LIGHT BROWN APPLE MOTH                                                       1/14/08

To understand more about how these programs work, please see www.dontspraycalifornia.org, also accessible as www.eastbaypesticidealert.org and click on Glassy-winged Sharpshooter to familiarize yourselves with Ag. Departments and entomologists and their responses. and take a look at how CDFA (CA Dept. of Food and Agriculture) is NOT working in the interest of health and safety. Click, also, onto West Nile Virus section to learn about another agency.

These programs typically come about related to problems caused BY pesticide use. Conventional grape growers wrecked the soil, then cried for bailouts and the feds came running with moneybags for the gross polluters. All the way back in March of 2000, when 4 of us in Sonoma became aware of and started to expose the new GWSS spray program, trying to stop it before any spraying began (we had 2 days notice before the first spraying was to begin in Southern CA), 2% of all U.S. Ag. already was organic; yet, only 1/10 of 1% of all federal subsidies for studies was put toward organics, and that was the same amount as was allowed in 1995, though between 1990 and 1998 the organics market had grown a steady 20% a year.

The message one of our local organics farmers, Bob Cannard (supplies Chez Panisse), was repeating is that these so-called pests are messengers and we should be grateful to them; they take hold only when conditions are off and so they are part of a natural line of defense.

Farmers heed these sometimes-unwelcome visitors; Growers are scared of them and their response is to kill kill kill.... the pests (they think, but actually they create superbugs), the soil, other animals and many people.

Think: Farmers and Growers... big difference.

 Farmers respect natural cycles; growers try to combat nature.

In Sonoma County people started going through civil disobedience preps to ready themselves quite literally to defend their homes and block spray trucks.

As a longtime nonviolence/ direct action prepper, I was called 1/2 a year ago to lead a prep in Monterey county around the Apple Moth program. I couldn't do it that weekend, but am happy to lead one in Alameda County or nearby for any groups that want to set one up. To be clear, as a person experienced with civil disobedience, I do not do the "mini prep" thing some people request saying, "Just tell me what I need to know about the legal side of things." Instead, that is only a small portion of a longer day with a lot of interactive role-playing, history of civil disobedience movements, a lot of local cd history since the 70's, and community building and affinity group formation for those who are not already part of any active affinity group. Having led these preps since '85, I do it our old-fashioned way, a daylong gathering. Even people who never have taken such a step tend to leave with a lot of confidence and feel ready to deal with any variety of logistics and outcomes.

As a person with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities due to pesticide poisoning a grace de the California Conventional Wine Industry, and with three children, 2 of whom also have MCS having developed it alongside, having watched a lot of our old neighbors die away in one of the cancer clusters common in Sonoma and Napa counties, I am as committed as you might imagine to help others come to understand the workings of these programs and to fight them.

In 2005 (news hit about the program I believe exactly 3 years ago today) and on it appeared to be the chemical industry going after Oakland which has a supposed ban on pesticide use by the city (big sham, unfortunately... see Wildfire Prevention Assessment District part of our website). Though it had NOTHING to do with lawns... this was about axing Eucalyptus and using herbicides all over the regional parks.... our fight was covered in the lawn"care" industry newsletters as this whole push for herbicide use could well have been the industry's attempt to convince average people that pesticide use was just fine as the city was about to create yet another exemption to the sham "ban". To our knowledge, that exemption has not gotten through due to into the thousands of hours of work and our invoking CEQA, forcing the city atty. to acknowledge that they could not proceed without doing environmental review. The city's next step, then, was to be trying to figure out HOW they could proceed with more pesticide use but without getting sued. Useful to consider WHY city people would have been pushing to use pesticides. Check it out on the website…. www.eastbaypesticidealert.org

So now Berkeley and Marin, perceived country-wide as being great environmentally, appear to be under attack by the chemical industry. What better way to try to convince a country's population which decades late is waking up in fairly large numbers to the dangers of pesticides than to attack the places people would consider to be most resistant to being poisoned, and for the profits of greedy and irresponsible conventional growers? Get the tacit okay for spraying and people across the country will tend to accept it as being "necessary".

My number is 895-2312 (please not before 9 am; if it rings, I'm online). Email is beneficialbug@...

Maxina Ventura, Chronic Effects Researcher, East Bay Pesticide Alert www.eastbaypesticidealert.org

 

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