Food is central to our everyday lives, yet ordinary people have virtually no control over its production and distribution. The food industry - like all industries - is dominated by multinational companies that make their profits by exploiting consumers, workers, the world’s natural resources, and billions of farmed animals. The way we eat, and these powerful institutions and their sophisticated multi-billion dollar marketing campaigns are manipulating even the way we think about food.

To understand the reality behind the fancy packaging and the glossy company propaganda and PR, we can focus on the business practices of just one of the major players in this industry: McDonald’s. The McDonald’s Corporation will be 50 years old in 2005. Now is a good time to evaluate whether their activities have been a good or bad influence on us and on society as a whole. Who better to decide than you, the jury in the most important court in the world: the court of public opinion.


McWorld On Trial: You, the Jury

McDonald’s is one of the most powerful, influential, and well-known global companies. Like all corporations, their aim is to maximise their profits and power to benefit their wealthy shareholders. But their business also has an enormous effect on the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people. If you have ever eaten their food, worked in their stores, seen their ads, or faced their litter in the street, then your life has been influenced - but for whose benefit?

Despite its strenuous efforts at self-promotion, McDonald’s is widely despised in the US, Britain, and all over the world. Campaigns against McDonald’s and what they stand for have grown over the last few years. Since the mid-1990s, millions of flyers have been given out in dozens of languages, serving as an antidote to the constant stream of McDonald’s own one-sided advertising and promotion of themselves.


So what are the main criticisms that are usually made?


What’s Wrong with McDonald’s?

McDonald’s spend well over $2 billion every year worldwide on advertising and promotions, trying to cultivate an image of being a “caring” and “green” company that is also a fun place to eat. Children are lured in, dragging their parents behind them, with the promise of toys and other gimmicks. But behind the smiling face of Ronald McDonald lies the reality: McDonald’s only interest is making money from whoever and whatever they can. The company’s sales are now $40 billion a year. The continual international expansion of fast food chains means more uniformity, less choice and the undermining of local communities.

McDonald’s promotes their food as “nutritious,” but the reality is that almost all of it is processed junk food, high in fat, sugar, and salt, and low in fibre and vitamins. A diet of this type is linked with a greater risk of obesity, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other diseases. Their food also contains many chemical additives, some of which may cause ill health and hyperactivity in children. Intensive farming of animals also poses risks to people’s health through the spread of harmful bacteria and disease from animals crowded together, and the frequent use of antibiotics, hormones, and unnatural feedstuffs.

Workers in the fast food industry are paid low wages. Except where required by law, McDonald’s does not pay overtime rates even when employees work very long hours. Pressure to keep profits high and wage costs low results in understaffing, so staff have to work harder and faster. As a consequence, accidents (particularly burns) are common. The majority of employees are people who have few job options and so have no alternative to being bossed around and exploited - and they’re compelled to “smile” too! Not surprisingly, staff turnover at McDonald’s is high, making it virtually impossible to unionise and fight for a better deal. This suits McDonald’s, which has always been opposed to workers' rights and Unions.

Meanwhile, in order to produce McDonald’s “happy meal” toys, workers in China endure scandalous conditions, with extremely low pay and long hours, working in poorly ventilated factories where dangerous chemicals are used.

The demands made by multinationals for cheap food supplies result in the exploitation of agricultural workers throughout the world. Vast areas of land in poor countries are used for cash crops or for cattle ranching, or to grow grain to feed animals to be eaten in the West. This is at the expense of local food needs. McDonald’s continually promote meat products, encouraging people to eat meat more often, which wastes more and more food resources. Consider this: 7 million tons of grain fed to livestock produces only 1 million tons of meat and by-products. On a plant-based diet and with land shared fairly, almost every region could be self-sufficient in food.

Forests throughout the world - vital for all life - are being destroyed at an appalling rate by multinational companies. McDonald’s has at last been forced to admit to using beef in some countries that is reared on former rainforest land, preventing its regeneration. Also, the use of farmland by multinationals and their suppliers forces local people to move on to other areas and cut down further trees. McDonald’s are the world’s largest user of beef. Methane, a flammable hydrocarbon, emitted by cattle reared for the beef industry is a major contributor to the global warming crisis. The heavy use of chemicals in modern agriculture destroys wildlife, plants, and the soil.

