Global Justice Ecology Project teams up with the Sojourner Truth show on KPFK Pacifica Los Angeles for a weekly Earth Minute each Tuesday and a weekly Earth Watch interview each Thursday.
Category Archives: Food Sovereignty
KPFK Sojourner Truth Earth Minute: World Social Forum in Tunisia closes with declaration denouncing capitalism, patriarchy, and the “green economy”
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Filed under Actions / Protest, Africa, Climate Change, Food Sovereignty, Green Economy, Rights, Resilience, and Restoration
Photo Essay: Occupy Monsanto Actions in St. Louis
Activists from Millions Against Monsanto and the Gateway Green Alliance hang a banner across the street from an industry conference on “biosafety of GMOs.” Photo: Petermann/GJEP
Note: Global Justice Ecology Project Executive Director Anne Petermann and Board Chair Orin Langelle were in St. Louis over September 16 and 17 for the GMO-Free Midwest Conference and the Occupy Monsanto day of action. The events were organized by the Organic Consumers Association and the Gateway Greens Alliance.
Petermann spoke on the first day of the GMO Free Midwest conference on the dangers of genetically engineered trees at C.A.M.P. (Community Arts and Movement Project) near downtown St. Louis. Langelle spoke against the Green Economy during day two of the GMO Free Midwest conference. Day two of the conference was held simultaneous to the “12th International Symposium of Biosafety of Genetically Modified Organisms” at the Millennium Hotel, adjacent to the St. Louis arch.
The second day of the conference and the Occupy Monsanto actions which followed were held in celebration of the one-year Anniversary of Occupy Wall Street.
The photo essay below is from the day of activities against Monsanto, both the conference at the Millennium hotel and the three actions that followed. The actions included a rally outside of the Millennium Hotel, an action at Whole Foods directed at their policy of allowing GMO foods to be sold in their stores, and an protest outside the world headquarters of Monsanto in Creve Coeur, Missouri.
–The GJEP Team
Rich Martin, a Director at the Millennium hotel, in full freak-out mode, threatens to throw out organizers and journalists from the GMO Free Midwest conference for asking questions and attempting to take photos. Photo: Petermann/ GJEP
Irina Ermakova, a leading scientist at the Russian Academy of Scientists presented on the health impacts of GMOs at the 12th International Symposium of Biosafety of Genetically Modified Organisms. She then left that event to join the activists at the GMO Free Midwest conference at the Millennium Hotel. Later she took part in the demonstration outside of the hotel in protest of the GMO industry conference. Photo: Petermann/GJEP
Protesters rally across the street from the Millennium Hotel. Photo: Langelle/GJEP
A mother and her two children protest Monsanto and GMOs outside of the Millennium Hotel. Photo: Langelle/GJEP
Mutant corn is turned away from participating in the “12th International Symposium of Biosafety of Genetically Modified Organisms.” Photo: Langelle/GJEP
Activist from Occupy Monsanto expresses their feelings about Monsanto. Photo: Langelle/GJEP
Activist in Guy Fawks mask protests Monsanto during Occupy Monsanto day of action. Photo: Langelle/GJEP
Protest across the street from the GMO industry conference at the Millennium Hotel in St. Louis, MO. Photo: Langelle/GJEP
After leaving the industry conference, activists went to Whole Foods for an action protesting the fact that Whole Foods carries unlabeled GMO foods. Photo: Petermann/GJEP
Eric, an anti-GMO cotton farmer from Texas, protests outside of Whole Foods. Photo: Petermann/GJEP
An activist ties up the line at Whole Foods by asking the clerk whether each of the items in her cart contain GMOs. Photo: Langelle/GJEP
A “superbug” caused by consumption of GMO crops argues with a police officer outside of Whole Foods. Photo: Langelle/GJEP
GMO farmer dressed for duty outside of Whole Foods. Photo: Langelle/GJEP
From Whole Foods, the Occupy Monsanto protest went straight to the source–the heavily guarded headquarters of Monsanto. Photo: Langelle/GJEP
Millions Against Monsanto banner at the Monsanto headquarters. Photo: Langelle/GJEP
Occupy Monsanto sign. Photo: Langelle/GJEP
Protesters line the highway outside of Monsanto’s headquarters. Photo: Langelle/GJEP
Anti-Monsanto protester is interviewed by the local media. Photo: Langelle/GJEP.
