So I was thinking about Paul's "by doing good things" and the respect I feel for the people who are out there blockading the pipeline, MTR, and so forth. For me, the people growing food and the people blockading pipelines and fracking (etc) are two sides of one movement. Even though I know growing food is about the most radical thing we can do, it sort of misses that edge of being right in-your-face radical. And besides, no good deed goes unpunished. Permaculturists and gardeners are being wiped out one by one, mostly by
local zoning boards.
I suddenly had an idea of how to connect us more completely:
The Federal Interstate Commerce Commission has constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce. They have used this authority to get into matters of people growing stuff at home. (Sorry, I forget the citation.) Two opportunities occur to me, based on this fact:
(1) We could all turn ourselves in for influencing interstate commerce by
*not buying from Monsanto
*growing our own food
*growing food and giving it away
*you name it.... starting a
gift circle, local dollars, freecycling, I make my own clothes and pretty much only buy from thrift shops .... a thousand signatures ought to be
enough to get some attention, but there are millions of us living this way.
(2) Or we could play it straight, and ask the ICC to get involved in local ordinances that damage food security by stopping gardens (like Monroe County, most recently and painfully to us). This would require them to declare that food security was a good thing - obviously a long shot.
Just playing around here - I throw these out for starters. Implementation might include a place for people to sign up and name their crime - from "made my own sauerkraut" to "made my own ethanol" or "fertilized my fields with humanure."
Looking for comments. Would be happy to "breathe with" anybody who thinks of a way to implement this.
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