Call to Action- The Goverment is selling us out- To Monsanto

We all know times are hard. We eat what we can when we can. Most folks don't question what they eat, especially poor folks, like me. The family needs food. We shop at the cheapest stores. Buy what we must to survive. Meanwhile, our government conspires with big business for a profit at our ex pence. Our government officials protect the interest of Monsanto over the interest of our most vulnerable citizens. Daily, we are fed foods that have been altered by GMO's (Genetically Modified Organisms) and most folks have no way of determining what foods have been altered or not. The government has refused to support labeling of GMO's on our food products. There has even been an amendment to a bill introduced this year in the 2013 Farm Bill protecting Monsanto from being forced to comply with labeling.
On Saturday May 25th, about 100 supporters gathered in the Mason Square area of Springfield MA, Michaelann Bewsee of Arise for Social Justice, helped with a great organizing effort that brought folks out in the rain and cold to push back against Monsanto. This action was in solidarity of 250 other marches that happened the same day in the USA, and millions more across the globe. 

 Learn more and Join the Facebook page at:   https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheMarchAgainstMonsantoSpringfieldMA/

 People need to know: GMO's have not been proven safe, and in fact, a growing body of independent peer-review studies have linked these foods to allergies, immune problems, infertility and cancers.
Most folks have no idea! GMO's were quietly introduced into our food supply in the 90's, and the FDA requires no safety testing or labeling.
What is truly outrageous is the connection between the largest company in the world that creates these GMO's and our elected officials. Watch this very informed video, where Heath Bleau gives shocking facts, definitively linking some of our top government officials to the interest of Monsanto. Even the President of the United States. This is very disturbing.
 What can we do?

Declare your Right to Know!

Support Mandatory Labeling of

Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO's)

Public Hearings June 3rd and June 11th 2013

Let Them Know

 

June 3rd 2013

10:00am - 2:00pm

David Prouty High School

302 Main Street Spencer MA

 

June 11th 2013

10:00am

Massachusetts State House

Room A-1

Boston MA

 

Hearings are open to the public.

Sign up or submit your testimony online at

marighttoknow.org

 

If you are worried------You should be!

Take Action -- Wake Up



This bloody, bloody war

We're on a countdown to the end of the Iraq war, but almost  no one seems to notice.

Nine years of war: what has it cost us?  What have we gained?

In lives: As of today, 4801 coalition forces have been killed, 4483 of them U.S. military members.  Official estimates say 32,200 have been injured, but some estimates put that number closer to 100,000.  Many of those injuries are brain injuries and amputations that will affect those injured for the rest of their lives.


On the Iraqi side, more than 100,000 civilian deaths have been documented, but Just Foreign Policy, Lancet and other place the number at more than a million.  The number of injured is undocumented.

In money: The official tally stands at $800 billion-- that's $3000 a second—for the duration of the war.  These are direct costs, however, and don't include the cost of replacing equipment, vehicles and weapons, and the cost of providing health care and other benefits for veterans.  That could push the cost to about $4 trillion.

I won't put all the blame for the recession on the war, but, in these times, can you imagine the number of jobs that could have been created with that money? 

What have we gained?   Only the most cynical would say that the fall of dictator Saddam Hussein justifies what we have lost.  A few might claim that Iraq paved the way for the Arab Spring, but I'd be more inclined to say that the people would have overthrown Hussein  themselves by now.  

Can anyone think of even one other benefit from this bloody, bloody war?

Anti-war activists called this war before it happened.  We saw the handwriting on the wall on 9/11, we tried to stop it and when we couldn't, we tried to bring it to an early end, and we couldn't do that, either.  the last few years the energy of the anti-war movement has been sapped by a misguided faith in Barack Obama.   Maybe we're just tired.  Or maybe we're coming to believe that everything must change before there can be no more wars.   


For more than nine years, Arise has vigiled every Monday at noon in front of the Federal Building in Springfield. We've had a half dozen major demonstrations there, joined by anti-war activists from around the Valley.  On snowy or rainy days, maybe the numbers get as low as four, but usually there's a dozen or more people.   We'll mark the end of this war in some way before the end of the year.  But we will continue to vigil.