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Filed under Actions / Protest, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Corporate Globalization, Events, False Solutions to Climate Change, Food Sovereignty, Genetic Engineering, Industrial agriculture, Pollution
La Via Campesina at Rio+20: The people of the world say “No to the Green Economy”
For a week throughout the People’s Summit, Via Campesina, the global movement of peasant farmers, mobilized in Rio de Janeiro to say “No to the Green Economy” and to reinvigorate the process of building new alliances thanks to plenaries, social movements’ assemblies, street demonstrations to show the real needs and aspirations of our peoples.
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Filed under Climate Change, Corporate Globalization, Food Sovereignty, Green Economy, Land Grabs, Latin America-Caribbean, Rights, Resilience, and Restoration, Rio+20, Solutions
KPFK Audio Segment: The link between the Paraguay coup and GMO Soy
Global Justice Ecology Project teams up with KPFK Pacifica’s Sojourner Truth show for a weekly Earth Minute on Tuesdays and a weekly Earth Segment interview on Thursdays.
KPFK’s weekly “Earth Segment” this week interviewed Dr. Miguel Lovera, Paraguay’s National Secretary for Plant Safety about the link between the recent coup in Paraguay and what has become known as the Genetically Modified Soy “mafia” in that country.
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Filed under Climate Change, Corporate Globalization, Earth Radio, Food Sovereignty, Genetic Engineering, Latin America-Caribbean, Political Repression
Rio+20: Opening statement of the Farmers Major Group by La Via Campesina
Cross-posted from La Via Campesina
Read by Henry Saragih, international coordinator of La Via Campesina at the opening of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development Rio+20
June 20, 2012, Rio de Janeiro
Mr. Chair, Heads of States, Your Excellencies and esteemed representatives, we have been debating the future of the planet and humanity for the past two years. It is clear that sustainable agriculture is essential to the discussion on sustainable development.
Our constituencies include: farmers, artisanal fishers, pastoralists, agricultural workers, youth and indigenous peoples. They are often among the most affected by multiple crises, in particular women and young people. They also hold the solutions for sustainable development in their hands.
In order to be able to implement systems that nourish our people and sustain our planet, institutional change is necessary, particularly in the area of participation and empowerment of the most vulnerable, the majority of whom reside in rural areas. The new path of development entails the empowerment of these constituencies to produce and harvest, this requires the rights to equitable access to land tenure – regardless of gender, marital status, religious or ethnic origins – and to productive resources, including seeds, inputs, trade and markets.
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Filed under Climate Justice, Food Sovereignty, Green Economy, Rights, Resilience, and Restoration, Rio+20
Peasants of the world mobilize against green capitalism in Rio
News, pctures and videos on www.viacampesina.org
(Rio de Janeiro, 14 June, 2012) About 3000 people from around the world will mobilize to say NO to the commodification of life and nature at the Peoples Summit for Social and Environmental Justice and in Defense of the Commons.
The peoples Summit is a space for discussion, debate and construction of alternative proposals by the global civil society, social movements and peoples collective organizations. La Via Campesina has been actively participating in the construction of this activity in order to denounce the false solutions of the same failed economic model that is now being dressed in green under the name “green economy”. La Via Campesina is instead promoting peasants sustainable agriculture as a true solution to the global climatic and environmental crises.
The delegation of La Via Campesina will participate in various plenaries as well as the global mobilization that will take place on the 20th of June concentrating at the junction of the roads Av. Rio Branco and Av Presidente Vargas in Rio de Janeiro. La Via Campesina has been actively participating in the planning of the Peoples Summit that will take place as a parellel activity to the UN conference on Sustainable Development or Rio + 20. This meeting marks the twentieth aniversary of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio 92 or Eco 92).
