Text Message (SMS) Polls and Voting, Audience Response System | Poll Everywhere

Text Message (SMS) Polls and Voting, Audience Response System | Poll Everywhere:

What is Poll Everywhere?

The fastest way to create stylish real-time experiences for events using mobile devices

Poll Everywhere replaces expensive proprietary audience response hardware with standard web technology. It's the easiest way to gather live responses in any venue: conferences, presentations, classrooms, radio, tv, print — anywhere. It can help you to raise money by letting people pledge via text messaging. And because it works internationally with texting, web, or Twitter, its simplicity and flexibility are earning rave reviews.

Official reports

Official reports: Olivier De Schutter | United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food
Official reports

Please look in ‘Areas of work’ in the main menu for the most updated lists of documents on each topic. 2012 ReadPDF 03/06/2012: "The right to an adequate diet: the agriculture-food-health nexus”, Report presented at the 19th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, also available in French, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic and Russian. ReadPDF 06/03/2012: "Guiding Principles on Human Rights Impact Assessments of Trade and Investment Agreements”, Report presented at the 19th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, also available in French, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic and Russian. ReadPDF 06/03/2012: "Mission to China", Report presented at the 19th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, also available in Chinese, French, and Spanish

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PEOPLES AGREEMENT - Climate Justice Now!

PEOPLES AGREEMENT - Climate Justice Now!:
Apr 26

World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth
April 22nd, Cochabamba, Bolivia

Today, our Mother Earth is wounded and the future of humanity is in danger.
If global warming increases by more than 2 degrees Celsius, a situation that the “Copenhagen Accord” could lead to, there is a 50% probability that the damages caused to our Mother Earth will be completely irreversible. Between 20% and 30% of species would be in danger of disappearing. Large extensions of forest would be affected, droughts and floods would affect different regions of the planet, deserts would expand, and the melting of the polar ice caps and the glaciers in the Andes and Himalayas would worsen. Many island states would disappear, and Africa would suffer an increase in temperature of more than 3 degrees Celsius. Likewise, the production of food would diminish in the world, causing catastrophic impact on the survival of inhabitants from vast regions in the planet, and the number of people in the world suffering from hunger would increase dramatically, a figure that already exceeds 1.02 billion people.
The corporations and governments of the so-called “developed” countries, in complicity with a segment of the scientific community, have led us to discuss climate change as a problem limited to the rise in temperature without questioning the cause, which is the capitalist system.
We confront the terminal crisis of a civilizing model that is patriarchal and based on the submission and destruction of human beings and nature that accelerated since the industrial revolution.

Owe Aku International Justice Project

Owe Aku International Justice Project: Owe Aku International Justice Project

Owe Aku International Justice Project Goal, Mission, Guiding Principles, Methods, Program Priorities

THE GOAL


The goal of Owe Aku International Justice Project is to secure human and environmental rights for and by Indigenous peoples. In the Lakota language, “owe aku” means “bring back the way.”


THE MISSION

The mission of Owe Aku International Justice Project (“IJP”) is to be a resource to traditional Indigenous leaders and communities who are preserving ancient Indigenous wisdom and a world view that honors and respects the earth and all her descendants That is, we seek to bring back the way.


GUIDING PRINCIPLES

1. In all of our efforts IJP recognizes that reliance upon Indigenous wisdom has resulted in the survival of Indigenous peoples against overwhelming odds while still managing to preserve and protect the last pristine environments on Earth. In the 21st century, we must be equally resilient and irrepressible

2. IJP relies upon our ancestors and elders because they have preserved generations of Indigenous knowledge, we receive our direction from leaders who stand on traditional cultural values, and we attempt to imitate the historical and contemporary courage demonstrated daily by our communities to whom we are always accountable.

3. IJP develops strategies for projects harnessing international human rights standards that compliment the efforts and address the concerns expressed from within Indigenous communities and nations. This is maintained by allegiance to identifiable Indigenous leaders and communities, in particular, we look to Owe Aku, a traditional cultural, social, environmental and educational organization of the Lakota Oyate (Sioux Nation).

4. IJPʼs mission, goal and principles are clearly defined. However, IJP does not set the agenda. Although we are active in all processes involving our efforts, we rely upon Indigenous leaders and communities to provide the framework for IRAPʼs activities and programs.


