Organic Grain Production Results in Reduced Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Washington, D.C. - Ongoing research at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Sustainable Agricultural Systems Lab (SASL) finds that organic grain production reduces greenhouse gas emissions relative to chemical-intensive no-till and chisel-plow production systems. In fact, the research concludes that the organic system removes more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than it contributes, while the other systems result in net increases. The results are based on data from comparable three-year crop rotations maintained for each production system at the Lab's farm in Beltsville, MD under the direction of Michel Cavigelli, PhD. The rotations mirror typical commercial grain production operations in the mid-Atlantic region that begin with corn followed by a rye grass cover crop, rotate to soybeans and winter wheat in the second year, and conclude with a legume crop. Dr. Cavigelli's team identified the substantial energy savings achieved in the organic system by using natural fertility sources, especially for nitrogen, as the critical factor in reducing its overall impact on climate change.

Previous research shows that carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide are the two most potent greenhouse gases that are produced and released as a consequence of crop production. It is also known that, due to its specific molecular properties, nitrous oxide is approximately three hundred times more powerful than an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide. The USDA research calculated how much carbon dioxide was gained or lost by measuring changes in soil organic matter and also measured the nitrogen added for crop consumption that instead escaped as nitrous oxide. Combining this data with standardized figures for the energy expended (and therefore carbon dioxide released through fuel consumption) to operate each system -the number of tractor passes, for example- provided a snapshot of their respective contributions to climate change.


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U.N. Climate Conference: Geoengineering Could Save Earth -- Or Destroy It

By Joanna Zelman

DURBAN, South Africa - Brighten clouds with sea water? Spray aerosols high in the stratosphere? Paint roofs white and plant light-colored crops? How about positioning "sun shades" over the Earth?

At a time of deep concern over global warming, a group of scientists, philosophers and legal scholars examined whether human intervention could artificially cool the Earth - and what would happen if it did.

A report released late Thursday in London and discussed Friday at the U.N. climate conference in South Africa said that - in theory - reflecting a small amount of sunlight back into space before it strikes the Earth's surface would have an immediate and dramatic effect.

Within a few years, global temperatures would return to levels of 250 years ago, before the industrial revolution began dumping carbon dioxide into the air, trapping heat and causing temperatures to rise.

But no one knows what the side effects would be.

They could be physical - unintentionally changing weather patterns and rainfall. Even more difficult, it could be political - spurring conflict among nations unable to agree on how such intervention, or geoengineering, will be controlled.

The idea of solar radiation management "has the potential to be either very useful or very harmful," said the study led by Britain's Royal Society, the Washington-based Environmental Defense Fund and TWAS, the academy of sciences for the developing world based in Trieste, Italy.


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With GMO Labels Still Missing, Look for the Opposite

By Michelle Maisto
The White House is 313 miles from my Brooklyn neighborhood, but in early October, 50 or so people set off walking there, as part of the Right2Know campaign. Along the way they were joined by hundreds of others, and rallying in Washington, D.C., Oct. 16, they called on regulators to insist that genetically modified or engineered foods/organisms (known as GEs, or GMOs) be labeled as such, and for President Obama to keep his 2007 campaign promise to do this.

The effort felt in line with the Occupy movement - with the voicing of frustrations that even in simple, common sense ways there seems to be a system working against the majority of us (even back in a 2001 ABC News poll, 93% of people said they wanted GE food labeling). But it was also just one more effort in a decades-long fight - Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich has introduced a Genetically Engineered Food Right to Know Act in 1999, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2008 and 2010 - and as far as I can tell the latest effort to fail to get the job done.

There's a lot of debate about whether or not it's safe to eat GM foods, but what's being argued for is simply that they be labeled. We're living in a time where it's illegal not to tell consumers if a product is made in a room where nuts are handled, but food can be tinkered with at the DNA level and no one is obligated to say so.


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Arsenic-It's in Animal Feed Too

By Ben Lilliston

The media has been splashed with recent findings of elevated levels of arsenic in apple juice. Much less attention has been given to concerns about the presence of arsenic in meat. Last week, IATP and the Center for Food Safety filed a series of petitions with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) calling for the agency to vastly reduce the legally permissible levels of arsenic in meat. Pharmaceutical companies produce and sell four arsenic compounds that are added to animal feed for turkey, chicken and swine production to increase weight and improve pigmentation of the meat.

"Arsenic's a poison that causes cancer, among other harm," IATP's David Wallinga, M.D. said in a press release on the petitions. "The FDA can't seriously uphold its public health mission while allowing residues of arsenic in the meat our children and families eat. That's why we've submitted this petition."

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The Organic 1%: Sustainable Farming in a Broken System

By Cyndie Hoffman
Local, sustainable food has become a regular part of our everyday culture as demonstrated through the growing interest in school gardens, Community Supported Agriculture, local farmers' markets, underground dining clubs, and organics in general. This enduring trend in sustainable food reignites a question posed on Triple Pundit two years ago: "Is Sustainable Farming Going Mainstream?" Unfortunately not at all as the sustainable food hype trumps the numbers.

In 2008 organic cropland represented only 0.7 percent in the United States and, at the current growth rate, it is expected to reach not more than 2.5 percent by 2050.

Much of the momentum and buzz in the organics industry has been sparked by key icons and influential leaders who have driven the conversation through thought-provoking books, films, TV shows, and other media engagements. Storytelling about food issues has changed the way Americans view and think about food. Since Michael Pollan unveiled Omnivore's Dilemma in 2006, vivid images of cattle crammed together in CAFOs and swimming in antibiotic-infused manure occupy the minds of many. And, when Jamie Oliver visited schools in 2010 and discovered that kids confuse potatoes with tomatoes and school bureaucrats call french fries a vegetable, education about where food comes from has become increasingly popular. 


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2010 Carbon Dioxide Output Shows Biggest Jump Ever

By Justin Gillis

Global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning jumped by the largest amount on record last year, upending the notion that the brief decline during the recession might persist through the recovery.

Emissions rose 5.9 percent in 2010, according to an analysis released Sunday by the Global Carbon Project, an international collaboration of scientists tracking the numbers. Scientists with the group said the increase, a half-billion extra tons of carbon pumped into the air, was almost certainly the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution, and the largest percentage increase since 2003.

