There is an uprising happening in America. It's not visible like in Europe where they are tearing up crops and being dragged away from protests in Hazmat suits.... in America the uprising is in kitchens and coffee shops and on the internet. Moms who once found their lives exhausting are now waking at 6 am automatically and posting everything they can about GMOs. They are spending money from their savings to start a ballot initiative for their state and learning the ins and out of politics that they once abhorred. They are doing radio shows and sharing their rage with thousands. People are MAD. Moms are LIVID. The recent reports, there seem to be a new ones every day now, are so many that if you don't scan Facebook for two hours you are out of the loop...and these reports now show categorically that GMOs are dangerous, not only to our health but to the environment and our economy. This is something I knew in my bones as soon as I saw Robyn O'Brien's TedX Talk "Patriotism on a Plate" and Jeffrey M. Smith's movie Genetic Roulette, but my brain did not have proof of human harm on paper until just these past few weeks. See here for many of those reports.
These new reports, coupled with the devastating impact of the President signing the "Monsanto Protection Act", have Moms practically spitting fire on the internet. Our Moms Survey, along with testimonials that their kids have gotten better off GMOs, have numerous responses saying:
"I HATE GMOS"
"I WILL NEVER FEED MY KIDS GMOS"
"I WILL FIGHT GMOS UNTIL MY DYING BREATH"
Yes, all in CAPS, all SHOUTING. They are MAD. That's why 69,000 people liked the "March Against Monsanto" on May 25th, and 9,000 signed up in about a week. People are angry...and worse than angry...people like me feel betrayed.
Usually we leave politics out of this at MAAM because anyone and everyone eats and Tea Partiers, Democrat and Republicans alike are working together on our team. I have to express for myself and all the Moms that I have talked to, that voted for Obama like I did and know about GMOs, that we want to weep with sadness. I feel betrayed. I feel a heavy weight and shame in being gullible and I am outraged at him about that. How could he? How could Michelle allow it? It's like my world turned inside out and upside down. Suddenly I have taken the blue pill and I can see clearly now that we are in the matrix.
For example: Walmart makes big profits, partially by paying their employees so little, and those workers must resort to buying cheap, nutritionally bankrupt foods. Big Agriculture profits from from the purchase of these cheap foods by Walmart and other poorly paid employees. When they get sick from this so called food, they have to pay huge amounts of whatever income they have left to pay for drugs from Big Pharmaceuticals. Big Media operates off commercial ads for those drugs which are paid for by Big Pharmaceuticals which also makes herbicides and pesticides for Big Ag, they are one and the same. Together they run our Whitehouse and Big Government.....paying for all the laws to be written in their favor to continue this circle of profit.
I am sure another website could put together much better statistics for this situation, exactly how much money they control, how many senators and congress people they have bought out...frankly the graphics that show the overlap of former Monsanto, Phizer and Dow employees that literally run our government, is sickening. Like a bad accident, I can't look at it for more than a few seconds. I don't want to know. It's too deep of a betrayal to everything I love about America.
Especially as Mom, I love our freedoms, our opportunities, the fact that we are not at war with another country on our homeland and our children are mostly safe...but now with GMOs in every school, church gathering, birthday party and scout outing...I feel like they are being attacked by food and our government knows this and lets it happen. My faith in our country is deeply shaken...and our food is slowly and literally killing us. ( I say this in reference to Dr. Huber's report, see link in first paragraph, that it has been discovered that soy has a new pathogen which causes birth defects and miscarriages in animals AND humans and we now have the lowest recorded birth rate in history. These are our BABIES.)
Unless I fight the status quo, be the one who doesn't have her kids sit down and eat the pizza at the bowling party, be the one who says "No you can't have popcorn" (at the movie theater because it was impromptu and we didn't smuggle in popcorn without GMO canola oil on it) "because it's GMO", loud enough for everyone around me to hear and not care...
Unless I am VIGILANT, tirelessly, actively, vigilant, my kids will be harmed by GM food over time. I know thousands of Moms get this and feel the same way. It's EXHAUSTING isn't it? Don't you just want to say "F it" and move to New Zealand or Peru where they ban GMOs?
Can you just NOT BELIEVE what a twilight zone of a mess our country is in right now? I hate to say this because it seems so un-American. I want to shake myself and wake up. I want to be able to eat at a restaurant and not feel like crap for two days afterwards. I want be able to send my kids to school with 3 dollars and say "Sure, buy lunch today". I want to be able to go to parties and smile authentically at the host and thank her and accept the cake, but that is not going to happen now. Not because I can't, because I could do all of those things, I just choose not to.
We have a choice but many don't. They don't know what they don't know. They are eating GMOs and wondering why the hell they can't loose the weight or why their autistic kid is not responding to therapy. Everybody, teachers, librarians, parent friends, bankers are all trying to give our kids GMO candy or sweets as rewards. They just don't know...and not only do they not know they are literally having the freedom to choose their food taken from them by not being told what is in their food. What is truly American is to have faith in the people. That's what our founding fathers did a couple hundred years ago and that's what this movement of mothers is doing now.
