize), Goldman Environmental Prize, a Human Rights Defender's Award from Amnesty International, the Magsaysay Award, and Global Villager Award. Patkar's lecture, "Who pays for progress?", will focus on policies that inhibit sustainable development and people's non-violent struggles for social justice. The talk will be Tuesday, Nov. 4, at 7:30 p.m. in the LBJ Auditorium in Sid Richardson Hall (the one-story building directly east of the LBJ Library and Museum) on the University of Texas campus. Free parking is available in the lots on Red River just south of Dean Keeton (26th St.) Map available at http://www.utexas.edu/maps/main/buildings/srh.html Because the event happens in just over a week, it's important to spread the word widely so as many people as possible can hear Patkar. Please forward this information to any relevant email lists and web sites. Flyers can be downloaded from http://ThirdCoastActivist.org The primary sponsor of the event is the Austin chapter of the Association for India's Development, a nonprofit organization promoting grassroots efforts for health care, education, small enterprise, alternate energy, environmental action and people's rights in India. For more information, visit www.aidaustin.org or www.aidindia.org. Co-sponsors will be announced later. For more information, contact Harish Sharma, 695-7983, aidut@uts.cc.utexas.edu. Information about this and many other events can be found at http://ThirdCoastActivist.org In Solidarity, the Nowar Collective