InterOccupy Call: F27 Global Day of Action to Occupy the Food Supply
(2/09/2012 / 7PM EST- 4PM PT / 60 registered callers)
Facilitator Comments/Agenda items marked with orange

*please remember this notes are not exact transcriptions of what people said, even when they are written in first person. they are an attempt to capture everything that was discussed. if you want to add any links or more information to what you said or how people can contact you please email owsfood@gmail.com

Welcome
Welcome remarks, explanation of how maestro conference works, intro of facilitator, note-taker and tech ass.
Facilitator: Seth from NY / Food Justice Group OWS
Tech Assistant: Jiovanni + Gina / Interoccupy
Note-taker: Paula from NY / Food Justice Group OWS

Introduction of participants (name, location / group)

  • Ryan:  San Francisco / Occupy SF Permaculture working group (formerly gardening working group) /organized the food bank of america action in SF’s Wall St./ working on occupy outdoor kitchen to feed occupation and also connecting occupiers with people with land /
  • Justin:  NY / Food Justice Group OWS
  • Kristin – NY / Occupy Big Food
  • Hillary – San Francisco / Occupy the Food System Oakland and Occupy Minneapolis + Rainforest Action Network / Contact: hillary@ran.org
  • Mary – Portland / Occupy Portland
  • Steve – Delaware / Occupy Delaware
  • Dusty – Philly / Occupy Vacant Lots (they have started cleaning vacant lots and preparing to grow food for spring summer)
  • Lisa S – Iowa / cofounder- codirector Food Democracy Now!
  • Alec – NY / Occupy Farms and Food Justice OWS
  • Winnie – NY / Sustainability OWS
  • Maureen – Oakland /Occupy Oakland and  Uhuru Foods (working with black self determination + garden work in east oakland + community kitchen serving the black community)
  • Kelly Green – Las Vegas / “i get around, im part of many groups” (working with slow food in las vegas) “this is my first occupy anything”
  • Ed– Arlington Virgina / Radical homemaker, blogger, active in  Occupy DC
  • Eloy – Denver, CO / putting together a non profit charity center for integrated health prevention. Working with public health + gardens + teaching nutrition. “just here for ideas”
  • Jacob – Toronto / Occupy Gardens Toronto / “We are planning an occupy seed exchange infront of the Toronto stock exchange.. we are excited to here what other are planning.”
  • Devika- Occupy the Food System Oakland
  • Will Betsy - Occupy Jacksonville – “we have started collecting seeds, planting and we have now seedlings”
  • Kelly –  Occupy Maine (?) “look forward to sharing every one’s ideas”
  • Sam –  Occupy Claremont “we want what all the the people here are trying to do”
  • Jackie – NY / Occupy Farms
  • Jen- NY / Food Justice OWS
  • Jen - Rainforest Action Network
  • Corbin – NY / Food Justice OWS
  • Ellen – San Francisco / started in Environmental Solidarity in NY now is co-creating a new environmental solidarity group in SF / interested in working in issues with fracking and the food supply
  • Monique – interested in food Justice + urban guerrilla tactics..not sure where ?
  • Emily - tuft university / doing research with lower income populations and intersection with food issues

Facilitator: Thanks to everyone we are very honored to have you all here and excited to what comes out of this. Lets move on with the Agenda. The first thing is the intro to f 27. Hillary from Occupy the Food Supply in Oakland, you have the mic.

Hi all! Im Hillary, during the day I work at Rainforest Action Network at night I’m with Occupy Oakland. We decided to make this call to action because we recognized the need to bring awareness to how interconnected  issues of corporate control, injustice with the environment, food justice issues , etc are. (Talk about globalized solidarity). One of the most powerful things of food justice is that there are so many of us doing amazing things already, so having a day of action enables us to see our collective numbers, see how many of us are out there, build collective solidarity. This allows us to strategically reach the scale that we need to to really have the power to really challenge corporate food power. This day of action is just a continuations of what we already do, and for some it opens the possibility  to “do the next thing”

Some ideas mentioned in relation to F27 (99% occupy the food supply/ ending corporate exploitation of the food system)

The reason me choose to do it on a week day (Monday Feb.27), is because a work day allows for actions that can disrupt “business as usual”. As well it gives people the weekend to be able to get prepared.

