Flint Water Crisis: Citizens Fighting For Clean Water Against Poison Politics

Jack Olmsted (Videoblogging 206/GMO Free News): You seem like a pretty even-keeled guy. What gets you upset about this (Flint Water Crisis) or is it simply business as usual? You have been at it (journalist) for twenty years…haven’t you seen it all?

Curt Guyette: Never seen anything like this. Where people...especially children, pregnant women, being poisoned with LEAD just to save money. Then the extent to which they went to try to cover it up. To deny there was a problem. What they did in terms of testing to make it appear that LEAD levels were lower than they really were. In terms, of just the scope of the issue, and how serious the issue is.

How many people are affected...I've never been involved with a story like this at all.

Jack: What is the big story here? There's lots a little stories - pregnant women, kids, schools, the [water system] infrastructure, the lead pipes, the government [corruption], the emergency manager [law]. What is the big story here for you?

Curt: Well it's a combination of the things that you just talked about certainly the role of the emergency management in this and how emergency management created this crisis. Which was a totally created crisis that could have been avoided. So that's one thing.

Jack: Let's say you are going to write a book. What is the title of the book?

Curt: I would say, "It's Fighting The Poison" because the big story is how citizens like LeeAnne Walters and Lois Amaze, the “Concerned Pastors For Social Action”... all these different groups and people who created this “Coalition for Clean Water” in Flint and refused to accept the government claims that the water was safe and kept pushing and pushing and pushing until they eventually forced the governor to allow Flint to go back to the Detroit system is the story.

In that sense, it's a very inspiring story about how citizens were able to through incredible effort and perseverance do what was needed to create change.

Part of what they did was find allies. One of the allies that they found was Virginia Tech which did the testing. And they really did heroic work. They were working around the clock when the samples were collected. Another ally was the ACLU of Michigan. This is not a traditional ACLU kind of issue but because it stemmed from taking away democracy, we thought it was important to become involved. And it freed me up to spend a lot of time with helping to coordinate and conduct the tests with the citizens.

Then at the same time doing our own parallel investigation into how the city was able to claim LEAD was below the federal action level when Virginia Tech was finding it to be far above the action level.

They [City] were basically exploiting loopholes in the law that effectively skewed the test low. So, these are all parts... but the really inspiring and instructive thing to come out of this is how even when democracy is taken away from them, if people are determined and persevere, can win out against really incredible odds.

You have all the power of the state that was working against these people.

They were not getting any help from the local media who were writing some of these activists off as being hysterical or however else they might have characterized them and certainly not give them any credibility without investigating really what the government was claiming.


Flint Water Crisis Playlist

I Had To Fight With My Sons Doctor To Get Him Tested For Lead Poisoning!

A clip from the GMO Free News 1+hour interview session with mother LeeAnne Walters regarding the Flint Water Crisis and her children's health.

“It is too late for my (4-year old) son, but I will not stand by and let this happen to another innocent child in Flint.” LeeAnne Walters, MDEQ Mistakes and Deception Created the Flint Water Crisis

Transcript (edited for clarity)

LeeAnne Walters: I had to fight with my son's pediatrician to get the testing to begin with.

Jack Olmsted, Videoblogging 206/GMO Free News: What was the fight over?

LeeAnne: The letter they (City of Flint) gave us for the TTHMs (trihalomethanes). It said that if you have a compromised immune system you should talk to your doctor.

So, I went in and spoke with his pediatrician and the pediatrician wrote me a note saying that because of his compromised immune system that he couldn't consume the water.

Every time he would have contact with the water he would break out and these horrible, just horrific rashes. To the point where he had to have Benadryl before every bath because of how severely he was breaking out .

I took a video to show the doctor what his skin looked like before bath and after bath. You could actually see a water line across his stomach from the waist down from being submerged in the water. So. then the doctor wrote me a note saying that Gavin broke out....his skin breaks out every time he comes in contact with the water.

I went back in for our next visit, after the city decided, they wanted to start doing lead and copper tests because of the discoloration.

I walked in and the doctor just started going off on me about having an agenda. He had been in contact with the City. What he was being told by the City was completely different from what I was telling him. And he was NOT going to do anything in regards to my children....when it came to the water.

I said, "Whoa, Whoa, Whoa! Wait a second. Why are you talking to the City? I didn't give you permission for that". He had a bunch of documents in his hand. Everything that I tried to hand him he refused to take from me.

He refused to have my kids tested for lead and copper at this point.

About two weeks later, I got my lead/copper test back from the city. I got a frantic phone call from Mike Glasgow, with the water department, telling me to make sure that my kids were NOT drinking this water. If I was making juice, to make sure that I was not mixing their juice with this water. To make sure they were not consuming the water.

Because my lead level was at 104 ppb and they've never seen a lead level that high in the City and that is concerning for them because 15 ppb is the max according to the EPA.

At that point, I called the doctor's office, and said, “Hey, I just found out that I just had this test...it is at 104 ppb. I need lab slips for my kids today”.

I was told, "I'm sorry you need to bring that report down to us and we need to wait to hear from the City before we move forward."

So, I went down to the water department and got a copy... and went to the doctor’s office and said, "OK here it is. Give me my lab slips.....Now! Either you are going to order the lab slips today or you are going to give me a letter telling me why you're waiting to hear from the City before you treat my children”.

I was there for an hour and a half and then the city actually emailed my doctor and CC'd me into it...and when that happened... minutes later, I had the lab slips for my kids.

I couldn't figure out where they (City) played into this. Like why this was such a big deal?

I figured out that the emergency manager's assistant was actually (Jerry) Ambrose's assistant and that is the wife of my pediatrician. So, there's the link between the pediatrician and the City of Flint. When I made that information public, she got moved over....

Jack: Who got moved over?

The emergency manager's assistant.

Jack:. But, the doctor, there were no repercussions on the doctor? Is this normal procedure that the doctor confers with the City and waits for the City to have a seal of approval before they give parents laps slips?