METHOD

•To provide logistical, organizational, and developmental assistance to traditional Indigenous leaders and communities, especially Owe Aku, Bring Back the Way,1 and its allies.

•Research, write and submit organizational plans and strategies for execution of projects and program work as requested by IJPʼs constituency.

•Preparation and submittal of reports on all projects and program work that meet Indigenous standards of accountability as well as those of supporters and funders. These reports are to include quantitative data as well as objective narratives of progress and/or challenges that have been encountered.

•Preparation of multimedia publications and presentations designed to inform, educate and recruit allies and support for projects and program work.

•Recruit and supervise specialized expertise and resources required for projects and program work.

•Facilitate and be present for projects and program work in a way that is consistent with individual responsibility and community accountability.


PROGRAM WORK PRIORITIES

•Support and advocacy on behalf of the Black Hills Sioux Nation Treaty Councilʼs International Court of Justice Project under the leadership of Chief Oliver Red Cloud and Alexander White Plume, Eyapaha.

•Owe Akuʼs Sacred Water Project protecting the Lakota Nation and people from uranium mining and its environmental devastation.

•Educational materials for Owe Akuʼs Unite to Fight with particular attention to international mechanisms for Indigneous peoples.


STAFF

Kent Lebsock, Coordinator

Professor Maivân Clech Lâm, Consultant on International Law and Relations


BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Alexander White Plume

Rosalie Little Thunder

Kent Lebsock


The Owe Aku International Justice Project (“IJP”) was formed by Lakota people who received direction from traditional leaders. IJP was launched to expand Owe Aku’s cultural, educational and environmental work to include international human rights as an additional level of advocacy to preserve the Lakota land-based way of life for future generations.


International human rights work provides us with the opportunity to join with other Indigenous nations and communities as well as allies around the world to ensure the preservation and revitalization of Lakota lifeways. These cultures have preserved wisdom that will sustain and protect Mother Earth, sacred water and all of the relatives upon which we rely for existence.


IJP’s specific mission is to educate all peoples about the critical value of our land-base and continue with strategies that utilize international human rights standards that recognize our sovereignty. Lakota sovereignty, an inherent human right of all peoples to determine their destiny, is also preserved in our treaties with the United States and its people. We have developed strategies that bring our traditional leaders into international forums, not just to those mechanisms assigned to Indigenous peoples, but all of the resources available. This is also a means to assert our inherent sovereignty and, as a result, bring well-needed encouragement and empowerment to the members of our communities within the Lakota nation.


We also carefully monitor and utilize international standards to advocate for issues such as health care concerns on the reservations to enforcing Lakota treaties and conserving treaty territory. As a result of this direct participation in the process by our leadership, with the technical support of IJP, new strategies are constantly examined, ensuring that evolving trends in international law from such places as the Organization of American States and the International Court of Justice are employed to maximize the benefit to our communities. Increasingly, human rights based strategies apply pressure on the United States and other countries resulting in more just and equitable resolutions of Indigenous issues. Many of these issues have been ignored for more than 500 years and working outside of a single domestic authority, historically committed to denying our rights, permits us to build a framework dedicated to the continuation of future generations within the wisdom and tradition of the Lakota way of life.


The Owe Aku International Justice Project is guided daily by traditional leaders and elders who speak our language and live our Lakota way of life. This approach has preserved our nation for 170 years against unyielding attempts to annihilate, assimilate and legislate us out of existence. Our goal is to do nothing more than continue the process left to us by our ancestors.


Owe Aku International Justice Project strives to secure human and environmental rights for and by Indigenous peoples. In the Lakota language, “owe aku” means “bring back the way.”

For more information please contact Kent Lebsock, director, oweakuinternational@me.com

Is Gluten Ruining Your Health

Well daaa... avoid all the fake white crap: GMO wheat, soy and sugar and 90% of the American illness will vanish!!! But don't tell your Dr, FDA, Big Pharm or Big Ag since this will end their high profits

Is Gluten Ruining Your Health (Or Are We Way Too Paranoid?)

