Washingtonians Fight for GMO Labeling

By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News

27 September 13

his November, voters in Washington State will decide whether or not people have the right to know if there are genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) in the food they buy when they vote on Initiative 522. Seattle is on the front lines of the GMO labeling front, after a similar ballot measure was defeated last year in California. Big agribusiness outspent the labeling advocates there 7 to 1, and the measure still came very close to passing.

"We starting early collecting signatures and talking to voters," said Elizabeth Larter, communications director for the "Yes on 522" campaign. "We were lucky to do this after California, because that campaign made GMO labeling a national issue. We're working hard on making Washingtonians more aware. People have been responding really well."

In their September 25 issue, the Seattle Times reported that the GMO labeling initiative is already shaping up to be one of the costliest ballot initiative fights in the state's history. The "No on 522" campaign has already raised almost $12 million from just six donors at the time of this writing. The No campaign's 2 other donors contributed $350 apiece. To contrast, the "Yes on 522" campaign has raised roughly $4 million from over 9,000 donors, at an average donation of $25 per person as opposed to the average donation of $2 million per person on the other side.

"They aren't in business for transparency. They're scared of people knowing what's in their food," Larter said. " he companies that oppose this initiative - Monsanto, Bayer, Dow Chemical, DuPont - they care more about making money than they do about people knowing what they're eating."

The Nutritional and Educational Labeling Act of 1990 established mandatory labels to show nutritional information on food products. Big Food opposed that measure just as they currently are opposing various GMO labeling measures in Oregon and Vermont, making the argument that the labels would be too confusing for consumers, or too costly to print, ending up costing consumers more money. Larter said history has proven the opposite to be true, and pointed out that labels telling consumers if a product is organic or locally-raised have the same purpose.

"They started labeling sodium and sugar content in 1990, and there's still Coca-Cola and Oreos. Those costs didn't go up, and people are still buying those products," Larter said. "Yes on 522 is simply trying to give consumers more information. It's a small label with a few words, and gives people more information on what they're buying at the grocery store. The No side is just trying to make a mountain out of a molehill."

While traveling through Olympia, Washington, I stopped at the state capitol and and asked Governor Jay Inslee's press liaison if the governor had made any public statements supporting or opposing Initiative 522. He refused to comment, but said that the governor would be briefed by staff later this week, and would make a statement after the briefing. As of the time of this writing, Gov. Inslee has remained silent. Republican governor Paul LePage in Maine and Democratic governor Daniel Malloy in Connecticut have already signed legislation mandating the labeling of genetically modified organisms. Oregon has a GMO labeling bill currently stuck in House committee.

"I would love for [Governor Inslee] to support this issue," said Larter, who worked on his campaign. "It's such a common-sense issue and it doesn't really make sense for him to still be silent about it."

Seattle has a radical history, and Washington has a reputation as one of the most progressive states in the country. The 1999 World Trade Organization Seattle conference was a staging ground for one of the most powerful nonviolent demonstrations against globalization, as well as a legendary standoff between Seattle Police and a black bloc. Larter said a defeat for the food justice movement in Washington would be very symbolic for the opposition, making it that much harder to campaign for it in the future.

"We're in a very unique position. Everyone is watching us to see what we'll do. There are other states like Vermont, whose senate is picking up a GMO labeling measure in January," Larter said. "New York is debating a bill. New Hampshire is considering it. But Washington is definitely a bit of a bellweather this year."

The ballots are going to be mailed out in 2 weeks, giving people 3 weeks to cast their vote and mail in their ballots before the deadline in November. Larter said that even though the measure was defeated in California last year, she's optimistic Washingtonians will make the right choice.

"California couldn't pass marriage legalization, or marijuana legalization, but Washington did both. We have very progressive voters in this state."

Carl Gibson, 26, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. You can contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , and follow him on twitter at @uncutCG.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

The Supreme Court's Key Role in Polarizing American Politics

By Garrett Epps, The Atlantic

27 September 13

he judiciary may appear the only functional branch of the federal government, but a string of recent rulings have contributed to the impending catastrophe on Capitol Hill.

By a strange coincidence, the Supreme Court's October Term may begin just as the rest of the government collapses.

