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Does Monsanto tell you what to eat?


CREDO Action | more than a network. a movement.
Fix our broken food system. 

Stop Big Food.
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Urge the Department of Justice and Department of Agriculture to break up the agribusiness giants. 

 

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Note: Along with our allies, CREDO has gathered over 240,000 comments against consolidation in the food industry. Our friends at Food Democracy Now! are delivering them at a special meeting with the USDA this week. As consumers, we have a vested interest in the future of our food system. Can you help us get to 250,000?

America’s supermarket bounty is deceiving. Of those hundreds of brands on grocery store shelves, the vast majority are owned by a handful of industrial food companies like Kraft, Conagra and General Mills.

This concentration of power in the hands of a few large corporations is repeated in all sectors of the food system — from Monsanto’s stranglehold on seeds, to Dean Foods and Dairy Farmers of America‘s control over our milk, to Smithfield, JBS and Cargill’s near total dominance of meat processing. But there was nothing inevitable about this kind of corporate control of our food. Decades of deregulation and governmental inattention to industrial consolidation brought us our broken food system, one that features non-stop food safety recalls, an obesity epidemic and the hollowing out of rural America as family farmers are forced to sell out to corporate interests.

It’s time to stop letting Big Food control what we eat. Urge the Obama administration to fix our broken food system.

The Departments of Justice and Agriculture have convened a set of “workshops” over the last few months to discuss potential antitrust practices by the agribusiness giants who control of the food industry. Family farmers were finally able to air some of their grievances against the abusive practices by large food corporations. Though only a baby step, these workshops represented one of the first admissions from the US government that its past policies have weakened, rather than strengthened, our food system.

Please sign the letter thanking Holder and Vilsack for the workshops and demanding they follow up with real action on antitrust enforcement. The era of Big Food must come to an end.

Thank you for working to break up the food monopoly.

Adam Klaus, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Don’t Let GOP Censor the Smithsonian
I urge you to end the hostile rhetoric and respect America’s standards of honoring free speech and creative expression. As the leaders of incoming majority of the House of Representatives in the coming year, your job should be to work with the Senate and the White House to advance policies which will help Americans, not to chase political straw men at the behest of the Far Right. 

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Incoming House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor have thrown the weight of government into efforts by the Religious Right to shut down an acclaimed art exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery. The Hide/Seek exhibit explores evolving expressions of sexuality in art. The Religious Right — in this instance led by the always-hysterical Bill Donohue and his fringe Catholic League — and its allies in Congress have been quick to try to whip their base into a fervor over themes they didn’t even try to understand before condemning as “anti-Christian.”

Cantor ludicrously said the exhibit is an intentional attempt to offend Christians during the Christmas season. And Boehner, Cantor and other right-wing leaders have attacked the exhibit as a questionable use of taxpayer money, even though Smithsonian exhibits — including this one — are privately funded. They are now threatening to go after Smithsonian public funding and even to launch investigations into Smithsonian exhibits.

Tell the House Republican Leadership to stay out of the censorship game and to keep their hands off Smithsonian funding.

After you sign the petition to Reps. Boehner and Cantor, you’ll be asked to call the National Portrait Gallery and urge administrators there to stand strong against the Right in defense of free expression.

The Gallery was quick to cave on one piece of the Hide/Seek exhibit which was singled out by the Right: a video which included an 11-second segment depicting a Crucifix with ants crawling on it, a statement about the suffering of AIDS victims at the time the video was produced. The video, by the artist David Wojnarowicz, who himself died of AIDS in 1992, had been on display for a month without a single complaint from any museum attendees. The only complaints the Portrait Gallery received about the video or any parts of the exhibit were from Religious Right activists from around the country who had not actually seen the art. In a twist of sad irony, these activists were successful in getting the video taken down exactly one day before World AIDS Day. Hide/Seek is a courageous exhibit, but it’s an outrage that the Portrait Gallery would not show equal courage in defending the exhibit in its entirety against right-wing censorship.

We need to speak up to make sure that there are no more capitulations by the Smithsonian, and to make sure that Republican congressional leaders don’t get away with their ridiculous political pandering to the radical Religious Right.

Please add your voice to the growing chorus of Americans who are speaking out against this latest right-wing attack.