The increase solidified a trend of ever-rising emissions that scientists fear will make it difficult, if not impossible, to forestall severe climate change in coming decades.

The researchers said the high growth rate reflected a bounce-back from the 1.4 percent drop in emissions in 2009, the year the recession had its biggest impact.


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The Greatest Water Crisis in the History of Civilization: Coming to the American West?

By William deBuys

Consider it a taste of the future: the fire, smoke, drought, dust, and heat that have made life unpleasant, if not dangerous, from Louisiana to Los Angeles. New records tell the tale: biggest wildfire ever recorded in Arizona (538,049 acres), biggest fire ever in New Mexico (156,600 acres), all-time worst fire year in Texas history (3,697,000 acres).

The fires were a function of drought.  As of summer's end, 2011 was the driest year in 117 years of record keeping for New Mexico, Texas, and Louisiana, and the second driest for Oklahoma. Those fires also resulted from record heat.  It was the hottest summer ever recorded for New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, as well as the hottest August ever for those states, plus Arizona and Colorado.

Virtually every city in the region experienced unprecedented temperatures, with Phoenix, as usual, leading the march toward unlivability. This past summer, the so-called Valley of the Sun set a new record of 33 days when the mercury reached a shoe-melting 110º F or higher. (The previous record of 32 days was set in 2007.)

And here's the bad news in a nutshell: if you live in the Southwest or just about anywhere in the American West, you or your children and grandchildren could soon enough be facing the Age of Thirst, which may also prove to be the greatest water crisis in the history of civilization.  No kidding.


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"Occupy" Goes South for the Winter

By Matt Reichel

As northern cities have parlayed the cold weather onset with police crackdowns to vanquish "Occupy" encampments, and the west coast has seen authorities violently wreak havoc on the movement, Occupy protesters are looking for alternatives. It may seem a paradox that the left-leaning movement would find refuge in the traditionally conservative south, but the economic malaise that informs its birth has been particularly harsh on this already ravaged region of the country. Meanwhile, temperatures should be far more reasonable for maintaining camp through the winter months, despite a recent spate of snow and chilly temps post-Thanksgiving. So far, some southern authorities have been wary about repeating the violent crackdowns of other cities, while others have lost legal battles in attempts to evict encampments. In a surprising twist to some, the Occupy movement may be going south for the winter.

But recent activity suggests that New Orleans could be the flashpoint for the next wave of police repression. The oft-scandalous New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) has navigated the issue very carefully thus far; keen on evading more of the adversity that came with the recent prosecution of five officers in the post-Katrina Danziger Bridge shootings of unarmed civilians that resulted in two deaths. Meanwhile, mayor Mitch Landrieu has mirrored the behavior of his counterparts in cities throughout the country: pretending to support the First Amendment rights of protestors, whilst presaging a coming crackdown with a statement Friday afternoon in which he said: ""I am asking them to leave right now. Any time after this may see enforcement. At some point in time, if they refuse to leave, I will initiate some action." (This statement was issued just two days after an email from Landrieu spokesman Ryan Berni assured me that there was "no deadline." When asked what caused such a sudden and drastic change in posture, Berni refused to comment).


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Movement-Building and 2012

By Ted Glick

"But eventually, the greater danger to the movement is that it may dovetail into the presidential election campaign that's coming up. I've seen that happen before in the antiwar movement here, and I see it happening all the time in India. Eventually, all the energy goes into trying to campaign for the "better guy," in this case Barack Obama, who's actually expanding wars all over the world. Election campaigns seem to siphon away political anger and even basic political intelligence into this great vaudeville, after which we all end up in exactly the same place."


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US Drug Agents Launder Profits of Mexican Cartels

By Ginger Thompson

Washington - Undercover American narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington's expanding role in Mexico's fight against drug cartels, according to current and former federal law enforcement officials.

The agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders, those officials said, to identify how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most important, who their leaders are.

They said agents had deposited the drug proceeds in accounts designated by traffickers, or in shell accounts set up by agents.

The officials said that while the D.E.A. conducted such operations in other countries, it began doing so in Mexico only in the past few years. The high-risk activities raise delicate questions about the agency's effectiveness in bringing down drug kingpins, underscore diplomatic concerns about Mexican sovereignty, and blur the line between surveillance and facilitating crime. As it launders drug money, the agency often allows cartels to continue their operations over months or even years before making seizures or arrests.


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Vermont's Push to End Corporate Personhood

By Greg Guma

As support builds to overturn the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, organizer David Cobb returned to Vermont last week to discuss pending state legislation and Town Meeting votes aimed at amending the US Constitution.

Over the last decade more than a hundred cities and towns across the country have passed ordinances putting citizens' rights ahead of corporate interests. They have banned businesses from dumping toxic sludge, building factory farms, mining, and extracting water for bottling.

Some have also refused to recognize corporations as people.

On Jan. 21, 2010, however, the US Supreme Court firmly rejected that idea in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case, ruling that corporations are "persons" with First Amendment rights and cannot be prevented from spending unlimited funds on political campaigns.

David Cobb is determined to change that, and returned to Vermont this week to promote the next steps in a campaign to amend the US constitution. Last January, Cobb, a former Green Party candidate for president who leads the Move to Amend campaign, spoke about the issue in Burlington, Waitsfield and Montpelier during a tour of the state organized by the Women's International league for Peace and Freedom. He also met with 11 state senators who agreed to support a Vermont resolution calling on Congress to initiate the process.


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Fair Trade Lite: Fair Trade USA Moves Away from Worker Co-ops

By Twilight Greenaway
Compared to so many other purchasing decisions -- like which humane meat label to trust, for instance -- the "Certified Fair Trade" logo has made buying ethically produced coffee a relatively simple choice. Most of us either buy fair trade or we don't. 

But that's all about to change. As The New York Times reported earlier this month, Fair Trade USA (FTUSA) is breaking away from Fair Trade International, its global parent, and creating new, less stringent standards. For American coffee drinkers, this will soon mean two fair trade labels -- one that will stick with the movement's original intention to work only with small coffee-growing cooperatives, and FTUSA's new label, which will most likely include coffee grown on larger, plantation-sized farms, and products with as little as 10 percent fair trade ingredients. (See the draft of the new standards.)

