world traveller (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} jenkasjournal) wrote,@ 2005-07-29 18:39:00 |
|
philadelphia and west virginia
I arrived in Philly a few days before the 'Biodemocracy' protest against the
Biotech Industry's annual convention, got to attend much of the 'Biodemocracy'
teach-in ( http://www.biodev.org/ )and work on puppets and signs for the big
event......well unfortunately the 'big event' wasn't quite as big as i'd
hoped...only a few hundred folks gathered for the first event of a series of
protests: breakfast in front of Glaxo-Smith-Klein Pharmaceutical
Corporation...joined by a few dozen bicycle cops, plainclothes cops, and
suspicious-looking camera holders with super telephoto lenses. but,
surprisingly enough for philly cops, they didn't harass us too
badly.......maybe they've cooled off since chief timoney left for miami (and
note how they started treating protests in miami since he got there -- re. FTAA
nov. 2003)......or maybe they were just busy gathing intel for homeland
security....
anyway the teach-in was great. well, actually it was really disturbing to hear
about the extent to which the biotech industry has managed to gain control of
the resources that we eat and drink and use for medicine....but great that
people were coming out to stand up to the biotech industry and say no -
farmers, elderly people, medicaid recipients, professors, scientists......not
enough, not enough to stop them....but a start.
i was inspired by percy schmeiser, a farmer from saskatchewan who stood up to
monsanto corporation when they sued him for 'patent infringement' when pollen
from their patented seed drifted through the wind onto his crop of canola and
infected it. he's been through 4 lawsuits, which have cost him nearly
$500,000, and lost......he's still fighting, though. he told horror stories of
the company hiring private detectives to trespass on his farmland and gather his
crops, to spray his crops with their patented herbicide to see if the crops
would die -- if they didn't die, that meant they were infected with their
patented 'roundup ready' seed that would resist their patented 'roundup'
herbicide (kind of like the old test in the 'salem witch trials' to see if a
woman was a witch - throw her in the water, if she didn't drown, she was a
witch, and if she did drown....well, she wasn't a witch, but was dead anyway).
the monsanto police would sit with their tinted-window Sport Utility Vehicle
just outside Percy's driveway for days on end, following him when he left his
home, following his wife, even his grand-daughter on her way to school. It was
pure intimidation -- wouldn't be surprising if we were talking about the Mafia,
but this is a multinational corporation. Well, I guess the two are not really
so different, in the end. Monsanto is the company, remember, that produced
'Agent Orange' that destroyed so much of Vietnam during the Vietnam War and
left so many veterans terminally ill. And Percy's not the only farmer they've
sued. They've taken more than 60 farmers to court in the US, and another 40 in
Canada, and hundreds more lawsuits are pending. The company sends 'extortion
letters' to farmers claiming that the farmer is using Monsanto's patented seed,
and that they will sue the farmer unless the farmer pays the corporation a
certain amount (usually in the hundreds of thousands of dollars) within a
couple of weeks to 'settle out of court'. Many of these farmers end up losing
their farms in the lawsuits -- it's really out of control. The court system is
set up to protect the corporations, and now that corporations are in the
business of patenting life forms -- well, it's not just farmers, but ALL of us,
that are in trouble because of this.
Companies like Monsanto are genetically modifying seeds, and those genetically
modified seeds infect other seeds -- the few studies that have been done have
shown that 37 of the 38 strains of canola seed in the country has been infected
with genetically-modified strains, 80% of the corn and close to 90% of the
cotton in the country has been infected. The companies claim that the genetic
modification is safe -- their proof? "You're already eating it!" Well, I, for
one, don't want to be a guinea pig for their genetic testing, especially when
the long-term effects are not known. And when these genetically-modified
strains get into the food system, as they have in North America, THERE IS NO
TURNING BACK! If they prove to be harmful, there is no way we can retract them
from the food supply and go back to the non-genetically-modified strains. This
is really frightening stuff!! And yet, many people in this country, many smart
and thoughtful people, are believing the companies' propaganda that they are
doing this to 'combat hunger'. In fact, genetic modification does the exact
opposite. It was promised to increase yields - it does not. It was promised
to decrease the use of pesticides - it does not. It was promised to cost less
- it does not. And the crops have lower nutritional value than their
non-genetically-modified counterparts. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO CONTROLLED
SCIENTIFIC STUDY?? I'm sorry to shout, but I'm angry about this!! This is the
future of our food supply, and these companies are mutating it on a national and
international scale!! They are lying to the public, and we are accepting it at
face value. WE HAVE TO STOP THEM!
