BUTTERFLY POWER

report by
Alan Moore
Battle for Seattle

Seattle was a gas!  No pun intended.

     We were on the block where Nike, Banana Republic and Planet Hollywood was.  Close by protesters were locked down in the middle of the street with Jill and beyond that was the police line.  Two blocks away police were busy gassing other protesters.  It really looked ominous and then the anarchists
all dressed in black with block hoods began banging on the windows at Nike.

   Many protesters asked them to stop and they retreated, at least for a while.  I followed their retreat and spoke to one youth that violence and breaking windows was being counterproductive and it could possibly instigate an attack by police on the peaceful protesters that separated them from the police lines.  I really didn't expect to change the outcome but I wanted him to think about things.  I told him a story about a similar situation that I witnessed during a Viet Nam protest in New York City.

   I was participating in a 5th Avenue Peace Parade march, my first in New York where I lived.  Everyone was peaceful but one marcher who I observed swearing at motorists, spitting on their cars, and tossing garbage cans into the street whenever he passed one.  I had on a suit for appearance sake.  I
didn't want it to appear that the marchers were only hippies and this guy was creating a very bad image for the protesters.  So I followed him for what seemed like an eternity before a police officer came up to apprehend him.  At that point I came closer and was just behind his left shoulder when I got the
shock of my life which turned into a great awakening.  This guy pulls out a government ID and is released to go on his disruptive way.  "You never know who is benefiting from a situation like this," I told the young anarchist. (I attended many peace marches against the Viet Nam War looking for similar
official provocateurs and was never disappointed.  It actually became a kind of hobby for me.)

   About ten minutes later they regrouped and finished breaking the windows.Its difficult making a point in the middle of a war zone and massive police overreaction and tear gassing.  After the windows were broken a line of peaceful protesters formed in front of the broken windows and protected the
buildings from being looted.

    Before leaving Seattle we talked with many police.  I asked them why there wasn't even a handful of police officers among the marchers that could have made a few selective arrests on the dozen or so anarchists that were doing all the damage.  Their answer was that they had orders to maintain
their formations and that they didn't want to get hurt.

    The Battle of Seattle was definitely worth witnessing.

May Peace Prevail on Earth!

Alan Moore / Member-Peace and Justice Commission/City of Berkeley
Butterfly Gardeners Assoc. & Project Chrysalis/Director and founder
Mendocino Coast Environmental Center
Global Renaissance Alliance in the San Francisco Bay Area/Circle leader
Email: Alan Moore
 

Jill's Battle in Seattle
 

Date:   12/09/1999
From: Jill Davie

    Hey butterfly, good to hear from you.  (I'm the corny one.)  Thanks for your story about the V.Nam rally and the provoker.  At the Nike corner, 6th and Pike, I stuck around until the teargas and concussion bombs started falling.  The sitters had just gotten up and packed up their platform and we all walked down Pike St. slowly, while the bombs exploded among us.  Though we could hardly breathe, nobody panicked.  I was so proud of those young people - the nonviolent ones, and so angry at the window bashers.  I got lots of pictures.

    Later, I had arranged to meet friends at a restaurant down on 1st St., and on my way there I saw a gang of young black boys.  There were two white fellows riding by on bikes and one of the boys ran out and shoved a biker over - hard.  Then he ran back to his gang.  I was nearby, still as a corn
cob, and yelled at them, "why did you do that?"  They stopped and looked at me - I walked up to them and asked again, "Why did you do that? Don't you know something new is going on here?"  They started threatening me, drew near, and then attacked me.  Many hands ripped my costume off, a few blows,
and someone took my bag.  They stopped and ran.  I gathered up my costume, (Minus lots of kernels) and took off after the one who had my bag, yelling at pedestrians, "stop that boy."  A few pedestrians took a lunge at him as he ran by, the chase continued, for a couple of blocks, me yelling all the way,
to where there were two policemen (not in riot gear, but with a phone).  One of the policemen made a concerted effort to nab him and he got away but dropped my bag.  Also, they called in and some cars with sirens were soon on their way.  Don't know if they caught any of the gang.  Probably not, they
ran and were probably soon looting the stores.