LeeAnne: Absolutely not. Absolutely not.

We actually ended up going to a dermatologist outside of the City and that was the one that finally ran the tests for us. The test showed that my son had lead poisoning and anemia from the lead poisoning.

Jack: Is there anybody that is bringing this doctor to task for what he did at this point in time or do they pretend like it never happened?

LeeAnne: It's a work in progress. It is something that we are working on. It wasn't just my family...for the longest time the doctors in the City would tell you, "Yes, I believe that it's the water, but we are not allowed to put anything in writing." I can’t tell you how many people told us that.

Jack: Who told the doctors they were not allowed to put something in writing? Who is the grand authority over the doctors? I thought that their first responsibility was the care to their patients?

LeeAnne: That is the million dollar question. Nobody knows that...

Jack: They basically had a gag order specifically on doing lead tests?

LeeAnne: Actually, it was on people that were having any issues from the water.

Jack: It sounds almost like a conspiracy, How can you get doctors to agree to that?

LeeAnne: I don't no? I'm not one of those people. I'm one of those people that would not shut up. So, I can’t answer that for you.

Jack: It sounds like something out of a "B" movie that would never happen in real life. I mean we're talking about doctors. They are educated. They went to medical school. They have a practice. They are seeing patients and then they are given a directive, "you can't do this," and everybody complies. What are they going to do? Take away their medical license? There were zero doctors to stand up to this advisory?

LeeAnne: Well, part of the problem were the lies from the MDEQ and from the City of Flint on the water. And the fact that all the testing that was coming back from the EPA was saying that we were in compliance.

So, at this point we were considered crazy whack-jobs, we didn't know what we were talking about. We were trouble makers.

And you know everything was coming back normal.

At that point, it was...we have to prove that there is a problem. They are not listening to us and that is when I started talking with Miguel Del Toral at the EPA.



Flint Water Crisis YouTube Playlist

Hawaii and Oregon University Students Share Stories On Pesticide Drift

Last week, GMO Free News live streamed a panel discussion with University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa students of Ho'a O'ahu, a new media organization, that produced the multimedia story, "PESTICIDES on the North Shore" and University of Oregon students that produced the short documentary, "DRIFT: A COMMUNITY SEEKING JUSTICE"

Below are two video clips from the 44+ minute broadcast with transcripts.


Jessica Homrich: Our main target audience for our class when we first came up with this organization was eighteen to thirty year olds on Ho'a O'ahu. But, this story obviously goes above and beyond to nationwide. Though that was kind of one of the things that we wanted to do ideally was to bring the stories locally and then push them out nationally. So I think our investigative team did an exceptional job with doing that.

Rachel Linden, GMO Free News Host: Very professional and very aloha. I like it.

Ana Giliberti-Ippel: You were saying that you were hoping to find a word of an organic farmer in our story and unfortunately there are not that many organic farms here. You know a lot of them didn't want to come forward to talk to us because there's some sort of you know push for diversified agriculture that kind of brings all together and we are not being supported as much and we have found through our story that only one third of agricultural lands are actually being used for agriculture.


So there is a dilemma because there is a lot of development that wants to be taking place here in the North Shore and there's a lot of people supporting agriculture and they want to keep these lands agricultural lands. So its kind of like sure, we'd love to, thing is most of the people in the North Shore would love to have agriculture farm coming in, we have two-thirds of our land available for agriculture. Why isn't organic farming thriving in Hawaii. Its not.

Kathleen Hallal, GMO Free News Host: Young people start paying attention and putting out media like you're doing that other people can see. Maybe you can wake up other people in a very positive way. You know, keep this movement going.

Rachel Linden, GMO Free News: Tell Me what's good about "Drift"?

Hope Tejedas: Well, it's very similar to the story of the folks over in Hawaii. We spent about six months researching it...and advice to you guys....it's never over. You guys will be fighting this battle and it will consume your lives for a long, long time.

It's a rippling affect. You continue to get involved and hear more stories and hear more points-of-view and perspectives and it keeps opening doors to different opportunities and ways to get this information out to diverse communities and diverse people and audiences.

So, here in Oregon our main industry is the timber industry. Which involves clear-cutting our forests and replanting our little Doug firs and then spraying them with pesticides and herbicides for the first five years of growth. These portions of land are close to homes, schools, waterways, fish bearing streams. All the things we don't want herbicide and pesticides to be involved with.

So, we kind of went at it and combating or investigating The Oregon Forest Practice Act and found out that we have very, very weak laws here in Oregon.

It is very unfortunate because being Oregonians we are in love with our environment and in love with the outdoors. That's what we're proud of and as a state and to be young people....you know none of us who produced this film were journalists or in the journalism school.

But, we have different backgrounds in science, biology, environmental studies, humanities and we all came together and really focused on creating ethical media making and storytelling. So we really tried to not be biased. So, we began this project... our leader of the group was the graduate student, so her entire thesis was about this class. "Just Stories"...like justice stories.

It's like trying to combat these environmental justice issues through storytelling and media making.


So our film "Drift" is focused on the community of Gold Beach, Oregon, a coastal town.

After that, we decided to create a website and interviewed multiple women in Oregon who have been involved in this movement for many, many years including Carol Van Strum. So, here's our website.

We had the opportunity to interview all these very powerful women in this movement and we learned so much about how we can get involved and different stories and really learned how powerful stories can be.

Marla Waters: It has a way for us to learn more about what's going on in Oregon. I mean, you live in a place but you think it is this really progressive, really green state and then we come to find out that private timber industry it's still able to spray pesticides. Which is something the government banned in the seventies. But, how is that private timber lands are still able to do this. So, that is really what we are fighting. This really shouldn't be happening any more.

We are at a point, you know, with government that we should be able move pass these issues and that we should be able to protect our land and our community. It has been a crazy experience.

We never thought that "Drift" was going to have this much of an impact. We have been threatened. People have threatened to shut down "Drift" because we've had people come from private foresters saying "we want to shut you down."