There is a document, call to action, that outlines some of the issues that we are all working with. She just mentioned a few (resist corporate control that has harmed people, climate, ecosystems/ reclaiming food systems by creating an alternative) but you can access the whole document here:

The main idea behind this day is showing that not only we need to be creating and alternative but we need to simultaneously resist corporate power that is holding us back. This is why the theme of the day is: Create/Resist (examples of create: growing your own garden, reclaiming vacant lots, supporting local markets, starting food justice commitee on your local GA, supporting food sovereignty..examples of resist: farmers resistance to monsanto, occupying cargill, joining efforts or creating an action for demanding gmo labeling, calling out corruption of the revolving door (FDA))

This call to action and this theme (crate/resist) should become whatever you all want it to be like a seedling it will grow and that is very exciting.

The website that RainForest Action network has created for the day is www.ran.org/ofs this page has a map to show actions being planned and share how they went, and resources for organizers.  (more detailed explanation of the website was asked to be shared later on in the agenda)
If you want to contact Hillary you can reach her at hillary@ran.org

Facilitator: Thanks Hillary this sounds very exciting. We are now moving to the next point in the Agenda: Actions. We ask that people share ideas on actions they have planned for F27.

Dusty! occupy Vacant lots philly – we have already selected some vacant lots, we are cleaning them out and are planning on doing some community gardening in spring. there are currently 40,000 vacant lots in Philly we have been doing research to select and reclaim lots that are publicly owned by the city.

Winnie – sustainability ows- sustainability supports everything that food justice ows will be doing, which they will talk about later on. in our last meeting we also came up with an idea: we will be contacting time’sup! bike pedal power people to coordinate a critical mass ride to through seed balls around vacant lots. it will be like a guerrilla gardening action.

Mary – occupy portland – i want to talk about how to find volunteers. it is something that is very difficult here in portland. the best way we have found is to have specific things that people can do.  i also want to talk about actively going around the presidency biotechnology working group as well as food companies that use gmo products. go after the house committee on agriculture, it is important that we fight so it has some not biotech interest pp on it. If you are interested you can go here: gmoreform.org. Also, I say we get behind the grassroots side with initiatives like  labelgmo.org, labeling will undercut the advantage gmo products have nationally

Maureen – oakland – as i mentioned before we will be organizing events and actions both f25 and f27. F25 will be an entire day of actions (including workshops on self determination, black and bown power in oakland, food and gardening) F27 – in the afternoon we will be working with alliance for the people’s food system.

Jen – food justice ows- we have been working in several ideas. some of them are: wheatpasting vacant lots. we will be  finding a lot that is really appropriate for this type of intervention and that it has a potential to become an urban garden and we will be using graphics to create a visual garden there that hopefully will inspire people and bring attention to land use.  the other ideas is campaign of grassroots labeling: going into a grocery chain we will chose a product and label it with the stickers we design to show that it contains gmos, we want to focus specially on products like soy milk that people choose because they think they are making a healthy choice but in reality they could be buying a product with gmos (exposing what is really behind). the stickers we are talking about will including a barcode (qr) that will link you to a website, or resource or image.

Ellen: occupy sf – im interested in issues with fracking and its connection to the  food system

Corbin- food justice ows — i just want to add a few things to what jen said before about our idea to do a “grassroots labeling campaign”. we want to make available the designs as templates so people can download them and do their own labeling autonomously. also we would launch this campaign on f27 but the idea is that it is an ongoing effort. on march 31st when the judge will decide whether or not to take the farmers vs monsanto case, we could do one focused on gmos.  but this can also be applied to a wide range of products, not only gmos,  that are marketed so people think they are making an ethical decision while buying this products but the reality .
is different. we had talked about including the bar code that people can snap a photo and then that could take them to a page with more info.

Emily –  i was in the solidarity rally for the farmers vs monsanto. i think that we could use this day (f27) as a way to publicise this case more. i’m very glad lisa from food democracy now! is on this call and will like to ask her if doing so would be an it be an unwise move.. i don’t want to start anything that might hurt the case .. but i do feel strongly we should use this day to bring more attention to this case. Perhaps having a petition so the judge knows how many people are backing this case and want her to hear the case to its fullest.

Lisa- food democracy now! (direct response) – it is a very important moment.. we have circulated a petition amongst our number we are over 100,000 signatures now that we got in just 10 days to show support, acknlowdgement and understanding of what farmers are dealing with and just the issues of gmo crops in general.. so we do have a petition that is available.. given the nature of this case.. and because we are plaintiffs….as a recommendation we want to make sure that the judge knows that this is not a political debate.. that this is something that the farmers are seeking judicial relief.. so we didn’t want it to be about a political argument and so our letter was a letter of support to the farmers. we all appreciate and are very grateful for what everyone is doing.