There's still Afghanistan.

Obama's failure, a truth-telling tour, and a march on Washington, D.C.

This morning I read an opinion piece by Drew Westen that completely summed up the deep disappointment I feel in our president, Barack Obama.  I urge you to read all of it, but these two paragraphs frame Obama's failure.

When Dr. King spoke of the great arc bending toward justice, he did not mean that we should wait for it to bend. He exhorted others to put their full weight behind it, and he gave his life speaking with a voice that cut through the blistering force of water cannons and the gnashing teeth of police dogs. He preached the gospel of nonviolence, but he knew that whether a bully hid behind a club or a poll tax, the only effective response was to face the bully down, and to make the bully show his true and repugnant face in public. 

IN contrast, when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public — a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it. Had the president chosen to bend the arc of history, he would have told the public the story of the destruction wrought by the dismantling of the New Deal regulations that had protected them for more than half a century. He would have offered them a counternarrative of how to fix the problem other than the politics of appeasement, one that emphasized creating economic demand and consumer confidence by putting consumers back to work. He would have had to stare down those who had wrecked the economy, and he would have had to tolerate their hatred if not welcome it. But the arc of his temperament just didn’t bend that far.

 Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornel West believe that Barack Obama is ignoring the plight of poor people.  They have launched The Poverty Tour: A Call to Conscience, to help wake this country up to what poor people have to go through every day, how their lives and the lives of their children have been stunted and cast aside.  Their inspiration also comes from Dr. Martin Luther King: "I choose to identify with the underprivileged, I choose to identify with the poor, I choose to give my life for the hungry, I choose to give my life for those who have been left out of the sunlight of opportunity. . .This is the way I’m going.  If it means suffering a little bit, I’m going that way.  If it means sacrificing, I’m going that way.  If it means dying for them, I’m going that way, because I heard a voice saying “DO SOMETHING FOR OTHERS.”

Poor people are organizing on our own behalf, too-- not just in the small ways we do every day, but for major mobilizations.  The Assembly to End Poverty, which was formed from the poverty resolution at the 2010 United States Social Forum, is calling for a march on Washington, D.C. on June 30, 2012. I don't know yet how we're going to do it, but Arise, and poor people from all over Western Massachusetts, will be there.

We are fighting for our lives.

Photo from Racole's photostream from Flickr.

Neal still waffling on health care

A hundred people showed up yesterday for a rally at Congressman Richard E. Neal's Springfield office on State St. We were there to see if we could win Neal's support for HR 676, The United States National Health Insurance Act.

Many groups have met with Cong. Neal to ask him to support HR676. He just keeps putting off a real answer. Yesterday he released the following statement:

“Since President Obama’s election, I have pledged to work with him to reform America’s health care system. I share his goals that comprehensive health care reform must be affordable, provide coverage options for every American and guarantee quality care. As a member of the Ways and Means Committee, one of three committees in the U.S. House that has jurisdiction over health care, I am committed to passing real health care reform legislation this year. On numerous occasions, I have spoken with the White House and officials in the Obama administration about the importance of passing health care reform during the 111th session of Congress. I know they share my view that the American people cannot afford to wait any longer. As the debate in Congress resumes, I look forward to continuing my work with President Obama and the leadership in Congress to make health care affordable and accessible for every American.”

Well, blah, blah, blah.

Two days before the rally, a member of the Western Mass. Single Payer Network had a conversation with Neal's legislative aide Bill Powers about HR 676. The gist of it went like this:

• Rep. Neal has already met with 2-3 groups regarding his stance on healthcare, and can't keep spending time meeting with groups over this single issue.
• • Neal's position on health care is not clearly articulated in any public place and cannot be articulated without a "longer conversation" but unfortunatelty Neal is not available to meet on this topic for at least a month-and-a-half or two months in the future.
• • When asked whether Neal supports HR 676 or not, Powers stated that Neal takes issue with how HR 676 is written, but does not necessarily object to HR676. Again, his position on HR676 requires a "more lengthy discussion".