Is Gluten Ruining Your Health (Or Are We Way Too Paranoid?) By Anneli Rufus, AlterNet Posted on March 6, 2012, Printed on March 6, 2012 Is gluten killing us or not? A $2 billion gluten-free food industry says yes. Science obligingly bolsters this boom with a raft of recent studies linking gluten consumption with health woes far worse than the cramps and diarrhea with which it is usually linked. Not that cramps and diarrhea are a walk in the park. Who could be grateful for having only those? But recent studies connect the consumption of gluten -- a protein found in wheat, barley and rye -- with autism, schizophrenia, lymphoma, lupus, multiple sclerosis, infertility, chronic numbness, severe balance problems and more. So even if you think you're not gluten-sensitive or that you don't have celiac disease, the best-known gluten-triggered disorder, gluten might still be ravaging your brain. A 2002 study affiliated with the UK's Royal Hallamshire Hospital linked gluten consumption with the loss of brain cells in the white matter of the cerebellum. A 2009 Duke University study followed the case of a schizophrenic woman who for decades had been assailed by hallucinatory skeletons and daily voices in her head. She had survived five suicide attempts. For this woman, the study reads, "a typical day's diet consisted of the following: egg and cheese sandwich, diet soda, water, pimento cheese, barbequed pork, chicken salad, hamburger helper, macaroni and cheese, and potatoes." In hopes that going gluten-free might help her, "she was instructed how to follow a dietary regimen consisting of unlimited meats and eggs, 4 ounces of hard cheese, 2 cups of salad vegetables, and 1 cup of low-carbohydrate vegetables per day" -- but no grains. Within a week, "she was feeling well, and noted an increase in energy." Three weeks hence, "she was no longer hearing voices or seeing skeletons. ... She had had no change in medication. The only change had been in her dietary intake." Sans gluten, "the abrupt resolution of longstanding schizophrenic symptoms was observed." Past studies cited decreased hospital admissions for schizophrenia in areas where bread consumption was reduced during World War II, as well as the rarity of schizophrenia on South Pacific islands where grains are scarce. A Penn State study published just last week in the journal Nutritional Neuroscience found that diets free of both gluten and the milk protein casein improved behavioral, social and physiological symptoms among children on the autism spectrum. Citing improvements in language production, eye contact, social responsiveness, request making and attention span, the study suggests strong links between autism and the gastrointestinal tract. But in a randomized, double-blinded 2010 University of Rochester study, autistic children on a gluten- and casein-free diet showed no improvements whatsoever. As with most health issues, it's impossible to find 100 percent consensus here. Meanwhile, some in the media -- including myself -- have hailed gluten, aka seitan, aka textured vegetable protein, as God's gift to vegetarians and vegans: a chewy, tasty, versatile, nutritious faux meat that you can make at home for pennies. Is gluten's cheap deliciousness -- and also that of most breads, cakes, cereals, pasta and crackers -- worth the risk, when researchers can't agree what that risk is, or to whom? Wheat allergies exist, but in fewer than 1 percent of children, according to a University of Maryland study published just last month -- "and most outgrow it by age five." Celiac disease, the autoimmune disorder in which gluten-triggered antibodies flatten structures lining the intestines, leading to