This week has brought tears for me. Some of the stories really are beyond comprehension. But there have been so many moments of pure beauty and hope. On the day on which I spoke along with grassroots activists from Argentina, Bolivia, South Africa, and Canada about the “Global Water Fightback,” it was also announced that the city of Atlanta has been successful in deprivatising the municple water system there. This is an incredible success for the movement, and one many people are eager to learn about so that there can be more Atlantas.

I would like to tell you more about what it is like to spend my days and nights with 100,000 or more people from social movements from all the world. I am at home here. I feel a part of something tremendous, which is also growing and gaining strength by the minute. I would like to tell you more about Lilia from Argentina and the her photos of people defending the streets of Buenos Aires from the pockets of international finance. I would tell you about the youth who have built a tent community for 30,000 people in a city park where workshops, music, community radio and independent media is all flourishing.

I have been enriched by staying with a warm and enthusiastic delegation of people from Canada, Bolivia and the USA, among whom are people like Maude Barlow, Tony Clark and Wenonah Hauter, all whom are organizing for Kyoto and are enthusiastic about the role Sweetwater can play there and in other places.

It is worth mentioning that the media has been responsive to our message here. A banner that I brought from Sweetwater against water disconnections was shown on a major corporate news channel the night following our day of water workshops. My mention of the situation in Detroit has shocked many people and I see an urgent need to get that story out. German radio also interviewed me, among others, and perhaps what is extraordinary to the dozens of people that I have spoken with, personally, about the Michigan struggle, is that indeed we in the belly of the beast are revolting. This is tremendously significant, I believe, give the fact that too often the policies which lead to such worldwide terror on so many fronts originate in this beast, and those that speak out and resist this war on their world and on their life, are from the Global South. I am among a small number of people who are from the United Stateshere, though this year it is twice that of last year. There must be more of us in the north, and from the north, working toward “Social Cambio.”

As I write this I am actually quite exhausted from all of the work and play, and now I need to go speak with a French journalist who has been interviewing me for a book he is writing about grassroots responses to global water privatization. There is of course so much more that I would like to share, and hope to speak with all of you about when I return to Michigan next week.

Love and Agua,
Holly