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GUESTS: Jim Graham, spokesperson for Monterey FLOW and Felton FLOW, Maj Fiil, campaign coordinator for the Water for All Campaign at Food & Water Watch

The Mayor of Urbana, Illinois has joined citizen groups from the US and Germany in Berlin to challenge water privatization. Mayor Laurel Prussing is in Berlin to hold the German multinational corporation RWE, accountable. RWE owns Urbana’s water system. According to Mayor Prussing, “Ownership by a giant conglomerate has led to boil orders, fire hydrants which cannot be opened when our firefighters rush to a fire, and perhaps most frightening, a huge interference in our local governments by RWE spending millions of dollars to influence our elections.” Across the US, as in the rest of the world, communities are fighting for equitable access to water. Here in California, the threats of privatization are most acute precisely where they are the least visible – in small rural communities of the state’s agricultural valleys. This is where mostly low income immigrants from Mexico and Central and South America live and work.

For more information, visit www.foodandwaterwatch.org. Or email water@fwwatch.org.