“Let us spray you from airplanes or you’re gonna be sorry,” government officials have begun to threaten the people of California.
From the Santa Cruz Sentinel:
State agriculture leaders issued a warning to the city and county Monday that if plans are delayed to spray pheromone over the county by plane to fight the light brown apple moth, another, more potent insecticide could be dropped instead.
“The risk of greater conventional pesticide is out there,” said Steve Lyle, spokesman for the California Department of Food and Agriculture, elaborating on a position outlined in a legal brief released Monday.
Santa Cruz Councilman Tony Madrigal accused state leaders of employing scare tactics to push their spraying agenda. “They’re proposing a choice to the people between bad and worse,” Madrigal said.
I feel like someone is holding a can of Raid in my face and saying, “if you resist me spraying you now, I’m going to make you drink the contents of this container.”
The most sickening part of the picture is that it is MY public servants threatening me in this way. These are elected officials, but they seem to be under the impression that they are dictators, perhaps living in some other country – not the USA, with our ‘by the people’ mentality when it comes to government.
And, for the record, I want to set it straight. The spraying of carcinogenic chemicals on millions of people isn’t causing ‘worry’ or ‘controversy’ as we keep seeing in the news. It is causing city officials to make public resolutions opposing the spraying on behalf of nearly everyone living in the spray zone. This isn’t ‘a few activists fretting’. This is local governments from one end of the state to the other telling the Governor and his cronies in CDFA ‘no’.
It strikes me that we are in such an unprecedented situation that many of our reporters and news people simply don’t have the language to express what is happening here in California. The state is insisting that it will override the concerted refusal of the majority of city governments and will bombard millions of people with documented carcinogenic chemicals encapsulated in particulate plastic pollution. People are calling this an act of war on the state of California for very good reason.
Who Can Stop the Spray?
Apparently, it is only our governor who can call off this chemical assault on us, and today, we have caught Arnold Schwarzegger on film declaring that carcinogens are harmless to humans. Watch this film clip. If the spraying goes forward, it will doubtless become a famous piece of evidence documenting this misguided public servant lying to his state in a total violation of his oath to protect the people of California:
If the planes do fly, if thousands of people do get sickened, if 9-1-1 gets short-circuited with emergency calls for help, if San Francisco Bay and the Bolinas and Rodeo lagoons are piled high with a meringue of carcinogenic foam, if the beaches are covered with dead birds, if the pets fall dead in our yards, if mayhem breaks out in the dark city nights while the spray pours down on panicked masses, Governor Arnold Schwarzengger will be to blame. The blood will be on his hands, and Steve Lyle’s, and A.G. Kawamura’s, and Joan Denton’s, and Stewart Resnick’s, and every single person who is smiling on this never-before-waged crime against the children, men and women of California.
Yes, we are angry. Yes, we want everyone of these people fired and given a mental health examination for daring to suggest that pesticide be sprayed on infants, on people trying to recover from cancer, on elders, on mothers, on fathers. No sane person would suggest doing such a thing.
Yes, we are angry.
And we will harness the power of that anger for a positive, non-violent, but totally unwavering battle against the evil suggestions of the CDFA and USDA.
Civic peace is a valuable thing. Civic disorder makes life miserable for everyone, especially our opponents in this public health crisis. They are trying to frighten us with grotesque threats of coming to get us with even worse pesticides if we don’t sit down and take their spraying like an orderly row of vegetables. And that is because they are afraid. They are afraid of that group of mothers who is going to descend on City Hall in San Francisco demanding that no one spray their babies. They are afraid of the elders who are turning out at all the rallies, waving their ‘stop the spray’ signs. They are afraid of the plethora of blog posts and articles that have erupted over the past couple of days as more and more people find out about CDFA’s diseased plan.
Our power is in our voices and we will make ourselves heard. Aerial spraying of human beings without consent violates the Constitution that we will work to uphold, even if our public servants have forgotten their duties. Use the hurt, the outrage you feel to stand up in this crucial hour of history and declare that chemical assaults violate basic human rights and we can stop our planet from going down a disastrous road.
