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Thousands protest pro-biotech conference
Compiled by Nicholas Holt
June 25 (AGR)— Ministers from over 70 countries gathered last
weekend in Sacramento, CA for a US Department of Agriculture backed
conference on agriculture and biotechnology.
Over two thousand people also convened in Sacramento to protest the
conference, calling it a platform for the Bush Administration to push
genetically modified (GM) foods down the throats of developing nations.
Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said the international Ministerial
Conference and Expo on Agricultural Science and Technology, would focus
on methods of raising food crops to help developing countries, and on
how to end hunger by 2015 — an objective established last year
by the World Trade Organization (WTO).
However, technology alone wasn’t a solution, Veneman said. She
suggested countries will also benefit by promoting free trade.
But activists said biotechnology is no antidote for hunger, the long-term
health risks of genetically modified foods have not been fully studied,
and that risks remain.
They say that the administration of President George W. Bush supports
the practice because of successful lobbying by large corporations that
want to peddle their goods in the developing world.
On June 22, two thousand protesters and an army of riot-gear-clad police
hit the streets.
Everywhere — lined up in front of the Convention Center and manning
street barricades — helmeted city police and California Highway
Patrol officers stood with batons in hand.
Helicopters buzzed overhead, armored vehicles were dispatched, and sirens
added to the cacophony as local media characterized the city as “an
armed camp.”
Sacramento police responded violently to a peaceful demonstration outside
an IMAX theater where fully armed horse-mounted police, a metal fence,
and large groups of riot police secured the whole downtown block where
conference participants saw a screening of a 3-D movie on the international
space station.
After demonstrations proceeded for approximately thirty minutes, police
officers armed with tasers, clubs, guns, and riot gear came out of the
fenced area and formed a police wall separating protesters into two
groups.
A squad of both mounted and riot police charged into the crowd, removing
individuals who were on the sidewalks, not near the police line, in
the street, and not behaving in a manner to attract individual attention.
Earlier in the day, milling activists upended trash bins, tore down
chain-link fences, and briefly charged officers with the city’s
own street barricades — sending a police car into rapid reverse
to evade the protesters. A cadre of activists also took over the site
of the former Mandella Community Garden in midtown.
“Hundreds of us are gathered here to say ‘No’ to the
corporate takeover of the food system,” said Leda Dederich, an
organizer of the protest, which she said drew more than 130 groups.
“We are here to promote and defend sustainable agriculture and
to protest the dangerous practice of genetically engineered food.”
The next day, more than 2,000 demonstrators marched through downtown
Sacramento as the conference opened.
They rallied on the steps of the California state Capitol under the
scrutiny of hundreds of police and California Highway Patrol officers
and then spread out through the downtown area.
Demonstrators included chefs in aprons and white hats banging utensils
on saucepans, as well as activists dressed as giant ears of corn, butterflies,
and tomatoes. Protesters carried large puppets, signs such as “Feed
the needy, not the greedy,” and trumpeted urban food programs,
veganism, and organic farming.
Among the most distinctive were restaurant workers from some of the
Bay Area’s most exclusive restaurants, including Chez Panisse,
Millennium, and ACME Chophouse. They wore traditional garb, high white
chef’s caps and starched tunics. One even carried a giant whisk.
“We’re here to expose the lies of big agricultural business,”
said Cal Peterneu, a chef at Berkeley’s Chez Panisse. “Speaking
through food can be convincing.”
After the planned march, about 20 protesters doffed their clothes, danced
on the Capitol steps and began an unauthorized march through downtown.
The naked protesters dispersed when the highway patrol brought in buses
and threatened to arrest them.
On June 23, over 3,000 people rallied and marched around the Capitol
building in the center of the city, protesting against biotechnology
and the genetic engineering of life forms. Members of the crowd decked
themselves out with colorful costumes, signs, and props.
As the march wound down, police officers began dividing the crowd, and
became violent against many individuals without provocation.
Around 11 am, police confronted the group of protesters in front of
the city’s Convention Center. About 15 demonstrators sat down in
an intersection, their arms linked. A Sacramento police officer, using
a bullhorn, ordered them several times to get back on the sidewalk or
risk serious injury.
As soon as the protesters stood up and moved back to the sidewalk, officers
rushed in and made two arrests.
For a few minutes chaos ensued, as dozens of police on foot — some
brandishing taser guns — and about 10 others on horseback pushed
the demonstrators back into police barricades. A handful of people received
electric shocks from the guns.
