June 18-21 *** Converge in Philadelphia *** BioDEMOCRACY / Reclaim the Commons!
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Join us to challenge the corporate crime, poisons for profit, and flagrant lies of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (www.bio.org), at the time of their annual international convention, with a creative uprising for truth, life and justice!
International Protest Against the Biotech Industry
BIODEMOCRACY 2005: Reclaim the Commons! >
Call to Action: Converge in
CALLING ON ALL PEOPLE who resent the demise of democracy and
hold to the promise of authentic popular empowerment! 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
As the world’s leading agents of eco-devastation and medical
malpractice meet here in June, we cannot stand quiet. Join us to challenge the
corporate crime, poisons for profit, and flagrant lies of the Biotechnology
Industry Organization (www.bio.org), at the time of their annual international
convention, with a creative uprising for truth, life and justice!>Â
RECLAIM THE COMMONS! 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. As public access to and control over the commons has
eroded, so has true democracy. For democracy to thrive, for racial, economic, social
and environmental justice to take deep root, and for sustainability to flourish
... we must reclaim our commons!>Â
RESIST BIOTECHNOLOGY! With their industrial exploitation of
biotech research, agricultural, pharmaceutical and weapons-manufacturing corporations
are now busily locking their greed into the most primal area of the commons,
the genetic structures of life itself. At the expense of public health and
ecological harmony, their profit-driven success hinges upon the global
proliferation of dangerous genetically modified organisms (GMOs), disregarding
the health needs of the poor while sinking money into science-fiction
treatments of questionable safety, and governmental funding for deadly
biological weapons deceptively classified as “biodefense.â€>Â
The corporations gathering in
world with genetically engineered crops at the expense of our health, popular
food sovereignty and biodiversity. They are profiting from unsafe and costly
designer drugs, whose side effects can be worse than the conditions they’re
aimed to treat, while raising the false hope that biotechnology carries the
solution to all human ills. In the name of “biodefense,†they are profiting
from the costliest expansion of research into high-tech weaponry since the
Manhattan Project, developing new bioweapons and resurrecting old ones, and
exposing our communities to the hazard of uncontrollable biological agents. To
reclaim our nutrition, health and security ... we must resist their biotech!>Â
PLANT REAL DEMOCRACY! 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-solutionstaking 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 ...>
We welcome this opportunity for local residents to come
together and learn from each other, and for visiting activists to share energy
and ideas from your home communities! With a shared commitment to putting our
values and vision into action, we can and will counter their corporate
bio-devastation with our peaceful uprising for BIODEMOCRACY!
>
To be involved with the BIODEMOCRACY 2005 mobilization,
please contact:
Philadelphia RAGE (Resistance Against Genetic Engineering)
at phillyrage@riseup.net -- (215) 222 4711 (ask for Nathaniel) -- or leave a
message toll-free at 877-806-2871.
For updates about the mobilization -- send a blank email to:
biodev-subscribe@lists.riseup.net
>
And check these websites in the coming months:
www.reclaimthecommons.net> www.biodev.org www.phillyimc.org biotech.indymedia.org
"Because disease and starvation will not be solved by
corporations!"
