NOBULL: The March to Stop Monsanto: Taking Back Our Planet
Protesters make their point to Monsanto in Los Angeles, Calif., 05/25/13. (photo: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)
The March to Stop Monsanto: Taking Back Our Planet
By Dave Murphy, The Huffington Post
31 May 13
he march to stop Monsanto is one of the most pressing issues of our time. As a single company, Monsanto is the tip of the iceberg representing the threat that unchecked corporate power has in corrupting our democratic institutions, driving family farmers off the land, threatening human health and contaminating our environment.
The problem with Monsanto is not just their corrosive lobbying practices, but the fact that the products they produce, genetically engineered foods and chemical weed killers, are in more than 70% of the processed foods that we eat and feed our families everyday.
In terms of corruption and consumption, Monsanto’s reach is global. Monsanto’s toxic impact reaches far and wide, from farmers’ fields to our nation’s capital to leading universities, media editorial boards and even the White House, with their patented genetically engineered pollen contaminating organic farmers’ fields, their poisonous chemicals infiltrating our waterways and our food and their lobbying tactics undermining our basic rights.
After more than 100 years in business, Monsanto’s name has become synonymous with greed, arrogance, corruption and poison. In a stunning display of calculated callousness of the impact that their products have on the human health and the planet, Monsanto is responsible for some of the most lethal chemicals known to history, including Agent Orange, PCBs, and DDT.
In the 1980s, Monsanto made a strategic decision to combine their chemical company with the emerging science of biotechnology. Today, the same company that poisoned America’s veterans in Vietnam is responsible for producing the food that appears on our plates every day.
If you think the same company that lied about the health impacts of Agent Orange to the U.S. government and our veterans is telling you the truth about the science behind genetic engineering and the food they are feeding us, you are either a fool, delusional or a member of Congress.
Only two months ago, Monsanto made the single largest strategic error in its 100-year history when they finally succeeded in sneaking a special corporate loophole that protected their genetically engineered crops from judicial review in a must pass spending bill.<
By passing Section 735, now known as the infamous Monsanto Protection Act, Monsanto finally exposed the truth to millions of outraged citizens of how they operate as a lawless corporation, willing to manipulate our nation’s laws to protect their flawed GMO technology and able to get away with it because our elected officials at the highest levels have become accomplices to the ultimate corruption in the writing of our nation’s laws.
Now that Congress and the President have shown their true colors to the American people and free citizens around the world, it is our civic duty to expose and resist this descent into lawless tyranny that not only keeps the American people from having the basic right to know what’s in our food, but also prevents open and independent scientific studies to be conducted on patented GMOs crops.
On March 26th, 2013 when President Obama signed H.R. 933 into law over the objections of more than 250,000 farmers and citizens from Food Democracy Now!, millions of people around the globe were outraged and the previously unknown provision gained worldwide attention. The outrage has become so intense, that Senators Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), the Chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee was forced to issue an apology, something almost unheard of in DC politics and Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) has courageously offered an amendment to repeal the Monsanto Protection Act during the recent farm bill debate.
The fight over the Monsanto Protection Act has become the turning point in the debate on political lobbying and genetic engineering in the U.S. For the past 20 years, Monsanto has been able to get their laws written behind closed doors when no one was watching. Today, we’ve built a movement that is paying attention to every lie they tell the media, our elected officials and every time they try to corrupt our democracy.
For far too long, Monsanto has been allowed to operate under cover of darkness, manipulating our elected officials, the media and scientific institutions that would normally serve as safeguards against their deeply flawed technology.
At Food Democracy Now!, we are greatly encouraged that activists and everyday citizens around the world are waking up to the toxic impact that corporations like Monsanto have on our planet and are willing to join a growing movement to take back our basic democratic rights.
This weekend, thousands of people across the world are gathering in towns and cities to rise up against Monsanto’s abusive practices to say that as a free society we will no longer stand silent.
Monsanto’s unchecked power is corrosive to the health of our democracy, our well-being and our planet and it must be stopped. As free citizens, it is our right and our duty to protest their unlawful encroachment into the most basic and fundamental aspect of our lives, the food that we eat and the laws that govern our lives.<
This weekend, thousands of everyday citizens joined together in more than 400 cities across the globe at an inspiring March Against Monsanto. What elected officials and Monsanto apologists need to know is that we will no longer be silent.
Monsanto’s days are numbered, the era of telling lies and getting away with it is over. Monsanto and our elected officials have one choice, label GMOs in the U.S. or they will go the way of the dinosaur.
Thank you Monsanto. Your corruption has become your undoing.