Every year McDonald’s use over a million tons of unnecessary plastic and paper packaging, the production of which requires environmentally damaging chemicals and degradation of forests. Most of the packaging ends up littering our streets or polluting the land buried in landfill sites.

The menus of the burger chains are based on the cruel exploitation and killing of millions of animals. Most are intensively farmed, with no access to fresh air and sunshine, and no freedom of movement. Their short lives are cruel and their deaths are barbaric“humane slaughter” is a myth. We have the choice to eat meat or not, but the billions of animals slaughtered for food each year have no choice at all.


Nothing particularly surprising there you might think about it. But when a small group of people began handing flyers out in the street that included such views, it led to an incredible chain of events that took over our lives for years…


The McLibel Story: How It All Began

In the mid 1980s, a small independent, activist group in England - London Greenpeace - produced a 6-sided fact sheet called “What’s wrong with McDonald’s? Everything they don’t want you to know,” which brought together a range of criticisms about McDonald’s made by nutritionists, trades unionists, environmentalists, and animal welfare organisations. The group launched the International Day of Action Against McDonald’s, which has been held on October 16th ever since.

Around this time, McDonald’s were busily suing, or threatening to sue, almost everyone in England who criticised them, from TV channels and newspapers to student unions and environmental groups. Their tactic seemed to be to attempt to silence any criticism of the company. They also produced their own “”McFact” cards, stating the company’s position on many of the accusations made.

Despite this legal intimidation the campaign against McDonald’s continued to grow and was taken up by more and more groups around the world.

McDonald’s decided to take extreme action against London Greenpeace. They hired at least seven spies to infiltrate the group over 18 months in order to gain information about how the group worked, who was involved and, most important, how to stop the leaflet. The spies came to meetings, followed people home, broke into London Greenpeace’s office, stole letters sent to the group, and got fully involved in the activities (including giving out anti-McDonald’s leaflets!). One spy even had a bogus six-month “love affair” with one of the activists.

The upshot was that in 1990 the McDonald’s Corporation of Illinois served libel writs on us, demanding we retract and apologise for the criticisms made in the leaflet, or go to court. We were stunned that a huge corporation, which spends millions forcing its views on the population of the world every day, should try to silence a few members of the public in London putting out flyers giving an honest, alternative point of view.

We were further amazed to find out that there was no Legal Aid (public assistance) for libel cases, which are notoriously expensive and complex. We did get two hours free legal advice, which boiled down to: “the laws in the UK are stacked in favour of rich and powerful claimants - without legal representation, you’ve got no chance, and probably won’t even make it to trial, let alone win.” Despite these risks, we felt that we had to fight backthe consequences of bowing to this blatant threat of censorship and bullying were greater. It was vital to defend the public’s right to criticise those who dominate our lives and our planet. We would have to represent ourselves. So that’s how we - Helen, a gardener, and Dave, a single parent, and ex-postman - became embroiled in what became the longest trial in English history.

We didn’t have a clue how to fight a libel case, but luckily a friendly lawyer agreed to help with some of the formalities. As for the corporation, well, they of course hired a top law firm, aiming to get the best “justice” money could buy. We had to learn on our feet, and fast. Gradually, we began to understand court processes. We managed to fight off every attempt by McDonald’s to have our defence thrown out of court. We also fought many legal battles with McDonald’s over their refusal to disclose all the relevant documents in their possession.

We were required under British libel law to provide “primary sources” of evidence to substantiate our case. This means witness statements and documentary proof rather than press reports, common knowledge, or even scientific journals. This was a very daunting task, but we contacted a range of educational and campaigning groups around the world, and over time scores of people stepped forward and offered to give evidence in court to support the leaflet. Despite this, McDonald’s kept saying we had no case, and forecast just a “three to four week” trial.

The company applied to have our right to a jury trial to be denied us, saying that the issue of links between diet and disease would be “too complex” for members of the public. In reality, the public are increasingly concerned over such issues, and it was clear to us that McDonald’s did not want to be tried by the very public they claim to serve. A jury may even have been outraged that the case was ever brought at all. The judge ruled in favour of McDonald’s agreeing that it would be “more convenient.” This outrageous decision confirmed to us that we were fighting not just McDonald’s but also the legal system. As one legal commentator said, “I cannot think of a case in which the legal cards have been so spectacularly stacked against one party.” With the public barred from judging the case in the court, we decided to ensure that people everywhere would have the chance to hear the facts and judge for themselves.