Well, our protest in Philadelphia did very little to actually stop the Biotech
Industry from meeting -- it was a fairly small, but beautifully creative
protest. As I have noticed at every protest I attend, what is most impressive
is not necessarily the 'protestation', but the creation of a joyous and
beautiful counter-culture that demonstrates an alternative to the profit-driven
world of fast-dealing that goes on inside the Biotech conference. In our
temporary autonomous zone, puppets personifying the demons of biotech were met
by a beautiful puppet of sunlight and freedom, and dozens of painted images of
organic vegetables, rising up in joyful defiance to their monstrous, tortured
vision of a world of high-priced drugs, genetically-modified crops and
bio-weaponry. There were people of all ages, from infants to retirees, singing
and chanting and dancing in the hot sunlight.....and there were medics supplying
water, organic food free for all provided by the volunteer cooks of 'food not
bombs', even a temporary clinic set up in the basement of a church. THIS is
why i go to protests, not so much to vent my anger but to be part of this
vision for another possible way to organize our society.....through voluntary
mutual aid.
a society of abundance -- fresh, organic produce to eat, free healthcare for
everyone whenever they need it (preventative measures as well).....such a thing
IS possible. but as long as we are confined by a profit-driven business model,
it's hard to see clearly that there's any alternative to that model.
----------
i got another chance to see this 'alternative model' in action when i went to
the rainbow gathering ( http://www.welcomehome.org )in west virginia. it's a
gathering of nomadic folks from all over, and back-to-the-land hippies from the
sixties who have kept this annual gathering happening for over thirty
years.....ten thousand or more gather each year on the fourth of july weekend
and live in the woods for a week, camping and sharing music and stories,
drumming and ending the whole thing with a sun ceremony on the fourth of july.
here's an article about it:
http://wildflowerstew.org/52916.htm
many on the right and left alike look down on this gathering as 'too much
fluff', but i found it to be full of hard workers who laid miles of plastic
pipe from a well to 20 main kitchens over a five mile stretch of land....the
kitchens provided free food, and there were dozens of smaller kitchens as
well....toilets were dug (three feet deep at a minimum - covered over when they
reached two feet), paths established, stages built for performances......the
woods were transformed into a magical fairyland of music, drumming, dancing and
sharing for those few days.....i found it to be a refreshing breath of nice
energy....all around me were people who were smiling and practically glowing
with life...lots of children and families.....and lots of GREAT food. no
rulers, no leaders, no governing authority. each kitchen organized on their
own, each person brought their own talent or skill to the community - be it
teaching yoga classes, cooking delicious tofu, laying water pipes, playing
banjo or digging toilets, everyone had something to contribute. and no one had
to make rules or assign schedules to make people work. they worked because they
wanted to help. and guess what?? _everything_ _got_ _done_!
on the last day of the rainbow gathering, there was a sun ceremony to celebrate
the community and life on earth.....at dawn the drumming, which had been going
for 24 hours, stopped abruptly, and i became acutely aware of the birds singing
and crickets chirping.....the silence spread throughout the camp, and people
maintained silence as they awoke and prepared a morning meal. everyone joined
a silent walk through all the woodland paths to the main meadow, where a circle
was formed with everyone joining hands......the circle kept growing wider and
wider, until it touched the very edges of the field - 10,000 people holding
hands. and then the children's parade came up the hill, with beautiful
costumes and rainbow colored banners, and they came into the middle of the
circle.....the people began to 'ohm', quietly, then more loudly, until a
crescendo was reached, and cheering and shouting ensued. the drums picked up
in the middle of the field where the children were gathered, and everyone
rushed forward in noise and dancing to celebrate.
now, i'm not saying the gathering is perfect -- i definitely have my critique
(white cultural privilege, disconnection to local struggles and direct action,
for example)....but i found it to be a beautiful breath of fresh air that
demonstrates how people CAN live together without money, governments or laws.
