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Featured Action
Plant a Victory Garden!
- During World War I and World War II, the US government asked its citizens
to plant gardens in order to support the war effort. Millions of people
planted gardens. In 1943, Americans planted over 20 million Victory Gardens,
and the harvest accounted for nearly a third of all the vegetables consumed
in the country that year.
- Planting a Victory Garden today is a great way to relieve some of the
strain of the worsening recession while reducing your carbon footprint.
- Planting a Victory Garden reduces global warming pollution, gasoline
demand and the cost of food. Instead of traveling many miles on fossil
fuels from farm to table, your food would travel from your garden to
your table, saving you money and saving the planet!
Revive the Victory Garden
for a Victory Over Global Warming!
About the BTC Campaign
OCA's Breaking the Chains Campaign is focusing consumers' attention on how
each purchasing decision can lead to a safer, greener, and more equitable society.
Millions of green minded consumers around the world have broken the chains
of corporate control in their own lives, by supporting organic, Fair Made,
and locally produced products and businesses.
It is time for these individuals
to come together as a single voice to break the influence of big chains, corporate
agribusiness, and sweatshop driven economies the world over.
You can join the
Breaking the Chains network, and become a part of this powerful force for change,
by taking the Breaking
the Chains Pledge, by distributing materials downloaded from this page,
and by spreading the word to family, friends, neighbors, and colleagues.
Why Break the Chains?
- The quality and range of America's daily essentials is being dictated and
degraded by a powerful network of Brand Name Bullies and Big Box chains.
By "outsourcing" from sweatshops in the factories and fields, by cutting
corners on public health and the environment, and by sucking up billions
of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, business behemoths such as Wal-Mart, Monsanto,
Starbucks and others have constructed a vast global shopping mall of cheap
goods and conveniences, reinforced by a non-stop, 24/7 glut of multi-media
distractions.
Why Organic?
- Excluding the last few decades, organic agriculture has been the only form
of agriculture practiced on the planet. Under its simplest definition, organic
agriculture is farming without synthetic chemicals.
- After the Second World War, however, there was a movement towards mechanization
and homogenization of farming. Larger chemical and energy-intensive farms
spread across the landscape, utilizing billions of pounds of toxic pesticides,
chemical fertilizers, and animal drugs.
- Amidst this agricultural industrial revolution, several astute pioneers
of the organic movement emerged, heralding the dangers of ecological insensitivity
and calling for a return to the responsible farming methods of our past.
A leader of this group, Lady Eve Balfour, provides a simple description of
the counter-movement that emerged:
- The criteria for a sustainable agriculture can be summed up in one word-
permanence, which means adopting techniques that maintain soil fertility
indefinitely, that utilize, as far as possible, only renewable resources;
that do not grossly pollute the environment; and that foster biological activity
within the soil and throughout the cycles of all the involved food chains.
Why Buy Local or Regional?
- Today, much of our food, conventional and organic alike, is traveling literally
thousands of miles from farm to fork. Along the way, food loses its nutritional
value, burns fossil fuels, and contributes to global warming. Local foods provide
exceptional taste and freshness, strengthen our local economy, and support
endangered family farms.
Why Fair Made - Fairly Traded, Grown, Sewn,
or Manufactured?
- While local and organic local food, fiber and bodycare have made great strides
in recent years, family farmers and farmworkers continue to struggle to make
a living, sweatshops continue to proliferate in the fields and factories, and
multinational corporations are gradually conquering organic businesses.
A Declaration of Interdependence
Breaking The Chains: Global Call To Action
Dear Friends,
We, the undersigned, call on ethically responsible people
across the world to Break the Chains of self-destructive consumerism
by boycotting Wal-Mart and other national and international chain stores,
fast food restaurants, corporate coffeehouses, and products bearing the logos
of the multinational Brand Name Bullies.
Wal-Mart and the multinational chains
are colonizing our communities and our minds, North & South, East & West,
rural and urban, killing off small businesses, exploiting workers and farmers,
devastating the environment, and sowing a toxic culture of cheap goods and
social unaccountability. Unless we stop this Wal-Martization of our communities,
we can say goodbye to Fair Trade, family farms, independent businesses, workers
rights, and environmental sustainability.
From Manhattan to Mexico, from
China to Chile, farmers, consumers and independent businesses are resisting
the invasion of Wal-Mart and the Corporate Chain stores and building grassroots
power through local, green, and just commerce. The answer to Wal-Martization
and so-called "Free Trade" is ethical consumer purchasing and political
action--building and supporting local and community-based producers and businesses
through solidarity, collective purchasing power, and mutual aid. Fair Trade,
not Free Trade, must become the global norm, with organic and sustainable production
leading the way. Local and community control over essential goods and services
provides the only solid foundation for economic democracy, a sustainable
environment, and public health.
Help us mark the beginning of the end for
Wal-Mart and the Corporate Chains. Please join us as we step up the pace to
re-localize and green a just global economy. Consumers of the world unite!
We have nothing to lose but our chains!
In Solidarity,
- Ronnie Cummins, Organic
Consumers Association; Vandana Shiva, Navdanya
International;
Kevin Danaher, Global
Exchange;
Judy Wicks, White Dog
Cafe, Philadelphia;
Anna and Frances Moore Lappe, Small
Planet Institute;
Randy Hayes, International
Forum on Globalization;
Maude Barlow, Council
of Canadians;
Frente Civico (Mexico);
John Stauber, Center for
Media and Democracy;
Kenny Ausubel, Bioneers;
Lorette Picciano, Rural
Coalition / Coalicion Rural;
Robin Seydel, La Montanita
Coop, Santa Fe;
Deb Edrozo, Bike
Aid;
Jennifer Rockne, American
Independent Business Alliance