So, that's been really crazy and you know that when they're paying attention, you know it's a big deal.

Our movie has been screened a lot of times across Oregon and whats really amazing that people are taking it upon themselves to show this story.

Hope: After we created "Drift" we decided that we wanted to hold public forums and panels. In each community that we went to, we had a panel with scientists, perspectives on the economic side, different nonprofit leaders and different just community leaders throughout Oregon to answer questions. We wanted to create a space to have the conversation about pesticides and herbicides and what is actually going on in our state.

Sometimes we would have a hundred people show up. Sometimes we would have fifty. Sometimes we would have 15 and we went to the rural communities that want this information and are lacking it because these are the timber communities... You know it's a half and half divide of them. Half are timber people and half of them are people who want a healthy community.

Over the summer, I think we had about 10 screenings and altogether probably around twenty and it is still a movement that we are really passionate about. We're presenting at a media conference next month and you know just the ripping effect like we said. We had no idea this was going to become what it has. But it's a really powerful moment that we are really proud and passionate to be involved with.

---

NOTE: Joel Edwards, Kennesaw State University, contributed to writing the transcripts.

Erin Brockovich Sent Us A Water Expert To Test The Flint River Water

The transcript is from above video clip.

Melissa Mays, "Water You Fighting For?": We started doing more research and we found out in February that there were really high levels of lead.

The EPA maximum is 15 parts per billion. There is one citizen that she had 397 parts-per-billion. We started pushing the testing and telling citizens - get your water tested. Please get your water tested.

More people were popping out with forty parts-per-billion thirty parts-per-million which is not safe.

As we were trying to contact the EPA, we found out that there's actually no safe level for lead exposure. http://water.epa.gov/lawsregs/rulesregs/sdwa/lcr/fs_consumer.cfm

So, they're trying to tell us it's fine. It's only small areas. You guys be fine.

Don't worry about the total trihalomethanes. Don't worry about the e.coli. Don't worry about the lead. It's safe.

On top of all this, soon after the actual switch, our water was brown yellow. Mine was blue and green because of the copper. Just disgusting. The smell either smelled like bleach or it smelled like an old stagnant pond or it smelled like dirt. Just horrible. And they're like it'll be fine. Just run your tap for a few minutes. It will be fine.

WNEM TV 5

The mayor kept saying, "I drink it everyday. It's perfectly fine."

And so people were getting upset.

Because we're told that you have to pay these ridiculously high rates for water that has such low quality.

We got a hold of Erin Brockovich and she sent a water expert out to help us, Bob Bowcock. He's been in water treatment for thirty years. He said it was a mess. He told them on Valentine's Day, we had a large March, and he told the city that we were out of compliance for the copper rule because they weren't doing the proper testing and we had no corrosion control. Which is unheard of.

So, we were yelling and screaming about this. They told us, "oh, you're just a crazy bunch of moms," no big deal.

We had our water tested and it came back with copper and lead. High copper and lead. I went ahead and had our blood tested and we found out my husband, myself and our three sons all had copper poisoning. So, we started working on the side effects and encouraging everyone to get tested.

Test your water. Test your blood. See a doctor.

Because the damage from lead poisoning is irreversible.

On top of it, its not just lead. We've got copper. We've got tin. We've got aluminum.

All neurotoxins. All extremely dangerous, when you introduce them to hot water.

Consuming them is bad.

But, also showering. Doing your dishes.

I have an environmental physician now and she said even the clothes you wear heavy metals are stored in the fabric and it rubs on your skin or if you sweat in them or your sheets at night you're going to absorb that.

So, it's a constant, it's a constant toxic danger to even be in your own home or in on your own clothes.

So, on top of the extremely high bills, we were buying bottled water.

Just to be able to cook. I we had a documentation come out to the house and it took us 12 bottles of water to make a pot of jambalaya.

So, the cost was ridiculous, especially since we have two puppies, a cat and three very active 11 12 and 17 year old sons that consume a lot of water.

So, there's a lot of people that actually lost their homes. They couldn't afford the water bill so they would put a lien on the property and home be foreclosed upon. So, right now there's a lawsuit for 21,000 people who lost their homes due to their water bills and the lien being placed on them.

Now, that part isn't illegal.

What is illegal is that, in 2011, our mayor raised our rates illegally 35%.

A judge just told them you have to roll back the rates.

You have to do this, this, this and they still haven't done it.

Our bill hasn't gone down and it's actually gone up. We received a bill for one week for one unit and it was a $193.88. For water that we weren't even using except basically to flush the toilet and to bath.

Darryl Ivy Interview: People Don't Realize That These Chemicals Are a Threat

Kathleen Hallal, GMO Free News: There are other people around and there's like a lady with the kid with the dog kind of in the stream and you guys are working and you're dumping the bucket that's been full of.... Darryl: I think it was atrazine being rinsed and filled in the stream and the truck's leaking all over the place right next to the stream and everyone knows what's going on and what's surprising to me is how casual everybody else is while handling these chemicals you know. Kathleen: We know about Tyrone Hayes and his findings of atrazine especially in streams you know changing the sexes of frogs and causing deformations and wreaking all kinds of havoc and how the company Syngenta hired private investigators to harass him and try to ruin his life and get him fired from Berkeley so we know the hazards of these chemicals because brave scientists like Evan (E.G. Vallianatos) and like Tyrone Hayes have been brave enough to speak out about these chemicals and you kind of had an idea, right? You're not feeling so well, you're around these chemicals and you're not feeling so well, but what's interesting is how other people who are handling them are so casual about it. She has her baby right near where they're putting it in the stream, and her dog. I think that at least for me what strikes me about your story is how... how many people don't realize that these chemicals are a threat. You were feeling it, you were seeing it, and you'd been to a talk prior to the job so you knew that something was going on that people needed to be aware of, so you started filming this. So why don't you talk a little bit about that? Were you the only person that knew that things were being mishandled? Darryl: No, everybody knows that. In some of my videos my coworker --the other driver-- you know, he also admits to being sprayed and getting welts on his arms. That was one of the reasons I discounted maybe that these chemicals are really, really bad because the other driver had been there for quite a bit longer. My pilot had been there for twenty years, been spraying and he was a really, really good guy and he didn't look blotchy, and he didn't look like he had any what we would all assume is somebody who's been dipped in a chemical toxic bucket.