Could Neal's lack of support for HR 676 be linked to the fact that his top contributer category is insurance companies? That's not the case for any of the other 13 U.S. Senators and Representatives in Massachusetts.

Unfortunately it seems as if President Obama has yet to come around to supporting a true single payer plan. His current proposal gives too much power to insurance companies. A good fact check on his plan can be found at PolitiFact. A real problem is that his plan mimics the Massachusetts model. Yesterday's Boston Globe sees the state's health care costs spiraling out of control, waits for doctors increasing, and costs keeping patients from accessing prescription drugs and doctors.

It's not too late to win HR676, but we have our work cut out for us.

Photos: President of Arise Don James, Shirley McCready and John Bennett from Mass. Senior Action, Liz Bewsee from Arise and Ashley from OutNow, Arky Markham from Western Mass. Single Payer Network, Sadie Centeno and Vanessa Rivera from Arise, State rep. Ben Swan, City Council candidate Norm Oliver.

An Open Letter to President Barak Obama

An Open Letter to President Barak Obama

April, 6, 2009

Dear President Obama,

In approaching the task of addressing you directly about a personal issue, I feel daunted by the abyss that separates the two of us in status and power. I am a retired public health physician, attempting to maintain a hold on his sanity and physical health by puttering around his garden in a Palestinian village in Galilee. You are the president of the nation most of humanity envies and desires to join, burdened with the task of saving the world from economic and political chaos and now from nuclear war.....

<http://a-doctor-in-galilee.blogspot.com/2009/04/open-letter-to-presideent-barak-obama.html>

The link for this blog was sent by a friend. here is the link to the rest of the blog.

After Yucca: America's homeless nuclear waste

In Idaho. In Massachusetts. In Iowa, Nebraska, Texas, Louisiana, California, New Mexico -- at 120 locations in 39 states a total of 66,000 tons of used but still dangerously radioactive fuel are stored in concrete containers under the open sky.

And now it has nowhere else to go.

In this June 25, 2002 file photo, the view from the summit ridge of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump near Mercury, Nev.,looking west towards California. (The Associated Press file photo)

But President Barack Obama opposes the repository and has slashed funding for it in his budget proposal. "Both the president and I have made clear that Yucca Mountain is not a workable option and that we will begin a thoughtful dialogue on a better solution for our nuclear storage waste needs," Energy Secretary Steven Chu told a Senate budget panel recently.
Concerns about transportation safety, earthquakes, water contamination and its proximity to millions of Nevadans have stalled the repository's completion after two decades and billions of dollars of study and construction.

Some even contend that the Yucca Mountain project is dead.

Read more at http://www.sltrib. com/ci_11967458

Obama’s green plan must include Native Americans

I was skipping through my email this morning and this caught my attention. Winona La Duke is a great activist/writer/leader among so many. I hope Washington will hear the voices of our past, present & future in the words of native americans like Winona today.

Obama’s green plan must include Native Americans
By Winona LaDuke, January 31, 2009
To accomplish the green energy goals he talked about in his inaugural address, President Obama must work with Native Americans.
“Each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet,” the president said, vowing that “we will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.”

You can read the full article at http://www.progressive.org/mag/mpladuke013109.html

Victory Gardens

Nice article about people growing and reclaiming.

Victory gardens sprout up again
People are borrowing an old wartime concept to lessen the need for mass-produced food, reduce pollution and build a sense of community.

By Mary MacVean > > > January 10, 2009
http://www.latimes. com/features/ home/la-hm- victory10- 2009jan10, 0,7167635. story

Solid as a Rock

I think there are still some good, progressive white people who just don't get the significance of Barack Obama's presidency for African-Americans-- indeed, for all of us. I don't expect him to be perfect but nothing like this has ever happened before.



Link: YouTube

This land is your land

Link: YouTube