A new documentary, simply titled Asparagus!, gives us big reasons to care about this one little green stalk. The film focuses a magnifying glass on Oceana County, Michigan, the asparagus capital of the world. Over the course of 53 minutes, we meet many of the residents, family farmers, and farm workers for whom asparagus defines life.
The film brings to life our country’s local asparagus industry, while pulling in issues from the local food movement to free trade to the U.S. war on drugs to the struggle of family farmers in an increasing globalized world. As many documentaries do, Asparagus! sets up a David/Goliath conflict: Oceana County’s asparagus community finds itself under serious threat from foreboding forces of the U.S. government’s war on drugs.
In the early 1990s, the government started using U.S. tax dollars to pay Peruvian farmers to grow asparagus instead of coca. Since then, hundreds of American farms have gone out of business. Not only is imported asparagus cheaper, but it’s available year-round – because Peru’s agricultural conditions allow for year-round growth.
For Oceana County, the impact has been particularly damaging. Many family farms have been forced to shut down. The ones still holding on for dear life struggle to compete with cheap imported asparagus.
Unsurprisingly, the so-called war on drugs initiative has done nothing to curb cocaine production or distribution. As one farmer in the film says, it’s not like coca farmers stopped their growing and switched over to asparagus. And why would they, when the cocaine industry is such a lucrative one, mainly due to high demand from the U.S.?
The film also takes on free trade, depicting small farmers whose lives and livelihoods are being greatly impacted by U.S. foreign trade policy.
But the real appeal of the film is that it’s got heart. As we get to know Oceana’s residents and farmers, hear their stories, and learn about their idiosyncratic love for asparagus, it’s hard not to fall in love with the town. Which also makes it hard not to get onboard with their cause.
Asparagus!, the award-winning “stalk-umentary,” is part of the Media That Matters film festival, and was released in its full length on DVD last week. Watch the trailer here.
Earlier this month, many of us celebrated Record Store Day by visiting local record stores, or possibly mourning the loss of some of those stores. In the last decade, over 3,000 independent record stores have shut down across the country. A new documentary is looking at why record stores are losing their place in American life and what it all means for the music industry as a whole.
I Need That Record!: The Death (Or Possible Survival) of the Independent Record Store features such musical greats as Chris Frantz of the Talking Heads, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, and Ian Mackaye of Fugazi. They're joined by such experts as punk historian Legs McNeil and political theorist Noam Chomsky. Filmmaker Brendan Toller also interviews both small business owners and music label executives.
The film not only explores how technology and the Internet have changed the way we consume music -- with everything from mp3 players to iTunes to music blogs and MySpace to, yes, of course, illegal downloading. It also takes a hard look at how corporate giants like Wal-Mart and Best Buy are pushing small businesses out of the market, how corporate radio dictates what many of us listen to, and how major music labels "squash new ideas" by focusing on the bottom line.
From Toller's I Need That Record! blog:
The music industry has always been a unique marriage of art and commerce, but today commerce has proved to be the ultimate influence. Rather than develop great acts, embrace new technology, offer affordable products; the major labels are more concerned with turning the clocks back to preserve old business models- with only one thing in mind- THE BOTTOM LINE.
Keep the full paid expense accounts and 7 figure incomes. Keep suing fans. Keep shoving bland music down people's throats that will sell x amounts. Keep producing homogenized radio programs that play the same 50 songs. Keep supporting big box businesses that could care less about music; businesses that sell music below list price. Keep screwing the consumers and retailers who love and care about good captivating music. Squash new ideas, new innovations, and new possibilities as the future of recorded music, a commodity that supports the artist, vanishes.
I Need That Record! premiers May 3 (this Saturday) at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. All are welcome to attend the screening.
View the trailer here:
And check out a few more links here:
HeadCount evolved from an idea that politics and music are inherently intertwined, says co-chair Andy Bernstein. The grassroots group recognized that young people are already getting together and sharing ideas. They’re already organizing around things that they care about, and one of those things is music. It just made good sense to add civic engagement into the mix.
Last week, Concerts4Charity released A Call to Action, a documentary about how the live music community and grassroots organizers came together to form HeadCount, a voter registration group focused on registering young people at concerts and music festivals. Those involved with HeadCount include Phish, Bela Fleck, the Dave Mathews Band, and Bob Weir of The Grateful Dead -- who sits on the organization’s Board of Directors.
Bernstein says when he thinks about political organizing, he hears music. “I always picture music from the 1960s. Social movements to me are often tied to music,” he said. “[We’re] fully recognizing that Woodstock is not the Martin Luther King ‘I Have a Dream’ speech -- and that Jerry Garcia and Gandhi are not to be in the same sentence. I’m not trying to put music in a place it doesn’t deserve to be. But music is an imprint. It’s something that strikes people at a very core emotional level. Something that inspires people and also inspires change.”