The McLibel Support Campaign was set up to generate publicity, solidarity and financial support for fighting the case and raised more than £35,000 to pay for witness airfares, court costs, expenses and so on, every penny coming from donations from the public. The campaign also prepared dozens of mailings to let people know what was going on in court, and co-ordinated international days of action against McDonald’s in support of the right to criticise multinationals, where people demonstrated their anger at McDonald’s activities both in and out of court. Thousands of people signed a pledge to continue to distribute anti-McDonald’s leaflets whatever happened during the trial. All this gave us a real boost.

In March 1994, just before the full trial was due to start, McDonald’s produced 300,000 copies of a flyer to distribute to their customers claiming that "This action is not about freedom of speech; it is about the right to stop people telling lies." We issued a counter claim against McDonald’s over this serious accusation that the company’s critics (including us) were liars. We hoped that the counterclaim would turn the tables and force McDonald’s to prove their claims that the criticisms were lies.

In fact the tables had already been turned. Maybe for the first time in history a trans-national corporation was about to find itself and its business practices under the spotlight in court.


Let Battle Commence

“The McLibel case is the trial of the century - it concerns the most important issues that any of us have to face, living our ordinary lives.” [a top attorney, Michael Mansfield]

“Activists Put McDonald’s Under The Grill”” (Wall Street Journal front page headline)

The trial finally started in June 1994 and lasted 314 court days over three years, during which we grilled US and UK corporate executives and officials, dozens of experts and witness of fact, fielded our own witnesses, and also endured constant legal arguments in court. McDonald’s pulled out all the stops and spent an estimated $15 million. The Corporation’s plan for a “three to four week” show trial had turned into a comprehensive public tribunal in which “McWorld” was on trial.

It was exhausting and highly stressful for us. But at the same time it was greatly empowering to be members of the public uniquely able to challenge the might and sophistication of the corporate world face to face in the witness box - they could not walk away from our questions and hide behind the usual slick PR department. As in society at large, it really felt like two worlds colliding.

The corporation called its big guns into the witness box - presidents, vice-presidents, heads of departments, and other key officials from the US and UK. As the trial wore on, they were forced under lengthy cross-examination to make damaging admissions and concessions on all the issues: nutrition, advertising, rainforests, recycling and waste, employment, food safety, and animals.

The first section of the casenutritiongot off to a flying start with a contrast between McDonald’s internal company memo: "We can’t really address or defend nutrition. We don’t sell nutrition and people don’t come to McDonald’s for nutrition." and one of their public leaflets: "Every time you eat at McDonald’s, you’ll eat good, nutritious food."

Then McDonald’s expert witness on links between diet and cancer inadvertently admitted that one of the most contentious statements made in the London Greenpeace fact sheet was a "very reasonable thing to say."!

After only a few weeks of the trial, we received a most unexpected message: McDonald’s wanted to meet us in secret to discuss a settlement! Two senior vice-presidents of McDonald’s flew over from Chicago and said they would drop the lawsuit and pay a substantial sum to a third party if we agreed never to publicly criticise McDonald’s again. We demanded an undertaking from McDonald’s not to sue anyone for making similar criticisms again and for the company to apologise to those they’ve sued in the past. And if they wanted people not to hand out leaflets then the corporation should cease advertising and promoting themselves. No deal, so back to court.

Publicity and protests mushroomed as the trial got longer and longer…and longer. A leaked “highly confidential” McDonald’s Australia memo detailing their strategy for dealing with media interest in the McLibel case included such gems as "we could worsen the controversy by adding our opinion" and "we want to keep it at arms lengthnot become guilty by association.”


Some Great McQuotes

The trial showed us just how important it was not to take McDonald’s public pronouncements at face value.

For example, in keeping with their promotional leaflets, McDonald’s Senior Vice-President of Marketing (USA), stated, “McDonald’s food is nutritious” and “healthy.” When asked what the company meant by “nutritious,” he said it “provides nutrients and can be a part of a healthy balanced diet.” He admitted this could also apply to candy. When asked if Coca-Cola is “nutritious,” he replied that it is “providing water, and I think that is part of a balanced diet.” He agreed that by his definition Coke is “nutritious.”

When asked to define “junk food,” McDonald’s nutrition consultant, said it was “whatever a person doesn’t like” (in his case, semolina). With disbelief mounting in the courtroom, McDonald’s intervened to say that they were not objecting to the description of their food as “junk food.”