So as Moms, as exhausted and mad as we are, I invite us all to channel that energy, that relentless vigilance and tireless love for our children, to share. Share everyday, and in every way you can imagine as an act of generosity for fellow Moms and as an investment in the future of America. We are the ones. There is no one else that is going to swoop down from the sky and fix this for us. This is our country and our kids and it's up to us. We just need to shift from what's bad and wrong to what's possible...
What is possible for our movement as we go from Mad to Inspired? From Betrayed and Depressed to Creative?
What would be possible for our children if, rather than stewing in our own anger, we share with all our Mom friends from a place of love? Right now, that is the kind of leadership we need in America. If each one of you shared with 10 Moms, let's say you had a movie night, and each one of them shared with 5, who all shared with 5 and they shared with 5 Moms, then you would be personally responsible for 1,270 Moms finding out about GMOs and empowering them to have the freedom to choose their family's food. Multiply that times 100 thousand Moms ( that's only 2000 per state) and we have brought freedom to over 127 million Moms. That is way more than the tipping point needed to cause consumer rejection of GMOs and food manufacturer profit loss of 5%. This will spark the food manufacturers to make the switch to NON GMO. By signing up to march on July 4th and sharing GMO info flyers with your WHOLE TOWN all at once, we will be causing that tipping point simultaneously around the nation!
My friend Montgomery posted on Facebook last night:
It’s almost April 2013 and the planet is going through a mass transformation. There are many aspects to this transformation, and in the end one must come to realize the basic building block for global change starts with us, humanity on a collective level, together.- Collective Evolution
My husband gave me a well worn book the other day, "The SIXTIES: Years of Hope, Days of Rage". It seems to me we are mimicking those times in many ways...they had "Pranksters" just like "Anonymous" they had a women's uprising and Gloria Steinmen like we have Vandana Shiva. They had war (with the involvement of the same chemical company today, Monsanto) and meeting of community groups like we did with Prop 37 and protests like Occupy Wall Street. What I derive from posts on Facebook that speak of transformation, a shift in consciousness, and the energy I see rising everyday, is that it's not hippy-ish or weird, it's real...we are on the cusp of something bigger and more different than any of us can image.
Think of the huge shift in society from the 50's to the 60's. HUGE. The average person in the fifties, with their crisp suit or housewives with hats, matching shoes, prim purses and gloves, would have laughed their butt off in disbelief or told youthat were loony if you told them how people would be in the 60's...long haired, bell bottom wearing, freely pot smoking and maybe even swapping spouses. I am not saying we should fight for the 60's again but I am saying there is a correlation between the standards and ideals in the fifties that came from marketing and advertising and the standards and ideals that we have now about our food system. We've been "sold" a way of eating that doesn't work for us, this advertising is brainwashing for their maximum profit not for the nourishment of the people. There is a freedom before us, if we continue to rise, connect, garden, grow our own food, gather with love and empowerment, that will transform our world. The cool thing is, that this time around, we can still shave our armpits.
When I think about the food revolution that we are up to causing, my energy comes back. I can set aside my resentment for the President. I shift my focus to the new and amazing relationships that are being created from this movement. Like my new friend Monica and her daughter Alicia, the 6 year old who is petitioning the Girl Scouts to make NON GMO cookies, that I only met because of this movement. I get inspired by my kids who want to write letters to Monsanto's employees telling them what they are doing. My heart fills with joy and awe when I get calls from across the USA and even from other parts of the world, saying "We support you, keep going". Then I want to weep tears of gratitude, fulfillment and wonder at the amazing resilience and generosity of the human spirit.
Thank you to ALL of you who keep on keeping on. We are standing for Empowered Moms and Healthy Kids, no matter what.
Zen Honeycutt
Please note: I do not know whose graphic this is, it was posted on Facebook and I just love it. If you know whose it is so I can credit them, I would appreciate it. My feeling that they just want it to be seen and I am thrilled to share it.
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Not only are the majority of the authors PhD holders, one of the has a couple PhD’s. One of the PhD authors has “28 years’ experience in the use of genetic engineering technology investigating gene organisation and control, with over 40 peer reviewed publications of original work, and holds inventor status on a number of gene expression biotechnology patents. Dr Antoniou has a large network of collaborators in industry and academia who are making use of his discoveries in gene control mechanisms for the production of research, diagnostic and therapeutic products and safe and efficacious human somatic gene therapy for inherited and acquired genetic disorders.”
The other PhD author “is a leading authority on sustainability in the food system,biosafety, and GMO testing. He is founder and chief scientific officer of one of the world’s first GMO testing and certification companies, through which he has pioneered the development of innovative tools to verify and advance food purity,
safety and sustainability. He co-founded Earth Open Source, which uses open source collaboration to advance sustainable food production. Earlier, he conducted cancer research at the US National Institutes of Health. He holds a PhD in biochemistry and molecular and cell biology from Cornell University.”
This evidence based examination is well worth the read. I for one sure hope Kevin Folta reads it as well.