“The police trapped the crowd,” said protest organizer and
author Starhawk. “There was nowhere to go.”
Throughout the day, police clearly outnumbered demonstrators, many of
whom said they felt intimidated.
There were also concerns that independent journalists were being targeted
by police.
At the protest Welcome Center, several demonstrators complained they
were hassled or arrested by police for wearing bandannas and carrying
protest signs on wooden stakes. They said police cited a new Sacramento
city ordinance that restricts what protesters can wear and carry in
a parade.
The law, passed on an emergency basis the week before the conference,
calls for signs only of cloth, paper or cardboard no thicker than a
quarter inch. Signposts have to be less than a quarter inch thick and
its ends cannot be pointed.
The ordinance also prohibits protesters from wearing gas masks or other
filtering devices over their faces.
Later that day, word spread among protesters that police would be following
any group of activists of ten or more. Through the evening, protesters
walking home were detained, intimidated, and in some cases arrested,
and helicopters with search lights buzzed the neighborhoods constantly.
Police reported a total of 75 arrests over the duration of the conference.
The three-day conference came as Washington pressures the European Union
to accept bio-engineered food and prods the World Trade Organization
to help in that drive.
US negotiators in Geneva had failed the week before to persuade Europe
to lift a ban on biotech foods while US and European officials look
set to do battle over the issue at a WTO conference in Cancun, Mexico,
in September.
Sources: Agence France Presse, AP, Biotech IMC,
Guardian (UK), Indymedia, Sacramento Bee, San Jose Mercury News
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Police raid on Bové home sparks
nationwide outcry
By Julio Godoy
Paris, France, June 23 (IPS)— The arrest of farmer José
Bové in a little town in southern France is beginning to do more
damage to the government than to him.
Shortly after 6am June 22, a police force moved up to his house in Larzac,
about 700 kilometers south of France. The policemen, accompanied by
guard dogs and moving under helicopter cover, smashed through a glass
door and arrested Bové.
Bové had been sentenced to ten months imprisonment for destroying
a genetically modified test plantation back in 1997. The police moved
in to enforce the court order.
The raid provoked a wave of protests all over France. In nearby Montpellier
where Bové was taken to prison, farmers and union members took
over the local police headquarters. Protests were held in Paris and
elsewhere.
“Chirac to Prison, Bové to Freedom” read a banner a
group of protesters carried in Paris. The banner was a reference to
accusations of corruption against President Jacques Chirac, against
which he has immunity as long as he remains head of state.
Opposition leaders and human rights groups called the police operation
against Bové evidence of the growing authoritarianism of the
government. The daily Liberation called it “a new government punch
against the unions in France.”
Jean-Michel Thenard, leading political commentator with Liberation said
Bové’s opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs)
was central to French policy on GM crops.
“If France today opposes GMOs, both in Europe and before the World
Trade Organization (WTO), it is mainly because Bové made people
aware of the dangers,” Thenard wrote Monday.
The European Union suspended import of GMOs in 1999 following demands
from farmers and consumers associations. This provoked a trade confrontation
at the WTO (World Trade Organization) with the United States, the main
producer of GM crops. The EU is now considering an end to the embargo.
Bové is leader of the Confederation Paysanne, a left-wing union
of small farmers supporting organic agriculture. He has since the mid
1990s become an icon of opposition to market-driven globalization. He
has been participating in major international meetings against market
globalization such as the World Social Forum in the Brazilian city Porto
Alegre, and in Seattle, Genoa, Doha, and elsewhere.
Bové, whose slogan is “The world is not merchandise”
described his destruction of the GMO test plantations as an act to protect
consumers and the environment.
Bové was offered a reduced sentence, but he insisted on nothing
less than a presidential pardon.
“Either they send the police to take me to prison, or they send
a letter announcing that there is no reason to send me to jail,”
Bové said before his arrest. Bové’s demand for presidential
amnesty was backed by some 600,000 letters from union members and small
farmers.
Few were expecting him to be arrested like this.
“The police force was completely out of proportion against a farmer
leader known for his non- violence,” said Bové’s lawyer
Francois Roux. “José is not a dangerous gangster.”
The powerful General Worker’s Confederation (CGT, after its French
name), called Bové’s arrest a “disquieting symbol of
France’s political life now.” It said in a statement that
“prison is not a place for a union leader.”
French judicial workers called the police operation against Bové
excessive and politically motivated.