Incredibly, McDonald’s UK President, claimed that the character Ronald McDonald is intended not to “sell food” to children, but to promote the “McDonald’s experience.” But an extract from the corporation’s official and confidential “Operations Manual” was read out: “Ronald loves McDonald’s and McDonald’s food. And so do children, because they love Ronald. Remember, children exert a phenomenal influence when it comes to restaurant selection. This means you should do everything you can to appeal to children’s love for Ronald and McDonald’s.” McDonald’s Senior Vice-President of Marketing (USA) also testified that children were “virgin ground as far as marketing is concerned.”

McDonald’s UK distributed “McFact” cards nationwide for several years publicising a scheme to recycle polystyrene waste from stores in Nottingham, where customers were asked to put polystyrene packaging into a separate bin, "for recycling into such things as plant pots and coat hangers." The Chief Purchasing Officer for McDonald’s UK admitted that the company had not recycled any of the waste and in fact the polystyrene was “dumped.” He later said, “I can see [the dumping of waste] to be a benefit, otherwise you will end up with lots of vast, empty gravel pits all over the country.”

McDonald’s UK President said that if one million customers each bought a soft drink, he would not expect more than “150 cups” to end up as litter. Photographs were then put to him, showing 27 pieces of McDonald’s litter in one stretch of sidewalk alone.

Throughout the 80s and 90s, McDonald’s denied any responsibility for destruction of rainforests, claiming that they only used locally produced beef. However, internal company documents, mistakenly disclosed to us (and which they asked us to returnno chance!) revealed that in 1983 and 1984 McDonald’s UK purchased beef imported from Brazil, a rainforest country. A letter from the McDonald’s Corporation to a member of the public in the UK in 1982 stated, "we can assure you that the only Brazilian beef used by McDonald’s is that purchased by the six stores located in Brazil itself." McDonald’s UK Senior Vice President denied that the purchase of Brazilian beef for use in the UK was in breach of McDonald’s policy of using locally produced beef, saying, “no, it was not. We still bought the hamburgers locally. We did not buy the ingredients locally.”

We had a battle to get information about McDonald’s beef supply sources for their Brazil stores. When the last expert witness was due to testify, we finally received a list of their supply points in Goias State near a tributary of the Amazon. She was amazed to find places that she then testified had been rainforest, which she had seen being deforested in the early 1980s to make way for cattle, ranching.

McDonald’s public statements about their employees are that they are paid “competitive” wages, but Sid Nicholson, McDonald’s UK Vice President, admitted that McDonald’s set their starting rates for crew employees for most of the country “consistently either exactly the same as the minimum rates of pay set by the Wages Council or just a few pence over them.” He agreed that for crew aged 21 or over the company “couldn’t actually pay any lower wages without falling foul of the law.” However, he said, “I do not accept that McDonald’s crew are low paid.” So dozens of witnesses and many more weeks of testimony would have to be heard on this!

We finally persuaded the judge to order McDonald’s to hand over some documents from one store where there were witnesses on both sides, as a “snapshot” on company practices in the 1990s. It revealed hundreds of illegalities in employment practices in those few pages alone (similar to offences McDonald’s had been fined for previously).

A McDonald’s expert witness admitted that McDonald’s egg suppliers keep chickens in battery cages, 5 chickens to a cage with less than the size of an ordinary sheet of paper per bird and with no freedom of movement and no access to fresh air or sunshine. McDonald’s UK Chief Purchasing Officer said the company had thought about switching to free range eggs, but, not only are battery eggs “50% cheaper,” but, he claimed, “hens kept in batteries are better cared for.” He said he thought battery cages were “pretty comfortable.”

At the end of the trial, some of those who had infiltrated London Greenpeace before the case had started had to go into the witness box. One of them changed sides and became a defence witness. She stated that she “felt very uncomfortable” doing the job and “disliked the deception, prying on people and interfering with their lives.” She added that she “didn’t think there was anything wrong with what the group was doing” and that she believes “people are entitled to their views.”

Most people would agree with that. But would the judge?


Some Damning Judgments

“Observers believe it will go down as the biggest Corporate PR disaster in history” (Channel 4 TV News).