This split over the definition of fair trade doesn't only risk confusing conscientious U.S. coffee buyers. It also exposes a rift at the heart of this movement over the best strategy for making coffee farming a more sustainable and humane enterprise.

Paul Rice, the chief executive of FTUSA, is positioning the shift as a question of growth and accessibility for the movement. In the Times article above he asks: "Do we want it to be small and pure or do we want it to be fair trade for all?"  


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Biomass Is the Next Biofuel 'Land Grab' on Tropical Forests, Warn Campaigners

By Tom Levitt

Just as biofuels have gobbled up farmland that should have been growing food so the push on biomass by Monsanto, Cargill and others will see an 'unprecedented' grab on land, plants and biodiverse-rich forests.

The world is on the brink of a new land grab, with companies like Cargill and Monsanto part of a wider attempt to 'grab' control of the productive capacity of the planet, argues a new book 'Earth Grab'.

So far humans use one-quarter of the planet's land-based biomass, essentially the earth's living matter, to provide food, heat and shelter.

Corporate plans for the coming 'green economy' will transform the earth's biomass, including grasses, woodchip and algae into the next generation of biofuels. We've already started using it to create biofuels, but thanks to technological advances we'll soon be able to use much more of it for generating electricity, fertilisers and chemicals.

The result, according to the authors, will be a grab on the planet's last remaining suitable biomass, mostly biodiverse-rich tropical forests in Africa, Asia and South America.


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Food Studies: The Invisibility of Modern Hunger

By Megan Moore

A couple pulls into a grocery store parking lot at exactly midnight on the first of the month. They are well-dressed and middle-class looking, but their faces are tense. The woman takes out her cell phone and dials a hotline that will report, in an automated voice, the total in their Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) account. When they hear the voice say, "Your balance is 691 dollars and zero cents," a wave of relief washes across their faces. They can now go into the store to buy groceries. The young man describes how he's feeling for the camera as he lets out what he says is "a great big aaah."

This was a scene from a recent episode of Rock Center with Brian Williams, which featured seemingly normal, middle-class food assistance users who often find themselves waiting outside of the grocery store at midnight on the first of the month. These families shop in the middle of the night -- we are told -- because fridges are empty, and a less-crowded store allows them to shop without persecution. A Walmart executive then tells us they have had to add extra staff on the first of the month to accommodate the increase in families using their benefits.

I caught this episode of Rock Center by accident the other night, but it just happened to highlight an important paradox I've been thinking a lot about lately. More people are using public benefits than ever before (according to the show, the number of people using EBT to feed their families has gone up nearly 37 percent in the last two years, to nearly 46 million people!) and yet there has been no correlating increase in EBT visibility.


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Farmers Join Occupy Wall Street, Calling for Food Justice

By Mel Fabrikant

As Wall Street's corrupt influence on the economy has grown, the corporate ownership of our food system has hurt the health and livelihood's of some of our most vulnerable communities. This Sunday, December 4th food justice activists and occupiers will be travelling from as far as Colorado, Iowa, Maine and Upstate New York to join together for the Occupy Wall Street FARMERS' MARCH.

Through a day of dialogue, musical performances, and a march, farmers and their urban allies working for food justice in their communities will form alliances to fight and expose corporate control of the food supply. Events throughout the day will call and inspire participants to fight against the corporate manipulation of the agriculture system. An industry that is responsible for using chemical toxins tied to soaring obesity rates, heart disease and diabetes and limiting access to affordable, wholesome food to the country's poorest citizens.

The event will kick off at 2pm at La Plaza Cultural Community Garden with a musical performance followed by remarks from food justice activists and occupiers. They will share their stories and listen to their peers as they highlight the role of urban-rural solidarity in building a sustainable food system as well as challenges of family-scale farmers in a culture of corporate dominance. March Begins at 4pm from La Plaza Cultural Community Garden

At 4pm, musicians will be among those leading the Farmers' March in a colorful parade from La Plaza to Zuccotti Park/Liberty Plaza, the site of a Solidarity Circle at 5pm. Stories of struggle, triumph and ruminations about the role OWS might assume in the food justice movement will help form the circle. The circle will close with a Seed Exchange.


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Regulators, Tea Partiers, and Populists

By Will Allen, Cedar Circle Farm, Vermont
Lately there have been a series of very public gaffes by several of the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, exposing alarming deficits in their knowledge of U.S. historical events. And, there has been some confusion about the significance of the 1773 Tea Party. In an effort to try to sort out the real history and avoid future stumbles regarding historical facts, let's revisit tea history, the causes of the Tea Party of 1773, real populists in the revolutionary era, and then jump forward to the 21st century tea partiers and Wall Street populists.

A Little Bit of Tea History

1600 - Queen Elizabeth granted permission for the charter of the British East India Company (1600-1858), on December 31, 1600 to establish trade routes, ports, and trading relationships with the Far East, Southeast Asia, and India. Trade in spices was its original focus, and trade in tea didn't begin until the late 1670s.

1662 - King Charles II (1630-1685) while in exile in the Netherlands, married the Portuguese Infanta Catherine de Braganza (1638-1705). Catherine's dowry was the largest in world history. Portugal gave England two million golden crusados, Tangier and Morocco in North Africa, Bombay in India, and also permission for the British to use all the Portuguese colonial ports in Africa, Asia and the Americas.

Both Charles and his Portuguese bride were confirmed tea drinkers. When the monarchy was re-established, they brought the tea tradition to England with them. Thereafter, tea mania spread across England.

The East India Company was highly favored by Charles II. Charles confirmed and extended its monopoly, to give the Company unprecedented powers to occupy by military force places with which they wished to trade (so long as the people there were not Christians). 1

The Boston Tea Party

Popular history teaches that the Tea Act of 1773 was supposedly inflammatory to New England radical colonists. What is not commonly known is that it actually lowered tea prices.

The Tea Act of 1773 followed several other English parliamentary maneuvers and skirmishes that restricted or taxed the colonists. England asserted that it needed to pass tax laws to restock its treasury after the French and Indian War, and to quarter troops in cities in private houses to cut costs in the protection of the colonies.

