Truthout combats corporatization by bringing you trustworthy news: click here to join the effort.
Although a ballot initiative to label foods containing genetically modified organisms failed in California, the organizers behind the measure say their movement is better organized and larger than ever before.
Supporters of California’s Proposition 37 are not giving up the fight after Tuesday’s rejection. In fact, they’re saying that the organizing around the initiative helped forge a diffuse group of individuals interested in healthy food into a powerful, organized movement.
“The Organic Consumers Association is a million strong,” said Ronnie Cummins, the founder and director of that group said on a conference call on November 7. “We have 5 million people on our email list and we’re looking forward to continuing this battle.”
Proposition 37 would have required the labeling of foods that contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and banned the use of the word “natural” to market products that contain GMOs. While the initiative won urban coastal counties such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, it lost in the state’s central valleys.
“We just didn’t have the funds to compete on the air” in those regions, said Stacy Malkan, media director at California Right to Know. “Many of those voters were getting their news from TV and we couldn’t compete with them.”
Companies like Monsanto, DuPont, and Pepsi poured nearly $50 million dollars into opposing the measure—about seven times what its supporters were able to raise—and spent most of the money on television and radio ads.
Throughout the campaign, the truthfulness of advertisements opposing the measure came into question. At one point, the No on 37 campaign ran an ad that identified Henry I. Miller, an opponent of the measure, as a professor at Stanford University. The campaign was forced to pull the ad after Stanford announced that Dr. Miller was not a professor there.
Multiple strategies going forward
Despite these frustrations, the mood was bright on Wednesday among supporters of Proposition 37, who were already discussing plans to introduce a similar ballot initiative in Washington state in 2013. Such an measure would need 325,000 signatures in order to significantly exceed the requirements for inclusion on the ballot, and organizers on the ground have already gathered half of that, according to Cummins.
Activists are making preparations for a similar effort in Oregon, although signature gathering there has yet to go into full force. Meanwhile, GMO-labeling bills have been introduced in the state legislatures of Connecticut and Vermont, which do not have a ballot initiative process.
Alongside efforts to implement GMO labeling in individual states, the food movement is putting pressure on the federal government. Dave Murphy, co-chair of the Yes on 37 campaign, explained that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ruled in 1992 that GMO crops are “equivalent” to traditional crops and therefore did not require labeling.
“We believe that there is evidence that GMO crops are not equivalent and now is the time for the FDA to review that policy,” Murphy said. He added that the “Just Label It” campaign had collected more than one million signatures on a petition asking the FDA for a review and that the Center for Food Safety has said it is prepared to sue if the administration fails to respond.
Another achievement of the Yes on 37 campaign was the education of consumers, Cummins said. People had previously thought that products marketed as “natural” were “almost organic but cheaper.”
The Yes on 37 campaign opened the conversation and changed that, he said. “‘Natural’ is a marketing term and has nothing to do with health or environmental sustainability.”
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.