diarrhea, malnutrition and other potentially lethal conditions, can be diagnosed only after extensive tests entailing biopsies. Affecting one in every 133 Americans, CD has increased fourfold in the last 50 years, according to the Maryland study, and is now "being diagnosed in people as old as 70 who have eaten gluten safely all their lives." So what are we to make of this? "We are observing another interesting phenomenon that is generating great confusion among healthcare professionals," reads the UM study. "The number of individuals embracing a gluten-free diet appears much higher than the projected number of celiac disease patients. ... It is now becoming clear that ... there are cases of gluten reactions in which neither allergic nor autoimmune mechanisms can be identified." This amorphous mass of cases is defined as non-celiac gluten sensitivity and it has become a new niche for food producers. The GF-products market grew by 28 percent from 2004 to 2011. But the Maryland study asks how many people go gluten-free for no medical reason at all -- e.g., because it seems trendy. "There are a number of misconceptions about the gluten-free diet: that it's a new version of the Atkins Diet, that it's a low- or no-carb diet, that it's a weight-loss diet, that it's a fad diet, that it's inherently healthier than a 'standard' diet," says Peter Bronski, founder of the blog, No Gluten, No Problem and coauthor of The Gluten-Free Edge, Artisanal Gluten-Free Cooking and Artisanal Gluten-Free Cupcakes. Although "people are jumping onto the gluten-free bandwagon for these or other reasons ... it's critically important to emphasize that for millions of Americans, the gluten-free diet is medically necessary. For them it is not a fad; it's a lifelong commitment." Bronski says he was "de facto diagnosed with celiac disease" in 2007: A holistic practitioner whom he told about the "terrible daily diarrhea, fatigue, and acute abdominal pain" that were wrecking his life advised him to go gluten-free. The result? "The seemingly miraculous resolution of symptoms." "I broke the rules in the sense that I never got formally tested for celiac disease. I felt so good on a gluten-free diet, and was so sick eating gluten, that I never went back to gluten in order to obtain positive test results," explains Bronski, who is also a champion triathlete and spokesperson for the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness. "Going gluten-free was an unbelievably and dramatically positive change. Within weeks I felt better than I had in years. I've described it as a deafening silence; the complete absence of debilitating symptoms was conspicuous." Bronski advocates "focusing on the positive," on what can be cooked and enjoyed while staying gluten-free. He also advocates stronger truth in labeling. "The FDA is finally making progress in this regard, after being stalled for years. We need a unified gluten-free standard, product labeling protocols, and ingredient and manufacturing transparency. When a manufacturer makes a GF claim on a product label or packaging, does 'gluten-free' mean zero gluten? Less than twenty parts per million? Some other standard? Has the product been tested to verify gluten levels? Has the product been manufactured in a dedicated facility? Or in a shared facility? Or on a shared production line?" He's in it for life. Others -- how many? -- will jump off this bandwagon when the next one pulls up. Anneli Rufus is the author of several books, most recently The Scavenger's Manifesto (Tarcher Press, 2009). Read more of Anneli's writings on scavenging at scavenging.wordpress.com. © 2012 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

