Alexis Baden-Myer, Political Director, Organic
Consumers Association
4-5pm CT, Saturday, 26 April 2014
On-air call-in number 816 931
5534
www.kkfi.org/program/urban-connections;
fssg.blogspot.com
Ms. Baden-Myer shown here with her son Sherwood
Alexis Baden-Mayer is a lawyer and activist who has worked in
Washington, DC, as the political director of the Organic Consumers Association
since 2005. She has contributed to some of the organizations most successful
projects, including the Millions Against Monsanto campaign. The group's
lobbying arm, the Organic Consumers Fund, has been a top donor to state
legislative and initiative campaigns in California, Washington and Vermont,
where they achieved the first no-strings-attached victory this year, when
Vermont became the first state to pass a "clean" bill to label GMOs.
This year, OCF is also supporting local initiatives to ban GMOs, including the
GMO Free Jackson County (Oregon) effort which will get a vote on May 20.
Organic Consumers Association (OCA)
http://www.organicconsumers.org/aboutus.cfm
Organic
Consumers Association · 6771 South Silver Hill Drive, Finland MN 55603 · Contact Us · Activist or Media Inquiries: 218-226-4164
218-226-4164 ·
Fax: 218-353-7652
Please support our work: Send a tax-deductible donation to the OCA
218-226-4164 ·
Fax: 218-353-7652Please support our work: Send a tax-deductible donation to the OCA
The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) is an online and
grassroots non-profit 501(c)3 public interest organization campaigning for
health, justice, and sustainability. The OCA deals with crucial issues of food
safety, industrial agriculture, genetic engineering, children's health,
corporate accountability, Fair Trade, environmental sustainability and other
key topics. We are the only organization in the US focused exclusively on
promoting the views and interests of the nation's estimated 50 million organic
and socially responsible consumers.
The OCA represents over 850,000
members, subscribers and volunteers, including several thousand businesses in
the natural foods and organic marketplace. Our US and international policy
board is broadly representative of the organic, family farm, environmental, and
public interest community.
The Organic Consumers Association
was formed in 1998 in the wake of the mass backlash by organic consumers
against the U.S. Department of Agriculture's controversial proposed national
regulations for organic food. Through the OCA's SOS (Safeguard Organic Standards) Campaign, as well as the work of our allies in other organizations,
the organic community over the last eight years has been able to mobilize
hundreds of thousands of consumers to pressure the USDA and organic companies
to preserve strict organic standards. In its public education, network
building, and mobilization activities such as its Breaking the Chains campaign,
OCA works with a broad range of public interest organizations to challenge
industrial agriculture, corporate globalization, and the Wal-Martization of the
economy, and inspire consumers to "Buy Local, Organic, and Fair
Made."
OCA's overall political program is
the Organic Agenda 2005-15, a six-point platform calling for:
- The conversion of American agriculture to at least 30% organic by the year 2015, including major reforms in agricultural subsidies and appropriations to help family farmers make the transition to organic, develop local and regional markets, and adopt renewable energy practices.
- Fair Trade and economic justice, not so-called corporate-driven "Free Trade" as the global norm.
- A global moratorium on genetically engineered foods and crops.
- A phase-out of the most dangerous industrial agriculture and factory farming practices.
- Universal health care with an emphasis on prevention, nutrition, and wellness promotion.
- Energy independence and the conversion of US and global agriculture, transportation, and utilities to conservation practices and renewable energy.
Our website, publications, research,
and campaign staff provide an important service for hundreds of thousands of
consumers and community activists every month. Our media team provides
background information, interviews, and story ideas to television and radio
producers and journalists on a daily basis - from national television networks
to the alternative press.
About Food Fight! All Lives Matter!
A call to Greater
KC and beyond, to organize ourselves to build our collective strength to transform our power relationships with our
global, big corporate, industrialized food, agriculture and socio-economic
systems, in order to build truly
healthy, just, fair and sustainable systems that provide livelihoods with dignity
to farm and food workers and small and family farmers.
"Poor diets kill more brothers than
pistols.
We're fighting for our lives like Michael
Vic's pit bulls.
Dog eat dog, America eats the young,
We die from beef, but more from meat than
the gun.
Bullets for breakfast and mass murder meals.
Enemy of the state, and your plate is the
battlefield
in this FOOD FIGHT!"
with KKFI KCMO Community Radio Urban Connections host and
long-time Kansas City community activist
Donna Morrow Wolfe, www.kkfi.org/program/urban-connections,
and co-host, Maria Whitaker, Program Director, Local to Global Advocates for
Justice, and KC Food Justice, fssg.blogspot.com,
foodhealthenvironmentaljustice.com.
Donna Morrow Wolfe
Maria Whittaker with Deyvon(6) and Sherrie(4) ( and their
little cousin)
Inspired by the work of The Praxis Project to strengthen the
capacity of communities to create sustainable, progressive change, in 2011,
Maria Whittaker founded Local to Global Advocates for Justice (LGAJ) .
