glass-winged sharpshooter presentation 2/17

Who: East Bay Pesticide Alert
What: Informational Presentation and Organizing Meeting
Where: Berkeley Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo, Berkeley
When: Informational Presentation, Saturday, February 17, at 1:00 pm
Organizing Meeting, Satuday, February 24th, TBA. (Call
510-895-2312 for time)

Coming Attractions: Marc Lappe graciously has agreed to be a keynote
speaker for us in the near future, speaking on the GWSS from a global
perspective. Marc, a toxicologist, resigned from the State Health
Dept. over the Medfly spray program and has been a valuable help to
our organizing in Sonoma County.
*************
You may have heard about the Glassy-winged Sharpshooter via t.v.,
radio, or the newspaper. You may have been led to believe that it was
only a vineyards issue, of interest to people who live in rural areas,
not cities.

In fact, the California Dept. of Food and Agriculture\'s mandatory
spray program for the GWSS has hit over 2,100 homes, in counties
throughout California. Everybody within a 1-mile radius of a nursery,
a drug store/hardware store carrying nursery stock, a new housing
development, or even a private home where a homeowner has planted,
let\'s say, a new orange tree in her backyard, is at risk for
mandatory spraying.

Obviously, then, everyone is at risk of being told her/his yard is
going to be sprayed. In Brentwood, Contra Costa County, in October and
early November of 2000, spraying was done around 200 homes across from
a vineyard. The vineyard itself was not sprayed!.

This program is reminiscent of the \'80\'s and \'90\'s Medfly program. And
threatens to spread to similiar proportions. Some of the same
government pushers are involved.

But, twenty years later, many more of us understand the failings of
conventional agriculture and CDFA- style approaches to insect
\"pests.\" We know that conventional agriculture is the past, that
organic agriculture is the future. And yet, the Cal. Dept. of Food
and Ag.\'s adherence to failed methods of the past threatens the very
future of organic farming in our state.

Now is the time to take a defiant stand against corporate conventional
agriculture. The poisoning stops here.

Already, the CDFA has ordered the spraying of neurotoxins and
suspected carcinogens. On the 17th we will talk about the specific
chemicals which have been used.

No one is spared-when the GWSS comes to the Bay Area there will be
spraying around your homes, schools, childcare centers, senior
facilities, workplaces, parks, median strips, the University of
California (as its scientists are behind the spray program and UCB
scientists are doing genetic engineering work on the GWSS as you read
this), grocery stores, hospitals.

East Bay Pesticide Alert follows in Sonoma Pesticide Alert\'s work to
debunk the myths that pesticides are safe and that Northern California
wine grape growers, especially Sonoma and Napa growers, generally grow
using safe or sustainable practices. Of course, there are a few gems
out there, Coturri, Topolos and others, but they are few and the
acreage is tiny when compared to the usual high-pesticide users.

East Bay Pesticide Alert stands for No Compromise with state officials
around pesticide use. No use is the only safe dosage of pesticides.
This refers, of course, to toxic pesticides Unfortunately, there is
practically no government money going into biological controls work.
Naturally, there are \"safe\" pesticides, such as soap or cinnamon-based
biological controls, occasionally applied by organic growers, often in
reaction to regional imbalances caused by conventional agriculture
nearby. But these farmers know that the safest and most sustainable
solution is the fostering of an ecological balance where plants and
bugs work together.

We can stop the mass poisoning. See you on the 17th and 24th.

Info: Contact Maxina Ventura at 510-895-2312 email:
beneficialbug [at] netzero.net