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Hi Kristine and others,
We have a good resource group in East Bay Pesticide Alert, or Don't Spray California. Based in the East Bay (Alameda and Contra Costa Counties) we have information on our website which is relevant to people statewide and countrywide. Particularly with the upswing in Glassy-winged Sharpshooter spray campaigns, you can find a section on our website focusing on that. While there isn't any recent information added, the basic information about the program is there, along with toxicological profiles of pesticides which were being used in the program a few years ago. Some, if not all, will be the same now.
Regarding West Nile Virus spraying, I would encourage you click on the West Nile Virus section to learn more and also get information you might want to download and reuse in your locale.
Regarding the Spartina project, massive spraying of herbicides over bodies of water, again click on The Spartina Project portion to get information.
If you are facing wildfire-related pesticide use in hills, you can click onto the section having to do with the Wildfire Prevention Assessment District issue Oaklanders face, and again find information you could download and reuse.
Regarding what you face by your local municipality or Caltrans spraying, you can find some of the toxicological profiles on our site. And how about the ubiquitous use of Roundup by your neighbors and their gardeners. People rarely even know if their gardeners are using pesticides, and gardeners usually don't even associate the word pesticides with pesticides, as city and county and schools people often don't. At best, they might refer to 'sprays' or 'bug spray' or 'weed killer' even though they all are pesticides, as are fungicides and rodenticides. You can find info on Raid or other similar insecticides that your neighbors are spraying because they are afraid of West Nile Virus or ants. All that info is on our site, too.
There are some groups with big money, fancy glossy brochures, offices and staff, yes, in SF. They all REFUSED to get involved in any way in the fight against the Glassy-winged Sharpshooter in 2000 when a couple Sonoma County activists became aware of a new statewide spray program with spraying planned to begin that week. Sonoma Pesticide Alert asked those groups' help and were refused any help, though once our groups had gathered hundreds of people to flood County Board of Supes meetings and got loads of media attention, they showed up with clipboards in hand, asking people to "become members and we'll take care of it". Later, in the brochures of one of the organizations, they claimed to have "spearheaded" efforts to stop GWSS spraying. Unfortunate. They weren't in sight until MANY, many months down the road, until we had people getting prepped to do civil disobedience blocking spray trucks.
Our only funding has been from our very shallow pockets and a $500 grant from war tax resisters, through their alternative tax fund (the link to warmaking we will be adding to our website more clearly in the future).
We don't spend our time fundraising; we spend our limited time and energy bringing together information, analyzing it, and much to our personal health detriment, watchdogging at some public hearings and such. We are primarily, unfortunately, MCS'ers who are doing this out of total desperation to share information as broadly as possible, information that we hope others will use in their local fights to end pesticide use. What you can find on our site, while much more is to come in the future, includes a lot of factual information you can use as a sort of template for organizing locally, we believe.
You should check out all you can and with a fine-toothed comb. Sometimes what's missing from what a group puts out publicly is as important as what they put out. Once there is grant funding, watch out. One of the big groups was getting indirect funding via wine.com. Bad news. Looking for the money trail with environmental groups is crucial.
One thing we are eager to add as we redesign the website for easier navigation for people with neurological problems like ours (and others!) is to add info on what others are doing in their areas around the state. If you do do some organizing in your neighborhood, local schools, hospitals, city, county or statewide, we would love to get info on what you've done, what approaches and tactics you feel have been useful in which situations, and so on.
You can access our site two ways: www.eastbaypesticidealert.org or we also have the name www.dontspraycalifornia.org. I'd use that name more if you are working in an area other than the East Bay and are passing on the website info... easier to remember.
Also, there is a group in Moss Landing (near Santa Cruz) which has recently gone through getting prepared to do civil disobedience around the issue of pesticide spray plans so if you want me to get you a contact number, let me know.
Be well,
Maxina Ventura
----- Original Message -----From: K KoppSent: Tuesday, August 14, 2007 6:47 PMSubject: [BayCanaryGrapevine] Advocates against spraying in CAHello,
Does anyone here know of a Santa Clara
county advocate group that is against
the use of pesticides? Or any group
in the bay area? I once heard that there
was one in SF.
Also, are there any congress people
who are against pesticide spraying?
I hope that we can all start a petition
that will allow us to have our street
(or any MCS'ers street) opt out.
Thank you in advance,
Kristine
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