Moyers: How Fear of Science Can Destroy Us | Personal Health | AlterNet

Moyers: How Fear of Science Can Destroy Us:
Parents are increasingly opting out of vaccinating their kids. Here's why that's dangerous for the world.

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Moyers: How Fear of Science Can Destroy Us By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, BillMoyers.com Posted on February 29, 2012, Printed on February 29, 2012 We haven’t even turned the page on the controversy over contraceptives, health care and religious freedom when another thorny one arises involving personal conscience and public health. A flurry of stories over the past few days coincided with seeing a movie that inspires more than passing interest in their subject. Steven Soderbergh’s film Contagion came out a few months ago and was inexplicably and completely frozen out of the Oscar nominations. But it is the most plausible experience of a global pandemic plague you’re likely to see until the real thing strikes. With outstanding performances from an ensemble cast that includes Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow and Laurence Fishburne, Contagion is stark, beautiful in its own terrifying way, and all-too-believable. The story tracks the swift progress of a deadly airborne virus from Hong Kong to Minneapolis and Tokyo to London -- from a handful of peanuts to a credit card to the cough of a stranger on a subway. Rarely does a film issue such an inescapable invitation to think: it could happen; that could be us. What would we do? With Contagion making such a powerful impression, for several days news articles seemed to keep popping up about contagious disease and the conflict between religious beliefs and immunization. There was nothing new about the basics: All fifty states require some specific vaccinations for kids, yet all of them grant exemptions for medical reasons – say, for a child with cancer. Almost all of them grant religious exemptions. And twenty states allow exemptions for personal, moral, or other beliefs. According to the February 15 edition of The Wall Street Journal, a number of pediatricians are dropping families from their practices when the parents refuse immunization for their kids. “In a study of Connecticut pediatricians published last year,” the paper reported, “some 30% of 133 doctors said they had asked a family to leave their practice for vaccine refusal, and a recent survey of 909 Midwestern pediatricians found that 21% reported discharging families for the same reason." They add: “By comparison, in 2001 and 2006 about 6% of physicians said they ‘routinely’ stopped working with families due to parents' continued vaccine refusal and 16% ‘sometimes’ dismissed them, according to surveys conducted then by the American Academy of Pediatrics.” But some parents still fear a link between vaccinations and autism, a possibility science has largely debunked. Some parents just want to be in charge of what’s put into their children’s bodies, as one West Virginia politician puts it. And some parents just don’t trust science, period -- a few have even been known to fake religion to avoid vaccinating their kids. So there are many loopholes. But now seven states are considering legislation to make it even easier for mothers and fathers to spare their children from vaccinations, especially on religious grounds. In Oregon, according to a story by Jennifer Anderson in The Portland Tribune, thenumber of kindergartners with religious exemptions is up from 3.7 percent to 5.6 percent in just four years, and continuing to rise. This has public health officials clicking their calculators and keeping their eye on what’s called “herd immunity.” A certain number of any population group needs to have been vaccinated -- 80% for most diseases, 92 percent for whooping cough – to maintain the ability of the whole population -- “the herd” -- to resist the spread of a disease. Ms. Anderson offers the example of what used to be called “the German measles” – rubella. All it takes are five unvaccinated kids in a class of 25 for the herd immunity to break down, creating an opportunity for the disease to spread to younger siblings and other medically vulnerable people who can’t be vaccinated. If you were traveling to Europe between 2009 and 2011, you may remember warnings about the huge outbreak of measles there, brought on by a failure “to vaccinate susceptible populations.” Here in the United States, several recent outbreaks of measles have been traced to pockets of unvaccinated children in states that allow personal belief exemptions. The Reuters news service recently reported 13 confirmed cases of measles in central Indiana. Two of them were people who showed up to party two days before the Super Bowl in Indianapolis. Patriots and Giants fans back east were alerted. So far, no news is good news. But this is serious business, made more so by complacency. Older generations remember when measles killed up to 500 people a year before we started vaccinating against them in 1963. The great flu pandemic of 1918 killed ten times more Americans than died in the Great World War that ended that year and took the lives of as many as forty million globally. Our generation was also stalked by small pox, polio, and whooping cough before there were vaccinations. In a country where few remember those diseases, it’s easy to think, “What’s to worry?” But as the movie Contagion so forcefully and hauntingly reminds us, the earth is now flat. Seven billion people live on it, and our human herd moves on a conveyer belt of perpetual mobility, so that a virus can travel as swiftly as a voice from one cell phone to another. When and if a contagion strikes, we can’t count on divine intervention to spare us. That’s when you want a darn good scientist in a research lab. We’ll need all the help we can get from knowledge and her offspring. Veteran journalist Bill Moyers is the host of the show “Moyers & Company.” More at www.billmoyers.com. Michael Winship is senior writing fellow at Demos and a senior writer of Moyers & Company, airing on public television. © 2012 BillMoyers.com All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/154342/

Radically Changing How We Eat

Alt_News : Message: Fw: Radically Changing How We Eat | How 2011 Changed Us Forever | 9 Laws that Keep Cities from Going Green: We Need to Radically Change the Way We Eat