“A Judge yesterday branded McDonald’s mean, cruel and manipulative after the burger giant had spent 10 million pounds to clear its name.” (Daily Mirror, 20.6.97)


Despite the overwhelming odds stacked against us the judge ruled that:

- McDonald’s marketing has “pretended to a positive nutritional benefit which their food (high in fat & salt etc) did not match.” “People who eat McDonald’s food several times a week will take the very real risk of heart disease if they continue to do so throughout their lives, encouraged by the Plaintiffs” advertising.” He also ruled, “it is possible it increases the risk to some extent” of breast cancer and “strongly possible that it increases the risk to some extent” of bowel cancer.

- McDonald’s “exploit children” with their advertising strategy, “using them, as more susceptible subjects of advertising, to pressurise their parents into going to McDonald’s”

- McDonald’s are “culpably responsible for animal cruelty”

- McDonald’s “pay low wages, helping to depress wages in the catering trade.” They “are strongly antipathetic to any idea of unionisation of crew in their restaurants. There have been occasions where McDonald’s crew have lost their jobs or been victimised for union activity.”

Despite McDonald’s technical “win” over some other points, it was seen generally as a humiliating defeat for the corporation. No one could recall a court delivering such critical judgements against such a powerful institution. McDonald’s then capitulated by abandoning all efforts to get costs, damages, or even an injunction to halt the leafleting (which had been their stated aim in bringing the case). Two days after the verdict, in a Victory Celebration Day called by the McLibel Support Campaign, over 400,000 anti-McDonald’s leaflets were defiantly distributed outside the majority of their UK stores, and there were solidarity protests around the world. We were elated.

However, we had failed to convince the judge on all issues, and so we appealed. But significantly McDonald’s did not appeal over the damning rulings against their core business practices, later stating that the Judge was “correct in his conclusions”!

In 1999, after an intense and gruelling 23-day hearing in which we again represented ourselves, the Court of Appeal added to the damning findings. The court ruled that it was fair comment to say that McDonald’s employees world-wide “do badly in terms of pay and conditions” and that it was true to say “if one eats enough McDonald’s food, one’s diet may well become high in fat etc., with the very real risk of heart disease.”

We felt we had succeeded in almost every area of the case. In addition to the issues that we won outright, the trial judge had also made many “sub-findings” in our favour.

For example the judge had accepted that “the expansion of beef cattle production has...led to the destruction of areas of rainforest” in Costa Rica, Brazil and Guatemala. We’d shown that McDonald’s is the world’s largest promoter and user of beef, and has in those countries used beef from ex-rainforest land. But we’d failed to convince him that McDonald’s itself had been involved more directly with rainforest clearances.

He also found that we “were able to establish some incidents of food poisoning attributable to eating McDonald’s food,” including two serious Ecoli O157 outbreaks (in the US and UK); that salmonella was present in “25% of the pieces of deboned [chicken] meat” supplied to McDonald’s, and campylobacter on 70%; and that the risk of undercooking (thorough cooking is the only effective defence against food poisoning) “is endemic in the fast food system.” But we’d not proved to his satisfaction that there was a serious food safety risk.

To summarise, we won outright the sections on advertising, animals, and effectively all of nutrition and employment, short of a part of the final conclusion in each, but didn’t succeed on environment and food Safety despite overwhelming evidence.

Some of the rulings focussed on UK practices but most applied to the corporation as a whole. Of course, the criticisms and rulings against McDonald’s also apply with just as much force against the food industry in general.

We believe that the critics of the company and the food industry were completely vindicated. Yet there have been no official sanctions at all against McDonald’s as a result of this case. Effectively, the courts have given the green light to companies to exploit customers, workers and animals and to abuse the legal system to silence their critics, without any risk of paying consequences. It is only the actions of campaigners and witnesses in ensuring that the truth came out during the trial, and was widely publicised, and the international grass-roots campaign of mass defiance and solidarity, that has created a deterrent to companies from taking similar legal action in the futureand given encouragement to the public to openly voice their concerns about present day issues without fear.

It is vital for the future of this planet and its population that these subjects are areas of free uninhibited debate and ordinary people can express their views, so the self-interested propaganda of greedy multinationals and their ruthless drive for profits can be widely challenged.

Indeed, this is already happening….


