various comments from participants in the Biojustice 2001 demonstrations in San Diego through June 25, 2001
"According to the United Nations, we're already producing enough food to feed one and a half times the world population with an adequate, nutritious diet. The fact that the US government and the people of BIO 2001 are arguing that a genetically engineered future is the solution is just diverting attention from the real causes of hunger, the real causes of poverty, the real causes of ill health, the fact that most people in this world still don't have access to clean water".-Luke Anderson
"If we're really serious about improving the health care of millions
of people on this planet, we can do so. But that takes political change.
That takes change from the bottom up. That takes people demanding that
their right to equality on this planet is not only answered but acted on".-Luke
Anderson
Americans don't know about biotechnology. They don't know that they're eating it, they don't know they're drinking it. They don't know that these are the technologies that are shaping their medical futures. We are here to counter that trend. We're here to build awareness and to give people the opportunity to learn what this technology is. -Chaia Heller, professor of Ecological Philosophy at the Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont:
I've done observations in both open- and closed-air research facilities and you'd be astounded to see people walking around with trans-genetic pollen on their clothing and walking right out of the laboratory. And the idea that you can have an open-air field test that is contained is ridiculous.-Chaia Heller, professor of Ecological Philosophy at the Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont:
I think this is very, very dangerous. Once you introduce biologically modified organisms into the environment, at a certain point you cannot go backwards. This is going to affect people for generations to come. So I think our challenge is to make the links between biotechnology and the people across the border who are living under colonial conditions. Those issues are inextricably connected.-Chaia Heller, professor of Ecological Philosophy at the Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont:
When you really understand what biotechnology is, it's not just a technology
that's rearranging the food supply and medical products for generations
to come. It's a new mode of capitalist production. The same capitalist
system that is producing biotechnology that is creating the kind of trade
wars and the kind of economic structures that are keeping people impoverished
all over the world. It's the same system.-Chaia Heller, professor of
Ecological Philosophy at the Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont:
We don't believe that genetically modified organisms in their untested
state should be coming into our bodies or into our food system or into
the environment.-Group of young women from the Bay Area:
The issue is commodification of life itself. Humans can only exist as
part of a community and that's not just a human community, but an ecological
biosphere community. For any one person to try to say they own something
like that and to try to put a patent on something and put a dollar value
on it is to pretty much deny what makes us human.-Group of young women
from the Bay Area:
All of us have learned some very serious life skills of being individuals,
and there's some unlearning that we have to do to have a kind of sharing
and generosity and connectedness with ourselves and the natural environment.-Group
of young women from the Bay Area:
We are trained to believe in the individual 'I', meaning myself, and
'if I have my food and my car and my house I don't have to worry about
the peel in Mexico because they're not me'. Other paradigms would define
'I' as 'my community' and that community extended to the biotic community
of the world. I'm concerned about the workers in Mexico because they are
really not that separate from me. If they're being pushed off their land,
if they're being commodified and having their knowledge taken and patented
by the corporations, well, that's mine too. I'm a part of that.-Group
of young women from the Bay Area:
I just informed myself about a week ago. There was not a lot of information
out. I went to the Starlight yesterday and that informed me a lot. They
had booths set up. I picked up information and gave it to my friends and
passed it all out.-Nineteen-year-old woman from San Diego dressed as
an ear of corn
I’m trained as a botanist and I’d like to do agricultural work in the future. I’m concerned for a lot of reasons about biotechnology and I think it’s a really important issue and something we should pay attention to. There’s obvious consumer and labeling issues, like where people don’t know they’re eating GMOs. There’s also a lot of affects on the family farmer in America and on third world farmers in terms of the monopolies these countries are having. There are detrimental effects on organic farming that these bred plants are having.-Woman botanist from Oregon
One of the most common organic farming methods to deal with pests is a naturally occurring soil bacterium, and organic farmers for a long time have sprayed concentrates of this bacterium on plants to deal with insects. Well, biotech companies are now breeding that into their plants, and that functionally renders its use by organic farmers useless.-Woman botanist from Oregon
In college, every opportunity I had on any project in my class, if there was any way I could study plant biotech, I did. I started off skeptical, but I didn’t start off thinking ‘this is a bad thing’. And the more I’ve gotten into it, the more concerns I have. The thing that I find most shocking and horrifying is, in a very basic sense, these companies are patenting life. What could be more offensive to a living being than a company, a corporate entity – that their sole purpose is to make money – patenting life? That is offensive on a basic and spiritual level. These companies are fucking patenting genes, organisms. That’s just so not OK.-Woman botanist from Oregon
I’m here for the cause. Like, no GMOs. They’re getting away with a lot
of stuff. I feel like every time these protests come around, people are
saying, ‘You know what? We’re watching this.’ It’s like a show of unity.