    Here is a message that I sent out to a couple of the biotech listservs.I tore into the anarchists and got some furious replies back - from real anarchists.

To those who were in Seattle, you are now an "epicenter" of activism in your area.  It is your task to educate the people within your realm of contact. Here is a sample letter-to-editor which you can use, revise, whatever, to send to all the newspapers in your region.  Continue to educate yourself via
the purefood.org and wtowatch.org websites and when you go to speak, take the purefood (OCA) petition and the no patents on life petition and get signatures.

The Battle in Seattle

   I was there all week, and I want people to know that there were around 75,000 nonviolent protesters and maybe 100 violent anarchists.  The anarchists stole the show, and we were very unhappy about that, but in the end, because of sheer numbers, good organization and persistence, our message
 did get heard.  We had our rallies in the symphony hall and the churches andthey were packed every time, with overflow crowds outside.  We had marches every day, organized by different groups, but coordinated among all the groups.  And who were the people in these rallies and marches?  This was the
magic of the moment.  There were labor unions, consumer groups, environmentalists, farmers' groups, citizens' rights groups, students and churches.  Coalitions have been formed that are uniting people from all over the world.  Seattle was just the beginning.

    It's the same old struggle: the rich and powerful Vs the poor and weak; tyranny Vs democracy.  It's another turning of the wheel, but now it has risen to new levels.  The multinational corporations are beyond the control of any nation, and are now moving to control the nations.  The profit margin
is, of course, the motivating factor.  All other considerations are being swept aside; labor standards, citizens' rights, farmers' issues, local and global ecologies; especially in poor countries.  Now, due to mergers, just a few corporations are controlling the world's life support systems....seeds, agri-chemicals, pharmaceuticals.  The World Trade Organization (WTO) is their vehicle for expansion of power.   But in Seattle, the turtles and the teamsters held hands, chanting:  "Hey Hey, Ho Ho, WTO has Got to Go!"  and the churches called for a year of jubilee for the poor countries.  I would be happy to speak to any non-anarchistic group that wants to hear more about what happened in Seattle and just WHY the WTO has Got to Go.

Message to anarchists: I was there, giving support to the nonviolent protesters who were occupying one of the intersections, waiting for the police to descend upon them.  Meanwhile you were bashing in the nearby windows.  You stupid jerks!  The bravery, heroism and power was with the nonviolent protesters.  Your behavior served only to diminish what they were doing.  The police were using all of their nasty tools on the nonviolent ones, who's discipline and persistence was terrific.  The contrast between police and protester was dramatic, but your actions gave the police an out -
and for many people - justification for their brutality.  Sitting there, waiting for the police to descend, refusing to engage in violence, being arrested, that was courageous and beautiful. Kudos to you, young people, you opened the door for all of us to regain a toehold on democracy and pride in
America.  Shame on you, anarchists, bragging about how you concealed yourselves among the others and avoided arrest.  You are cowardly, and disgustingly stupid.

       Jill Davies ~~~ River Care ~~~~
 
 

  Also, did you know that newsweek mentioned seeing butterflys (monarch) and BT corn.  Though that was probably Allan.  Refered to them as "kids".   Doesn't sound to me like you are a "kid" in the actual sense of the word.  Ofcourse I still act like one, hopefully that will never change and am still unfortunately a hopeless idealist - even now  at 40 something   God that is old, and me I never expected to live past 30, couldn't even envision me past 30.  I remeber sitting in grade school and the teacher talking about the year 2000 and then me counting the years to see if I could possibly still be alive then.  Then thinking that  though I'd be really old, I could possibly live to 2000.  And here it almost is and you know, I don't even feel old.  Life, she is crazy. peace today, tomorrow and into Y2K and yes, even beyond. kay

I am here representing the position of the Butterfly Gardeners Association, the Patch Adams Peace and Justice Center, the Mendocino Coast Environmental Center, the Bay Area Citizen Circles of the Global Renaissance Alliance, and a group that a recent Times Magazine article on the World Trade Organization
meeting in Seattle called "butterfly defenders."  Our group includes David Brower, John McConnell, Julia Butterfly, Neile Donald Walsch, Patch Adams, Dr Helen Caldicott, Wavy Gravy, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Elisabet Sahtouris, Barbara Marx Hubbard, David Seaborg and over two hundred organizations. I am
also representing those that can not speak for themselves, the butterflies of the world and the children of the future.  I am a biologist and was a graduate student in molecular biology at the time molecular engineering was in its infancy.

