There are days when I wonder if anything is safe to eat. (Like yesterday when the prepackaged garden salad I got from the school cafeteria looked as if it hadn’t even been washed. The lettuce had weird dusty black ick all over it. And it wasn’t dirt. And it didn’t stick like mold. I don’t know what it was, but it was disgusting. And dirty. And don’t mock me; you wouldn’t have eaten it either.)
On an increasingly common basis I think about ways I can become more closely connected to the source of my food. I want to KNOW the conditions in which it was grown; how it was altered chemically, genetically, or environmentally; and frankly whether it’s safe for me to eat. In many ways, it’s a hard balance. Living in a very urban space on a below-the-poverty-line income, I have limited options. (BUT, I do have options, AND I have the cultural capital to know about those options and how to access them, so really I’m not in the same bad situation as many, many others.) But, in the process of feeling safe about the source of my food, I have rarely felt that the government had my best interests (aka – my health and well-being) at heart.
Slow Food USA has created a video and a petition they hope will help change that. They're asking Congress to better regulate the food industry and thus help ensure the health of all Americans. So we're talking about making corporations accountable for actions (or the lack of actions) that produce/protect a healthy food supply; demanding that the USDA and FDA communicate better with one another; and supporting legislation that simplifies food safety regulation.
Sounds good to me. Here's the video:
And, if you're interested, you can look at and/or sign the petition.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Video Spotlight: Rachel Maddow’s take on women candidates versus women’s rights
It’s feeling about time that I get back to my “Video Spotlight” roots, as it were. Usually I post up short three or four minute videos. Not today. Today I’m asking you to take 13 minutes to listen to this BRILLIANT segment from this past Thursday’s The Rachel Maddow Show. Rachel discusses the rise of women candidates in the GOP and the logical analysis that women candidates can have an influence on women’s votes. She also explains that women (brace yourself) might not vote based on chromosomes, but rather on issues. Shocking, right?! Just as the number of women candidates in the GOP rises, so too rises that number of right-wingers, including women, who take the previously extreme view that abortion should be banned for ALL people, including victims of rape and incest. So, will women citizens vote for women candidates who propose greater and greater limits to women and girls’ reproductive rights? Hard to say. I hope not. They surely won’t have my vote.
In addition, the segment features a discussion with the wonderful Melissa Harris-Lacewell, a professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton University, who shares this gem:
"There is no place in the world and no time in history where restricting women's reproductive rights makes a people or a nation more free or more equal. These extreme positions on abortion are without any question a war on American girls and women, and the fact that there are women who are both complicit and participatory in it is really neither surprising nor unprecedented. It has always been true and it is incredibly important that we recognize that, despite the fact that we can be very proud of these women as women and as politicians, that the question is: how do women as citizens fair on the other side of them either being elected or not elected?"
Check it out:
And, if you need a little laugh/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you humor/sorrow in your life, you can give this little “Rachel Maddow is a lesbian vampire” segment from yesterday’s show a watch too. Wow.
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