Weekly Round Up! Labeling GMOs and LAX Shooting

Bill Moyers profiles Annie Leonard and her Story of Solutions video.

 

At GreenBiz, Stacey Malkan records her reflections on her activism after watching Annie Leonard’s Story of Solutions.  Whether she’s fighting against cosmetic toxicity or toward labeling genetically modified ingredients in our nation’s food supply, Malkin found Leonard’s 9 minute video “leaves us with a tool we can use to evaluate our own work in the world, and ask the honest question: Am I on the right track?”  Read on to see how the campaign to label GMOs measures up against the criteria outlined in the Story of Solutions.

 

Today in Boston we’re voting for our municipal government, but Washington State is voting on an initiative to label GMOs.  Chair of the Just Label It Campaign, as well as chair of Stonyfield Farms, Gary Hirshberg, shares his go-to argument against genetically modified crops: “From my vantage point, the argument is very simple: since the introduction of these crops, we’ve seen an explosion in the use of herbicides in this country. Promises were made back in the 90s by these companies that have simply not held true.”  Video at Huffington Post.

 
Starting with the recent shooting at LAX, Arsalan Iftikhar ably points out the double standard that applies in reporting antisocial acts of mass violence, particularly how, “the same right-wingers who would shout ‘terrorism’ from the rooftops if the LAX airport shooter was a Muslim will likely avoid using the word ‘terrorism’ at all since the shooter was a white Italian dude from Jersey.”  Read on to find out where racial profiling in the aftermath of this incident would logically lead.

 

Cambodia’s Phnom Penh Post reports on the most recent recipients of Arn-Chorn Pond’s Living Arts Scholarships, to keep Cambodian folk art alive in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge genocide.  Says Pond, “We can use arts to heal the wounds of the war, the killing fields and spread this art around the world and use it as a model. If it works here, it works everywhere else. The arts have no borders.”

 

Amazers profiles Kyle Thiermann’s work as a pro surfer and a changemaker.  Five years ago, when he learned that Bank of America was supplying the funds to build a coal-fired power plant in popular surfing destination Constitución, Chile, he called for people and organizations to move their money from the big banks funding destructive projects into local banks.  His efforts have seen over $340 million move out of big banks so far.

 

The Burlington Free Press was quite taken with Tim DeChristopher on his recent visit to Vermont, running an article on his talk and conducting an interview with the environmental activist.  In light of Vermont’s having passed a prohibition against fracking last year, but continues building a natural gas pipeline to pipe in gas from elsewhere, DeChristopher opined, “Building a pipeline in this state that transports fracked natural gas is not only immoral, but it’s short-sighted,” he said Monday.”  Read his interview to learn why he feels nonviolence is effective, and the role of creativity in social change.

 

Huffington Post Canada talks to children’s singer Raffi Cavoukian and the attention he gets for his political tweets.  “I’ve always been in some ways a rebel … I pulled out of the Vancouver Children’s Festival in 2000 because they let a car company overrun the festival.  I’ve been espousing what some might call ‘green values,’ in terms of green energy, sustainability, and so on – and so those are the values you see in my tweets.”

 

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