Whittaker, a Greater Kansas City (GKC) based attorney, horticulturalist and food sovereignty advocate, says that LGAJ is comprised of “the individuals most directly and negatively impacted by our unhealthy and unjust food, farm and socioeconomic systems, policies and practices, committed to grassroots community organizing to strengthen their collective power, coming together, to explore the formation of, and interest in, the creation of local, national and global alliances to represent and promote their interests on issues of food and agriculture, environmental, economic and social justice.”
Their seven guiding principles of food sovereignty (La Via Campesina) are:
1. The basic human right to sufficient amounts of healthy, nutritious, culturally appropriate food;
2. True agrarian reform including the nondiscriminatory access to land, credit, training, technology, markets and everything needed to farm and garden;
3. Sustainable agriculture and the preservation of natural resources;
4. Ending the big, corporate control of food and agriculture;
5. Fair rather than free trade;
6. Ending all forms of oppression in our food and agriculture systems including the exploitation of farm and food workers; and
7. Social Peace is a prerequisite to food sovereignty.
In 2012, LGAJ launched a local initiative, KC Food Justice composed of community members, grassroots organizing ourselves from the bottom-up, to build our collective strength to transform the power relationships and institutional structures that determine our food, health, wealth and sustainability, through advocacy for truly healthy, just, fair and sustainable food, farm, and socioeconomic systems, policies and practices.
Whittaker, a Greater Kansas City (GKC) based attorney, horticulturalist and food sovereignty advocate, says that LGAJ is comprised of “the individuals most directly and negatively impacted by our unhealthy and unjust food, farm and socioeconomic systems, policies and practices, committed to grassroots community organizing to strengthen their collective power, coming together, to explore the formation of, and interest in, the creation of local, national and global alliances to represent and promote their interests on issues of food and agriculture, environmental, economic and social justice.”
Their seven guiding principles of food sovereignty (La Via Campesina) are:
1. The basic human right to sufficient amounts of healthy, nutritious, culturally appropriate food;
2. True agrarian reform including the nondiscriminatory access to land, credit, training, technology, markets and everything needed to farm and garden;
3. Sustainable agriculture and the preservation of natural resources;
4. Ending the big, corporate control of food and agriculture;
5. Fair rather than free trade;
6. Ending all forms of oppression in our food and agriculture systems including the exploitation of farm and food workers; and
7. Social Peace is a prerequisite to food sovereignty.
In 2012, LGAJ launched a local initiative, KC Food Justice composed of community members, grassroots organizing ourselves from the bottom-up, to build our collective strength to transform the power relationships and institutional structures that determine our food, health, wealth and sustainability, through advocacy for truly healthy, just, fair and sustainable food, farm, and socioeconomic systems, policies and practices.
If you would like to be a guest on the show or have
suggestions or comments, we welcome you to email Maria Whittaker at
foodsovereignty@yahoo.com with Food Fight! in the heading. We particularly
envision lifting-up the work of youth and those communities the most negatively
and directly impacted by our food, agriculture and socioeconomic systems.
Objectives
Raise consciousness of the impact of our global, big
corporate, industrialized, food system on our health, wealth, justice and
sustainability, and to
2. Act as a vehicle for us to:
2.1. Organize ourselves inclusively, from the bottom-up, to
build our collective strength to
transform our power relationships with our global, big corporate food
and agriculture systems in order to build truly healthy, just, fair and
sustainable systems which create livelihoods with dignity for farm and food workers and small and family farmers;
2.2. Take immediate actions now to actualize our basic human
right to sufficient amounts of healthy, nutritious and culturally appropriate
food and improve community health and wealth by connecting people to programs
already in existence, but not yet reaching them, such as: doubling their food stamps, organic
gardening, mobile food pantries, healthy free food pantries, organic farmer
training programs and healthy lifestyle support programs, including diabetes
and hypertension management, and to:
2.3. Take grassroots advocacy on food policies such as food
stamps and farm subsidies to immediately actualize our basic human right to
healthy, nutritious and culturally appropriate food.
KC Food Justice List Serve
The easiest way to join our list serve,
kcfoodjustice@lists.riseup.net, where we share news of upcoming events,
information and analyses of the nexus of modernization, capitalism, food,
health, equality and justice is to send an email to:
kcfoodjustice-subscribe@lists.riseup.net.
You will be automatically be added. We send out anywhere from
1 to 9 messages a month.
In Conclusion
If you would like Maria to talk to your group about food
sovereignty, food justice, food and health, or climate justice and global
warming, please email her at foodsovereignty@yahoo.com. She will be available
for speaking engagements in the Kansas City area beginning Monday June 16,
2014.
Also check out our facebook pages, Local to Global Advocates
for Justice and Food, Health and Environmental Justice Coalition. For more
information about our work check out our facebook groups, Food and Health
Justice KC, Sustainable Agriculture in Cuba: Growing Food without Oil; and
African Food Sovereignty.
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