Mary- occupy portland- talked about issues with gmos

Kristin- occupy big food –  I like the sticker action idea.. Erika and I.. have discussed this as well.. will be very cool to be able to coordinate this nationally.. to make the most impact we should be putting those stickers in store nationwide.. this could build incredible momentum.

Carlos - occupy food – (activist/food warriosr/ working with occupy santa barbara) we have had a very cool group of people here … we have been using stickers for gmo labeling and have been posting those.. but we would love to see a unifying sticker that identifies occupy.. along with a twitter campaign…it would be really powerful if  we can start our own twitter facebook revolution with our own sticker campaign from where people can download a template and print their own labels.

Jacob – occupy gardens toronto-  we have been planning several garden gatherings.. we are working with permaculture, rooftop agriculture. This saturday we will have a worldpea expo: a celebration for space and food and art and solidarity. We are also planning to do for f27 a seed exchange or seed share in front of the stock exchange. WE want to encourage others to do other actions around the stock exchange in other cities. Seed exchanges can be very cool and symbolic and we can tie in both mosanto and food justice issues. We are excited to hear everyone elses ideas and hopefully we can collaborate.

Hillary – occupy food system oakland-  I want to share some ideas from some groups that couldn’t be in this call. occupy cal wants to do actions challenging bp… occupy the food system oakland, is looking into doing actions around gmos at level of the laboratory, where they are being created in addition to the labeling. we also want to expose cargill, they are sort of like monsanto’s evil twin// they keep low profile but they are resposnible for alot of food distribution their headquarters are in minneapolis (occupy minneapolis, organized a  citizen arrest of cargill). Citizen’s arrests are very effective as actions.

Lisa – food democracy now! –  I really appreciate what you are all doing. Here in Iowa, we do have some occupy momentum., but we are only 8 – 10. So when we go to occupations in NY or LA or SF, we are so inspired. i just wanted to say that. Dave, my partner and codirector of Food Democracy Now! and I want to offer all the support we can give to you. We are riding this wave right now and we are not there yet.. but we are going to change the planet.. and i feel so encouraged by the occupy movement in a way that i had never been before.. i want to thank you all and encourage you all to reach out to us if there is anyway that we can support your event. You can contact me at : lisa@fooddemocracynow.org

Eloy – denver –  so i just wanted to address this idea of guerrilla gardening .. which i think goes along with roof top gardens.. what i have been doing is working on the permaculture technique called hugelkultur to create soil, the reason why i bring it up si because here in denver the utility companies spend a lot of time clearing trees around power lines and a lot of those tress end up in the landfill, so we have been trying to make some connection with the utility companies.. to close the loop.. and we can usually get the wood chips and use them to create a garden.
i have a video, you an look it up on you tube, that shows step by step how to it. What this allows to do is to create a garden basic anywhere… i just wanted to go ahead and put that out  there,  it might be useful in places…

Kristin – occupy big food – for the gmo labeling campaign, we can also have other type of stickers, not only gmo, there are many brands, that appear to be small companies but are actually owned by big corporations… maybe we could have a few stickers exposing this.

It was consenced that the meeting would move into breakup groups to further discuss actions but because of technical difficulties break out groups didn’t work. Actions where discussed a little more in detail by the whole group.

GMO STICKERS

Corbin – food justice ows – i want to point two things. the first is that i second the idea of having multiple stickers, not only gmos. in terms of this being an on goign action we can possibly address issues of corporate consolidation, labor practices, deforestation and expose how this connect to food issues and choices. lets try to get different aspects of food fustice be part of this action. second point: with the gmo sticker, what would the barcode image link too? we had talked about a  link to a gmo free buying guide. we could also think of linking it to a certain campaign maybe a petition  on asking or demanding labeling or bringing attention to threat corporations and make it clear why citizens are taking autonomous actions to do that on behalf of the 99 % .

Kelly (direct response) – las vegas – perhaps a good idea is linking to center for food safety  they already have a shopping guide  to avoid gmo food. does anyone have any contacts with them? would be good to maybe bring them in because they already have lots of thins in regards to that.

Jen – food justice ows- if this is going to be open source action, it is important that people are labeling the correct products.. lets think of that and make sure that the information is really solid and available for people.

Will — occupy jacksonville – we here at occupy jacksonville, are very on with this action, the problem we would have is funding for the stickers.

