[Peace-discuss] Farmer's Market - tabling with Food & Water Watch?

[Stuart Levy]

AWARE will be back at the Farmer's Market as usual tomorrow. Expect cool 
(55-65F!) clear weather.

Question for those assembled on this list, especially for those who 
might work the table:

We have another request for the who's-tabling-with-us-this-week roster:

    Hanna Saltzman, an activist with Food and Water Watch, is 
petitioning about genetically modified food - specifically, encouraging 
people to sign petition cards to call for a GMO food labelling law.

This might seem a distraction from AWARE's mission - if people think so, 
we can certainly say No.

However I'd like to put in a plug for this sort of citizen action, both 
on process grounds (if you care about political action, it's not just 
via the November ballot) and on substance: by calling for transparency 
in food production, this is effectively a citizen challenge to corporate 
power.

[I'm disappointed that the campaign's focus seems to be on food *safety* 
(we don't know how safe long-term consumption of a variety of modified 
foods will be) rather than issues like the concentration of power and 
price-setting and intellectual-property controls in the hands of a tiny 
number of huge GMO-seed-making corporations, or the promotion of bad 
agriculture (who needs integrated pest management if you can just use 
pesticides on pesticide-resistant crops).   I'm not sure whether they 
raise the issue of the loss of farmers' independence - e.g. draconian 
practices by Monsanto used against farmers who try to grow non-GMO crops.]

Anyway, if you feel strongly pro, con or sideways, please lemme know.  
If nobody objects, the Food and Water Watch campaigner may be tabling 
with us, this week or some future weeks.   (She's also trying to get her 
own table.)