These laws and pivotal events included: the proclamation of 1763 (which forbade English colonists to live west of the Appalachian Mountains-even though many already did), The Sugar and Molasses Act in 1764 (which imposed taxes on sugar products), The Stamp Act in 1765 (which imposed taxes on any paper requiring a stamp-including magazines and newspapers), the Quartering Act of 1765 (which forced colonists to provide housing and food for British soldiers), and the Boston Massacre in 1770, in which five colonial civilians were killed in protests against the two year long occupation of Boston.

Those colonists, who formed the Committees of Correspondence and the Sons of Liberty, were afraid colonists might accept the lower tea taxes, which would put some of the founding fathers out of the business of buying tea from Denmark and selling it in the colonies. This was labeled tea smuggling by the British, and "smart business" by the colonial shippers.

Throughout the colonies "tea parties" were held where men turned back ships or boarded them and tossed packaged tea into the harbor. The largest in terms of tea dumped into the sea and the number of men participating was in Boston.

Northern radicals like John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Marinus Willet fanned the flames of rebellion. Adams was the leader of the Sons of Liberty in Massachusetts and Willet led the New York group. While Americans fought for liberty, some of the founding fathers may have had a slightly different "Liberty" in mind. John Hancock ran one of the largest shipping companies in the colonies and was one of the richest colonial citizens. Many historians have argued that Hancock was a smuggler as well as an influential and wealthy shipper, but he was never convicted. John Hancock's sloop, the Liberty, was seized by custom officials on June 10, 1768, and Hancock was accused of smuggling. Other ships in Hancock's shipping fleet were also boarded and seized by British troops and officials searching for smuggled wine, spices, and tea.

In 1767, the Townshend Act, which included a tax on tea, was passed, and by 1773 it was a fixture of the colonial tea trade. The tax on tea under this act was actually higher in England than in the American colonies.

By 1769, importers like Hancock reduced the amount of tea purchased in the colonies from the East India Company from 320,000 pounds to 520 pounds. By 1772, the East India Company had 18 million pounds of unsold tea in warehouses and 1.3 million pounds sterling of debt. Its largest creditor, the Bank of England, refused further credit. 2

By the middle of 1773, the East India Company was lobbying Parliament for some help to deal with their surplus tea stock. They needed a bailout! To save the company (which was too big to fail), and undercut the smugglers, Britain passed the 1773 Tea Act, which allowed the Company to pay the colonial taxes in England instead of collecting them in port and also provided a subsidy for tea shipments to the colonies. As a result, colonists actually got a net decrease in taxes on tea from the 1773 Tea Act.

This was actually a win for the colonists, since the price they paid for tea dropped. But this was not good news to the shipping companies.  Shippers found that the lowered tax enabled colonists to buy East India Company tea at lower prices than they were charging. What to do?

Protesting against lower taxes was not an option because no one wants to protest that. So, the shippers (the early tea partiers) focused on representation in Parliament. "No taxation without representation" became the rallying cry for the movement. The tea merchants of the colonies and the Sons of Liberty used the issue of representation in Parliament to stir up sympathy to their cause of protesting a 6 year old tea tax, which had just been lowered.

English parliamentary representatives argued that the colonials had as much representation as most of the population of England. While true, this didn't amount to much representation for the majority of the population in Britain or in the colonies.

In England, at the time, Parliament was composed of voted-in members. But, only about 3% of British citizens (those with property and title) were allowed to vote. The other 97% of British subjects, colonists included, had what was called "virtual representation" in Parliament, but no vote.  

At a meeting that Samuel Adams (also accused by the British of being a smuggler) was holding near the Boston docks on the night of the Boston Tea Party, many men left the meeting early. Historians have argued that these same men dressed up as Mohawk natives and boarded the tea ships. They then dumped all the tea in the water and stopped locals from grabbing packages of tea out of the water for use or sale.  

Samuel Adams used this incident to begin a long series of propaganda pieces, which depicted the tea partiers as patriotic heroes who were standing up against an unjust government. That left us with the dominant American myth that patriots struck a blow against Big Government and excessive taxes by staging the Boston Tea Party.

But, in reality, wealthy shippers and smugglers, acting under the guise of populism, struck a blow against their British competition, staged the Boston tea party, fought off locals who wanted to share in the booty, and ensured that their tea profits weren't affected by the lowered tea tax. 3

So, if the wealthy shippers (some of the founding fathers) were not the populists of the period, who were the populists?

18th Century Populist/Regulators

While taxation without representation was a major and convenient rallying call against the British, it didn't survive the revolution. After the revolution, only those who owned a significant amount of land and slaves were allowed to vote.  So, most of the population still only enjoyed "virtual representation" in the new American Republic (even after they had fought in the revolution), and those allowed to vote were hardly populists. They were wealthy land, business, and slave owners (less than 5% of the population). That is not to say that certain founding fathers and others with a vote were not sympathetic to populist causes, some were, most were not!

Both before and after the revolution, however, there were many populist revolts, called "regulator revolts" directed against the excesses of the aristocracy, monopolistic corporations, like the East India Company, and bureaucrats. In English common law, revolts against the Crown, aristocrats and bureaucrats were legitimate forms of protest that began with the limited success of the Magna Carta revolts of the landed gentry against the crown in 1215.

Anglo American government policy in the 18th Century evolved from these earlier struggles to a place where governments were dependent on the consent of the citizens. People gave up some of their liberties and authority to the government, which in turn was obliged to use its power for the public good. When bureaucrats and the aristocracy betrayed this trust and did not act to further the public's well being, the citizenry had a right, and a duty, to resist, and demand regulation.

Such resistance was not considered to be rebellious, since government officials who oppressed the people forfeited their power back to the people. Central to this compact was Theodore Beza's argument that it was the right of a Christian to revolt against a tyrannical King, aristocrat, or the King's bureaucrat who were oppressing the commoners (Beza was Calvin's biographer, and defender). Beza's and Calvin's writings were widely read in the colonies and greatly shaped the moral foundation of the American colonists' regulatory fervor. 4

The North Carolina Regulator Revolts began in the 1760s. These revolts revolved around the issue of corrupt tax collectors, corrupt bureaucrats, and excess spending by and coddling of the aristocrats. For example, Edmund Fanning who was the leader of the opposition to the regulators in North Carolina was found guilty of embezzling the colony's money (along with Francis Nash) but they were fined only one cent per charge.