Seneca Timber forestry representative, who is monitoring the job site, with her child and dog at the creek we used to get water and wash buckets. (See Video)

He seemed normal. And so I just assumed it was all normal. But, as far as the forester there with her child, that was really disheartening because I tell people I'm 45 years old. I'm done making babies but if these chemicals, in days, can put me into an emergency room with the hazmat team trying to burn my clothes and me in a decontamination unit getting zapped by this high powered water and then a special ventilation room as if I had ebola, you know, its really disheartening to think what would these chemicals do to a pregnant lady or developing child? And here I am driving Kathleen: Go back...you skipped a really interesting part of your story . So you eventually got very sick, and you were put in the hospital ? Darryl: Oh yes, seventeen days in. I could no longer function properly. I could not breathe right. I had lost so much sleep that I actually drove off... -- I have never done this in my life ever --- I fell asleep on a mountain road with thousands of gallons of chemicals in the back of my truck and have not admitted this to anybody up until right now. I was so tired--- so sleep-deprived and so messed up by the chemicals--- that I drove off the side of the road and just by blessing it was a big muddy little swampy area that I drove into and another truck was able to come back hook up to me, and pull me out. I poured bottles of water over my head and I realized Holy Moly! I can't even operate... I can't even even drive this truck on a forest road much less on a road where there's other people that I could run into, and it really started hit me hard. I had no choice but go to the hospital. I could not function anymore. And it was disgruntling, because normally I'm more resilient than the guy next to me. I always try to be the..you know in Alaska, we have a saying you know you don't have to be the fastest runner you just have to if a bear's chasing you you just have to run faster than the slower guy and I didn't want to be that guy. Kathleen: So you end up in the hospital and what's their reaction when they see you? Darryl: They made me stand outside the emergency room. They didn't even want me in the emergency room. And this is a testament to the two different sides of the stories that I heard from Beyond Toxics that night at the town hall meeting,and of course you know I've learned since then a lot of people would like to tell you these chemicals are very, very safe and then some of these people--- when you show up in the emergency room--- and they do research on the federal data sheets, make you stand outside the emergency room until they get their decontamination room ready and they strip you naked and take your clothes. They put them in hazmat buckets and I mean it goes to show that some people that are in the industry that are receiving financial monies will tell you that these chemicals are just fine and then a gentleman with Roseburg Fire Department his only job---his oath--- is to protect the public and not to protect the chem, not to say anything bad about the chemical---, His job was basically to protect people in that emergency room, to isolate me from them and so he knew what he was dealing with. And so I have to take sides with the public health officials that these chemicals are bad for you They treated me as if I just came out of an ebola situation and I thank them for it. They did a great job.

Darryl Ivy Interview: People Don't Realize That These Chemicals Are a Threat - YouTube:

Vlogger Darryl Ivy - Chemicals Gushing From Truck In Public Parking Lot

This is an edited transcript from the YouTube video below. The clip was taken from a 1+ hour live stream interview session with Darryl Ivy, a former truck driver with Apple Aviation, who vlogged getting repeatedly sprayed on the job with toxic chemicals. Due to tech issues on the Oct. 23rd panel discussion, GMO Free News will redo the live stream interview, Friday October 30 at 10am (PST). See video embed at the end of this blog post.
Kathleen Hallal, GMO Free News: Darryl would you say that what you saw was sort of common practice? It does sound like that company you were working for might have been the extreme example. Would you say that? Or would you say this sloppy handling of chemicals is kind of common?

Darryl Ivy: Well I have to say that...I can only say what happened to me obviously with Applebee. But, I can tell you right now. That I grew up thinking that the good guys wore white hats and the bad guys had black hats. We knew who people were.

When I handed these videos off and this evidence off to the Oregon Department of Transportation, the Department of Agriculture, OSHA, the FAA and to the EPA, I thought that I was done.

I'm not a whistle-blower.

I thought I did something that everybody else would do that has a moral compass.
I saw something that was really wrong, nobody was doing anything about it, and so I stopped and helped the guy beside the road while other cars pass by.

I went to these agencies and I handed them the evidence and they told me that basically that I'm a white elephant in the room and that I need to go away. At this point, to this day, right now going on six or seven months, the EPA and the FAA still has to weigh in on their findings on this.

So, when you asked, if I think it's common practice or not or Applebees is the lone wolf...?

I have to lean a little in the direction that, these companies are protected, and if they weren't protected, when I came forth with this, these agencies, these guys with the white hats, should have been out there doing their job and instead they wanted me to go away.

So, I have to lean in the direction that maybe this is common practice and maybe, maybe I'm not an isolated incident.

And yes maybe Applebee is extreme with their defective equipment the way they operate but due to the delay in action from the agencies....

Let's just say I felt like I was doing more verbal combat with these agencies than they were questioning me as a victim, actually, felt like I'd done something wrong, when I left these interviews, and I had to do a lot of soul-searching and questioning on what the heck I did I do wrong and I felt bad.

It took a month and a half, two months, for me to really, really get the fire burning in me that I didn't do anything wrong.

These are the guys that sprayed me.

They are the ones contaminating the creeks.


That truck right there....It was parked in Fred Meyer's parking lot (See Video) with Velpar DF in it. It causes irreversible permanent eye damage and I'm in Freddy Meyer's parking lot and it's dripping chemicals.

I know that five-year-old kids walk by trucks and vehicles and they rub their fingers down them and I was astounded.

I went out of the way to park my truck way, way, way in the butt end, of the parking lot at Fred Meyers just so a kid would not walk by and be blinded by what was dripping off of my truck. And it to me....

