top
Central Valley
Central Valley
Indybay
Indybay
Indybay
Regions
Indybay Regions North Coast Central Valley North Bay East Bay South Bay San Francisco Peninsula Santa Cruz IMC - Independent Media Center for the Monterey Bay Area North Coast Central Valley North Bay East Bay South Bay San Francisco Peninsula Santa Cruz IMC - Independent Media Center for the Monterey Bay Area California United States International Americas Haiti Iraq Palestine Afghanistan
Topics
Newswire
Features
From the Open-Publishing Calendar
From the Open-Publishing Newswire
Indybay Feature

Occupy, social justice groups blockade entrance to Monsanto

by Dan Bacher
"We are calling for a 'global class-action' against Monsanto," said Steven Payan, one of the Davis protest organizers. "We are joining the world in solidarity to demand a ban on all GMO foods and hold Monsanto accountable for its actions throughout history from Agent Orange to Deforestation to current and past deaths to preying on small farmers through a broken court system and also through International Free Trade Agreements."
174675_195816593822841_644762784_n.jpg
Occupy, social justice groups blockade entrance to Monsanto

by Dan Bacher

Monsanto has closed its facility in Davis after 150 occupiers from throughout the state blocked the entrances to Monsanto's Davis facility on 1910 5th Street.

The occupiers reported they have "shut down" the corporate giant, which produces genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and is notorious for its inordinate influence over the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the Obama administration. Police are now on the scene.

You can see the protest live at sacmedia.tv.

The protest is part of a "Global Days of Action to Shut Down Monsanto" in dozens of U.S. cities and several countries. Occupy groups from Sacramento, Davis, Woodland and even Los Angeles are expected to participate, as well as labor, environmental, veterans and social justice groups.

"We are calling for a 'global class-action' against Monsanto," said Steven Payan, one of the Davis protest organizers. "We are joining the world in solidarity to demand a ban on all GMO foods and hold Monsanto accountable for its actions throughout history from Agent Orange to Deforestation to current and past deaths to preying on small farmers through a broken court system and also through International Free Trade Agreements."

Payan said Monsanto has been linked to massive pollution, including the poisoning of drinking water, genetically modified crops and seeds, chopping down rain forests and other types of social justice and environmental destruction.

Several countries, including Brazil, India, Haiti, Peru, France and others in Europe, have enacted recent bans or restrictions on Monsanto and its GMO foods. People worldwide are demanding restitution for hundreds of thousands of deaths, birth defects, suicides and ailments linked to Monsanto. 300,000 organic farmers recently sued Monsanto, according to Payan.

Among the endorsers of the Monsanto protest are The Anti-Monsanto Project, Occupy Woodland & Occupy UC Davis (Occupy Yolo County), Occupy Sacramento, Occupy Yuba-Sutter, Occupy Redding, Occupy Chico, Peace & Freedom Party, PSL Sacramento, Native People Association, Sierra Club, Rebuild the Dream, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement AFLCIO, MEChA de Woodland Community College, SEIU-Justice for Janitors, Revolutionary Hip-Hop Report, SoL Communications, Battle Creek Alliance, Sierraforest.org, Geo-Engineering Watch, Northbay Uprising, West Sacramento LULAC, SmallWorldRadio.net, United Native Americans and more.

For more information, contact: Steve Payan 818-741-8234.

Also today, Occupy Monsanto’s agents of change with the Genetic Crimes Unit (GCU), a group designed to protect America from genetically modified foods, will wear bio-hazmat suits when they visit Congress. The group will gather at Capitol South Metro station in Washington D.C. at noon to highlight how chemical company Monsanto is contaminating our political process.

The GCU opposes Monsanto’s bid to increase spraying of food with toxic weed killers like 2,4 D (the main ingredient in Agent Orange), genetic contamination of the organic food supply, and other risks associated with genetically modified food (GMOs).

The GCU will arrive at the metro station wearing bio-hazmat suits to assess whether Members of Congress and their staff have been victims of genetic crimes. The GCU will hold a banner that reads, “Congress is Genetically Modified,” as they circulate on Capitol Hill sidewalks.

This day of action is part of a larger international call to ‘Occupy Monsanto’ taking place all over the globe including Spain, Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and at least 28 cities throughout the US.

“In the name of Wall Street profits, chemical corporations such as Monsanto genetically engineer crops to withstand high doses of their toxic weed killers that contaminate our food and water, and have not been proven safe. We deserve to know what we are eating. Virtually every major country requires labeling of GMOs in foods so their citizens can make informed choices, including all of Europe, Japan and even China,” said GCU’s Ariel Vegosen.

“Monsanto’s lobbying dollars are pouring into politicians so its clear we have a GMO contaminated US Congress that threatens our health and the health of the planet,” Vegosen concluded.
Add Your Comments

Comments (Hide Comments)
by Gill Tewkesbury
BRILLIANT! GO FOR IT!
May this be the start of global protests!
Where can i protest in England?
by Twojays
Thank you for saying it for the rest of us. You are Freedom Fighters.
by Len Aldis
Congratulations to all involved in these actions against the evil company of Monsanto, I hope this movement to close down Monsato will grow and grow into a world-wide campaign. This company, along with others, who manufactured Agent Orange and Napalm are responsible for the deaths of many thousands of unborn babies in Vietnam on which 80 million litres of Agent Orange were sprayed over a ten-year period from 1961.

Today in Vietnam there are near to four million people suffering from the effects of Agent Orange, these include children born long after the spraying stopped in 1971 and the wars end in 1975.

Not one of the companies or the US Government has accepted responsibility or made any compensation.

Yes, lets work to see that Monsanto closes down all its plants.