Such fake justice inflamed the regulators and caused many revolts well before the Revolution in 1776, including the sacking and burning of Jamestown, the North Carolina capital.  In an effort to curb the protests, North Carolina legislator Samuel Johnston (who later became Governor) introduced the Riot Bill, and by January 10, 1771, both houses of the Assembly eventually approved it, Governor Tryon signed it, and legitimized An Act for Preventing Tumultuous and Riotous Assemblies, and for the More Speedy and Effectually Punishing the Rioters, and for Restoring and Preserving the Public Peace of This Province. The Johnston Riot Act helped foster a change in attitude among the aristocracy that equated resistance to government corruption with insurrection.

The act allowed for the establishment of emergency courts and declared rioters, who remained at large for 60 days, to be outlaws. Once rioters were declared outlaws, officials seized and sold their property and hunted down the outlaws. The law was applied retroactively and made participants in previous riots subject to the act. 5 Instead of curbing Regulator protest, the law had the opposite effect. But, in spite of their resistance the regulators were finally defeated, seven were hanged and many farms were either confiscated or burned.

The North Carolina regulator rebellion reveals just how sharply elite and popular notions of independence differed on the eve of the Revolution. The Regulators saw themselves not as enemies of government but as its true defenders. They tried to obtain redress by legal and peaceful means. They asked local aristocrats and government bureaucrats to open their books and show people how their taxes were spent (or misused). They petitioned the governor and the state assembly for help and they attempted to get convictions against corrupt officials in North Carolina's courts. Instead, they discovered that the aristocratic and bureaucratic leadership was corrupt and did not regard the small farmer's protests as legitimate.

The stonewalling of legal and peaceful attempts at social and political change frustrated the petitioners and significantly increased popular support for the Regulator cause. This early populist revolt was a serious threat to the dominant class (including many of the founding fathers) well before the revolution began against England.

After the war, regulator revolts against excesses of the aristocrats and bureaucrats continued, with the most notable being Shays' Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion.

Shays' rebellion began in Massachusetts shortly after the end of the Revolution. At that time, the Massachusetts economy was in bad shape. Incredible personal sacrifice had been expended in the war to gain independence. Most of the soldiers who had served their country in the war returned home penniless. Continental paper money issued to pay continental debts had become worthless, and the public credit was destroyed.  Massachusetts, and every town, was deeply in debt. Script that had been issued to revolutionary soldiers was devalued to about 1/10th of its value. After most desperate soldiers had sold their script to speculators, the state legislature (under pressure from the speculators) increased the script to near its original value. The fond hopes of the revolutionary fighters had not been realized. Instead they were ripped-off, and most colonists were in a worse state of affairs than before the revolution.

Coastal merchants, who no longer had markets in England (their largest pre-revolutionary customer) and under pressure from European creditors, began demanding payment of debts in silver and gold (specie) from inland merchants, both of which were scarce, if available at all. Contracts between individuals, also had to be paid with silver or its equivalent. Farmers who had traditionally paid many of their debts in produce, now were unable to pay because the merchants had no market into which they could sell bartered products. Many rural inhabitants (including those who had served in the Revolutionary militias just a few years before) soon found their property seized and ended up in debtors' prisons.

The people peacefully petitioned, agitated for reform and a bailout or at least temporary relief from their debt burden. Then, in1786, western Massachusetts towns from Worcester (45 miles from Boston) to the Berkshires finally resorted to armed resistance under the leadership of Capt. Daniel Shays. They shut down several of the debtors' courts (Courts of Common Pleas) across the Commonwealth in an attempt to stop the courts from seizing property and jailing honest citizens. These rebels, just as in the Carolinas were upstanding citizens, frequently pillars of their community. Emily Dickinson's ancestors were upstanding citizens and were among Shays' rebels from western Massachusetts.

Urged on by Boston area aristocrats, Washington and Hamilton decided to call 3,000 Revolutionary troops back in to service to put down Shays' Rebellion. But, only a few hundred responded to the call for active service against their former soldiers in arms. In frustration, the federal government, with the financial aid from wealthy Boston speculators, hired 5,000 mercenaries to march against Shays' rebels. The mercenaries were successful in defeating the rebels and dispersing the main agitators. Many left the state and settled in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, or moved west.

Though public sympathy for the rebels was high, Shays' rebellion convinced many aristocrats and bureaucrats that a strong central government was needed. Following the revolt, the Federalist Party promoted the adoption of the Constitution, a strong central government, a standing army, and a federal bank. Shays' rebellion definitely frightened the wealthy and contributed to the adoption of the Constitution soon after its defeat. 6 And, as we shall see, the existence of a standing army and a central bank to fund it led to the defeat of another frontier rebellion in the 1790s.

The following quotes are from two of the founding fathers, and illustrates the difference between those who supported the wealthy and those who supported the populists who had fought along side of Shays.

Two quotes from Thomas Jefferson on Shays' Rebellion, 1787:

"What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? "

"A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government. God forbid that we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion."

Quote from Samuel Adams on Shays' Rebellion:

"Rebellion against a king may be pardoned or lightly punished, but the man who dares to rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death. "

In the 1790s, rebellion spread to many states to the south of Massachussets. The most famous and pivotal was the Whiskey Rebellion. The official view of the Whiskey Rebellion is that four counties of western Pennsylvania refused to pay an excise tax on whiskey that had been levied by a proposal of the Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton in 1791, as part of his excise tax solution to pay for public debts from the war.

Western Pennsylvanians failed to pay the tax, this view says, until protests, demonstrations, and some roughing up of tax collectors in western Pennsylvania caused President Washington to call up a 15,000-man army in the summer and fall of 1794 to suppress the insurrection. A localized but dramatic challenge to federal tax-levying authority had been met and defeated. The forces of federal law and order were safe.

