NOWAR - Leader of India's largest movement to speak (fwd)

[Jim Choate]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2003 07:15:36 -0500
From: NOWAR <pat at thirdcoastactivist.org>
To: nowar at 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 at uts.cc.utexas.edu.

Information about this and many other events can be found at
http://ThirdCoastActivist.org

In Solidarity,

the Nowar Collective