Rachel Linden, GMO Free News: Yeah, I gotta say, I have two kids. I've seen them to step their feet and splish splash in puddles. I've seen dogs licking things, little puddles of water, I cringe as a mother, thinking "oh my goodness" you know how, how could these leaky trucks and you had video of them leaking, leaking everywhere like a garden hose leaking off the truck. All these chemicals. ..

Darryl: Yep!

World Food Day Oct. 16-17 DC Rally and Route Information

A clip from our 1+ hour panel discussion with Alexis Bayden Mayer, political director for Organic Consumers Association (OCA).

Video Transcript:

Alexis: Ok so once that action was called and we knew that the DARK Act was at least in Congress. We did know how far it would go. The Truth in Labeling Coalition and Moms Across America decided to do a lobby day on Friday, Oct 16, and before the Saturday Oct 17 protest and so we've got a lot of events happening the weekend before the DARK Act gets a hearing in the Senate.

So, the timing couldn't be better.

It's really a wonderful time to come to DC. If you live in the DC area, if you can make a drive here in a day, there's no excuse not to be here and if perhaps you can take time away from your family, away from your job, to travel from a longer distance please come.

It is going to be lots of fun.

The only downside of that is Congress is actually in recess next week from the 13th to the 16th. So, its also a good idea if you're involved in your your local dominant parties politics, you might get invites to events your congresspersons, your senators, are going to be and whatever your politics, do get involved in the party because the party does control access to the politicians and you'll rarely know where the politicians are going to be unless you're part of the dominant party in your area.

If you want an opportunity to speak to a politician, a recess is actually really good time for that. So. The Columbus Day recess next week, if you're staying in town, hunt down the politicians in your area and try to speak to your Senator and even your Congressperson. Let them know that you know how they voted on HR 1599 and you're either very happy or very disappointed. So, it's a good time to reach out to the Senate and the Congress and Friday will be a really fun lobby day with the Truth in Labeling Coalition and Moms Across America.

Also on Friday, we're going to do a march on Friday afternoon. So, it'll be around rush hour and will be walking through downtown DC stopping at various points along the way. We're going to be going by the White House, going by the office of the US trade Representative, going by the Chamber of Commerce.

We didn't mention the Chamber of Commerce. But, its worse than the Grocery Manufacturers Association. Because it is all US businesses and they organized like the Farm Bureau down to the local level.

So, if you're any business person no matter how small or progressive, you probably have to be part of the Chamber of Commerce, like,  if you're a farmer and you want to get insurance for your farm, you probably have to be a member of the Farm Bureau.

So, the Chamber of Commerce is a very, very big powerful organization and they do the bidding of the largest corporations. It does not represent their small businesses which probably make up the majority of the members. It directly represents corporations like Monsanto.

We have direct evidence that since trade talks have been going on with Europe. the Chamber of Commerce has been putting pressure on European regulators not to move through very important consumer safety regulations related to dangerous pesticides, specifically endocrine disruptors.

The European Union has a new policy on endocrine disruptors that have not been put into place yet because of the US Chamber of Commerce blocking it. Because they say, "well you are going to have to deal with this new trade agreement that probably will preempt a lot of these regulations so you might as well not bother putting out this important public safety regulation at this point to protect kids from endocrine disruptors." So that is the type of thing that we know that the Chamber of Commerce is doing on a regular basis.

So, we are stopping by the Chamber of Commerce and then we're heading to the EPA and I hear that Monsanto the Grocery Manufacturers Association is perhaps on the way to the EPA from Afayette Park where these other locations are. And so, perhaps we'll stop by Monsanto's DC headquarters. The Grocery Manufacturers Association's DC headquarters their lobbying offices. Where they do their DARK Act strategy, no doubt, and then we're heading to the EPA for a rally at 5 p.m.

This I'm really excited about this because about once per month I get together with people who work at other non-profit in DC like Friends of the Earth, Center for Food Safety, Beyond Pesticides and we deliver petitions to the EPA about the pesticides that are killing pollinators and we've delivered literally millions of signatures on petitions to save the bees and the butterflies and EPA is not listening to us and of course there are serious human health problems associated with these pesticides as well.

Zen Honeycutt from Moms Across America will be speaking at the EPA protest talking specifically about glyphosate and why glyphosate needs to be ban and this is an opportune time.

The EPA was supposed to put out its new re-registration for glyphosate in July of this year and they haven't done it yet and I think that they have not done it yet because new information came out that glyphosate is probably causing cancer and the EPA can't sweep this under the rug so easily when the World Health Organization is making these announcements. It's all based on science that has already been published. Its just a new review of it. But, the EPA has always done its own reviews that always, you know, pushed individual papers under the rug and ignored the large body of evidence. But, now the World Health Organization saying very clearly, "yep, it is clear from the evidence that glyphosate is probably causing cancer."

So, obviously human health problems associated with glyphosate, cancer is only the tip of the iceberg and then of course glyphosate harms beef and the glyphosate GMOs Roundup Ready GMOs they are always coated with neonicotinoids, that is a product that's created by Bayer, but Monsanto is more than happy to coat all of its GMOs with neonicotinoids pesticides that we know kills bees and glyphosate is also destroying Monarch butterfly habitat.

Monarch butterfly habitat is the Milkweed. Milkweed has actually survived in the agricultural region of the mid-west the corridor between Mexico and Canada that the butterflies fly through every year.

But, since the advent of the Roundup Ready herbicides, Milkweed is very tough it can survive may be one dosage of herbicides per year. It can survive till up. It generally just gets kind of more distributed if it gets tilled up once a year but it cannot survive repeated doses of herbicides and when they created the Roundup Ready crops they weren't just using round up at the end of the growing season before planting to clear the field they've been spraying roundup continuously on the plant throughout the growing season.

So, our genetically modified Roundup Ready corn and our round-up ready soy is not only increasing our exposure to Roundup but it is increasing the amount of roundup in the environment. It's killed the milkweed and the introduction of Roundup Ready crops had been decimated and that has decimated the butterfly population more than 90 percent loss in the butterfly population since Roundup Ready crops were introduced.

