Rising Up For Justice: In Pursuit of Global Justice

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FEATURING MARGARET KWATENG - Our nation and our world is overrun by billionaires and bigots, but they are few and we are many. On this series, exclusive to subscribers of Rising Up With Sonali and viewers of Free Speech TV, we’ll hear from organizers in the movements for social justice, and dig into the nuts and bolts of values, strategies, tactics, narratives, and building power. 

This week, Margaret Kwateng joins us. She is the Campaign Director at Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, where she shepherded the development of GGJ’s first national campaign, The People’s Care Agenda, a campaign that seeks to both defend communities from attacks and build caring alternatives. Prior to joining GGJ, Margaret worked for years as a community and labor organizer in working class communities of color and with rank and file nurses. 

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So how do you summarize what your organization is, before we even get into what it does, because as the name suggests, it is an alliance. That means I gather that it's essentially a coalition of numerous organizations. If so, who are these organizations? What defines Grassroots Global Justice Alliance? 

Margaret Kwateng: Yeah, absolutely. So, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance is an alliance of around 65 community grassroots organizations. And so, by grassroots I mean organizations that are made up of everyday poor and working class people, predominantly people of color who are brought into groups by conversations on the bus at school, on the streets, and then sort of introduced into community efforts that are around improving the conditions. 

And the groups that are in Grassroots Global Justice Alliance are all over the country, including in the territories, so in like Puerto Rico and Guam, and are fighting on a whole host of issues from workers' rights to reproductive justice to migrant rights. 

But the thing that's really connecting them in Grassroots Global Justice Alliance is this understanding and desire to be a deep relationship with social movements in other parts of the world. Yeah, so that's a little bit about who is in our base. And I'm happy to talk about the work that we do.