Carlos – occupy food – like i said before i have been working with gmo labeling organization (label gmo? labelit?).. and we have been pretty aggressive on putting labels on food with gmo products, we have been posting this on our site, we have lists that will tell you every single product that has gmos..we can combine all these resources and make it available for people through a twitter campaign. we need to come up with a hash tag and a website that will have all the open source information. the smart scan code should link to a unifying image or page that would work as an umbrella for the project. if we do it right we would be able to beat the media. that barcode will direct all the information to a site.
we know that things are getting compartmentalized and information is being restricted.. so lets open source  information and bring it together wit a genuine creative force for this day of action.

Seed Exchange

Ryan – permaculture group occupy sf – when we created the food bank of america action, what we did was share an alternative. so this time we would create an alternative of having a seed bank disrupt business as usual in bank by  bringing in the community to share and trade seeds, this event raises consciousness on guerrilla gardening and food growing. we are also interested in creating a food bank to feed occupations.

Jacob – i encourage you all to  reach out to local seed companies and explore wheter or not there are already seed exchanges happenings in your city.. because people have been doing this for a long time, and we need to reach out to those people. * Anonymus just announced operation seed bomb (#OpSeedBomb)  that will be happening at end of march and beginning of april

Carlos – occupy food — we just had pretty massive seed exchange in santa barbara. bill mcdorman was here. we had a lot of resources about seeds and posted pretty aggressively, so there are those resources, what we will do is centralize them and repost them on our facebook.

Monique – is anyone working with food justice issues with immigrant farm workers? if so can you contact me? moniqueverhart@hotmail.com

Guerrilla Gardening

Occupy ft lauderdale – we are growing from seeds and are currently looking for public land and planting as much as possible… we have a big problem with pesticides here.

Will -occupy jacksonville – we have been experimenting with moss graffiti. i encourage every one to explore this.. very low impact creative beautiful option.

Carlos – occupy food– we have a bottom up song that anyone is welcome to use. we are very aggressive in guerrilla gardening here. i just wanted to point out that the bill and melinda gates foundation just made public a campaign that says: how will we feed the world… it is VERY crucial to occupy this agenda that they are using to push what they want into the conciousness of people. if everyone can please go to there pages, facebook, twitter, lets coopted it with comments.

Resistance

Hillary – occupy the food supply oakland – i was referring to resisting food corporations in general, not only monsanto. we have been targeting cargill because of what they have been doing with their palm oil. is anyone interested in doing their seed exchange while resisting cargill? they basically have offices and headquarters around the USA. We have been researching cargill and hedge funds. we are trying to see if pp are interested in protests that expose the funding that makes agribusiness possible.. ill be publishing all this info on our blog and on the website.

Mary – occupy portland- i love that their protesting cargill. i would like to do a research group about anti-competitive practices. in looking at the government anti competitive practices. if anyone is interested please contact me at pointgirl_3@yahoo.com.i also heard about cargill in food inc bc they are also involved with  slave trade in chocolate.

Facilitator: it looks like we are almost out of time, so if anyone wants to add anything please get on stack.

Corbin – food justie ows – i want to point out that April 17 is  international day of peasants’ struggle, it is important to tie this into occupy food/food justice struggle. Also we should keep May 1st in our radar if we are interested in carrying this on forward.

Mary– occupy portland- there is someone organizing occupy mosnanto day for sept 17 2012,  im not sure who is behind it.

Facilitator:  If there is one particular action that really resonates across the border, not that it will be the only one, but we should really try and carry that forward, having it be replicated all over will be very powerful. Also we don’t really have time for our last agenda item which was outreach, but i wanted to reiterate what jacob already pointed out before when we were discussing the seed exchange: it is important that we think about local groups that are working in areas of food justice and try to bring them in to the conversations, even more important that we involve ourselves with them. this will strengthen our efforts and help us build this critical mass that will help us get to what we are trying to accomplish. Also I want to remind everyone to  continue to reach out to as many occupations as possible to try and get them on board for f27. and moving onwards to spring. Thanks so much for participating in this call. The mic is now open.

Hillary – occupy food supple oakland -i encourage people that are participating to go to: www.ran.org/ofs there you can find a map to place the action you are planning also there is a resource page, tt also has some hashtag suggestions.
*there was some concerned raiced about website for oocupy call to action being hosted under rainforest action network.

The contact info for occupy food bank is  occupyff@gmail.com. We are trying to build a decentralized network to share food with each other.