Daily Sitka Sentinel
May 8, 2013 Letters to the Editor
Sitkans Called to Join First March Against Monsanto
By BRETT WILCOX
Sitka will join some 300 cities and tens of thousands of people around the world in the first global March Against Monsanto. Sitka’s march will be less of a march and more of a ceremony in honor of Monsanto’s victims.
Why March Against Monsanto?
The Monsanto Company is currently one of the world’s largest pesticide and seed companies. It is also the largest producer of genetically modified organisms. Genetic modification is based on the idea that God and Mother Nature don’t know what they are doing. And that we human beings, through crude and imprecise laboratory methods, can combine unrelated species, to create life forms that survive and thrive in toxic chemical baths or which generate poisons from within their cells, turning those plants into pesticides, plants which we then eat.
Monsanto spends millions of dollars telling us their poison-soaked genetically modified crops are safe, healthy, and necessary to feed the world’s ever growing population. The Monsanto-influenced FDA and USDA routinely approve these biotech crops based on Monsanto’s claim that the crops are safe.
Monsanto also spends millions of dollars making sure their GMO products remain unlabeled. They have even sued companies that label their own products as GMO-free, claiming that such labels stigmatize their own GMO products.
Monsanto wants you to believe they’re mission is to feed the world’s hungry. Don’t believe them! Monsanto’s mission is to profit from, control, and own food – your food, my food, and the food of the world.
Prior to getting into agriculture (if poisoning food can be called agriculture), Monsanto specialized in products that sicken and kill people and destroy the environment. These products include PCBs, DDT, and Agent Orange. Monsanto declared those products to be safe as well.
Responsible for over 50 Superfund sites, Monsanto was once listed as a top U.S. polluters. Monsanto poisoned their own employees with Agent Orange, then manipulated studies to “prove” that Agent Orange does not cause cancer. Those studies helped Monsanto avoid compensation to Vietnam veterans poisoned by Agent Orange. More than 50 years after the Vietnam War, Vietnamese mothers are still giving birth to children with birth defects. Monsanto saturated Anniston, Ala., primarily a poor African American community, in PCBs, resulting in numerous ailments and premature deaths.
Above all else, Monsanto lies. What else can they do? Telling customers their poisons will kill them is bad for sales.
We will meet on Friday evenings, May 10, 17, and 24, at 7 p.m. at Centennial Hall to watch Monsanto-related documentaries. We will also hear from Imani Altemus-Williams, a Hawaiian activist and author, on May 17. Bring your friends, your enthusiasm, and your non-GMO snacks. By attending, you’ll be able to answer the question, “Why March Against Monsanto?” And by attending, you’ll learn what we can and must do to stop Monsanto. We must stop Monsanto before Monsanto stops the world.
March Against Monsanto. 2 p.m. May 25. Castle Hill. Latest updates on Facebook: “March Against Monsanto Sitka.”
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Brett Wilcox is working on a book about Monsanto. He and his son, David, 14, are planning a cross-country run calling attention to genetically modified organisms.