“The government is expressly aiming its repressive apparatus against
the popular movement,” said Evelyne Sire-Martin, leader of the
magistrates union. “The government is repressing a popular movement.”
Maurice Tubiana, president of the French League of Human Rights, called
the police operation against Bové “a further step in the
government’s authoritarian radicalization against a popular movement.”
Jean-Claude Amara, spokesperson of the rights group Droits Devant! (Rights
First!), said that the French government had exhumed a law from the
1940s to pursue activists.
“This law is directly inspired by the neo-fascist French government
that collaborated with the Nazis,” said Amara. “Our present
government has copied complete paragraphs from the laws of the 1940s.”
Now, he said, the new enemies are union leaders, human rights activists
and immigrants.
Minister for Justice Dominique Perben defended the police operation
against Bové as a preventive measure. “Bové had showed
that he would not cooperate with the police, and we tried to avoid violence,”
Perben said at a press conference Sunday afternoon.
Perben said Chirac will soon consider whether Bové deserves presidential
pardon. The announcement that Chirac is considering amnesty for Bové
shows the difficulties the government faces in dealing with the farmer
leader.
“For Chirac, Bové’s case is a real headache,”
Thenard commented. “The police operation against Bové was
not only ridiculous, it was also dangerous for the government and for
French justice.”
Scores of farmers have now announced they are accomplices in Bové’s
destruction of the GMO test plantations. The pressure is on Chirac.
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Racial tensions flare in Benton Harbor,
MI
Complied by Shawn Gaynor
June, 25 (AGR)— It was a week ago that the city of Benton Harbor,
MI, entered the national spotlight.
A 28-year-old African-American motorcyclist died during a police chase.
Soon the city was in flames. For three nights protests and riots shook
this city, the poorest and one of the most segregated in Michigan. By
June 19, twenty-one houses had been burned. Hundreds of police in riot
gear marched the streets.
One local resident said Benton Harbor looked more like Beirut than the
former popular lakeside vacation spot that it once was.
The problems in Benton Harbor have been growing for years. During the
1980s a team of urban affairs professors examined the city in search
of a solution. The effort failed.
One of those professors, Joe Darden of Michigan State University, told
the Detroit News, “When you combine segregation with the intense,
concentrated poverty, hopelessness, and grievances associated with police
brutality, you have potential powder kegs on your hands.”
“This whole riot, it didn’t just start on Sunday. It’s
been building up for ten years.” This was the response of Rev.
Pinckney, a community activist in Benton Harbor to the uprising that
has been attracting national attention for the past several days.
“What’s going on now goes back way further than my age, than
your age,” said Sammie Kemp, a young black man with a large silver
cross around his neck, as he watched police in riot gear and assault
rifles swarm his neighborhood. Kemp lives just a few blocks from where
the two nights of rioting occurred, in which hundreds of people burst
into the streets after a tense City Hall meeting, burning as many as
a dozen buildings, overturning cars, and clashing with authorities.
He knew Terrance Shurn, the young man on a motorcycle who died in the
chase. But he and his friends are mostly upset about what they see as
past miscarriages of justice — and their struggle to get jobs.
“What happened last night I don’t agree with,” he says.
“But stuff like that can happen, and even worse, if they don’t
come up with ways for people to work here.... A lot of [the people in
St. Joseph] automatically judge you. You’re a drug dealer, you
carry a gun. It’s a lot of racial profiling.”
Few articles have been written about the uprisings thus far that have
bothered to trace its roots beyond the death of Terrance Shurn which
occurred late Sunday night, June 16th. Coverage in mainstream media
tells a uniform story: Terrance Shurn, a 27 year old motor cyclist was
drag racing at 100 mph when a police chase ensued, which ended in Shurn’s
death as he crashed into an abandoned building. The Associated Press
article, which has been circulated widely, features interviews with
police officers and city officials. It includes no interviews with residents
as to the circumstances of Shurn’s death or the history of race
and power relations in the area, which many say fueled the riots.
Reverend Pinckney is a Benton Harbor resident involved in an ongoing
effort to expose criminal injustice and corruption in the Benton Harbor
court system. He is a long time community activist and the executive
director of BANCO (The Black Autonomy Network Community Organization).