Everybody’s here for the same cause. People show up and support everybody,
because it’s a great cause.-Latino youth from LA active in the Youth
Student Network of the October 22nd Coalition Against Police
Brutality:
Young anarchist, marching with the black bloc:
I started learning a lot more about the biotech industry just recently. Genetic engineering – I think that’s messed up. It’s totally manipulating the environment and it’s not benefiting people. It’s benefiting more corporate greed. It’s the whole system in general, not just one part.
It’s a plutocracy, it’s a system where wealth controls, and that’s why we have so much fucked-up shit. That’s what capitalism leads to, plutocracy.
Woman in her 20s from San Francisco who was leading chants during the march:
I think one of the most horrifying pieces of the biotech industry is research into really owning a woman’s body, turning her breast milk into something that’s patented. That’s pretty horrifying. I’m not going to let anyone own my body. I think it’s something that attracts women in particular, to defend the rights of our own bodies.
High school science teacher, 33, from North County San Diego:
We’re not being allowed into this debate; all of the decisions are being made for us. These decisions are not being held up to scientific rigor, they’re being held up to what’s profitable for the few.
In this society you’re free to say anything you want until somebody actually hears you. Their concern was that our voice was going to be as loud as Seattle. This is a good showing. What’s really interesting is that this group represents so many different groups and yet it’s managing to be cohesive. It’s going so beautifully, and I know the cops are hating it.
Chant in front of the convention center:
That’s bullshit! Get off it!
The enemy is profit.
Disease and starvation
Will not be solved by corporations
Woman member of the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade:
I’m here because I’m a revolutionary and I love the people. We want to unite with people from all different areas. They’re destroying the fucking earth. The very idea that there ‘s like ‘terminator’ seeds, that Monsanto would make a seed that destroys itself so that people cannot grow food and they can make money off this stuff is preposterous, it’s almost unthinkable. They’re using all the technology that people have developed and in the service of profit, not in the service of the people: It’s one more reason to make revolution.
These people who are coming forward, they’re searching for solutions, they’re searching for a way to save the environment, they’re searching for ways to stop this genetic engineering and all this stuff. I’ve talked to more than a few youth today, and I say, ‘Have you ever considered revolution?’ and they say the same thing, three youth said this to me: ‘All the time. I think about it all the time.’ People really are grappling with changing the world.
Jim Thomas, Greenpeace:
In about 35 countries worldwide there are laws that say if you have genetically engineered ingredients in food, you have to label it. It’s pretty straightforward. What’s interesting in the United States is the vehemence with which the lobby and the government, which is the same as the industry, have resisted the basic mandatory labeling of food. This guy in the FDA said that if you put a labeling saying it’s genetically engineered food people would think that was the skull and crossbones, they would treat it as poison and they wouldn’t buy it and they wouldn’t eat it.
Well, that’s actually true. The reason this industry is able to get away with putting genetically engineered ingredients into 17% of our food is that nobody knows that it’s there. It’s been their strategy all along to maintain that ignorance.
Just labeling a problem doesn’t make it go away, just like labeling a toxic outflow pipe doesn’t stop stuff from running out of it. What we do need globally is a ban on the release of genetically engineered organisms because of the threats they pose to the environment.
Labeling is in one sense tactical. It lets people know what’s going on in their food. It’s just a very basic right to know. But if you merely label, give it five years and everything is going to be contaminated.
Twenty-six-year-old woman from San Francisco:
I found the march really inspiring. A huge community from San Diego
came out and stood in the streets to challenge the biotechnology industry,
an industry that is the epitome of corporations trying to take over our
lives. While we came together in San Diego to fight back, people all over
the country and all over the world are joining in that battle, drawing
attention to what we did here and taking that message to their own communities.
That's how we're going to create change.
We're constantly told that young people don't care about things and
we're apathetic, but that's such a lie. The more young people I meet that
are just so smart and concerned about what's going on in the world, and
want to create a world that we can bring people into for future generations.
Man in his 30s, activist from Los Angeles:
Yesterday we had a celebration, we had a lot of people in the streets
of San Diego. We sent out a clear message that there's strong resistance
to genetic engineering in the US. We came to the gates of the castle, and
they saw what the 'riff-raff' is really concerned about.