Friday Jan 24, 2013
North Kingstown, RI – Good morning, Ocean State Futurists. This is Bob Plain, editor and publisher of the RI Future blog podcasting to you from The Hideaway on the banks of the Mattatuxet River behind the Shady Lea Mill in North Kingstown, Rhode Island.

Later on in the show, we’ll be checking in with we’ll be checking in with Steve Brown of the ACLU on Waivergate, the latest fiasco with the NECAP graduation requirement. We’ll also here from Rep. Dennis Canario, a legislator who represents Sakonnet and parts of Portsmouth, on why he is pushing a bill this session to label genetically modified foods.

Our show today is brought to you by Largess Forestry. Preservationists and licensed arborists, no one will care for your trees better than Matt Largess and his crew. If you’ve got a tree or a woodlot in need of some sprucing up, call Matt today for a free consultation at 849-9191 … or friend them on Facebook.

It is Thursday, January 24 and the unemployment rate is up, but so is our population. And, if you ask me, so is our collective psyche. I can just kinda feel it everywhere I go that Rhode Islanders are feeling better about the biggest little state in the union … And I give major credit to Linc Chafee, the Rhode Island Foundation and all the other folks who work tirelessly to focus on what’s great about Rhode Island and pick us up by our bootstraps. Seriously, if we can break the inferiority complex that the Ocean State has long suffered from, we’ll have done something a lot more important than simply created some wealth and maybe a couple jobs…

There were 400 more unemployed people in Rhode Island in December than the previous month bringing the total number to an almost eerily even 49,900, reports the Providence Journal this morning.  This has become our monthly box score and reporters, politicians and pundits comb through these monthly numbers the way I poured over NBA agit in the ProJo when I was a kid…

The next meeting of RI Against GMO will be held at the Rochembeau Library in Providence Thursday at 7 p.m.,  anyone who cannot attend in person is welcome to Skype. Hope to see you there! For more information, please join this Facebook group.

Consumer awareness and grassroots efforts among the 99% make a powerful impact- even in the face of adversarial forces, and despite our invisibility in mainstream media.

While concerned citizens plan another protest for October 2013, Monsanto stocks have fallen (they are going back up now though).  Last week, Connecticut became the first state to pass a GE labeling law. And in Oregon, when a farmer discovered GE wheat growing in his field, Food & Water Watch urged the USDA to end all field testing of GE plants. Japan and South Korea have halted U.S. wheat imports, and many are boycotting brands that have tried to block GMO-labeling ballot measures.

Monsanto has lost the fight in Europe, and will indeed lose the fight here, if momentum continues to build and activists remain committed.

Although it is important to relish our victories, the “bigger picture” is still staring us in the face. GE salmon (on the verge of approval by the FDA) could potentially breed with wild salmon- or worse, breed with brown trout, and create offspring that out-competes native species.  The damage this could do to our environment is as disturbing as the effects of glyphosate, (the active ingredient in Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup).  More and more people are discussing Roundup’s connection to autism and chronic disease, and bringing behemoths like Syngenta into the conversation, too.

Because while Monsanto was recently named the “most evil corporation” in the world, in a NaturalNews poll, this isn’t just about Monsanto.  This is about a tipping point reflecting the impact of “civilized” lifestyles- both on ourselves, and our surroundings.  Between pipelines, fracking, agribusiness gone awry, climate change, and the recent uptick in mass shootings, we have an overwhelming amount of toxicity “on our plate,” as it were.

As progressive activists, and simply as human beings, we must remember:  Monsanto’s wrongdoings have not occurred in a vacuum.  They are interconnected with (and representative of) a hierarchical and dysfunctional system.  Eliminating only one weapon in the arsenal cannot- and will not- end the war; we must see the fight over who controls our seeds, and the battle to know what is in our food, as intertwined with other social, environmental, and political injustices.

Abbie Hoffman said it best: “Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade.  It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit.”

This “perpetual process” is complex and ongoing.  As Bob Plain has pointed out, Connecticut’s GMO labeling law will only take effect after four other states pass similar laws. I do hope Rhode Island will be next in demonstrating a commitment to the health of our children (and each other).  But more importantly, I hope activists will not grow tired of protesting Monsanto – for we have only just begun fighting the system it represents.

Connecticut needs Rhode Island’s help. And by helping our neighbors in the nutmeg state, we would also be helping our own economy and creating a healthier, more sustainable food supply for Americans everywhere.

Connecticut recently made big national news for passing the first ever law requiring Frankenfoods be labelled as such. For foodies, this is the most critical political battle being fought between slow, local family farmers and genetically engineered, corporate-controlled agriculture.

But Connecticut’s landmark labeling law only takes affect after four other states pass a similar law. And at least one of them has to share a border. That means it’s up to us, Massachusetts or New York to make this happen.

Let’s have Rhode Island be the next state to pass this important legislation.

Rep. Ray Hull of Providence has introduced this bill. The bill is co-signed by progressive Rep. Art Handy of Cranston, Republican Antony Giarrusso of East Greenwich, conservative Democrat Karen MacBeth of Cumberland and moderate Democrat Joe Scherkachi of Warwick. That’s a pretty much touches the entire RI political spectrum.

Because of our compact size and wealth of great restaurants and innovative young family farmers, this is an obvious area of our economy that Rhode Island should be working hard to grow. High-quality, local food is one of most attractive reasons to come to the Ocean State over, say, Maine, which passed a GMO labeling bill yesterday similar to Connecticut’s. Not to mention that farmers won’t ditch us just because another state offers them a better tax deal.

For more on how economically important sustainable agriculture is for Rhode Island, watch Ted Nesi’s excellent Executive Suite focusing on farmers’ markets and the amazing growth in small agriculture.