So, this is, you know, we're about to lose a very beautiful iconic species and it is paralleled with the loss of our health and human population. So, you know the Monarch butterfly is worthy on its own, but I think it's also a symbol of the fragility of health in the human population as well.

Rachel Linden: I agree. They are the canary in the coal mine for our environment Hash tag #Epicfail.

Kathleen Hallal: But, I think the other thing too that it's trying to bubble up to the surface is how systematic their programs have been to buy scientists and buy universities and how it's being uncovered now that these big industries especially big Ag but also Pharma and other industries have bought off scientists to published papers for them and then they take these papers into their Representative or Senator and they say vote this way or approve this, you know, this looks greater you know this is a great study and we're finding out that it's sort of like a house of cards. They've just set it up and it hasn't really been studied and on all these problems you bring up deserve real independent scientific attention. We have to stop, as you say “sweeping it at all under the rug.”

Because it is growing and growing and how much longer are we going to ignore this?

Rachel: Biotech genetic engineering was built on lies. It came from lies. It only exists in the dark in the lies and we shine a light on it we talk about it and we bring attention to it...it cannot survive.

Kathleen: They are not telling the truth about scientific consensus. There is not scientific consensus. We know lots of preeminent scientists worldwide who are questioning this. How many scientists have signed the petition Alexis? I think it's like 800 scientists worldwide who are questioning the safety of GMOs and demanding more science.

We're not people who are not science based. We want more science. Please. We want stop pretending that there's not any science that shows harm from glyphosate, Roundup Ready crops, GMO crops, BT.

We want all the products explored further and we want to stop being basically force fed these foods. So, we need to stop the DARK Act. We need to have labeling now and we need more science now.

Two Georgia Dairy Farmers Spread Free Sewage Sludge Fertilizer And...

A clip from our 1+ hour interview with Dr. David Lewis, a former senior research microbiologist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research & Development.

Rachel Linden, GMO Free News: You wrote about your research being used in a lawsuit, and correct me if I get any of this wrong, by two families in Georgia that owned dairies that had previously used sewage sludge on their land and their cattle died. How many cattle and can you tell us the story of what happened with that?

Dr. David Lewis: In both cases it was two of the most productive dairy farms in the state of Georgia, had been in operation since the 1940's. Suddenly after the city of Augusta, Georgia talked these two farm families into spreading this free sewage sludge fertilizer on their farms their cattle started dying.
The cattle were getting infections, and in some cases rare infections the cattle didn't normally get. It's a story that I saw repeated across the country.

These toxic mixtures of heavy metals and toxic organic chemicals cause a depression of the immune system. We saw it in humans and animals.

And that's what was happening on these two dairy farms.

So, they were having to haul off the sick cows and replace them with healthy cows, but they couldn't keep up with it. It destroyed both dairy farms.

In the process, they hired expert veterinarians to come in and figure out what was going on. And what they found is that the liver and kidneys in these cattle were damaged from the cocktail of toxic organic chemicals and heavy metals that were in the sludge.

And what they discovered when they went back, they filed a lawsuit over this against the city, and one of the farmers filed a lawsuit against the USDA later on.

What they found in discovery is that, for one thing, in 1993, when the sewage treatment plant in Augusta and everywhere else, other sewage treatment plants, had to start following the EPA's 503 sludge rule for certain metals, that the historical data for over 20 years in Augusta look clean.

I mean it's amazing to look at the graph.

For decades they had high levels of cadmium in their sludge, high levels of molybdenum, high levels of other things, including organic things like chlordane, a banned pesticide. All of a sudden, all of that went away in February , but yet nothing was done to change anything at the waste treatment plant.

That happened at waste treatment plants across the country.

So we got into that and found out, and the plant manager at the waste treatment plant admitted when deposed under oath, he sat down at a computer when EPA came down to look at what was going on in Augusta and publish its own research paper on what was wrong with the cattle, when they arrived within a day or two, when EPA arrived in Augusta, Georgia, the plant manager in Augusta sat down and got rid of twenty years of data, created twenty --- created data on a computer to represent those years, that showed the heavy metals were far lower than they really were.

And all of the original data disappeared. They disappeared at the University of Georgia, they disappeared at the state EPD, the Environmental Protection Division, in Atlanta, they disappeared at the federal EPA, and in the city of Augusta.

All of these original valid data disappeared and they published these fake data.

So EPA tried to cover up what happened in Augusta, the lawsuit was filed over it, it got into federal court when they sued the USDA. The USDA pulled out their own paper they published saying the levels of metals were fine, there was no problem there.

The federal judge in that case, Anthony Alaimo, a judge that was famous for fighting civil rights issues in the prisons, in fact there's a book about him out. He was the first judge to look at any of this situation and rule on it, and he ruled that EPA's testimony and USDA's data were not reliable because it was based on fabricated data.

And Judge Alaimo devoted several pages of his thirty-page ruling to how EPA suppressed my own research on this and other sites.

So that's the story of the dairy farms.

The British science journal Nature covered Judge Alaimo's ruling in an editorial calling for EPA to investigate and report toxic chemicals in sewage sludge and published a two page news article on the fake data.

The interesting thing about this issue is we have the scientific community behind us that something's got to be done about this problem, unlike other things where the pharmaceutical industry and the chemical industry has gotten the upper hand ahead of us on issues where we've got the government suppressing research and data and putting out misinformation.

This is not one of those areas. We have the scientific community at large behind us to do something about this problem.

Resource Links:

• McElmurray v. U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, 535 F.Supp.2d 1318 (S.D. Ga., 2008) 
• A Summary of Court Records in Civil Actions Filed by David L. Lewis, Ph.D. , R.A. McElmurray, III and G. William Boyce Land Application of Processed Sewage Sludge (Biosolids) 1997-2011

Interview With Barbara Loe Fisher President Of The National Vaccine Information Center

WWGF News host Kathleen Hallal interviews Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), a non-profit charity she co-founded with parents of DPT vaccine injured children in 1982. For the past three decades, she has led a national, grassroots movement and public information campaign to institute vaccine safety reforms and informed consent protections in the public health system. NOTE: The above video is the complete 1 hour 7 minute session.