I arrived in Philly a few days before the 'Biodemocracy' protest against the
Biotech Industry's annual convention, got to attend much of the 'Biodemocracy'
teach-in ( http://www.biodev.org/ )and work on puppets and signs for the big
event......well unfortunately the 'big event' wasn't quite as big as i'd
hoped...only a few hundred folks gathered for the first event of a series of
protests: breakfast in front of Glaxo-Smith-Klein Pharmaceutical
Corporation...joined by a few dozen bicycle cops, plainclothes cops, and
suspicious-looking camera holders with super telephoto lenses. but,
surprisingly enough for philly cops, they didn't harass us too
badly.......maybe they've cooled off since chief timoney left for miami (and
note how they started treating protests in miami since he got there -- re. FTAA
nov. 2003)......or maybe they were just busy gathing intel for homeland
security....
anyway the teach-in was great. well, actually it was really disturbing to hear
about the extent to which the biotech industry has managed to gain control of
the resources that we eat and drink and use for medicine....but great that
people were coming out to stand up to the biotech industry and say no -
farmers, elderly people, medicaid recipients, professors, scientists......not
enough, not enough to stop them....but a start.
i was inspired by percy schmeiser, a farmer from saskatchewan who stood up to
monsanto corporation when they sued him for 'patent infringement' when pollen
from their patented seed drifted through the wind onto his crop of canola and
infected it. he's been through 4 lawsuits, which have cost him nearly
$500,000, and lost......he's still fighting, though. he told horror stories of
the company hiring private detectives to trespass on his farmland and gather his
crops, to spray his crops with their patented herbicide to see if the crops
would die -- if they didn't die, that meant they were infected with their
patented 'roundup ready' seed that would resist their patented 'roundup'
herbicide (kind of like the old test in the 'salem witch trials' to see if a
woman was a witch - throw her in the water, if she didn't drown, she was a
witch, and if she did drown....well, she wasn't a witch, but was dead anyway).
the monsanto police would sit with their tinted-window Sport Utility Vehicle
just outside Percy's driveway for days on end, following him when he left his
home, following his wife, even his grand-daughter on her way to school. It was
pure intimidation -- wouldn't be surprising if we were talking about the Mafia,
but this is a multinational corporation. Well, I guess the two are not really
so different, in the end. Monsanto is the company, remember, that produced
'Agent Orange' that destroyed so much of Vietnam during the Vietnam War and
left so many veterans terminally ill. And Percy's not the only farmer they've
sued. They've taken more than 60 farmers to court in the US, and another 40 in
Canada, and hundreds more lawsuits are pending. The company sends 'extortion
letters' to farmers claiming that the farmer is using Monsanto's patented seed,
and that they will sue the farmer unless the farmer pays the corporation a
certain amount (usually in the hundreds of thousands of dollars) within a
couple of weeks to 'settle out of court'. Many of these farmers end up losing
their farms in the lawsuits -- it's really out of control. The court system is
set up to protect the corporations, and now that corporations are in the
business of patenting life forms -- well, it's not just farmers, but ALL of us,
that are in trouble because of this.
Companies like Monsanto are genetically modifying seeds, and those genetically
modified seeds infect other seeds -- the few studies that have been done have
shown that 37 of the 38 strains of canola seed in the country has been infected
with genetically-modified strains, 80% of the corn and close to 90% of the
cotton in the country has been infected. The companies claim that the genetic
modification is safe -- their proof? "You're already eating it!" Well, I, for
one, don't want to be a guinea pig for their genetic testing, especially when
the long-term effects are not known. And when these genetically-modified
strains get into the food system, as they have in North America, THERE IS NO
TURNING BACK! If they prove to be harmful, there is no way we can retract them
from the food supply and go back to the non-genetically-modified strains. This
is really frightening stuff!! And yet, many people in this country, many smart
and thoughtful people, are believing the companies' propaganda that they are
doing this to 'combat hunger'. In fact, genetic modification does the exact
opposite. It was promised to increase yields - it does not. It was promised
to decrease the use of pesticides - it does not. It was promised to cost less
- it does not. And the crops have lower nutritional value than their
non-genetically-modified counterparts. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO CONTROLLED
SCIENTIFIC STUDY?? I'm sorry to shout, but I'm angry about this!! This is the
future of our food supply, and these companies are mutating it on a national and
international scale!! They are lying to the public, and we are accepting it at
face value. WE HAVE TO STOP THEM!