7 users commented in " LBAM Spray Headgames "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackLast week I wrote a letter challenging CBS 5 to do some informative and helpful articles on the spraying. They were kind enough to respond and tell me about a piece they were going to do (4/15). I doubt that it was my letter which caused the article but I was so happy that someone in corporate news did a good deed. It was on the front page online and that alone was a change. Can we hope the tide is turning? I wrote a letter to ABC 7 asking them to do a better job and not just repeat what the state says. I referred them to the CBS article. A little competition is not always a bad thing.
Blessings to you and your site. Thank you for what you are doing.
Wow, Mim,
Great journalism on your part. I’m grateful and impressed with the amount of passion, information, and excellent writing you merge to inform us about LBAM spray.
Thank you!
Donna
Dear Mary Anne,
Thank you for the blessing. I appreciate that so.
I applaud you for writing to CBS and ABC and asking them to give this the focus it needs. I am sure your letters are helping!
It is so hard, when something is so important, to realize that ‘the rest of the world’ is going on with life normally. The Marin Independent Journal was running a feature on ‘Healthy Kids Day’ and the Chronicle was doing when about San Francisco’s plastic bag ban.
If I had the time, I’d be tracking down the authors of stories like these and saying, “our healthy kids are threatened…we can get rid of plastic bags, but what will it matter if our air is plastic?”
What helps me so much is knowing that there are people like you, Mary Anne, and all of my readers here, who are making efforts every day to speak, to write, to converse, to protest. We can be so powerful because we are all working toward the same goal.
Thank you for taking the time to comment here. Come back soon and keep up the great work!
Mim
Hi Donna!
I love having you come here. Thank you for the kind comment. To tell the truth, if I couldn’t write about this, my head would probably explode.
You, too, are doing a fabulous job.
Mim
Hi Mim, Just want to give you a great big hug for that great article and all the good work you are doing to stop the spray. You go girl. Blessings to stopping the spray.Namaste’ Joyce
Thank you, Joyce. Your support is very meaningful to me and I needed that hug!
Namaste.
Mim
Let’s never forget about the power of labor. Organized labor could easily shut this state down, and trade issues “caused” by a little moth, would be the least of the problem of big agri-business.
The labor movement has become increasingly misunderstood over the years, mostly because of propaganda from greedy capitalists. Strikes are not about money, but a direct action to defend livelihoods, standards of living, and health and safety. Everyone is going to be affected by this, regardless of occupation. All labor has a stake in stopping this toxic pesticide program, both aerial and on the ground.
An injury to One is an injury to All!
Talk with your unions! Pass resolutions like the one below, then act on them: All out for a General Strike!
Here’s an example of a strong resolution:
Date: April 10, 2008
To: Distribution
Re: AFSCME Local 2428 Resolution Opposing the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s (CDFA) Pesticide Program to Attempt to Eradicate the Light Brown Apple Moth:
WHEREAS, this union of park workers is pledged to conserve the land, the air, the water, and the life that resides there for the present sustenance of the people and use by future generations; and
WHEREAS, the Union/Management Ecology Committee is working in a cooperative manner to implement the District’s goal of reducing the use of chemicals on District property; and
WHEREAS, each of the methods planned by the USDA and CDFA’s pesticide program to attempt to eradicate the light brown apple moth, whether by aerial spraying, ground spraying, twist ties, permethrins on trees and utility poles, chemical traps, or other related methods have known and unknown negative health and environmental impacts associated with them; and
WHEREAS, science has shown that chemicals in the environment pose significant health risks to the public and the ecosystem; and
WHEREAS, scientists have reported that the light brown apple moth has not caused any substantial crop damage and is more successfully controlled without the use of chemicals, by encouraging natural predators and healthy soils to prevent the spread of damaging infestations; and
WHEREAS, Local 2428 is concerned about the health and safety of park workers and park users, especially the most vulnerable populations of young, old, or the infirm who may be exposed while working or visiting in District parklands to unnecessary and untested levels of known carcinogenic and mutagenic chemicals.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, Local 2428 strongly opposes this eradication plan and demands that the USDA downgrade the pest classification of the light brown apple moth to reflect the lack of risk it poses; and
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, Local 2428 will work with communities across the state, the nation, and the globe to seek alternatives to chemical pest management by creating healthy habitat, including, but not limited to, the use of bio-intensive gardening to attract natural predators and soil microbes, and the addition of organic compost to add nitrogen and minerals to the soil in order to support the plants’ own immunity against “pests.”
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