   Our government has been far too lax in approving and/or failing to regulate a whole array of socalled technological improvements that are mainly focused on improving the health of big corporations rather than the health and welfare of the American public.  Such practices has tainted our food, meat, poultry, and milk supply with antibiotics, growth hormones, and a whole host of recombinant genetic materials whose health effects and consequences were mainly ignored but are becoming increasinly understood While we may have allowed you to pollute and poison our food supply in the past, there is no
way to imagine that the American public will acquiesce when these same technologies threaten butterflies.

    When genetically altered crops such as BT corn were shown recently in a Cornell study to kill monarch butterfly caterpillars, it created a world-wide uproar that stopped the exportation of these transgenic seeds to the European Union and other countries around the world.  It was a deep rooted
archetypical love of butterflies that raised the consciousness of the world to realize the dangers that these multinationals corporations were threatening us with.  Even though bioengineered tinkering with the world's food supply had been debated for years as a threat to human health, it was not until this technology threatened butterflies that the world took action. I have long said that we, as human beings, are in denial of threats to our own health and well being, but will respond with more passion when things
such as butterflies, dolphins, whales, and ancient forests are threatened. There is a whole new nature oriented psychology that is at work here.

One news report on the issue from a Department of Agriculture scientist tried to downplay the threat by stating that Bt-corn alone could not push the monarchs over the edge.  What he failed to point out was that other Monsanto innovations just might.  Roundup ready crops pose a direct threat in that
they target milkweed, the monarch's host plant, as well as a whole spectrum of annual and perennial weeds for elimination.  Many of these weeds are host plants for other butterflies as well.  The impact from the combination of these two threats acting together to push the monarch and other butterflies
on the endangered list was deliberately ignored and misrepresented.

Dr. Chip Taylor, head of the University of Kansas entomology department and director of Monarch Watch, a group dedicated to the conservation of the celebrated butterflies, was cited as saying the new corn and soybean crops have the potential to ``raise hell with monarchs.''  Genetically engineered
crops, which are revolutionizing agriculture in the Midwest, could pose serious problems for monarch butterflies.

Dr. Len Wassenaar, an Environment Canada scientist in Saskatchewan, was citing as agreeing the new transgenic crops, which are being increasingly used from Nebraska to Pennsylvania, are something to be very concerned about. The story says that the scientists believe the new ``Round-up ready''
varieties of corn and soybeans, which have been engineered to withstand applications of the herbicide Round-up, could drastically reduce the amount of milkweed in farmers' fields. Milkweed, which is killed by Round-up, is the host plant that monarch caterpillars live on.

Dr. Wassenaar was quoted as saying, ``They may eventually allow farmers to completely eliminate milkweed from agricultural settings,'' adding that he and his colleagues have found about half the monarchs that winter in Mexico originate in the Midwest of the United States, where milkweed has long
proliferated in corn and agricultural fields. Dr. Taylor was cited as saying that equally worrying is a new variety of corn that has been genetically engineered to produce a toxin that is deadly to the larvae of butterflies and moths, adding, ``If the toxin is in the pollen the corn sheds, it would be avery significant biotoxin for anything that's within the shadow of that corn.''

   While we may have allowed these corporations and regulatory agencies that were supposed to protect us to ride rough shod over us in the past, this isno longer the case.  If it takes our love for butterflies to get us to come out of our cocoons and wake up to this issue, so be it!  The butterfly is the
symbol of transformation and what we are calling for is the transformation of the system that puts profits before the health of the American public and their environment.

May Peace Prevail on Earth!

Alan Moore / Member-Peace and Justice Commission/City of Berkeley
Butterfly Gardeners Assoc. & Project Chrysalis/Director and founder
Mendocino Coast Environmental Center
Global Renaissance Alliance in the San Francisco Bay Area/Circle leader

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