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San Francisco is preparing for the Olympic torch relay to pass through the city in its only U.S. stop. Already, seven people have been arrested as protesters climbed up the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge to unfurl banners calling for a free Tibet, blogs Wiretap's Adrienne Maree Brown.
Thousands of protesters are expected to line the waterfront route to greet the torch with outrage, following scenes in London and Paris. Activists demonstrating for a free Tibet join those protesting China’s policies in Darfur and Burma.
But not everyone thinks the Olympics is the place for protest. According to a poll by the L.A.-based Kelton Research firm, many Americans think sports and politics should not intersect. Of 1,000 people surveyed, 90 percent said they agree with the statement that the Olympics and politics should be kept separate; 70 percent said they strongly agree with that statement.
By contrast, 21 percent of those polled said they support boycotting the Beijing Olympics. Slate’s Anne Applebaum gives a couple good reasons for why the Olympics are the perfect place for a protest.
For one thing, everyone is watching. Media from all over the world will be in Beijing to capture demonstrations. The Games haven’t even started and those demonstrations are at the center of pre-Olympic coverage.
For another, she argues, history has shown that boycotting sporting events can make a difference:
The boycott of South African athletes from international competitions was probably the single most effective weapon the international community ever deployed against the apartheid state. ("They didn't mind about the business sanctions," a South African friend once told me, "but they minded—they really, really minded—about the cricket.") The boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics helped undermine Soviet propaganda about the invasion of Afghanistan and unify the Western world against it. I don't know for certain, but I'm guessing that from the Soviet perspective, the Soviet bloc boycott of the Los Angeles Olympics four years later was successful, too. Presumably, it was intended to solidify Soviet elite opposition to the United States in the Reagan years, and presumably, it helped.
The modern Olympics were founded with the goal of promoting international peace. Having the games in China turns that idea on its head by supporting a government that hasn’t supported peace. The hypocrisy of it all also makes Beijing ripe for protest.
China's Tibet Accusations Continue
China’s repeated attacks on the Dalai Lama really isn’t doing much for its image. Last week, the notorious human rights offender accused the Tibetan Nobel Peace laureate of being a terrorist. Today, China said the Dalai Lama and his supporters are planning suicide attacks.
I swear, you’d think this stuff was straight out of The Onion.
From the AP:
The Tibetan government-in-exile swiftly denied the charge [regarding suicide attacks], and the Bush administration rushed to the Tibetan Buddhist leader's defense, calling him "a man of peace."
"There is absolutely no indication that he wants to do anything other than have a dialogue with China on how to discuss the serious issues there," State Department spokesman Tom Casey said.
The Chinese government saysthe Tibetan Buddhist leader’s master plan is to collude with Muslim terrorists to destabilize the country before the Olympics. The only thing that’s clear, though, is that China is doing a good job all on its own of destabilizing the country’s image before the Olympics.
China's claims about Tibetan violence continued this week. The Chinese Ministry of Public Security says it found an array of weapons in Lhasa, Tibet, including 176 guns, 13,013 bullets, 7,725 pounds of explosives, 19,000 sticks of dynamite and 350 knives.
But China’s ban on all foreign media makes it impossible to gauge whether there could be any truth to its claims that Dalai Lama supporters are planning violent attacks.
Violent Crackdown and Information Blackout in Tibet
The news from Tibet keeps getting worse. Well, what little news China will let us hear.
China has been able to block information out of Tibet. Thousands of Tibetans living in exile in India had relied on email and cell phone correspondence to obtain information about the protests in Tibet, and the violent Chinese crackdown that has followed. But now those emails and calls have stopped.
This comes after China banned foreign media last week.
At today's U.N. human rights forum, China was urged by the EU, the US, Australia, Canada and Switzerland to ease its military crackdown.
Meanwhile, China has actually had the gall to say what's needed in Tibetan monasteries is "patriotic education." We can only assume the Chinese government is talking about patriotism for China; because, as far as I can tell, fighting for rights and autonomy for Tibet is pretty patriotic if you're Tibetan.
In the midst of all of this there's a little event that's supposed to happen this summer. What is that? Oh yeah, THE OLYMPICS. Yes, the Olympics are still actually taking place in Beijing, despite its perpetration of egregious human rights violations. Awesome.
About 50 Tibetan exiles in India began a global torch relay of their own, which will end in Lhasa, Tibet on August 8, the first day of the 2008 Olympic Games. Tibetan exiles are planning their own mock Olympics from May 15-25 in Dharmsala, India to show the absurdity of it all.