This official myth turns out to be mostly wrong, similar to the Tea Party myth. Alexander Hamilton did devise a plan to raise taxes from whiskey production to help pay for the Revolutionary War. But, in Hamilton's program, the tax bore much more heavily on the smaller distilleries and the smaller farmers. Sound familiar? As a result, many large distilleries supported the tax as a means of crippling their competitors, and it was owners and employees of the larger distilleries who often were the tax collectors. The small-scale producers were assessed a tax of 25%.  

Beyond the inequity in the whiskey tax, there was a deep historical hatred by colonials and their British relatives for what was called "internal taxation" (in contrast to tariffs, which are "external taxes"). Internal taxes meant that the taxman, who everyone hated, would be on your property, searching for whiskey production, and examining your records and your life.

Internal (excise) taxes in Britain, particularly, taxes on cider, had provoked riots and demonstrations, and the slogan: "liberty, property, and no excise!" To most newly liberated Americans, the federal government's assumption of the power to impose excise taxes did not look very different from the British excise taxes.

The main distortion of the official myth of the Whiskey Rebellion was its alleged confinement to four counties of western Pennsylvania. From recent research, we now know that no one paid the tax on whiskey throughout the American "back-country": that is, the frontier areas of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and the entire state of Kentucky.

President Washington and Secretary Hamilton chose to make a fuss about Western Pennsylvania precisely because in that region there was a cadre of wealthy officials (distillers) who were willing to collect taxes. There was no fuss or violence against tax collectors in Kentucky and the rest of the frontier because there was no one willing to be a tax collector.

The whiskey tax was particularly hated in the backcountry because whisky production and distilling were widespread; whiskey was not only a home product for most farmers, it was often used as money, as a medium of exchange for transactions. And, most importantly, it was a way to convert corn to whiskey, which was cheaper to ship to the large urban distillers and urban markets than the bulk grain.

Western Pennsylvania, then, was only the tip of the iceberg. But it was a big tip. It had great soils and high production on lands that small farmers had cleared, and was a big whiskey producing region. This frontier that we are talking about is now Pittsburgh, so it was well within striking distance from the major military forts near Philadelphia. The point is that, in all the other back-country areas, the whiskey tax was never paid. Opposition to the federal excise tax program was one of the causes of the emerging Democrat-Republican Party, and of the Jeffersonian "Revolution" of 1800. Indeed, Jefferson repealed the entire Federalist excise tax program, which was weighted against the small land-owner.

Rather than the whiskey tax rebellion being localized and swiftly put down, the true story turns out to be very different. The entire American frontier was gripped by a non-violent, civil disobedient refusal to pay the hated tax on whiskey. Farmers were still recovering from the Revolution, and literally were unable to pay exorbitant taxes on whiskey, their main medium of commerce. In most frontier areas local juries could not be found to convict tax delinquents. Instead of being confined to four western Pennsylvania counties, the Whiskey Rebellion was actually widespread and successful, for it eventually forced the federal government to repeal the unequally imposed excise tax.

Washington, Hamilton, and the Cabinet covered up the extent of the revolution because they didn't want to advertise the extent of the legitimate revolt all along the frontier (50 to 75 miles to the west). Just the opposite, they wanted to use overwhelming force (more troops than fought against the British) for a victory against the easiest target to get to. They took down the tax resisters in western Pennsylvania to send a message that the federal government would act with overwhelming force against rebels. And then they declared victory!

They knew very well that if they tried to enforce, or send an army into the rest of the frontier, they would have failed. Many historians feel that Kentucky and perhaps the Carolinas would have seceded from the Union if they had been attacked.

The Whiskey Rebellion is historically pivotal in the push to assert federal control. It illustrated to a war weary country that the wealthy and powerful were in charge, controlled the army, and were willing to kill civilians who were trying to assert their rights, just as they did to the Shays' Rebels immediately after the revolution and the Carolina Regulators before the revolution. 7

So, even though the battle cry of the revolution was "Home Rule", the real issue after the revolution was: "Who will rule at home?" Shays' Rebellion and The Whiskey Rebellion settled all that! The aristocrats were still in power, and ruling at home, much the same way they did when the British were in power.

21st Century Populists: "Tea Partiers" and "99%ers"

Fast forward to the Twenty-First Century Tea Partiers and Regulators.

Sadly, the monied crowd still rules the roost in American politics. As in the 18th Century, when populists were killed, jailed, or exiled and their property confiscated for opposing the aristocracy, much the same is true today. Those currently opposing Wall Street and the corporate aristocracy are being treated like criminals.

Like the tea parties of the 18th Century, the current Tea Party is a corporate funded revolt. The Koch brothers, Exxon-Mobil, the DeVoss family and other right-wing corporate protectors have invested millions of dollars and endless air-time on radio and TV in creating this powerful, supposedly grass roots movement. Obviously, it is not grass roots. Instead, it is "grass-tips". Tea party teach-ins were funded by the rich at the top, not spontaneously generated from locally aggrieved grass roots communities. 90% of Tea Party members voted for McCain and are affluent whites. Even when Tea Partiers spat on congress members, they were not treated like criminals.

While there were justifiable grievances against the British bureaucracy and their tax policies, tea was clearly not a central grievance. Similarly, opposition to taxing the rich is not a central grievance today; in fact a large majority of U.S. citizens feel that taxes on the wealthy and the corporations should be higher, tax loopholes closed, wars ended, the military reduced in size, and corporations stripped of their personhood.

Certainly there are justifiable grievances that the Tea Partiers expound today. Yes, government is too big, and a huge part of its bigness is military (which many of the 21st Century Tea Partiers wanted to downsize in 2010), and tax subsidies and loopholes to protect the corporations and rip off the public need to end. Yes, tax policy needs to change, but the most urgent changes should address the public's desires and focus on closing the tax loopholes and giveaways that enable corporations to evade taxes and receive rebates after paying NO U.S. taxes. Most of the U.S. public favors higher taxes on the wealthy not on lowering the taxes for millionaires, billionaires, and multinational corporations.

The right-wing talking heads continuously rail against efforts to raise taxes on the wealthy by citing the statistic that only 53% of the population pays income tax. This is a bogus smokescreen to protect the 1%. Everyone who has a job pays payroll taxes and income taxes. So, everyone except the 16% of the people who are really unemployed (and the investor class) pay income taxes. That means about 84% of the U.S. population is paying income taxes, not 53%. The claim that 47% of the population doesn't pay income taxes means that either individuals paid enough payroll and income taxes, had enough expenses or deductions during the year to offset taxes on April 15th, or that they didn't make enough to pay income taxes.

