Food Fight! Local Greater Kansas City Food Activists March Against Monsanto 2014

Jill Valentine and her 9 yr old son Tristan;  Angela Cooper and her 17 year old daughter Keyleigh Coper and 9 year old son, Bobby Toska, and Eric King.

Today’s Guests are local KC community members turned activists out of concern for their and their children’s health.

Food Fight! All Lives Matter. Purpose is to organize to build collective strength to transform power relationships with the big, global, industrialized food and agriculture corporations, in order to build truly healthy, just, fair and sustainable food, agriculture and socioeconomic systems which provide livelihoods with dignity for farm and food workers, and small and family farmers.

Jill Valentine, 29, is a mother of two boys and a local activist that has organized for March Against Monsanto (MAM) since its beginning. Jill got involved out of concern for other parents like herself and the future of our children. Says Jill:
“[W]e (parents) were so busy doing the best we could to provide for and protect our children that we didn’t see what was deliberately being hidden from us right under our noses on the dinner table. So many in our community still haven’t heard of Monsanto, and yet are being diagnosed with cancers, food allergies, diabetes and other illnesses at such young ages. I will not rest until every parent is made aware.”

Jill’s beautiful, nine year old son, is just finishing 4th grade. Jill is homeschooling him. He’s helped collect and deliver donations for natural disaster victims, and he played a big part in helping organize MAM for Kansas City.

Angela Cooper, shown here with her beautiful 17 year old daughter Keyleigh Cooper, who graduated one year early from high school and is planning on attending college this fall, vivacious 8 year old son Bobby Toska, who is in second grade and loves baseball, and her husband, is with The Children of Vietnam Veteran Health Alliance. She knows the past crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Monsanto Corporation headquartered in St. Louis. She has joined this fight to stop Monsanto from poisoning us with our food. She is deeply concerned with food safety and recognizes that it is a global issue.

Eric King is 28 years old and a college graduate. He became an activist after visiting Cairo, Egypt and witnessing some of the worst global poverty first hand. This trip helped him to understand how global socio-economic policy created poverty and human degradation. Eric has previously participated in three rallies against Monsanto. Says Eric, Monsanto is far too dangerous to sit on our hands. Opines Eric further, Monsanto’s influence over our government, including the executive branch, is out of control; their products are frightening, and they have a legal stronghold over farmers here in the US and around the globe.

UC Co-hostMaria Whitaker, Program Director, Local to Global Advocates for Justice, and KC Food Justice, fssg.blogspot.com, foodhealthenvironmentaljustice.com.
Food, Health, and Environmental Justice Coalition

Email Maria Whittaker at [email protected] with Food Fight! in the heading. We particularly envision lifting-up the work of youth and those communities the most negatively and directly impacted by our food, agriculture and socioeconomic systems.

Objectives of Food Fight! All Lives Matter!

Raise consciousness of the impact of our global, big corporate, industrialized, food system on our health, wealth, justice and sustainability, and to
2. Act as a vehicle for us to:
2.1. Organize ourselves inclusively, from the bottom-up, to build our collective strength to transform our relationships with our global, big corporate food and agriculture systems in order to build truly healthy, just, fair and sustainable food and agriculture systems which create livelihoods with dignity for farm and food workers and small and family farmers;
2.2. Take immediate actions now to actualize our basic human right to sufficient amounts of healthy, nutritious and culturally appropriate food and improve community health and wealth by connecting people to programs already in existence, but not yet reaching them, such as: doubling their food stamps, organic gardening, mobile food pantries, healthy free food pantries, organic farmer training programs and healthy lifestyle support programs, including diabetes and hypertension management, and to:
2.3. Take grassroots advocacy on food policies such as food stamps and farm subsidies to immediately actualize our basic human right to healthy, nutritious and culturally appropriate food.
KC Food Justice List Serve
The easiest way to join our list serve, [email protected], where we share news of upcoming events, information and analyses of the nexus of modernization, capitalism, food, health, equality and justice is to send an email to:
[email protected].
You will be automatically be added. We send out anywhere from 1 to 9 messages a month.

Share This Episode