About the Assembly
Road to Mexico City

The First Transnational Assembly of La Liga -
The Global Association of Community Sustainers

As the corporate social responsibility campaign against the money transfer industry gathers momentum in neighborhoods throughout the US and increasingly around the world, migrant remitters are poised to formalize their collaboration and envision a more sustainable future for their families. We are proposing a global assembly to discuss the core issues common to all remitters and their communities and explore the formation of The Global Association of Community Sustainers, or La Liga, as a transnational network to represent our constituency on the global stage.

The Ministry of Rural Development and Community Equity of Mexico City has stepped forward in support of our gathering by offering to co-host the conference, scheduled for May 12 - 15, 2008, at the National Press Club in Mexico City, Mexico. The city's mayor, Marcelo Ebrard, is confirmed to give the key welcome address to the delegates. During the three days of the conference workshops and panels will focus on the principal themes identified for the formation of La Liga as well as cultural highlights. There is an additional study tour scheduled for May 11-12 to local sustainable development projects with very limited space.

In the coming months, various organizations and individuals working with TIGRA will help articulate the core themes that will constitute the platform, or work plan, for La Liga. These themes have been generated from a series of dialogues that TIGRA has conducted with its members during our national gatherings in 2007. They will be presented as tracks of workshops and panels at the conference in Mexico, to be discussed and further developed into La Liga's platform. The core themes include:

• ECONOMIC SECURITY
  Migrant remitters wish to deconstruct the existing global development model that displaces communities and threatens families. We want to achieve economic security for our communities by redefining neoliberal globalization to benefit families, by promoting sustainable development of communities of origin, and supporting innovations for growing sustainable cottage industries and cooperatives into larger sustainable economies (ie. international sustainable and fair trade). We are committed to ensuring that ecological security and social development are tied to economic security.

• POLITICAL PARTICIPATION
  Through the collective power of La Liga, member organizations in both host and home countries have the ability to ensure migrant participation in global political spheres as a single constituency, to advocate for community needs and demand changes to policies that exacerbate migration. We propose a resolution of transnational rights that expand citizenship and human rights as defined by nation-states that would include: transnational governance; freedom of human movement (not forced displacement); the Right to Belong, legal status wherever a person resides that would be transferred between generations; and the right to gainful employment everywhere.

• TRANSNATIONAL REALITY
  Migrants and their families face different realities in their home and host countries and through their connections, these realities continually influence each other. La Liga will ensure that the experience of women as global providers is uplifted as well as the understanding of how race, class and national identities are being continually transformed into a transnational identity. 

The unique aspect of La Liga's conference is the central participation of remitters and their communities. It is remitters' priorities and vision that must direct the course of efforts to channel remittance funds towards sustainable development. TIGRA's base-building efforts have so far brought together 200 migrant organizations throughout the USA, Latin America, and Asia. Increasingly we are establishing partnerships with migrant organizations in Africa and Europe. Our goal for the conference in Mexico City is the participation of 250 migrant leaders.

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For more information: 510-338-4930, convention@transnationalaction.org