Many very rich Americans do not get a payroll check, so they pay no income taxes. Instead they are in the investor class, whose income is derived from capital gains on investments. Capital gains are only taxed at 15%. So these rich folks' tax rates are 10% less than someone making $50,000, even if the wealthy investor makes $50,000,000 in capital gains. And the capital gains crowd pays 20% lower taxes than a person with a job whose salary is over $250,000 and pays payroll taxes of 35%.

Like the tea party tax revolt in 1773, central tenets of the current "Tea Party" revolt are based on myths. The confusion over who pays taxes and how much is just one of their misconceptions. But the ironic parallels don't end there. The tea party rebels in 1773 were acting against their own interests. Today's tea partiers are also acting against their own interests. This year, they are lobbying for a larger, not reduced, military (and its enormous tax liability), they argue against regulations designed to stop corporations from evading taxes and polluting, and they refuse to advocate for increasing taxes on the very wealthy.  Most Tea Partiers, even though affluent, are part of the 99% of the population that is being victimized by the 1% who control most of the wealth.

The 18th Century regulators (North Carolina, Shays, and Whiskey rebels) were railing against unequal taxes and slap the hand penalties on wealthy criminals. And what about the populist regulators of today? After the crash of 2008, populists were calling for regulation of the banks, mortgage corporations, and Wall Street - and prosecution of the thieves. After BP's Gulf oil spill, populists were calling for the regulation of the oil industry and prosecution of the polluter/killers. After all the chemical spills, fish kills, and the creation of a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico as big as New Jersey, populists called for the regulation of industrial agriculture.

In every instance, big oil, big banks, Wall Street, and big chemical agriculture combined to frustrate and derail regulation, even dismantling long fought for consumer and environmental protections. The Tea Partiers, echoing arguing points from their "Tea Party teach-ins" maintain that there is too much regulation already and any new regulations will stall the recovery from the crash.

Granted, there are lots of regulations on the books at both the state and national levels. Most are actually designed to protect us and our environment (water, air, food, etc.). Sadly, many of those regulations are not enforced, because of the antiregulatory shift of our politics funded by big oil, big banks, Wall Street, and big agriculture. So, regulation is clearly not stalling the recovery, because regulators are not regulating. Lack of regulation in the auto, banking, Wall Street, and mortgage industries is what crashed our economy.

Jefferson and other framers of the constitution deliberately restricted the power of corporations in the constitution, partly to prevent them from becoming monopolistic (like the East India Company). And though continuously assaulted, many restrictions remained until Supreme Court decisions opened the doors to cartels, trusts, monopolies, and corporate personhood.

Rational protective regulation, quality products, innovation, education, and well-paid skilled labor are driving the German recovery, not stalling it. Organic farming is the fastest growing sector of our agriculture, and it too is regulated, focuses on quality, well-paid skilled labor, and innovation. Consequently, customers trust German goods and organic foods and are flocking to buy those products in ever increasing numbers. These same principles should guide our recovery. We need rational protective regulation, we need to produce quality products, we need to train, pay and protect our workforce, and we need to educate our citizens to the highest level they can attain. Jefferson was correct, we need a Regulator Revolt every twenty years. It should follow a Ghandian agenda of pacifist protest as long as possible, as they did in Madison and as the Wall Street Occupiers are trying to do now.

Though our elected leaders mouth support for peaceful rebellions abroad, the U.S. is a violent country. Calling to account and regulating the wealthy and powerful in this country will probably not remain peaceful, it never has. Already the police are randomly pepper spraying peaceful Wall Street occupiers, entrapping them, beating them, arresting them on the Brooklyn Bridge, harassing, gassing and arresting their allies in Boston, Denver, Oakland, Atlanta, San Diego and several other cities.

Many of our rebellions in the last 250 years have been violent and bloody because the rich and powerful have been willing to thwart redress of grievances, suppress criticism, crush legitimate protest, and even kill and imprison dissidents to hang on to their control. And police forces, acting against their own interests, crushed protests, and killed and imprisoned protestors. Already, Wall Street Banks have provided 4.6 million dollars to pay for round the clock police surveillance and harassment of the Wall Street occupiers.

Many of the Tea Partiers and the police have the same grievances as the populist occupiers of Wall Street. They should stop acting against their own interests and join in the struggle against our real enemy. The real enemy is the 1% who have most of the wealth, land, and power in the U.S., the 1% who bankrupted the country, the 1% that taxpayers bailed out, the 1% that refuses to pay their fair share of taxes to fix the infrastructure that they use (and helped deteriorate), the 1% that is too big to fail.

It's past time for a Regulator Revolt at home. Occupation, demonstration, and ultimately organization of a peoples' movement is essential. We must continue to confront and regulate the wealthy and prosecute corporate criminals. These are our last hopes for real change, and our first steps in the direction the revolution of 1776 promised, but failed to deliver!

Will Allen is an organic farmer, an author, a rural community organizer, and a civil rights and anti-war activist. He currently serves on the Policy Advisory board of the Organic Consumers Association, and the board of Willing Hands. As Assistant Professor Bill Allen, he and 19 others were indicted for burning the Bank of America in Isla Vista, California in 1970. They were all acquitted.  

Citations

1. Stradley, Linda , What's Cooking in America, History of High Tea/Afternoon Tea. The Tea Tradition: A History of Tea Time, www.victorianbazaar.com/tea.html

2. About North Georgia, Georgia Historical Society

3. Ragle, Brian. April 15, 2010. Historical Reality: The Boston Tea Party. Docendo dicimus.

4. Beza, Theodore 1574. Du Droit de Magistrats. Expanding upon Calvin's political resistance theory set forth in the final chapters of Calvin's Institutes. This work by Beza, Calvin's successor in Geneva, was published in response to the growing tensions between Protestant and Catholic in France, which culminated in the St. Bartholomew Day Massacre in 1572. This text argues that it is the right of a Christian to revolt against a tyrannical King, aristocrats, or the King's bureaucrats: a principle central to the American colonists' regulator fervor.

