CREATIVE VISION
Timeline
Our project began on December 7th, 2015 with the decision to focus our action in relation to GMOs. From there, our work has been to create a plan of action and assembling our class organization.
Our plan is to initiate our plan of action on Friday, December 18th 2015.
Our intention is to be able to bring awareness to the consumption of GMOs by the public. We are told that some of our food is GMO, we are told that GMOs can be safe and bring more good than harm, but, is that really the case? For our action, we plan to, at the very least, to make people shopping for their daily groceries realize the lies they have been fed and the products they will be consuming with their friends and family.
For the long term, we can only speak idealistically, say the elimination of GMOs as a whole. This would something we would love to be able to do, even if the possibility of this is relatively low. However, we do intend to bring in other organizations, ones with experience and connections with this issue, to help spread our action and cause to a broader audience. Even if our small group and incite something to be done, either big or small, that can be an achievement we will be proud of.
We also intend to keep this organization going past the end of this semester. With new students coming in, we can pass the torch onto them and they can spread our cause even more. Of course this doesn’t mean we plan to abandon our plight come the termination of our semester. If we can all continue to participate in this for years to come, then we intend to.
Spreading the Word and Garnering Support
There are many ways in which we can go about spreading the word on a general level. There are two ways that we think we should focus on, which are, the use of social media and speaking to people directly.
Speaking to people directly will almost always be a more effective way to gain supporters for our cause. Choosing a few days before the event to talk to people in person and spread the message of the project would be a great deal of help. Something that we can do is to keep the pressure up on social media. Create accounts and handles that get the message across, and then, SHARE! SHARE! SHARE!
A constant flow of information is what keeps people engaged. Connect our cause to other, well established causes of a similar nature and people will follow. The actions that we must take are creating social media accounts, arming ourselves with knowledge, and simply talking to people. We want this to have an impact and we need the voices of the many to do so.
Reaching Out to Other Organizations
There are a plethora of huge organizations that could potentially take interest in our cause. These people already believe what we believe, they just have a much larger reach than we do. We can try our best to spread the word on our own, but the best outlet is through people who already have a following.
One that comes to mind is the popular and ever growing YouTube channel “Tek Syndicate”. At the time of writing they have over 552,000 subscribers, a forum with over 60,000 active members, and a twitter following upwards of 200,000 users. If we could get the attention of a media outlet like them, we could really make some waves.
https://teksyndicate.com/articles/monsanto-destroying-our-food-supplies-and-our-health (Tek Syndicate forum post regarding Monsanto)
Appealing to People’s Emotions, Creating a Narrative
In order to have people join the cause is to let people know about the evils of the GMO’s, their collaboration with the multinational corporations, and the way in which it affects both people domestically and internationally in a negative way. The best way to do this is by appealing to the public’s emotions. That is the way to get people’s attention.
Some articles that highlight these points:
https://www.rt.com/news/206787-monsanto-india-farmers-suicides/ (Rising suicide rate for Indian farmers blamed on GMO seeds)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carole-bartolotto/a-farmers-take-on-gmos_b_4621669.html (A Farmer’s Perspective on GMOs)
https://www.organicconsumers.org/old_articles/ge/ge_soybeans_argentina.php (GE Soybeans Are Destroying Argentina’s Agriculture)
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2013/03/201331313434142322.html (Argentina’s Bad Seeds)
https://www.rt.com/usa/176836-brazil-farmers-gmo-refund/ (Brazilian farmers demand Monsanto refund their money for GMO crops that don’t work)
http://www.thestreet.com/story/12101202/1/monsanto-grows-controversy-on-genetically-modified-food.html (Monsanto Grows Controversy on Genetically Modified Food)
When will it occur during the day?
Our plans are to begin our action around the afternoon, more specifically, around rush hour. Since most people will be going from work to their homes or other places, we can capitalize on the amount of people outside during that time. With all of our members participating in the action, we hope to reach a significant amount of people.
Of course, due to the nature of rush hour, we know that a portion of these people will be too busy or in a rush, which would mean they will ignore or disregard our action. We understand this and aim to, at the very least, get these people to notice our action. Even if they ignore us, with our poster, tagline, or action we hope this will stick in their mind and perhaps mention it to somebody else or acknowledge it at later time.
Where will it occur?
As of our class on December 9th, our plan is to bring to light the use of GMOs of the store, Whole Foods. However, we did not have sufficient information to properly decide if this store would be our intended target. Nevertheless, we had brought other places we can use for our action, such as, Trader Joe’s, Costco, or BJ’s. We will solidify the target location at a later time once we have ample information regarding the use of GMO’s at the said locations.
Specifically, our action will take place at this target location, both outside and inside the structure. Half of our group will be inside placing labels on produce that is revealed to be a GMO. The second half will remain outside on the street and give out sample produce, as of our Dec 9th meeting this would be tomatoes, however, this is subject to change. These would be tagged with a hashtag (Ex. WholeGMO’s) that would give more information to people about their GMO consumption.
Are these choices strategic?
Yes, very much so.
We chose rush hour on a weekday due to the sheer amount of people who would outside at that point in time. This would allow us to reach a much larger audience, both outside and inside the target location, than say at 9 A.M on a sunday.
The idea for our target location was Whole Foods initially because, this is a store that tells its customers that they are buying fresh and organic, something they would not get from another chain. Our idea was to have people realize how much of what they consume is GMO and bring awareness to these facts. As well as, exposing how WholeFoods has been built on a foundation of deceit and valuing profit over its integrity and customers.
We had discussed how if Whole Foods really wanted to sell real organic and fresh produce, they have the means to do it. All they need to do is find this produce or demand that such produce should be available for them. Whole Foods is also capable of preventing the sales of produce that is widely known to be GMO, such as corn, yet, the continue to sell it anyway.
Since our focus will be on produce, we aim to utilize stickers as an indicator for GMO products. Our group will be labeling these products with stickers that should help customers see that are actually buying GMO’s. Our decision of using tomatoes stemmed from the fact that they are small and people will more likely take a food sample over a flyer.