Reps. Boehner and Cantor, along with virtually ever other congressional Republican leader, are working hard to block all business on Capitol Hill… holding the country hostage by insisting that no much-needed measures be passed until the Bush tax cuts are extended for the richest 2% of Americans… and all the while attacking the president for not doing enough to create jobs. Yet THIS is how they want to spend their time and taxpayer dollars — kowtowing to right-wing zealots like Bill Donohue by attacking the arts and investigating museums.

Shame on them.

Sincerely,

Michael B. Keegan signature

Michael Keegan, President

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Decide which T-shirt we should make


Repower America is designing a T-shirt and you don’t have to be a fashion expert to weigh in. We’ve narrowed it down to two choices. Which one is your favorite?

Cast your vote by Tuesday at midnight for the T-shirt you want to see Repower America supporters wear in 2011.

Vote for your favorite Repower America shirt

Whether you’re part of the climate movement because you want to save money on your electricity bill or because you want to save the planet for your grandchildren, you know it’s important for supporters to come together in 2011. Climate deniers and the fossil fuel industry are emboldened, and it’s up to us to show that we will keep standing strong.

The truth is, we’re already winning this fight. Electric utilities and other corporations are taking steps to reduce their emissions. Windmills and solar panels are dotting the landscape from coast to coast. And more and more car owners are shopping for fuel-efficient vehicles.

What we need now is a way for supporters everywhere to send a clear and powerful message: We’ve got momentum behind us, and we won’t be denied our clean energy future.

That’s why Repower America is rolling out a new T-shirt exclusively for Repower America members. And we’re counting on supporters like you to help us select the best one.

Decide which T-shirt we should make. Vote here:

http://acp.repoweramerica.org/yourshirt

The climate movement has always been in your hands. Now, it’s time for you to decide how to move it forward in the weeks and months ahead.

Thanks for getting involved,

Dave Boundy
Campaign Manager
Repower America

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

a message from Gov.Tim Kaine


Democrats

There are just a few weeks left in this Congress, and we have a lot left to do.

Democrats are rolling up their sleeves, getting to work on all fronts to finish important work that we all set out to accomplish together.

That means pressing, right now, to ratify the New START treaty, furthering our goal of nuclear arms reduction — and securing a safer future for our nation.

That means working to extend much-needed tax cuts to the middle class and unemployment benefits to those who are out of work — making sure Americans get the relief they deserve.

That means fighting to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” a discriminatory law that prevents qualified men and women from serving their country.

And that means pushing to pass the DREAM Act, paving a path to citizenship for undocumented youth willing to work toward a college degree or serve in our military.

We’re working, right now, to draw attention to these crucial measures, and help get them passed — making them impossible for the media to ignore and for Republicans in Congress to obstruct.

But amplifying this message requires resources — and we can’t do it without your help.

Can you donate $3 or more today to support Democrats and fuel these efforts?

If the obstructionist Republicans in Congress have their way, the current “lame duck” session will have lived up to its name. They’ve been blocking the road on every single one of the issues we’ve been fighting so hard for.

They’re willing to hold up an arms treaty that’s critical to our national security. They’re willing to stand in the way of commonsense immigration reform that folks on both sides of the aisle have long embraced. And they’re willing to keep in place an unfair policy that top military leaders across the board have recommended repealing.

It’s not enough for us to just lament how “broken” Washington is. It’s not enough to shake our heads and say that we wished Republicans would stop playing political games, or that the pundits would focus on issues that unite us instead of the petty partisan battles that divide us.

We need to stand up.

We need to raise our voices about where we’d like to see this country go — and the work we know this Congress still needs to accomplish. That means ratifying the New START Treaty, extending tax cuts to middle-class Americans, repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and passing the DREAM Act. And it means extending unemployment benefits so Americans looking for work can keep paying their bills.

Democrats in Congress are going to work for the measures that matter to us — and together, we can send the message that we refuse to stand by and watch while Republicans stand in the way.

Please donate $3 or more today to help send the message loud and clear that Democrats across the country are committed to accomplishing these key initiatives before the year is out:

http://my.democrats.org/LoudAndClear

Together, we’ll make these issues impossible to ignore.

Thank you,

Governor Tim Kaine
Chairman

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