June 18-21 in Philadelphia, thousands of biological profiteers representing the Biotechnology Industry Organization will convene to celebrate and promote their dangerous manipulation of life’s very building blocks for private gain. In response, thousands of concerned activists and citizens will gather to decry this ruthless commodification of Earth’s biodiversity and the proliferation of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). All who dare to paint poems of resistance on walls of oppression, dance in city streets in defiance of police states, and plant seeds of sedition in the shadows of Empire: come to Philadelphia!
Reclaim The Commons! notes: “We recall a custom much older than two-party Republics, in which croplands, grazing land and forests were a public domain that benefited the whole community and belonged exclusively to no one. In today’s global society, our commons encompass the biological strata that sustain life on earth — air, water, food, medicine, energy, biodiversity — plus the means of communication, education and transit that connect us culturally. Today, to a degree unprecedented in human history, corporations have seized this public wealth and privatized it to reap growing profits for a small and ever-shrinking elite.
“Sustainable, community-based alternatives to corporate biotech are possible and viable, and we are making them real! At our counter-convention in June, we will not only shine an educational spotlight on the dangers of GE food, medicine and weapons, but will also exhibit the grassroots eco-solutions taking shape in our own communities. The Philadelphia area is home to a fabulous array of community gardens and organic farms, food co-ops and urban nutrition initiatives, radical health collectives and advocates for universal public health care, groups of student environmentalists and war resisters, interfaith leaders for human rights and renewable energy, and diverse neighborhood coalitions against police brutality, the gutting of public services, and environmental injustice …”
Under the Pavement Organizing Collective notes “our enemies are not just GMOs but global capitalism, neo-colonialism, patriarchy, the industrial ethos, & anthropocentric western science itself, which aim to reduce all people and nature to orders of coercion and control.”
Contact: phillyrage@riseup.net, Nathaniel (215) 222 4711, www.reclaimthecommons.net www.biodev.org, www.gbug.org.