Tuesday 6+7pm, Pesticide Alert - Oakland City Council

Please come out to Oakland City Hall, tomorrow, Tuesday, April 5, 2005, at
6pm (public forum) 7pm (voting), when the proposed ordinance to use
herbicide as a method of wildfire prevention is going before the full City
Council. This ordinance would further erode Oakland's pesticide ban, which
is being
exposed as a very bad joke, with all its exemptions, which do not include
the pesticide use by UC, EBMUD, the East Bay Regional Park District, and
Caltrans.

Even though they have been given toxicological profiles of the herbicides in
question by East Bay Pesticide Alert, Jean Quan and her staff, who have been
pushing this ordinance, have been downplaying environmental concerns
throughout this discussion, claiming they were absolutely not talking about
spraying these chemicals, only "painting". Recently they amended their
proposal to include "spritzing" (the dictionary defines spritz = spray), and
at the Public Works meeting on
Tuesday, March 22, Quan admitted that apply could mean "a little tiny spray
bottle", and exclaimed that she wasn't going to "spray it out of
airplanes"... Not so funny, considering that her boss, Mayor Medfly,
launched a chemical assault over Oakland out of helicopters back in 1981,
when he was governor. As
someone who was caught unprepared one evening and was heavily exposed as a
result, I can tell you it was terrifying. Jean Quan is fond of refering to
the 800 pounds of pesticide "dumped on golf courses" to ridicule the big
deal made of the 6 pounds she wants to use. But she opens up a much greater
can of worms:
Should we really believe that 800 pounds of pesticide (and that is truly
just the tip of the iceberg for Oakland's pesticide use) constitute a "ban"
on pesticides?

Most of the "science" in the March 22 report from Jean Quan to the Public
Works Committee consists of a 20 page reprint from The Nature Conservancy.
And the Nature Conservancy is by no means an unbiased source. What Jean Quan
didn't tell the Public Works Committee was that the Nature Conservancy
recently received $390,000 from the Monsanto Fund, the philanthropic arm of
the Monsanto company. As most of the world turns against Round-up ready
genetically modified crops, Oakland is about to put its seal of approval on
Round-up, Monsanto's most popular product. Please look at the toxicological
profiles of the chemicals proposed for use at
http://www.eastbaypesticidealert.org under "local issues", and see for
yourself what scientists who are not funded by the industry found out about
their toxicity.

In an attempt to balance the very one-sided claim of "expertise", East Bay
Pesticide Alert has invited Professor Tyrone Hayes, famed UC researcher on
pesticide effects, and concerned Oakland hills resident, to speak at the
City Council meeting tomorrow, and has made a request of Councilmembers that
he be given time to make a formal presentation. So far, it looks like the
city officials will continue to deny equal time to community groups and
experts who are opposed to this
ordinance. All the community groups invited to participate at the panel
discussion at the initial Townhall meeting on January 26 were for the use of
pesticide, and those who oppose it were deliberately excluded. However, the
public is entitled to speak on this issue, even if the time to do so is
being cut shorter and
shorter. Now is the time to speak out against this proposal, as it is likely
that the council will vote on it tomorrow night.

Please take a stand tomorrow, Tuesday, April 5, 2005, at 6/7pm at Oakland
City Hall, One Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, in Downtown Oakland, next to the 19th
Street Bart Station. Seating and signing up to speak starts at 6pm. Parking
is available in the lot immediately behind city hall, and is free if you
write "city council meeting" on the ticket, and tell the attendant that you
attended the meeting.

See you at City Hall.

Isis Feral