5. Erkirch, Roger A. 1977-1978 "The North Carolina Regulators on Liberty and Corruption, 1766-1771" in Perspectives in American History 11, 199-256; Kars, Marjoleine, 2002 Breaking Loose Together: The Regulator Rebellion in Pre-Revolutionary North Carolina Chapel Hill; Lee, Wayne E. 2001 Crowds and Soldiers in Revolutionary North Carolina: The Culture of Violence in Riot and War, Gainesville; Powell, William S., James H. Huhta, and Thomas J. Farnham, eds., 1971. The Regulators in North Carolina: A Documentary History, 1759-1776,  Raleigh, North Carolina History Project.
 
6. Richards, Leonard. 2002 Shays's Rebellion: The American Revolution's Final Battle. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

7. Slaughter, Thomas P. 1986 The Whiskey Rebellion, New York: Oxford University Press; Boyd, Steven R. ed. 1985 The Whiskey Rebellion, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press; and Rothbard, Murray. 1994 The Whiskey Rebellion. September: The Free Market.



 

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Marching for 100% Change at the Global Climate Summit in South Africa

By Kristin Palitza

Dubbing Saturday the "Global Day of Action", demonstrators from international and national non-governmental groups as well as labor, women, youth, academic, religious and environmental organizations came together to highlight civil society's demands for politicians all over the world to take serious action to fight climate change.

"We are asking for 100 percent change. Today will be the beginning of a strong movement that is going to challenge the rich nations of the world," said Global Day of Action subcommittee convenor Desmond D'Sa. "World leaders are discussing the fate of our planet, but they are far from reaching a solution to climate change."

Protesters said it was time for climate change negotiators to listen to the voices of ordinary people. They marched holding banners which said: "Never trust COP17", "Unite against Climate Change", "Climate Justice Now" and "Ensure the survival of coming generations".

There was a general feeling that ordinary people remained largely excluded from important debates on important issues that directly affected their lives.


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Occupy Our Homes: From the Streets to Foreclosed Homes, OWS Finds a New Frontier

By Sarah Seltzer
Today, Occupy Wall Street and Occupy movements around the country will "go out of the streets and into the homes" of the 99 percent to draw attention to the economic, social, and racial injustice of the foreclosure crisis.

Through vacant home reoccupations, eviction resistance actions, and foreclosure auction disruptions from Brooklyn to Atlanta to Minneapolis and beyond, activists will highlight the families and individuals who live with the threat of eviction ever looming or those who have already lost their homes but are barred from ones that sit empty, owned by banks.

"We want people to pick sides - are you going to side with a bank sitting on an empty house when there's record family homelessness in NYC? Or will you side with a homeless family that is really desperate for a better environment for their kids to grow up in?" says VOCAL-NY organizer Sean Barry, one of many activists involved in the New York City action, which will begin at 1 p.m. at the intersection of Pennsylvania and Livonia in East New York, Brooklyn.

Indeed, the optics are perfect for OWS: not only will the actions highlight the plight of America's families, but they will also point to the indifference and callousness of the 1 percent - the bankers and financiers who speculated on subprime mortgages, turned the other way knowing that many mortgages were being signed - or robosigned - to individuals who could never pay.


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Maria Rodale: Who Is Your Farmer?

By Maria Rodale

This is a fundamental question that, in an ideal world, we'd all be able to answer.

Knowing your farmer is about understanding his or her practices, motivations, challenges and ideas, but it's also about transparency. Transparency in agriculture means better practices, and better practices results in better food. I truly believe that if all Americans were able to meet their farmers, we would have a much healthier population and society.

I am fortunate enough to have met many of the lovely farmers who provide the organic meats, dairy, and produce for my restaurant, GustOrganics. And a few weeks ago, I got an invitation from Organic Valley to meet organic dairy farmers Susan, Aaron, and David Hardy on their farm in Mohawk, NY.

I completely understand that most people don't have the chance to personally meet their farmers and visit their farms; therefore, I decided to ask the Hardy family some questions and share their answers here with you. --Alberto Gonzalez

Would you say you are a farmer or you work as one?

Susan: I am a farmer! Farming is our life, not just a job to us. We live with the land, we work with the land, we take care of the land, and it is in our souls. It is who we are. It has been wonderful to bring up our family on the farm and to raise our kids that way.

Why did you go organic?

David: There are a couple of reasons. When I was younger, I went to college and learned the conventional way of farming.  Then, in the mid-'80s I started reading this magazine called The New Farm (a Rodale Institute publication), and it opened my eyes to a whole new way of farming. In 1992, we bought this farm, and 1994 we started our new adventure as dairy farmers. We wanted to go the organic route because we didn't like chemicals and we didn't want herbicides--we like pasture. We particularly like the concept of rotational pasture because grazing is a more natural way of farming--it's more sustainable and better for the cows' health. If the soil and the grass are healthy, the cow, the milk, and the people are healthy. Going organic was something that came naturally.


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A Maine Farmer Speaks to Wall Street

By Julia Moskin
Jim Gerritsen lives a far piece from New York City, in a remote part of northern Maine that what was once known as the Potato Empire. But there he was on Sunday - at age 56 making his first trip to the city - to speak at the Farmers March on Wall Street.

Mr. Gerritsen, who grows potatoes, corn and wheat, is president of the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association, a national organization that supports (among other ideas) resistance to big agriculture's control of seeds for farming. The march, from the East Village to Zuccotti Park, was a co-production of Occupy Wall Street's food justice committee and Food Democracy Now.

I first met Mr. Gerritsen in 2006, when he and his wife, Megan, drove 13 hours to deliver ingredients for an all-potato dinner at a restaurant in Portland, Me. (And after dinner, they turned around and drove back, because they couldn't leave the farm for any longer.) For this trip, he flew, while Mrs. Gerritsen tended the farm.

In an interview on Monday as he prepared to get on the plane home, he explained why he had made the journey: "I have not spoken to one farmer who doesn't understand the message of Occupy Wall Street, the message that so many people keep saying is nebulous. It's very clear. Because of business and corporate participation in agriculture, farmers are losing their livelihoods." 


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