Dr. Vandana Shiva, Navdanya
Global Alliance For Seed Freedom / Navdanya
Call for a March Against Monsanto
On 25th May 2013
(Video and Full Transcript)
A March Against Monsanto Is A March For Life and Freedom – 25th May 2013
On 25th of May, people across the world, wherever they are, whatever they do, will be standing up to march against Monsanto. The March Against Monsanto is inspired by the love for freedom and democracy, the love for the Earth, the soil, the seed. And it is our deep love for life on Earth in freedom that makes all of us march against Monsanto and we stand in solidarity with everyone from the seed freedom movement catalyzed by Navdanya.
Monsanto has become the center stage for the destruction of our seeds, our diversity, our food, and our freedom. Beginning with the 1980s, when Monsanto drafted the laws imposing patents on life, even though life can’t be invented, and therefore is not patentable. More recently, the Supreme Court of the United States has upheld Monsanto’s totally illegitimate patent right on seed in the Bowman v. Monsanto case. And Monsanto writes into the U.S. budget law a Monsanto Protection Act, making it immune from any court action to protect diversity, to prevent contamination of the kind that the OSGATA case is fighting to defend the rights of organic seed producers.
In India, we have a very strong and very good law under the Environment Protection Act. It predates the Earth Summit, it predates the Convention on Biodiversity, it predates the Cartagena Biosafety Protocol, and it’s meant to regulate GMOs. Because we used the law to stop the Bt gene, the Bt brinjal, there’s been attempts by Monsanto to write a Monsanto Protection Act. It is called the Biotechnology Regulatory Act of India. It’s a deregulation act, but in typical Monsanto double speak, it’s called a regulatory act. It would throw citizens into jail for challenging GMOs. It is taking away the federal rights of our state governments who were a major player in stopping the Bt eggplant.
And in Europe, the European Commission, which as become an extension of Monsanto through the hundreds of lobbyists that work on a daily basis, there’s another Monsanto Protection Act being shaped to make it illegitimate and illegal for gardeners and farmers to have their own seeds. This is a new form of fascism. It’s a new form of dictatorship.
When Hitler came to power and the Nazis came to power with their kind of genocide, people created resistance movements everywhere. Today this new fascism is over life itself in all its diversity. It’s not just controlling one religion and one race. It’s wanting to outlaw all diversity of all life on Earth, and the rights of the producers as well as the eaters of food. After all, the huge onslaught against any attempt for labeling GMO foods in the United States is part of this Monsanto dictatorship. That is why the March Against Monsanto is a march for freedom. And this march is not just for the 25th of May. We will have to carry it on everyday of our lives as we plant our seeds and save our seeds, and we stand up in resistance with our gardens of resistance, growing healthy food, nurturing the soil and the seed, thanking the ancestors of those seeds and the future generations, handing over to our future generations the care and custody of our precious diversity.
Let us plant gardens of resistance against this new form of fascism. We will set the Earth in her diversity and people with their diversities free.
This dictatorship must end. The March Against Monsanto is a call to end the dictatorship over seed, over life, over our food, and over our freedom.