Well, our protest in Philadelphia did very little to actually stop the Biotech
Industry from meeting -- it was a fairly small, but beautifully creative
protest. As I have noticed at every protest I attend, what is most impressive
is not necessarily the 'protestation', but the creation of a joyous and
beautiful counter-culture that demonstrates an alternative to the profit-driven
world of fast-dealing that goes on inside the Biotech conference. In our
temporary autonomous zone, puppets personifying the demons of biotech were met
by a beautiful puppet of sunlight and freedom, and dozens of painted images of
organic vegetables, rising up in joyful defiance to their monstrous, tortured
vision of a world of high-priced drugs, genetically-modified crops and
bio-weaponry. There were people of all ages, from infants to retirees, singing
and chanting and dancing in the hot sunlight.....and there were medics supplying
water, organic food free for all provided by the volunteer cooks of 'food not
bombs', even a temporary clinic set up in the basement of a church. THIS is
why i go to protests, not so much to vent my anger but to be part of this
vision for another possible way to organize our society.....through voluntary
mutual aid.
a society of abundance -- fresh, organic produce to eat, free healthcare for
everyone whenever they need it (preventative measures as well).....such a thing
IS possible. but as long as we are confined by a profit-driven business model,
it's hard to see clearly that there's any alternative to that model.
----------
i got another chance to see this 'alternative model' in action when i went to
the rainbow gathering ( http://www.welcomehome.org )in west virginia. it's a
gathering of nomadic folks from all over, and back-to-the-land hippies from the
sixties who have kept this annual gathering happening for over thirty
years.....ten thousand or more gather each year on the fourth of july weekend
and live in the woods for a week, camping and sharing music and stories,
drumming and ending the whole thing with a sun ceremony on the fourth of july.
here's an article about it:
http://wildflowerstew.org/52916.htm
many on the right and left alike look down on this gathering as 'too much
fluff', but i found it to be full of hard workers who laid miles of plastic
pipe from a well to 20 main kitchens over a five mile stretch of land....the
kitchens provided free food, and there were dozens of smaller kitchens as
well....toilets were dug (three feet deep at a minimum - covered over when they
reached two feet), paths established, stages built for performances......the
woods were transformed into a magical fairyland of music, drumming, dancing and
sharing for those few days.....i found it to be a refreshing breath of nice
energy....all around me were people who were smiling and practically glowing
with life...lots of children and families.....and lots of GREAT food. no
rulers, no leaders, no governing authority. each kitchen organized on their
own, each person brought their own talent or skill to the community - be it
teaching yoga classes, cooking delicious tofu, laying water pipes, playing
banjo or digging toilets, everyone had something to contribute. and no one had
to make rules or assign schedules to make people work. they worked because they
wanted to help. and guess what?? _everything_ _got_ _done_!
on the last day of the rainbow gathering, there was a sun ceremony to celebrate
the community and life on earth.....at dawn the drumming, which had been going
for 24 hours, stopped abruptly, and i became acutely aware of the birds singing
and crickets chirping.....the silence spread throughout the camp, and people
maintained silence as they awoke and prepared a morning meal. everyone joined
a silent walk through all the woodland paths to the main meadow, where a circle
was formed with everyone joining hands......the circle kept growing wider and
wider, until it touched the very edges of the field - 10,000 people holding
hands. and then the children's parade came up the hill, with beautiful
costumes and rainbow colored banners, and they came into the middle of the
circle.....the people began to 'ohm', quietly, then more loudly, until a
crescendo was reached, and cheering and shouting ensued. the drums picked up
in the middle of the field where the children were gathered, and everyone
rushed forward in noise and dancing to celebrate.
now, i'm not saying the gathering is perfect -- i definitely have my critique
(white cultural privilege, disconnection to local struggles and direct action,
for example)....but i found it to be a beautiful breath of fresh air that
demonstrates how people CAN live together without money, governments or laws.