Opposition Grows

Opposition to corporate power can take many forms. These are just some of the examples in recent years of people taking action together against McDonald’s:

There have been many determined residents’ campaigns against planned new stores. This includes some campaigns against “drive-thrus” in neighbourhoods in Canada; protest blockades in Voronezh, Southern Russia; and in Eastern Europe. There have been concerted efforts to keep fast-food chains out of the beautiful Blue Mountains region of Australia. There was even a successful 552-day occupation of a proposed McDonald’s site by residents of Hinchley Wood village in South East England. There have also been mass anti-McDonald’s protests by 30,000 French farmers opposed to anti-social modern agribusiness techniques.

There are growing controversies over the kinds of foods being promoted by McDonald’s and other fast-food outlets. The systematic and unethical promotion of unhealthy food products is contributing to a massive increase in those suffering from obesity, heart disease, and a range of other serious health problems. This has led to demands for curbs on advertising and sponsorship, and for legal action against the companies involved. There have been a number of controversies over McDonald’s targeting of children, and their sponsorship of schools, hospitals, and even the United Nations Children’s Fund.

McDonald’s own workers have organised together to stand up to fight for their rights, especially in the UK, France, Russia, and Canada. This included the setting up of a McDonald’s Workers Resistance network. Campaigners launched an international protest campaign over the extreme labour exploitation in China for the production of McDonald’s “happy meal” toys

Other protests include those organised by environmentalists against McDonald’s mass use of HFC refrigeration chemicals linked to global warming, campaigns by animal rights groups to expose the suffering of chickens, pigs, and cattle, and angry responses to McDonald’s claims that they are committed to “corporate responsibility.”

Protestors have also been buoyed by successive falls in the corporation’s global profits and closure of many stores. This led their US Chief Executive to admit that 2001 was the "most challenging" year in McDonald’s 47-year history. 2002 was worse…and they have struggled to recover since then.

Every year on October 16th, which is United Nations World Food Day, there is a Worldwide Day of Action against McDonald’s. This generally involves protests in dozens of countries, mainly leafleting and pickets in front of stores, but also marches, distribution of free healthy food, in-store dumping of company litter collected from streets near their stores, public meetings, etc. In recent years some of McDonald’s own workers have joined the day of action with go-slows, walkouts, and other protests at their conditions of work.

Leaflets given out in thousands at the start of the case are now given out in millions. The independent McSpotlight website has now been accessed over 120 million times.

The McLibel case continues to generate bad publicity for McDonald’s. We are currently taking the British Government to the European Court of Human Rights over oppressive and unfair UK libel laws, arguing that, to protect the public’s freedom of speech, corporations should not be allowed to bring such cases against protestors raising issues of public importance.

No matter what the court decides, the continually growing opposition to McDonald’s is a vindication of all the efforts of those around the world who have been exposing and challenging the corporation’s business practices.


McWorld: You Decide

Whatever a few judges think, it’s your views that really count. We believe there is enough information for people to judge for themselves and also to decide what action should be taken as a consequence.

But like with any debate, it depends first on what the questions are that are being asked. For us, it’s not a question of a superficial choice between a burger or McNuggets, or between McDonald’s or Wendy’s, or even “what and where shall I eat today?” The scale and urgency of the social and environmental problems facing us and our planet mean that we need to look deeper.

The basic questions we believe need answering are:

1. Are McDonald’s and McWorld a positive influence on society and the environment in general?
2. Why should we have to put up corporations dominating our lives? After all, aren’t they just institutions solely geared to making profits for their shareholders out of the exploitation of customers, workers, and natural resources?
3. Are politicians and governments who seek power over us in the same way as corporations seek profitspart of the solution or part of the problem?
4. How can ordinary people the world over take direct control of our own lives and communities, and all of the decision-making in society?
5. What can we do in our daily lives to think and act for ourselves, to support each other, to stand up for what’s right, and to help create alternatives?

There are many examples of ordinary people making positive things happen, although such examples are rarely encouraged or even acknowledged by the official media. Workers can and do organise together to fight for their rights and dignity. People are increasingly aware of the need to think seriously about the food we eat, and of the need to counter corporate propaganda. Local neighbourhood self-help groups of all kinds are springing up as people seek to build up community spirit and to improve their lives. Environmental, animal rights, and other progressive protests and campaigns are growing everywhere. People in poorer countries are organising themselves to defend their land and communities, and to stand up to multinationals and banks which dominate the world’s economy.

Why not talk to friends and family, neighbours, schoolmates and work-mates about these issues? Together we can challenge the institutions that currently control our lives and our planet, and we can create a better society without exploitation or oppression.

Why not join in the struggle for a better world?