From his perspective, the death of Terrence Shurn and the uprising that
followed were predictable outgrowths of deep injustices that are rooted
in Benton Harbor and its relationship to neighboring St. Joseph. Historically,
Benton Harbor was a vibrant town with the lure of factory jobs during
the 30’s and 40’s and later as a resort town. Until as recently
as fifteen years ago, Benton Harbor was “Beautiful.” Since
then, he says, “everything’s been taken out.” Since he
has lived there, Pinckney has seen the water department, the courthouse,
the hospital, and basically anything that could make money move across
the river to St. Joseph.
The fact that sixty percent of all property in Benton Harbor is owned
by white absentee landlords who pull money out of the city and across
the river helps provide a context to the burning of houses which took
place during the riots. Pinckney insists that while the state charts
unemployment in Benton Harbor at 25 percent, in reality it is closer
to 70 percent. Schools in Benton Harbor receive $6,700 per student compared
to $12,000 per student in St. Joseph. But economic disparity between
the two cities, and the history of power and exploitation that has formed
it, is only one branch of the root system as Rev. Pinckney sees it.
The town of 11,000 is 92 percent black. Federal figures show that the
average income is $17,000 a year. By contrast, St. Joseph (population
8,800) is 90 percent white. Bustling with clothiers and cafes, its average
unemployment rate last year was below 2 percent. Indeed, most of Berrien
County is white, conservative, and affluent. While some of the tensions
playing out in this small community are rooted in local grievances,
much of the anger heard here on the streets echoes that of African-Americans
who have rioted in major cities in recent years. In that sense, Benton
Harbor could be South Central Los Angeles or the Over the Rhine section
of Cincinnati.
Serial police brutality has set the frame for race relations between
Benton Harbor residents and the police force, which is 99 percent white.
Recent incidents include the strangling of a young black man by police
officers and the death of a seven year old boy, who was a bystander
to a police chase. According to research that Pinckney has compiled,
black men aged 14 to 28 are fourteen times more likely to be killed
by a police officer than the national average. Given the statistics
and the incidents still fresh in people’s memories, Pinckney says
“you basically have two options when a cop wants to pull you over:
you can stop and get beat up or thrown in jail, or you can keep going,
knowing that it’s probably going to be worse for you… nobody
wants to get pulled over by them.”
Beyond economic oppression and police brutality, a more systemic problem
exists: courts are corrupt and explicitly racist. Pinckney feels that
no real change will ever be possible in Benton Harbor until the court
system and the police force are investigated, reformed, and held fiercely
accountable through a “people’s” monitoring body. Right
now, he tries to be that body, sitting in the courtroom every day, documenting
and recording injustice. He says, “I have seen open racism from
judges which was met with no discipline. But sometimes they skip the
courtroom altogether and send people straight to jail.” Benton
Harbor has the highest per capita rate of individuals in prison of all
cities in Michigan. Six or seven people (out of a total population of
12,000) are sent to jail per week. The jail, which is located in St.
Joseph, currently holds 500 prisoners (with a legal capacity of 347).
It is the first building one sees when crossing the bridge from Benton
Harbor into St. Joseph and residents say this is not a coincidence.
Pinckney says he is not surprised at mainstream media’s coverage
of the uprising. In Benton Harbor, the local paper is owned and operated
from St. Joseph and therefore stories of police brutality and other
injustices are ignored or misrepresented. He says, “we are just
sick and tired of the injustice of this system… it is important
for people to hear our stories.” The story that holds water for
Benton Harbor residents about the death of Terrence Shurn and the beginnings
of the riots last week is starkly different from the one being read
and digested through corporate media throughout the country.
Pinckney claims there are forty witnesses to a death that was by no
means an accident. Reportedly, a police car rode close behind Shurn,
bumping the tires of his bike. When a second car approached, the police
drove Shurn off the road and into the abandoned house. After the crash
several policemen kicked Shurn in the head, and then gave each other
high fives. The next night, while relatives of Shurn were holding a
vigil outside the house where he was killed, police attempted to break
up the gathering. This incited indignation and rage, which turned into
a riot.
A campaign is currently underway to hold an independent investigation
of the death of Terrance Shurn. The Southwest Michigan Coalition Against
Racism and Police Brutality is circulating a letter urging people to
write to Governor Granholm with their demand. When asked what he would
communicate to the rest of the country about the situation in Benton
Harbor if he could, Reverend Pinckney said: “I would ask people
for help. We need better jobs, better education. We need to have a no-chase
clause. We need a people’s commission to oversee the Benton Harbor
police department.”
Sources: Christian Science Monitor, Democracy Now, Indymedia
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