Time Code ListNOTE: The time code numbers below link to the highlight on the YouTube Page. The time code list is also on the YouTube page in comments. 

1:05 Barbara's background 
1:40 Came from a medical family
1:50 Never asked questions about vaccines, 23 doses of 7 vaccines
2:14 The 4th DPT Shot 
2:42 I walked into my sons room...
3:02 I called out his name...
3:08 How old was he?
3:44 It never occurred to me that he was unconscious 
3:54 My mother called me
4:06 You have to go wake him up
4:43 I didn't know what I know now...
5:26 He woke up the next day - he was very quite. We kind of forgot about it
6:02 My son is constantly sick...
6:16 I took him to the doctor...
6:42 Take him home and love him...
7:05 Eventually, he was diagnosed with minimal brain damage, multiple learning disabilities, ADD, dyslexia...  
7:43 My son today is 37 years old 
8:21 I see so many children who are much more severely damaged


8:28 The reason I continue to do this work...I've been doing this work for 33 years and we have seen this explosion of chronic disease and disability among our children
9:20 We can't leave off the research table...
9:50 The price tag our country is paying for these chronically ill individuals is astonishing
10:15 For 30 years, NVIC has been calling for the good science to be done
10:30 It is unfortunate that the government and the medical community is writing off the children who regress after vaccination as just coincidences, that there is not cause and effect...this is totally unacceptable, the mothers of this country have to quit our jobs and become full time care givers of our children...it is up to us to urge  these companies and the government to do better science.

Notes: Oral History of CLAIR PATTERSON

So I was studying that stuff. And Harrison said—he really

was a brilliant guy politically—”Oh, heck, the oil companies

should be interested in this.” “Why?” “Well, because if

Patterson is looking at these sediments, the isotopic composition

of the lead is a tracer that helps identify the stage, or the

age, to characterize the time or the type of sediment that you

have.” So he convinced the oil companies that they should

finance my research because it would assist them in identifying

oil deposits. You know, when you drill a core, you’re looking at

bands in a rock. And if you measure the lead isotopes in there,

it can give you more information than you had before. It could

help characterize the type of sediment, so it could help you

locate and identify oil deposits and reservoirs here and there.

So they started. It was a national consortium of oil companies

that had this big research fund where they doled it out to help

Bought The Movie - GMOs, Big Pharma, Vaccines

Bought Movie | Jeff Hays FilmBought Movie | Your Health Brought To You By Wall Street:

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Bought

The hidden story about vaccines, autism, drugs and food… Americas health has been BOUGHT. Your health, your family’s health. Now brought to you by Wall Street… “If you thought they hurt us with the banks, wait till you see what they’re doing to health care.” Vaccines. GMOs. Big Pharma. Three big, BIG, okay… HUGE topics in one film. Why? Why not 3 films, why put all this in one movie? Great question, 2 answers. 1st and most importantly: We need to band together. We need a mainstream film, not another radical movie that only interests the “already converted”. Over 5 million people supported Prop 37 in CA. Reportedly, over 2 million w...ndustrialized food, our insane vaccine expansion, and our love affair with pharmaceuticals- it’s the same villain. It’s a risky story to tell, but would be a tragedy to passively consent to with silence. There is something horribly wrong with health care today. Huge money, billions and billions of dollars flowing into the same pockets. Meanwhile, MD’s aren’t being allowed to actually practice the art of medicine and anyone who questions vaccination safety, pharmaceuticals, factory farms, etc. is ridiculed and belittled. Meanwhile, the billions keep flowing, carried on a river of pain and anguish. Huge corporations funded by individual misery, one broken life at a time. Three huge stories, each worthy of multiple films, but each brought together by one staggering fact: it’s the same villain. These three story lines converge on Wall Street, in a tale of corruption, greed and shocking lack of conscience.

Bought is a film about the issue of health being sold out from underneath individuals through big pharmaceutical companies (Big Pharma), dangerous vaccinations and a food supply chain contaminated by the use of GMO’s. This film has the support of some of the world’s most acclaimed experts in research, medicine, holistic care and natural health. Based upon the film’s trailer, it has been dubbed controversial by media outlets even though it focuses on educating the public and arming people globally with the truth and facts about Big Pharma, vaccines and the food supply.

Film backers believe each person has a right to be informed about the truth and empowered by the
facts in order to make educated decisions about their own health, food and medicine. Bought – a film about how Americans’ health, food and our children’s health have been sold out from underneath of us.

The History Of The GMO Awareness Group (GAG) of the North Olympic Peninsula

Photo Credit: Diane Urbani de laPaz, Peninsula Daily News

The GMO Awareness Group (GAG) of the North Olympic Peninsula was started in the spring of 2011 by Kia Armstrong (Photo) from Nash's Organic Produce (Video). She had organized several rallies previously, protesting GMOs and Monsanto. 

She made up small flyers and placed them in various businesses as well as sending invitations through email for the first meeting. I volunteered to be the facilitator of the group at that first meeting and another person offered to keep meeting notes.

We met at a regularly scheduled time every month, had an agenda (sent out ahead of each meeting) and stuck to a time frame. This is important to keep people engaged. We shared information and began to develop educational materials.

Our first event was the Lavender Farm Fair. By then we had created a tri-fold poster of information about GMOs, had printed educational materials, and gave away GMO shopping guides. We also held a bake sale to raise funds to pay for the materials we were giving away. We continued these efforts through Farm Day October 2013, sponsoring a booth at community events and outreach. We also participated in Millions Against Monsanto rallies twice a year. When the initiative was filed, we helped gather signatures. Efforts in 2013 continued to include education about GMOs as well as information about I-522.