The Court, however, will assemble with a swagger. Though the 5-4 cases - like United States v. Windsor (the DOMA case) and National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (the health-care case) garner the headlines - the Roberts Court is more harmonious than the rest of the government. Nearly half of its opinions last term were unanimous, the culmination of an upward trend from the last years of the Rehnquist Court. The justices may exchange sharp words in their opinions (and sarcastic looks on the bench), but they are great pals after hours, attending the opera or shooting large game animals in bipartisan packs. The Court is the branch that works.

So the justices will probably be feeling good as they put on their robes. But maybe they shouldn't be high-fiving behind the velvet curtain. In fact, they might want to look in the mirror and wonder what part they have played in the train wreck that is 21st-century American democracy. It's not a small one.

These reflections were spurred by a report in The New York Times that outside groups like the Club for Growth are using their massive wealth to threaten Republican members of Congress who dare hint at a compromise to avert shutdown and default. A number of House members know that the boat is about to go over the falls, but if they try to stop it, far-right individuals and groups will turn on them.

These members must avoid a primary challenge at any cost. But they don't need to worry about voter backlash, even if they wreck the economy and the nation's credit. That's because scientific gerrymandering of House districts has made them all but immune to defeat by a Democratic opponent. In the 2012 election nationwide, Democratic candidates won a plurality of the vote, 48.8 percent to 48.47. But clever districting produced a Republican majority of 234-201 - nearly 54 percent of the seats. In many districts, voters have no real choice.

Red-state Republican senators who fear popular disgust - from, say, Latinos reacting to their resistance to immigration reform - have another line of defense: 18 states have passed vote-suppression measures since 2011. In close elections, just keeping one or two percent of the voters at home can make all the difference. In other words, American democracy is breaking down. It's war to the knife between the parties.

In this spectacle of decay, the Court's hands aren't clean. Over the past two decades, a series of silly and impractical decisions, taken together, have helped clog the arteries of our political system. If that system suffers a catastrophic infarction next month, the Court must shoulder part of the blame.

Take polarization. Here is what may be the worst prophecy ever to appear in the United States Reports: "As for the case at hand, if properly managed by the District Court, it appears to us highly unlikely to occupy any substantial amount of petitioner's time." Those words appeared in Justice John Paul Stevens's opinion for the Court in the 1997 case of Clinton v. Jones, in which President Bill Clinton asked the Court to stay a sexual-harassment lawsuit brought against him by Paula Jones. He did not ask for dismissal, just a delay until after he left office, arguing that having to respond to civil actions would distract him from his duties. Pish-tush, replied the justices. The result was the first impeachment and trial of a sitting president in more than a century. No single event has done more to foul the atmosphere of today's politics.

Two years later, the five-justice conservative majority awarded the White House to George W. Bush, who systematically deepened political division in his years as president. "Get over it!" Justice Antonin Scalia likes to say when citizens question Bush v. Gore. Why should they? The nation hasn't gotten over Bush; we're not even close.

The gerrymander of 2010 flowed directly from a 2004 case where the Court considered Pennsylvania's carefully orchestrated, computer-driven redistricting - a partisan coup openly designed to maximize Republican gains. The same five who picked Bush threw the redistricting plaintiffs out of court. Scalia wrote for four of the five, "'Fairness' does not seem to us a judicially manageable standard."

As for the Court's role in dark money, I don't need to say much. Since Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2009, the Court has been at war with any effort to limit the political influence of the rich.

Finally, the ballot wars across the country owe much to the Court's crabbed concept of democracy. In the 2008 case of Crawford v. Marion Co. Election Board, the Court told Indiana to go full-speed-ahead in a partisan voter-ID law aimed at imaginary fraud. "The record contains no evidence of any such fraud actually occurring in Indiana at any time in its history," Stevens breezily wrote. But he upheld the law because some fraud had occurred in New York City - in 1868.

Then, in June, the five conservative justices decided that Southern racism is a thing of the past, and that Southern states must be allowed to impose new ballot regulations without the pre-clearance mandated by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The law had been reauthorized with near unanimity by a huge bipartisan majority and signed by George W. Bush. But the majority disagreed: "Our country has changed." As a result, Southern states are erecting powerful new obstacles between minority voters and the ballot.

So when we lament polarization, the declining respect for democracy, the bitterness of the national dialogue, the dominance of money in politics, and the life-and-death struggle over the right to vote, we are lamenting trends either born in or enabled by the Supreme Court.

The Court isn't the cause of our current crisis. But the justices are not immune from the zombie epidemic; indeed, the Court may actually be a carrier of the plague.