Action Note: Blueprint for an Agitation and Pressure Group

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For example, let’s say a few people looking for a worthwhile campaign decided to commit to the abolition of glyphosate. What might such a group be like for starters?

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1. For any activism to be worthwhile it has to fight for the necessary goal. The uncompromising goal: The total abolition of glyphosate. Strategy and tactics would then follow from this goal. Partial steps could be acceptable, but only on the vector toward total abolition, never counter to it.

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What this group might do.

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2. Completely master all existing knowledge on glyphosate and keep up with it in real time as new knowledge is found. Group members would divide the research and reporting labor. Learn it all inside and out – cancer, birth defects, neurodisease, organ toxicity, gastrointestinal damage, the microbiome, autoimmune disease, allergenic maladies, the environmental devastation, soil, water, bees, monarchs, its agronomic failure (superweeds and other problems), how all glyphosate-tolerant GMOs and the foods which follow from them are suffused with glyphosate and AMPA residue, its malign effect on farming consolidation and farming economics, the way it distorts politics and economies, corporate lies, fraud, and secrecy, regulator dereliction, cover-ups, and lies, everything. This research is done always with an eye to applying all knowledge to the abolition fight.

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If the expertise and means are at hand, create knowledge ourselves. Original study and reporting.

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3. Original writing on all these main glyphosate topics. The writing is abolitionist analysis and a call to action.

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4. Relentless, disciplined publicity, online and where applicable through fliers etc. Assert selves, get the writings published as far and wide as possible, all under a clearly recognizable abolition banner.

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5. Planned group commentary at mainstream media comment threads and at other important sites. Stop letting the organized liars face only disorganized, often less-knowledgeable ad hoc opposition. Counterattack them with the fully erudite, philosophically coherent, organized, disciplined truth. Reply in a strong, organized way to corporate media pro-glyphosate propaganda and hatchet jobs on campaigners, scientists, and scientific bodies like the IARC.

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6. In real life start public discussion groups with monthly meetings, hold public meetings, give lectures and presentations.

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7. In all these publicity endeavors the three goals are: To educate the people about glyphosate; to force the idea of the need for abolition and how easily doable it is into the public consciousness, getting people to be aware of this idea and to remember it, whether they initially agree with it or not; and to convince people to agree with and support the abolition goal.

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8. Pressure campaigns on municipalities which use glyphosate to stop using it, and retailers to stop carrying it. Friends of the Earth and other campaign groups have shown what can be done through their campaigns to get retailers to pledge not to sell GM salmon or not to use GM potatoes and apples, or to stop using neonics on their products. Recently such cities as Barcelona and Edinburgh have responded to campaigns with pledges to phase out glyphosate use. Same for some retailers in France and Germany. Germany banned the surfactant POEA from glyphosate formulations sold within the country. (It’s still included in Roundup everywhere else.) If they can be driven to ban POEA, they can be driven to ban glyphosate as such.

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Abolitionists support these campaign goals in themselves, and a dedicated abolition group would also always use every such campaign as an occasion to publicize the need for total abolition.

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9. In all these endeavors, the group seeks as much as possible to speak directly to the people. When it speaks to establishment media it does so in a way calculated to be channeled as clearly to the general public as possible. While it welcomes the adherence or sympathy of any kind of professional or establishment type, it does so only on an abolitionist basis, never in terms of modifying itself to be more “respectable” or “acceptable” to any element of the establishment. This doesn’t mean chaos, but it means an organized, disciplined adherence to ecological philosophy and science, the abolitionist philosophy, and the abolitionist goal.

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So there’s a brief sketch of the kind of small, grassroots action group which could launch itself with minimal resources except for the time, energy, and commitment of its members. If it did its job well then growth and greater resources would follow, but it must never drift from its grassroots nature rooted in ecology, democracy, positive freedom, and abolitionism.

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This template could be applied for other kinds of abolitionist campaigns. It’s also a sketch toward the broader movement need for a fully ramified GMO and pesticide abolition organization, which I’ll write more about soon.

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