A van load of folks went to Olympia for hearings of House and Senate bills.

We collected email addresses at events and used a listserv to keep the list private. We only shared information about GMOs and avoided requests for other subjects.

GAG also developed a mission statement. This helped to keep the group focused.Through a facilitated process, we identified our priorities which resulted in the formation of three sub-committees. 

They were a committee that collected and created educational materials, another that collected scientific research (peer reviewed and edited) and a legislative/legal committee. 

These functioned successfully for awhile and provided reports to the group. However, for various reasons people left, others joined and the groups gradually stopped meeting. We also had people available to speak to groups and wrote articles for newsletters of local natural foods markets.

NOTE: GAG is based in Clallam County that has a strong Republican lean and a large senior population. According to "Yes On 522" campaign exit polls, these two groups voted against I-522 in the 2013 election. Three Olympic Peninsula counties, Clallam, Jefferson and Kitsap, voted Yes On 522

What works:

1. EDUCATION, EDUCATION, EDUCATION! People on the peninsula didn't know anything about GMOs or had mis-information about them. Develop and distribute eye-catching, informative brochures and pamphlets. Here's what we used from (with permission from Nature's Path Organics). Let people know where to go if they want to learn more. Talk to them in person. Create interesting tri-fold posters. Then get out into the community to share the information. Hosting a booth at large events works well. We also created a food game, using packaged foods. People were asked to guess if the food contained GMOs or not. A "yes" or "no" sticker was on the bottom. Great learning tool!

2. Regular meetings, agendas and sticking to time limits.

3. Write articles for newsletters, letters to the editor and other media. 

4. Setting up a Facebook page. A website would be good too, but costs money. Other social media tools. 

5. The film series in Port Townsend was an excellent way to generate interest. People then could get involved. This was a highly successful tactic. 

What didn't work:

I think overall in the state, we had the cart before the horse. We had an initiative asking people to label something they knew nothing about, which neatly paved the way for a fear and intimidation strategy by the No campaign. People need information. The YES campaign didn't address any reason why we should know what is in our food.

Dr. Beverly Goldie

GMO Awareness Group, North Olympic Peninsula

Sequim, WA

WWGF News Hangout With Carin Chase, Yes On 522

Carin Chase, Director of Grassroots Constituencies for the Yes On 522 Campaign
(Twitter, YouTube) Mother: Senator Maralyn Chase Co-Chair Yes On 522 

Life Events
2012 Started Work at Edmonds School District Started Work at Seattle Central Community College
2008 Started Work at Chair, 32 Legislative District Democrats

Carin Chase has lived on Puget Sound all her life. Her first home was in Penn Cove on Whidbey Island where her father was stationed with the Navy.

Carin graduated from Roosevelt High School and the University of Washington with a BS in Zoology and is the single mother of a 12 year old .

Four generations of her family live together including her 94 year old grandmother. Carin is the 6th generation of her family to live in Washington and she is acutely aware of the importance of planning for long term sustainability for the 7th generation.

She is a proud member of SEIU 775NW and the Shoreline Chamber of Commerce. Carin is an active member of the Federation of Democratic Women, a Democratic feminist organization dedicated to ending the war on women and electing Democrats.

Carin is Chair of the 32nd District Democrats, a position she has held since 2008. “The District has a strong track record of electing progressive candidates to Olympia and to Congress who understand the effects of the economy on working families. I plan to continue that tradition.”

Favorite Quotations 
"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."- Mark Twain
"I always wondered why somebody didn't do something about that. And then I realized I was somebody." ~Actress, Lily Tomlin
All things are ready if our minds be so." --Shakespeare, Henry V: Act 4
When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. -Lao Tzu

 Interview Questions

Who

What

What do you enjoy about being the Director of Grassroots Constituencies for the Yes On 522 Campaign?
What is your job description?
What can volunteers do now?
What will you be doing between now and Oct. 18th voters receive their ballots in the mail?
What do you think about Governor Inslee's undecided stance on I-522?
What would you like to say to all the hard working WA volunteers?
What are some of your highlights of the campaign so far?

Do we need to push or are things going along as planned? 

What are the polling numbers?

How is the Yes On 522 campaign different from other political campaign that you have been involved in?
How is the Yes On 522 campaign the same as other campaigns?
How is the phone banking going? 

Gov. Inslee stated: “I have looked at the scientific literature, and it’s quite consistent to show that there’s no observable nutritional health impacts with GMO foods. And I think there’s an overwhelming amount of evidence in that regard."  I know the campaign is laser focused on the "Right To Know" message. But, how do you respond to voters concerns regarding science and GMO food health impacts?

GMO Fishy Tomato Car In Port Townsend - Videoblogging 206

GMO Fishy Tomato Car In Port Townsend - Videoblogging 206:


Today, at a press conference held in the parking lot of the Port Townsend Food Coop, Fishy Tomato Car driver Nancy Metcalf talked about the Fishy Fleet, GMOs, the misinformation campaign conducted by corporations in California last year to defeat a GMO labeling proposition, I-522, the Washington State initiative to label GMO foods that is on the November ballot and GMO health concerns.


Kathie Meyer, outreach coordinator for the Port Townsend Food Co-op, explains the research she has conducted on GMOs.
GMOs: The Trust Issue By Kathie Meyer


Rick Doherty, coordinator for the Jefferson County Grassroots Volunteers YES on I-522, explains a couple of the I-522 issues in the November election.


Lies, Dirty Tricks and $45 Million Kill GMO Labeling in California


Deceptive mailer mailed to California voters last year by Pro-GMO front group: Californians Vote Green

NOTE: The Fishy Tomato Car will return to Port Townsend on Friday, September 20 to promote the screening of the new film, "GMO OMG" at the 14th annual Port Townsend Film Festival (PTFF). The PT Coop is a co-sponsor of the PTFF screening of the film.


Charlie Bermant, Peninsula Daily News snaps a picture for his article: Port Townsend organic food outlets support GMO labeling