National Day of Action Targets Fast Food Giant
First it was Taco Bell, then McDonalds, and now Burger King. We’re not talking about greasy fried things, we’re talking about poor working conditions for immigrant farmworkers.
Boycotts and protests by the Student/Farmworker Alliance got Taco Bell and McDonalds to buckle under the pressure and give back just a tiny fraction of profits to ensure decent working conditions for tomato farmworkers struggling with poverty.
Now it's Burger King's turn.
On March 31st, farmworkers, students, and activists from across the country come together to fight the good fight against the home of the whopper on the SFA National Day of Action. Farmworkers and students will hold local protests, screen films on Burger King and farmworker poverty, and collect petition signatures.
The SFA won victories with Yum Brands (in 2005) and McDonalds (in 2007), forcing the corporations to take responsibility for the poor working conditions of their tomato farmers. After years of boycotting, Taco Bell and McDonalds came to agreements with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to nearly double workers’ sub-poverty wages, pay a penny more per pound for Florida tomatoes, and enforce codes of conduct for agricultural suppliers.
But Burger King just won’t back down. The fast food monarch even joined with the tomato industry to launch a campaign threatening the deals made by McDonalds and Taco Bell.
Fortunately, the SFA won’t back down either.
On the SFA Day of Action, Burger King will learn just what farmworkers and students think of the big bad fast food chain. If the protests and boycotts don't eventually do the trick, the bad press hopefully will.
Visit SFA to find out how to get involved with National Day of Action events in your area or to find out how to organize your own events.
A couple weeks ago, I blogged that efforts to distribute food to those who need it most are being thwarted by militia groups. Well, it seems that things just keep getting worse.
Yesterday, U.N. officials said it will have to cut emergency food aid in half due to an increase in bandit attacks on its delivery convoys in Darfur. These attacks come at a time when the U.N. World Food Programme is already extremely low on money, reports Reuters.
"Our humanitarian air operation for aid workers," said U.N. Sudan representative Kenro Oshidari in a statement, "could be forced to stop flying because we have no money, at a time when our helicopters and aircraft are needed more than ever because of high insecurity on the roads."
Unless more funding arrives, the WFP will have to close its humanitarian air service by the end of March. That will affect over 8,000 aid workers carrying emergency supplies each month.
The decline in food supplies is especially worrisome because demand for food is high right now, in the time leading up to the May-October rainy season.
Golden Agri-Resources Ltd. is Indonesia’s largest palm oil plantation and the second largest in the world. CEO Franky Oesman Widjaja has announced a record year for the company, which would move net-profit to the billion-dollar range.
That’s terrible news for the large indigenous population affected by the environmental degradation brought by palm oil.
60 to 90 million indigenous people are left without land due to plantations’ clearing of forests. That information was released last month in “Losing Ground,” a report by environmental advocacy group Friends of the Earth and indigenous rights groups Sawit Watch and Life Mosaic.
The report found 513 conflicts over land between local villages and the palm oil industry. In some cases, seizure of land by the palm oil companies have lead to killings and kidnappings.
Public health problems are also arising because palm oil companies use pesticides and fertilizers found to pollute drinking water in some villages.
The problems don’t stop with the environment. Local economy is disrupted not only by land use issues, but also because palm oil is interfering in a once self-sufficient community.
These human rights issues are only likely to get worse as demand for biofuels increases. Palm oil is also apparently the most consumed edible oil in the world.
Five Years of Conflict in Darfur
Today marks the fifth-year anniversary of crisis in Darfur. The political conflict is said to have begun on February 26, 2003 with an attack by rebels in North Darfur—though this was by no means the first outbreak of ethnic violence. In five years, it seems that no progress has been made.
Over the past five years, about 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million have been displaced. 240,000 of those fled to the neighboring country of Chad, just one of the ways the conflict is affecting the whole region.
Darfur has elicited the world’s biggest relief operation—(there are currently 12,100 humanitarian aid workers on the ground)—but the situation has simply not improved. In May 2006, the government and one rebel group signed a peace deal, but two others refused, and new rebel factions have sprouted since then. The peace deal has done nothing to improve security in the state.
New bombings are adding to the chaos. The U.N. said this week that bombings are endangering thousands of lives and motivating more Darfurians to flee from their homes. Earlier this month, 12,000 more people fled to eastern Chad following two days of bombing by the Sudanese army and Janjaweed militias.
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Save the Children is trying to bring down the high infant mortality rate in Sierra Leone’s Kroo Bay slum through an internet campaign that’s creating a direct relationship between donor and recipient.
In Kroo Bay, about 10 million infants die each year from disease and hunger. Save the Children has created a system that lets people make donations by sending a simple text message.