The most important political space in the Peoples Summit will be the Peoples Permanant Assembly that will organize around three main themes: The denouncement of the structural causes of global poverty and environmental crisis as well as the new forms of the reproduction of capital; Peoples real solutions and new paradigms; and the agendas, campaigns and mobilizations of anticapitalist struggles after Rio +20.
La Via Campesina is an international movement that brings together about 200 million peasants, small and medium-sized producers, landless, rural workers and indigenous people from around the world. LVC advocates sustainable small scale peasant’s agriculture as a means of promoting social justice and dignity. The organization brings together more than 150 organizations in about 70 countries of Africa, Asia, Europe and America.
Link to document – La Via Campesina’s position on Rio+20
To facilitate interviews with peasants from different continents we have available a list of spokespersons of La Via Campesina as well as the overall agenda of the Summit.
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Filed under Corporate Globalization, False Solutions to Climate Change, Food Sovereignty, Green Economy, Greenwashing, Rights, Resilience, and Restoration, Rio+20
The people of the world confront the advance of capitalism: Rio +20 and beyond
Position Paper of La Via Campesina
Cross-posted from La Via Campesina
June 6, 2012 — Governments from all over the world will meet in Río de Janeiro, Brasil from June 20-22 2012, to supposedly commemorate 20 years since the “Earth Summit”, the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development, that established for the first time a global agenda for “sustainable development”. During this summit, in 1992, three international conventions were adopted: the Convention on Biological Diversity, the United Nations Convention on Climate Change, and the Convention to Fight Desertification. Each of these promised to initiate a series of actions destined to protect the planet and all of the life on it, and to allow all human beings to enjoy a life of dignity.
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Filed under Food Sovereignty, Rio+20
March Photo of the Month: GMO Protest, Sacramento, CA 2003
Protest in Sacramento, California during a meeting of the WTO’s Agricultural Ministers, hosted by the USDA in June 2003 in preparation for the WTO summit in Cancun that fall. Global Justice Ecology Project co-founder Orin Langelle joined allies at this WTO miniterial to organize protests against the development of dangerous and uncontrollable genetically engineered trees. Photo: Langelle/GJEP
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Global Justice Ecology Project coordinates the international STOP GE Trees Campaign. We recently produced a briefing paper on the current status of genetically engineered trees, as well as a history of the campaign to stop GE trees, which we have led since 1999.On March 29th, Global Justice Ecology Project co-organized aconference on Synthetic Biology in Berkeley.
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Industry plans to combine the use of GE trees and the use of manufactured and totally synthetic lifeforms to create so-called “advanced cellulosic biofuels.” These synthetic organisms have never existed before and there is no way to know what would happen if they “escaped” into the environment. This is a reckless technology that must be ended.Genetically engineered trees live for decades, can spread their pollen and seeds for up to hundreds of miles, making them much more dangerous than agricultural crops. GE versions of native trees like poplar and pine will inevitably and irreversible contaminate native forests with their pollen and seeds, leading to total disruption of the forest ecosystem. GE eucalyptus trees are non-native, invasive, highly flammable and deplete ground water.
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Today the issue of GE trees is more urgent than ever with industry proposals to commercially release millions of GE eucalytpus trees in huge plantations pending with the USDA. If approved, these plantations will exacerbate droughts and cause massive firestorms. They must be banned.
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To read our briefing paper, “Analysis of the Current State of GE Trees and Advanced Biofuels, click here.
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Also check out the GJEP Photo Gallery, past Photos of the Month posted on GJEP’s website, or Langelle’s photo essaysposted on GJEP’s Climate Connections blog.
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Filed under Actions / Protest, Biodiversity, Corporate Globalization, Food Sovereignty, GE Trees, Genetic Engineering, Photo Essays by Orin Langelle
