Say No To GMOs
Dallas-Fort Worth joins upcoming international March Against Monsanto
Dallas-Fort Worth will join an international protest movement called March Against Monsanto on May 25. Two rallies are planned in the area.
The protest is designed to call out the practices of agri-business giant Monsanto. Marches will take place on six continents, in 33 countries with 275-plus events in more than 250 cities. In the United States, the events will be coordinated to start simultaneously at 11 am Pacific time.
That means 1 pm in Dallas-Fort Worth. The Dallas march will start at City Hall and proceed to the Dallas Farmers Market. The Fort Worth march, whose Facebook page has a cool-looking skull, will be at General Worth Square.
There are marches in all of the major (and some of the minor) cities in Texas, including Houston, Austin and San Antonio.
Monsanto has come under fire for its production of genetically modified seeds, engineered to be pest-resistant, herbicide-resistant or to boost nutrition. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have raised questions about their effect on allergies and antibiotics resistance, and are being fingered as a factor in the wipe-out of the world's bee population.
In March, the U.S. Congress and president ignored a grass-roots campaign and passed a bill with a controversial provision that bans courts from halting the sale of Monsanto's genetically modified seeds and protects Monsanto from lawsuits.
The March Against Monsanto campaign was started by Tami Monroe Canal, 31, a Salt Lake City mother of two who created a Facebook page in February. "I honestly didn't have high expectations," Canal said in a statement. "So many of my family and friends don’t know what a GMO is. Rather than going around being mad about [the issue], I decided to act."
Jessica Winters, who is organizing the Dallas event, doesn't have a history of activism. "My attitude started to change after I saw the documentary Food, Inc," she says. "Then I saw The World According to Monsanto, which shows the revolving door between Monsanto and the FDA, where people who worked for Monsanto now work for the FDA."
Her concerned are shared by a wide spectrum of people, she says. "If you look at the Dallas Monsanto page, you can see that it's the most diverse group of people who've come together. Food is something we consume multiple times a day. Democrat or Republican, men and women, it affects all of us."