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Big Food Must Go: Why We Need to Radically Change the Way We Eat By Christopher D. Cook, AlterNet Posted on February 26, 2012, Printed on February 27, 2012 http://www.alternet.org/story/154311/big_food_must_go%3A_why_we_need_to_radically_change_the_way_we_eat Editor's note: Find Christopher D. Cook's book, Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis, here. It is no longer news that a few powerful corporations have literally occupied the vast majority of human sustenance. The situation is perilous: nearly all of human food production, seeds, food processing and sales, is run by a handful of for-profit firms which, like any capitalist enterprise, function to maximize profit and gain ever-greater market share and control. The question has become: What do we do about this disastrous alignment of pure profit in something so basic and fundamental to human survival? It is time -- now, not next year -- to de-occupy Walmart. And Archer Daniels Midland. And Tyson Foods. And Monsanto. And Cargill. And Kraft Foods. And the other large corporations that decide what ends up on our plates. Take all our money out, public and personal, from our shopping dollars to school district lunch contracts to the corporate subsidies that uphold these firms' grip on our food supply, and invest it in a new system that's economically diverse and ecologically sustainable. These corporations' stranglehold over food has wreaked havoc on the environment, our health, farmers, workers, and our very future. It is time for an end to Big Food, and a societal shift to something radically different. We all deserve a future where what we eat feeds community and land, instead of eroding soils, polluting water and air, and tossing away small farmers and immigrant workers as if they were balance sheet losers. "Occupying the food system" has emerged as a rallying cry as activists and movements across the country, from Willie Nelson to more than 60 Occupy groups are turning up the heat on "big food" in nationwide actions today. Across the US, online and offline, thousands will be protesting icons of corporate control over food such as Monsanto and Cargill, and literally occupying vacant lots and tilling long-ignored soils in a mass-scale rejuvenation of community-led food production. (Find out more about the day of action here.) "We want to ignite a robust conversation about corporate control of our food supply," says Laurel Sutherlin, communications manager for Rainforest Action Network, a lead organizer in this growing coalition of food system occupiers. "Occupy has opened a national dialogue about inequality and the dangers of surrendering our basic life-support systems over to corporate control." The idea that food ought to be spared from the all-consuming machinery of corporate control has gained wide currency, but what does it mean to "occupy" and revamp our food system? Apart from our desire for local heirloom produce and artisanal cheeses, or to save the family farm, what's wrong with a few corporations controlling our food supply? "Occupying the food system is about taking it back from the corporations for the communities and for the people," says Erin Middleton of the California Food and Justice Coalition. "Access to good, healthy, affordable food is a basic human right that has been interfered with in the current capitalistic food system." Beyond any aesthetic concerns about local versus multinational, or slow food versus fast food, the well-documented reality is that Big Food has attained phenomenal and destructive power over what we eat -- our diets, our health and the planet. Consider a few quick facts: Four corporations, led by Walmart, control more than half of grocery sales. Walmart alone gets more than one quarter of every grocery dollar spent in the U.S. Three companies -- Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta -- own 47 percent of the world's seeds. And they own 65 percent of the global proprietary maize market. Nearly every major commodity -- wheat, corn, soy -- is controlled by just four corporations. Just four corporations control more than 80 percent of all our meat supply. According to USDA statistics, America loses more than 17,000 farmers a year -- one every half an hour. This corporate occupation of our food isn't just unfair and wrong; it's impractical and destructive. It's ruining farmers, the land and our future food supply. This Big Food system produces an astounding 1.3 billion tons of animal waste every year. It sprays half a million tons of toxic pesticides on our food each year. We are literally eating oil, as author Rick Manning has put it: annually 400 gallons of fossil fuel per person, 100 billion gallons a year as a nation. Rivers and streams across America are polluted by this industrial agriculture, which is now a major contributor to climate chaos -- and we're all paying for it. But at least these corporations feed the world, right? Wrong. Worldwide, more than 850 million people go hungry every day. In the U.S., 48 million people, including 16 million children, do not have a reliable, secure food supply. Twenty percent of families with children are food-insecure. Why all this hunger amid a global food bounty in which UN Food and Agriculture Organization data show we have far more than enough to feed everyone? Poverty. Unemployment. Underemployment. Here in the U.S., stagnant wages have combined with rising costs for everything to make simply feeding oneself a major economic stressor. We cannot separate "food issues" from economic justice issues. And the corporations that control our food supply are directly to blame. But at least McDonald's, Walmart, Safeway, et al. offer us "cheap" food, right? Wrong again. We pay more than $100 billion a year in medical costs due to diet-related diseases from Big Food's relentless production and marketing of junk "food" and highly processed foods. We pay countless more dollars for injured and maimed workers who risk life and limb daily on the fast-food assembly line; for environmental cleanups from factory farms' rivers of toxic waste; and we pay roughly $15 billion a year, sometimes more, to subsidize corporate agribusiness commodities like corn and soy -- our tax dollars financing unhealthy sweeteners for soda, and fast food, all those burgers and fries that seem so cheap. Then