Dazzle the forces of corporate globalization with streets full of resistance and vision! While the biotechnology industry and its lobbyists meet in San Francisco and the G8 meets in Georgia, join us in San Francisco for a mass mobilization that says NO to corporate profiteering and destruction and YES to the world we want.
RECLAIM THE COMMONS! Traditionally, the commons was cropland, grazing land, or forest that belonged to the community as a whole and benefited all. Now, the commons includes everything needed to support life on earth: air, water, shelter, food, energy, biodiversity – as well as our multicultural heritage. Corporations, aided by the governments they dominate, are seizing control of these basic rights, and privatizing them for the profit of a few. Yet, public control of the commons is essential for true democracy; for racial, economic, and social justice; and for a diverse and sustainable society. We are reclaiming the commons!
RESIST BIOTECH! The biotechnology industry is a prime example of how global corporations are eroding democracy, threatening our health and environment, and concentrating control of our food and resources in the hands of a few profit-driven companies. With almost no public debate, over 100-million acres of genetically engineered (GE) crops are planted each year in theUnited States. That’s almost 70% of the world’s GE crops. Once released into the environment, these GE life forms can’t be recalled, and there’s no way to predict their effects on our bodies, ecosystems, and our future. Gambling with the future of human and environmental health is gravely affecting FOOD SOVEREIGNTY throughout the world, dramatically increasing the risks of BIOWARFARE and further entrenching the health-for-profit system with the creation of BIOPHARMACEUTICALS that are “grown” in GE plants and animals. Already these artificial life forms have contaminated seeds and crops that have been cultivated over thousands of years. And while our tax dollars subsidize corporations developing antiaging drugs and biological weapons, these same companies deny affordable drugs to people in desperate need of medical relief.
PLANT ALTERNATIVES! It’s time to put as much energy into creating that better world as we have been putting into resisting the exploitative one! We need to get off the corporate grid, exercise democracy outside of party-driven, corporate-funded electoral machines, live sustainable lives, and create just and thriving communities amid the corporate-controlled world! As part of the June Mobilization, we will be PLANTING ALTERNATIVES all over the Bay Area! We’ll be showcasing community-based, eco-solutions to urban problems such as unemployment, homelessness, pollution, gutted education and services, unaffordable health care, exploitation of immigrants, police brutality, crime, corporate threats to neighborhood sovereignty, and other pressing economic and racial justice issues! Check out the web site to sign up for a project or to add your own!
[Details and regular updates were posted at www.reclaimthecommons.net, which is no longer active.]
Come and join thousands, as we reclaim the commons for everyone in the Bay Area, the country, and the world!
