Lorette Picciano
Rural Coalition/Coalicion Rural

Lorette Picciano is with the Rural Coalition which works in the United States and Mexico on minority farmer and farmworker and indigenous rights issues. "Weâ??re working on both ending racism at the Department of Agriculture in Washington and a big movement on the countryside in Mexico. The countryside canâ??t take it anymore, the impact of NAFTA on the farmers of Mexico."

Picciano, the executive director, is based in Washington D.C. but her "entire Board of Directors has come from as far away as Mexico City and theyâ??re here from all over the country, from Alabama, Maine, thereâ??s a whole delegation from Maine, and California. And we are all marching together against the war because we are trying to connect the issues of food and justice and peace." Picciano and others will be flying to Mexico City in a couple of weeks to attend a demonstration there "because the workers are saying that all of the U.S. corn that is going into Mexico for every truck of corn that comes in two workers come back out. And because of this war on terrorism, weâ??re waging a war on terrorism at the U.S./Mexico border, we are damaging the lives of the immigrant population who are being forced off the land, .... They come to the United States and are exploited. These are not terrorists, these are the people who pick our food, these are the people who take care of our children, do the cleaning. And theyâ??re not terrorists and they are being treated that way and we believe it has to stop."

According to Picciano this war is "oil. Itâ??s about control. Itâ??s about corporations. Itâ??s about all of the things that are against peace and against building harmony. Itâ??s about putting more money into the military industrial complex instead of meeting the human needs of people." When asked what, if anything, the U.S. should do concerning well-armed, authoritarian regimes such as Iraq and North Korea, Picciano said "Well, obviously any country where the leaders are not democratically elected and the population doesnâ??t have a voice and is exploited ... it's of a concern to us. But we also believe that we need to work on peace and that weapons are not going to solve anything, weapons will probably intensify the conflict. We need to look at meeting human needs. Probably a more aggressive effort to meet human needs in Iraq and build up the belief of the people that thereâ??s some hope for them, would change the situation more." Picciano and other members of the Rural Coalition will travel as a delegation to the World Social Forum in Puerto Allegre "to try to carry the message also that not everybody in the United States thinks the same way as our leaders do, that we donâ??t want to be working against the people of the rest of the world."

As she travels to organize in rural areas, Picciano finds that people are critical of Bush's drive to war. "People are very concerned because the poverty in rural areas is increasing and the desperation is increasing. We really need some other kinds of options, and this war is spending all the things that are needed in the communities so we donâ??t find anybody who is in support of this war." She further noted that the people the Rural Coalition contacts those who have "lived in rural communities for all of these years knows that capitalism has been bankrupting our communities and our struggle is the same as the struggle of all the farmers across the world. And we really want to make it clear to people outside the United States that there are many of us who do not agree." Picciano left us invting "everybody to join the food and justice struggle and connect it with the peace struggle....We really want to be working with all of our colleagues in the United States on peace."

www.ruralco.org/