there is the brutal sweatshop-style labor we eat. All our food today relies on terribly exploited workers, both in the U.S. and abroad. Our daily meals rest on underpaid, impoverished immigrants, tens of thousands of whom are injured each year. We cannot continue to ignore the abuse of people, land and animals by the corporations that claim to feed the world. We cannot solve this simply by going vegetarian or vegan, or buying organic and fair trade. The very market that has created this Big Food disaster -- the market that creates monopolies and monocultures -- cannot solve these deep systemic crises. To truly "occupy the food system" we will need nothing less than a fundamental restructuring of the economics and policies that currently enable our corporate food system. There are great things happening on the good food margins today -- local foods movements, more urban agriculture and community gardens, school gardens, small sustainable food companies, victory gardens, even some fairly radical small-scale entrepreneurialism. But we need something much bigger. We need a radical overhaul of our current food and agriculture system -- and of how our tax dollars are spent on food. Here are a few ideas. We must pressure Congress, through education, protest and targeted campaigns, to end agribusiness subsidies and begin spending our money on sustainable healthy foods and farming. Pass a 2012 Farm Bill that not only ends subsidies for corporate agribusiness, but that reinvests public money in an economically diversified, ecologically sustainable and more locally-oriented food system. It can be done. Shift the agribusiness subsidies to fund small and mid-sized organics; subsidize smaller-scale organics, and living-wage jobs in organic farming; create public investments for local and regional sustainable agriculture, both rural and urban; stop all food industry mergers today; and ban corporate representatives from all aspects of government food policymaking-no more corporate lobbyists and advisors deciding our nation's food, farming, and nutrition policies. No more revolving door between government and agribusiness. Period. Beyond that, we need to break up the food oligopoly. Reform anti-trust law so these companies can't control entire food and seed markets. Cargill, for instance, the world's largest privately held corporation, not only controls a huge portion of the global grain business, but it also has a near monopoly over entire regions of American grain elevators, where farmers sell their crops. For the future of the environment and local economies, we must also redistribute land from corporations and agribusiness to small sustainable farms, and reverse the long trend of huge subsidized landholders buying out the family farm. A few more ideas: Tax fast food corporations at the point of production (not sale, where it just hurts low-income consumers) and use the money to create sustainable urban farms. Create a federal New Deal for Food that invests in a truly sustainable healthy food system that makes good food accessible to all -- reinvesting the dollars we currently throw at agribusiness, into community-driven food production and marketing. Ultimately, we need to understand that this isn't just a few bad corporations -- this is capitalism doing what it naturally does, exploiting people and land for profit. Even Adam Smith warned of the inherent tendency of capitalism toward ceaseless growth and monopoly power. Whether you're for revolution or reform, let's be honest about the system we're dealing with. Capitalism is unraveling, undermining even its own interests with its tireless demand for more growth, more profits, endless new markets with no protections for local industry, more corporate consolidation and monopoly power over both economics and politics. Increasingly, activists are making these deeper connections between sustenance and a larger economy. "One of the most important aspects of Occupy the Food System, especially during this time of high unemployment and economic crisis, is rebuilding local economies and creating quality jobs," Tanya Kerssen of Food First wrote in an email to me. "In many communities where unemployment is high and access to healthy food is limited or nonexistent, the food system is an obvious place to start." Kerssen argues that community-based food production can rebuild and sustain more than just food:, "By localizing the production and consumption of food, we can generate employment along the entire value chain (from production to distribution to retail). We can also rebuild our social fabric, address our health crisis, and significantly reduce our carbon footprint." Michele Simon, a food policy expert and author of Appetite for Profit, sees the Occupy Big Food actions as "a great opportunity to bring together a rather fragmented good food movement. I'd like to see more connections being made to the industry's massive marketing machine, especially when it comes to children and the impact on public health, which too often gets left out of the food justice critique." But, Simon adds, "I also think we need much more long-term action. Single-day actions here and there won't cut it when powerful food industry lobbyists are roaming the halls of Congress and state legislatures all over the nation every day of the year. We need to Occupy our political system!" Indeed, we need to occupy politics, and the economy. Capitalism's endless need for new markets, new products and new lands and people to exploit is putting our entire planet and future in peril. We must re-socialize food and other life essentials. Food is already socialized, but it's corporate socialism: the huge subsidies we all pay, directly and indirectly, to uphold agribusiness. Reclaiming our food system, says Aaron Lehmer of Bay Localize, "must mean reclaiming control of our land, our labor, and our economy from corporate monopolies. Anything less will leave our communities enslaved by special interests, whose primary goal is extracting more and more value from the common good." Christopher D. Cook is the author of "Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis" (New Press). He has also written for Harper's, the Economist, the Los Angeles Times and the Christian Science Monitor. His Web site is www.christopherdcook.com. © 2012 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/154311/