Readers wishing to know more on Agent Orange can go to: http://www.aoag.org

In May 1995 our commune got a phone call from the B.C. govt. authorities in Canadato notify us that highway 97 right-of-ways in the Cariboo was to be sprayed with toxic poisons.
The law required them to phone us and inform us of the spraying because we had honey bees at the time and if they did not phone us, and some honey was bought and eaten by our farmers' market customers they could be sued if say the person died from poisoning or was injured or deformed in any way.

Apparently according to law now that we were informed it is we who supposedly sold the honey to anyone would be the ones held responsible. That is how Monsanto and Dow shuffle the blame off of their selves and on to the backs of the working classes.

The communes elected leaders asked me to take on the reponsibility to research the question and to make a leaflet and leaflet the farmers and workers who lived along the highway. We learned that they also intended to spray the hydro, railway, and hi-ways across Canada also.
I did the research in the local library and the librarians supplied me with a tray of clipped newspaper aritcles about the Chlorine poisoning of the drinking waters, and the so-called herbicide and pesticide poisoning of the right-of-ways and playing fields in Canada.

Previous to this notice to the commune, I had been working at the Strathcona Community Garden in Vancouver, B.C. 1993, and we got a notice that the playing fields of Vancouver were to be toxic poisoned sprayed. I decided when I heard that some of the poisons were listed as 2-4-d and 2-4-5-t which were used in the American Imperialist Aggression against Vietnam that therefore I would take on the task to post all the fields with anti-poisoning spray information on the poisons and put skull and crossbones poison insignia on a leaflet and with the Parks board meeting comming to take place on the question, the address of where the meetings were to be held. I wrote the research under the skull and crossbones of the two page leaflet and posted all the various playing fields due to be poisoned in both English and Chinese.
To make a long story short we got out a full crowd at the parks board meeting, and had uninanimous vote after discussion to never again allow the poisoning of the playing fields to occure and we cancelled the poisoning of Vancouvers playing fields that year. Thanks to cope--committee of progressive electors on the parks board backing, and thanks to the Strathcona Community Gardens and their executive for helping to stop the toxic poison spraying. Justice for the children, adults, elders and workers, for a change took place.

Democracy worked thanks to the communist party of Canada for being there. Peace to the playing fields and rest areas. However in 1995 while on the Cariboo Commune, the on-going struggle continued, and I spent the next fiver or so years leafleting the hi-ways and working with the railway, and hydro right-of-ways to end the campaign of toxic poisoning of Canadas right-of-ways.

The fight back included native first nations, woman's liberation, central federated trade-unions, independent Canadian Unions and even including the Canadian Labour Congress (three million members), while the Canadian politicians except for some progressive exceptions, were backing the poison toxic issuing of poison permits that looted the public tresuries.
What finally put an end to their false lead was when, with my leaflet I managed to get into the army camp and explained to the Canadian soldiers there that the poisons due to be sprayed included three sprays that were used in Indo-China in the U.S. Aggressive poisoning of the food crops, peoples, animals, ofrests and waterways.

In a matter of a couple of months the entire spraying programe was cancelled Canada wide never to be renewed again. Thanks to the progressive work of the Canadian Working people and their soldiers who were intelligent enough to stop the toxic death in the ecological, organic web-of-life throughout Canada.

During the research I found and article that was unclassified by the militaries. It had this to say abourt 2-4-D. It said that in 1945 the U.S. Military was going to spray the German Food Crop with 2-4-D, which was characterized as an allied poison miliary weapon, but that as the war ended May 9, 1945 it was never used. Consequently the U.S. Military was left with huge wharehouses full of this chemical weapon.

Apparently someone in the officiers corps decided rather than take a loss on the stuff he decided to rename it a herbicide and pesticide, and sell if on the market as such for untold millions.
It was never intended to be used that way. It is still a hidden secret of Pentagon theft, and criminal undertakings that have not been fully exposed to the 'American Public' to this day.
When the Vietnamese took the Supreme Court of America to Judgement for war crimes committed by the U.S. Imperialist soldiers poisoning of five million Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians who were acutely and chronically poisoned by the Agent Orange Monsanto and Dow done deal.

The Supreme Court of America said there was no scientific proof of any wrong doing and that Monsanto was innocent. Remember that the Supreme Court in the U.s.A. and Canada is not allowed to be elected by the people, and is appointed by the one percent to lie to the 99% of the worlds' peoples.

That was the true purpose of former slaveholder Booth shooting Lincoln in 1865, because President Lincloln was about to make the law making and government into a country and democracy that would be for, by, and of the people. Such projects were then avoided by the former slaveholder's killing of Lincoln and on-going to the formers slaveholders appointing Heyes as president although he had less votes than the reconstuction opposition. Heyes, and George W. were both appointed, and the unelected American supreme court to cancel the program of a goverment for, by and of the people and its programes of reconstruction, reparations (forty-acres and a mule).

To this day the Supreme Court of America continues to lie and destroy the environment for the monied interests of the monopoly corporations such a monsanto Dow, Dupont etc. with immpunity.
The government continues to not restore the matriarchy by doubling democracy and electing woman equally at every level of the government which would make the government for, by, and of the people a living reality. Instead the Imperialist male chauvinist state continues to lie and make unjust wars, and illegal violence against the organic web-of-life globally.
Such is the phony lying impunity sponored and carried out by the cops of America and their male chauvinist military. End pollution wars, not endless wars for more and more pollution. Workers of the world, unite!! You yet have a world to win!!

by The 99%
The protestors didn't shut down anything. Most employees worked that day off-site to avoid having to arrest the trespassers and give them more media attention that they didn't deserve.
We are 100% volunteer and depend on your participation to sustain our efforts!

Donate

$110.00 donated
in the past month

Get Involved

If you'd like to help with maintaining or developing the website, contact us.

Publish

Publish your stories and upcoming events on Indybay.

IMC Network