By texting one of seven words—WATER, NUT, NET, BLANKET, JAB, THERM, SALTS—to the number 81819, donors can track exactly where their money is going. Those words correlate to water, peanut butter, mosquito nets, rehydration salts, and vaccinations. Each item has a predetermined cost, ranging from $2 to $10.
Save the Children has created a Kroo Bay campaign website to compile footage and stories from residents and aid workers living in the slum. Check out the campaign’s interactive websiodes.
Rat Invasion Leads to Near-Famine in Bangladesh
150,000 villagers face near-famine in Bangladesh’s remote Chitagong Hill Tracts—the hills along the southeastern border with India--reports the UN Development Programme. And it’s all because an invasion of rats is destroying their crops.
For the first time in 50 years, the country’s bamboo forests are blossoming. The forests provide food to the rat population, though, which has led them to multiply by about four times. Then the rats proceed to eat all crops in sight. The northeastern Mizoram state has been badly hit, with 75 percent of agricultural land being wiped out by the rats.
The local people say the last time this happen was in 1958, and that the bamboo blossom happens twice a century. The Mizoram government has declared the area a disaster zone.
In 2005, when a similar invasion hit Nicaragua, the UN sent hundreds of tons in emergency food aid. But food aid is a short-term solution, and some aid workers on the ground in Mizoram say the rats will likely continue their destruction for at least three more years.
Those Bangladeshis affected by the famine are beginning to get aid from relief agencies, but it isn't enough by any means. Last year when the invasion first broke out, the Indian government offered monetary incentives for farmers to kill rats--2 Rupees per rat killed. As the UNDP continues to grapple with this problem, it needs to take into account long-term agricultural solutions versus short-term quick-fixes.
Usually I stick to covering international human rights for this blog, but since it’s Super Tuesday, I figured I’d cross over a bit to domestic territory.
Recent developments in the debate over torture beg the question of whether any of the candidates will take on this issue with respect to the “war on terror.” CIA Director Michael Hayden said today that the CIA used waterboarding on three occasions soon after 9/11.
Waterboarding was used on senior al-Qaeda leaders Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and suspected 9/11 terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, said Hayden. The CIA says that the two al-Qaeda suspects accounted for one-fourth of human intelligence on al-Qaeda.
But that speaks to one of the key arguments against forms of torture such as waterboarding. As many trained interrogators have said, harsh interrogation techniques do not generate reliable intelligence. “What we end up doing,” former intelligence and special operations commander Ken Robinson said on the Diane Rheme Show back in October, “is we end up creating more generations of the very type of people we’re fighting when we start using the same techniques which we are accusing them of using on our people.”
The CIA admitted in December to destroying interrogation videos, prompting a Justice Department investigation. Those tapes would probably clear up any question that might remain about whether or not waterboarding is torture. If, you know, the Geneva Conventions’ classification isn’t good enough.
The situation for children in Kenya's Rift Valley is only getting worse as schools remain unable to open. Children make up almost half of the internally displaced people living in refugee camps in the Rift Valley. Many of these young refugees fear for their lives in the camps themselves.
In the Nakuru district, at least one child has reported sexual abuse since the camp was opened on December 30, around the date of the disputed election. Camp officials say they haven't been able to provide sufficient security. There's a lack of monitoring and screening of volunteers, and police are too busy dealing with high levels of violence in the area to provide protection.
Some believe the problem could be abated if the kids were able to start the new school year. Unfortunately, five public schools in the area have yet to open and none of the private schools have opened. A large number of teachers have left the Rift Valley to transfer to areas they feel safer, and parents are too concerned about safety in the schools to send their kids.
The Kenyan Ministry of Education along with UNICEF and other local partners are working on a "response and recovery" plan to open schools, even if they have to do that inside the refugee camps themselves.
As one camp teacher says, "We're trying to keep the children busy so they can have some stability."
Amidst a world of turmoil, Kenya's parliament opened today for the first time since the highly disputed presidential election. The first order of business was selecting a house speaker. In Parliament, the opposition party controls 99 seats, compared with President Mwai Kibaki's 43 (in a 222-seat parliament).
Today's vote is highly important, as the position of speaker is the third most powerful in the country. While this governmental shuffling takes place, a huge number of Kenyans are dealing with disaster, as more than 250,000 people have been displaced from their homes since the election.
This map from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies--with data current as of January 3rd--shows the proportion of people displaced from their homes in cities and districts.
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Sumedha Sood is a 2007 fellow in the Academy for Alternative Journalism at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. The former assistant editor at the Center for American Progress, she is a frequent contributor to WireTap and AlterNet.org.