The Kansas City Premier of Harvest of Empire by Juan Gonzalez will be Tuesday August 13th at 7:00pm at the Tivoli in Westport. Sponsored by the KC Crossborder network.  For More information call 816-835-4745 or visit crossbordernetwork.org
Harvest of Empire takes an unflinching look at the role that U.S. economic and military interests played in triggering an unprecedented wave of migration that is transforming our nation’s cultural and economic landscape.
Why should you care and what does this have to do with food, health and farming?

Everything. This forced migration creates a desperate work force willing to work for anything.  This consequently then brings wages down for all workers in the US, North America, Europe and around the world. 

This was part of the plan of implementing the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA: to force small Mexican farmers out of business by dumping federal government subsidized and consequently cheap US big corporate produced corn and other produce in Mexico, forcing them to migrate for their sheer existence and forming a pool of cheap labor for North American corporations and others,  forcing down wages all over the US, North America and the world.
(Now our government and its backers are trying to do the same thing with the Trans Pacific Partnership, another free trade agreement being negotiated with Pacific Rim countries of Asia, in secret.)
What do low wages have to do with  food, health and farming?

Everything.  Poverty and unemployment are the greatest indicators of hunger and health disparities  which have been growing in our country since the recession which started in early 2000. This is the greatest recession Americans have experienced since the Great Depression of the 1920's. 

As well, low wages for food and  farm worker labor as well as the lack of livelihoods for small and family farmers create hunger and health disparities.  It also creates cheap, unhealthy food produced by  heavily, federal government subsidized big, corporate farms which then put family farmers and small farmers out of business, struggling for their lives, hungry and unhealthy.

This cheap unhealthy food which then becomes cheap, unhealthy fast and processed food is the root cause of the unhealthy epidemics in our country, the West and increasingly the globe, of diabetes, heart disease, obesity, cancers, and hypertension to name a few.
Working for the rights of migrants and against free trade agreements such as NAFTA and the Trans Pacific Partnership, to reduce the desperate conditions under which they are struggling to survive, will  bolster wages and working conditions for all as well as our wealth and health.

Check out this film and the root causes of our declining wealth, health and farm livelihoods.

Please publicize widely.