ST. LOUIS, Mo. – Protests occurred both inside and outside the Monsanto shareholder meeting in St. Louis on Tuesday as local activists, shareholders and citizens from across the country joined in 20-degree weather to demand the biotech giant label genetically-modified organisms, or GMOs.
The activists arrived accompanied by five colorful “fishy cars” representing the fishy food that has been genetically modified and consumed by Americans now for decades. Protesters hoped to make a single powerful statement: Label it.
For the first time ever, Monsanto shareholders convened to vote on a resolution to support GMO labeling – brought by shareholder and food safety activist Adam Eidinger of Occupy Monsanto, and presented by family farm advocate Dave Murphy of Food Democracy Now!
“We’re just coming to their shareholder meeting as a response to what they’ve been doing around the country,” said Cesar Maxit, designer and architect of the five fish art cars. “We’re taking the fight to their home, their shareholder meeting, saying we’re sick of it.”
Last year, Maxit finished the construction of what have become nationally recognized faces in the fight for GMO labeling – half-fish, half-food sculptures mounted atop five cars. Paint jobs on the cars read “Label GMOs” and encourage passersby to tweet about the “fishy car” they’re standing near. Each sculpture has a “unique personality” representing a different GMO crop: Fishy Apple, Fishy Soybean, Fishy Tomato, Fishy Corn and Fishy Sugar Beet.
“We need to label our food,” added Maxit. “The idea is that we’re not trying to scare people – we’re just trying to use humor and art” to educate people about the importance of labeling GMOs.
Food Democracy Now!’s Dave Murphy served as the proxy on Tuesday presenting the GMO labeling resolution to the Monsanto shareholders.
GMOs are organisms, such as corn or tomatoes, whose genetic makeup have been modified in a laboratory and spliced using DNA from bacteria, viruses or even fish. Many believe the “fishy food” causes health problems such as cancer. Thorough, long-term studies have yet to be completed on the health impacts of GMOs.
And until the products we consume get labeled, activists are worried it will be impossible to track the real effects of the food in our systems.
“We’re asking that Monsanto stop fighting the will of the American people, 90 percent of whom want to know if their food has been genetically engineered in a laboratory,” said Murphy, whose organization has bloomed into a grassroots movement of more than 650,000 farmers and citizens dedicated to reforming America’s food system.
“If Monsanto can profit off a patent in their products and label their foods in India, China, Russia and South Africa, they can certainly agree that Americans should have this basic right as well,” he added.
Yet, “In the past two years, Monsanto has spent more than $13.4 million to defeat GMO labeling efforts in California and Washington state. This is an outrageous fortune wasted.”
A second shareholder resolution that was to be voted on at the company’s annual meeting, sponsored by activist investor John Harrington, dealt with Monsanto’s potential liability to organic farmers.
In October, more than 700 activists descended on the company’s St. Louis headquarters as part of the global March Against Monsanto. Protestors flooded onto the roadway, blocking traffic and overwhelming police on the road leading to their offices.
The city had previously seen large protests for the first March – an international day of action in May of last year, when some 2 million people participated in events in nearly 500 cities.
“The thing about labeling GMOs is: what’s wrong with transparency?” said Shamal Halmat, 26, one of the activists gearing up to protest in 20-degree weather on Tuesday.
“There shouldn’t be anything wrong with transparency. That’s really what’s being asked for,” added Halmat, “so hopefully if they don’t really have too much to hide, they’ll be transparent.”
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy