Local to Global Justice is a nonprofit volunteer organization based in Tempe, Arizona

Tempe, Arizona

Tempe is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, USA, with the Census Bureau reporting a 2010 population of 161,719. The city is named after the Vale of Tempe in Greece. Tempe is located in the East Valley section of metropolitan Phoenix; it is bordered by Phoenix and Guadalupe on the west, Scottsdale...

, USA. It sponsors events dealing with social justice

Social justice

Social justice generally refers to the idea of creating a society or institution that is based on the principles of equality and solidarity, that understands and values human rights, and that recognizes the dignity of every human being. The term and modern concept of "social justice" was coined by...

 issues, mostly held on and around the Arizona State University

Arizona State University

Arizona State University is a public research university located in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area of the State of Arizona...

 (ASU) Tempe campus. The group is a registered ASU student organization, but membership is not limited to students at the university.

Every year since 2002 the group has organized the Local to Global Justice Teach-in at the ASU Tempe campus. The free event is a social forum

Social forum

A Social Forum is an open meeting place for civil society organizations and individuals opposed to neoliberalism and the domination of the world by capital and imperialism. The first Social Forum was the World Social Forum held in January 2001 in Porto Alegre. It was designed as a counter forum to...

 featuring nationally recognized speakers, workshops by local grassroots

Grassroots

A grassroots movement is one driven by the politics of a community. The term implies that the creation of the movement and the group supporting it are natural and spontaneous, highlighting the differences between this and a movement that is orchestrated by traditional power structures...

 organizations, music, and food. The speakers and workshops at the Teach-in have dealt with a wide variety of topics, including civil rights

Civil rights

Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...

, environmental justice

Environmental justice

Environmental justice is "the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, sex, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies." In the words of Bunyan Bryant,...

, workers' rights, globalization

Globalization

Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...

, and immigration

Immigration

Immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence...

.

Well-known speakers at past events have included Starhawk

Starhawk

Starhawk is an American writer and activist. She is well known as a theorist of Paganism, and is one of the foremost popular voices of ecofeminism. She is a columnist for Beliefnet.com and On Faith, the Newsweek/Washington Post online forum on religion...

, Ward Churchill

Ward Churchill

Ward LeRoy Churchill is an author and political activist. He was a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder from 1990 to 2007. The primary focus of his work is on the historical treatment of political dissenters and Native Americans by the United States government...

, Rod Coronado

Rod Coronado

Rodney Adam Coronado is a Native American eco-anarchist and animal rights activist. He is an advocate and former activist for the Animal Liberation Front and a spokesperson for the Earth Liberation Front...

, Jonathan Schell

Jonathan Schell

Jonathan Edward Schell is an author and visiting fellow at Yale University, whose work primarily deals with nuclear weapons.-Career:His work has appeared in The Nation, The New Yorker, and TomDispatch...

, Frances Moore Lappé

Frances Moore Lappé

Frances Moore Lappé is the author of 18 books including the three-million copy Diet for a Small Planet. She is the co-founder of three national organizations that explore the roots of hunger, poverty and environmental crises, as well as solutions now emerging worldwide through what she calls...

, Lisa "Tiny" Gray-Garcia, Michael Alewitz and Tom Hayden

Tom Hayden

Thomas Emmet "Tom" Hayden is an American social and political activist and politician, known for his involvement in the animal rights, and the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s. He is the former husband of actress Jane Fonda and the father of actor Troy Garity.-Life and...

.