Sitka Dad, Son to Run With a Health Message

By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer
May 21, 2013
http://sitkasentinel.com/7/2012-05-10-22-08-10/local-news/5843-sitka-dad-son-to-run-with-a-health-message

Two Sitkans will start a 3,000-mile journey in January with a single step – or stride.

Brett Wilcox and his son David, 14, plan to run across the country to raise awareness about issues related to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and their effect on human health and the environment.

Brett and David Wilcox at Indian River Falls in Sitka, Alaska

They will be joined on their project, called “Running the Country,” by a support team of family members – Brett’s wife Kris and daughter Olivia. Other friends and supporters are volunteering to run or ride along for part of the journey.

The Wilcoxes say on their run across the country they will carry a message of the importance of healthy food, healthy diet and healthy exercise.

“A big part of healthy living is knowing what’s in our food,” Brett Wilcox said. If successful, he said, David will be the youngest person to complete a cross-country run, and the two runners will be the first father-son team to do it. David will be 15 when he starts the cross-country run in January. He and his father tentatively plan to cover 15 miles a day, running six days a week.

David became inspired to make the trip after learning of a teenage girl who completed a transcontinental run at age 17.

“Initially, it was David saying ‘I want to do that,’ about three years ago,” Brett Wilcox said. “Then it sat on the back burner. When David pressed me and Kris a few times, it was like: we have a very talented son, who wants to do something extraordinary. Are we going to say no or do everything we can – ethically – to make this happen?”

Brett said he and his family live fairly conservative lives, and that this will be something of a change from that.

“We get up, go to work, go home and take care of our family,” he said. “The thought of stepping away from our jobs is unsettling and it will take a lot of support from a lot of people to make it a reality.”

Along the way, the family will be stopping at community centers and public events, and making scheduled talks about and raise awareness on genetically modified organisms. They’ll explain what the public can do to “secure a safe, non-GMO food supply,” Brett said.

The Wilcoxes and Running the Country garnered early support from the Sitka Conservation Society because of their joint concern about genetically modified organisms. SCS helped organize the protest in Sitka recently to raise awareness of the dangers related to genetically modified salmon, and the organization is active in promoting sustainable food systems.
“We are facing a really scary threat of genetically modified salmon in Alaska,” said Andrew Thoms, SCS executive director. “Our community’s livelihoods are intricately connected to wild Alaska salmon. Introducing a ‘Frankenstein salmon’ into the environment could cause disastrous consequences to our wild salmon stocks and our local industry. The more people know about this threat, the better. Running the Country will help spread the word about what people want for our food system and counter the voices of large food corporations that are pushing GMO foods.”

The Wilcoxes plan to start their run in southern California and stick to a southern route during the winter months before starting to angle north to the finish on the East Coast, some eight months later. One important stop will be St. Louis, Mo., where the headquarters of the Monsanto Company, a leading producer of genetically modified seeds, is located. Another will be Washington, D.C.

“Monsanto says it will feed the world, and we’ve found the opposite is true,” Brett said. “It’s taken the seeds out of the control of the farmers … instead of food security they’ve created food insecurity.”

Brett is also working on publishing two books on his own that the family will carry on the trip to publicize their message about the importance of healthy food choice, diet and exercise. The self-published books are called: “Sexy Body, Sexy You: Discover The Secrets to Weight Loss, Life, Love & Loot” and “We’re Monsanto: Feeding The World, Lie After Lie.”

Brett Wilcox is spreading the word locally in other ways about his concerns with GMOs, including organizing a local March Against Monsanto Movie Nights, a series of films that will wind up May 24. The movies have been shown on Friday evenings at Centennial Hall starting at 7 p.m.

The March Against Monsanto is set for 2 p.m. Saturday on Castle Hill, one of nearly 400 such demonstrations organized in communities around the world.

The Wilcox family has lived in Sitka for more than 12 years. Brett, 52, is an outpatient mental and behavioral health counselor at SEARHC Mt. Edgecumbe Hospital, and Kris has a house cleaning business. David has three sisters, Olivia, 12, and Erika and Brittany who attend college in Utah and Hawaii.

Brett said the cross-country run will need many supporters and sponsors. The Wilcoxes have their own Running the Country site at www.runningthecountry.com, and also a Running the Country page on Facebook.

Photo Credit: Jeff Arndt

Dr. Vandana Shiva March Against Monsanto

Dr. Vandana Shiva, Navdanya

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.

www.navdanya.org
www.seedfreedom.in

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