This article by Bruce Dixon is re-posted by Black Agenda Report.
There was a time when the master class of the American South would gather under the shade of carefully pruned magnolia trees to gamble, sip mint juleps, tell tales and celebrate themselves in the midst of stolen wealth trampled from the hides of mother nature, Native Americans and African-descended slaves. In the 21st century South, where as Faulkner said, the past ain’t even past, not much has changed.
Southern Companies is a greedy rapacious corporation that owns power generation and delivery networks throughout the southeast. They own coal, gas and nuclear plants. They endow college and university chairs and scholarships, community organizations and local churches. In whole or in part, they own hundreds of judges and politicians across the region including many black ones, right up to a piece of the White House itself. Their influence is a big reason why Obama called himself the president of “clean coal and safe nuclear power.” One of Barack Obama’s first acts as president was to grant $800 million in free loan guarantees to build the nation’s first new nuclear power plant in 30 years right next to an existing pair of leaky nukes believed responsible for a cancer epidemic in mostly black Burke County GA, one of the poorest places in the South. Southern Companies-owned politicians have also allowed it to charge millions of ratepayers $15 and $20 monthly to cover advance construction costs of the new nukes so it need not invest any of its vast cash reserves.
To insulate themselves against charges of environmental racism for poisoning poor blacks in Burke County, Southern Companies doesn’t just make wild claims about how many Homer Simpson jobs new its nuclear plants will produce. Southern Companies purchased its very own civil rights organization, the Atlanta-based Southern Christian Leadership Council, originally founded by Dr. Martin Luther King himself. A Southern Companies CEO headed up SCLC’s building fund and raised over $3 million to pay for its new office buildings on Atlanta’s Auburn Avenue.
So it is that on July 16, 2012, despite its robbery of mostly poor ratepayers, its massive theft of formerly black land, its fouling of air, earth, water across the South, and its ongoing radioactive poisoning of poor black residents in Burke County, the masters of Sou thern Companies feel comfortable enough in downtown Atlanta to celebrate their history of plunder. On July 16, Southern Companies will rent Atlanta’s famous downtown Fox Theater for an invitation-only showing of Big Bets, a twisted movie based on a twisted book of the same name portraying the company’s bribing, double-dealing, land-stealing founders as titans of civic virtue.
Black America used to be where the left lived. But that was before our civil rights organizations enslaved themselves to corporate funding. Ole massa’s July 16 party in downtown Atlanta will be a kind of test. Our black political class and civil rights organizations have been purchased by our foes. Are we ready to man up, to woman up? Are we ready to put our people before our personal career prospects? Are we ready to throw up new organizations, new formations, new voices that speak for us and our communities, rather than for our current and prospective funders? Only time will tell.
Some news agencies are outsourcing local news
This media alert is re-posted from FreePress.net.
Millions of American workers have been put out of work as employers move operations overseas. It’s true in manufacturing, data processing and customer service.
Now it’s true for local news. That’s right, media giants including Sam Zell’s Tribune Company have begun to send local reporting jobs overseas. To the Philippines.
According to a major story by This American Life, dozens of papers around the country have outsourced local news production to Journatic, a company that hires underpaid workers in the Phillippines to create local news for communities in the United States.1
Tell Tribune Chairman Sam Zell: Local News = Local Journalists
Journatic’s employees attach fake bylines to their stories to obscure its outsourcing scheme. Zell’s Tribune Company has bought into this deception, hoping people won’t notice the journalistic sleight of hand. A whistleblower at Journatic who figured it out had this to say:
“It’s sort of a tattered product that’s being written overseas, halfheartedly edited, and just kind of slopped on the page.”
Most readers of the Tribune Company’s many print and broadcast news outlets would be outraged to know that local reporting was produced in news sweatshops abroad, where writers make 35 – 40 cents per story.
Local news organizations must be accountable to the communities in which they operate. That means hiring reporters who work among us and walk the same streets, who have direct ties to the people and issues that affect our lives.
That’s not what Zell thinks. He’s using Journatic’s assembly line; writers in the Philippines, editors in far-flung corners of the US, and even paragraphs that are auto-generated by computers, to repackage local press releases and public information as real reporting. It’s not.
Demand Local News from Local Reporters. Tell Sam Zell to Stop the News Deception
Zell, who has a notorious disregard for journalism,2 hopes that you won’t notice — that he can save money by fooling Americans and faking local news. His Tribune Company stretches from New York to Los Angeles, from Chicago to New Orleans, and includes dozens of daily newspapers and local TV stations.
Since he took the helm at the Tribune Company, Zell has slashed more than 200 newsroom jobs. Now, with this Journatic deal, it’s clear that Zell’s assault on journalism isn’t over.
Sign our letter to Zell so that the Tribune Company chairman and media executives across the country know that you can’t fake local news. With your help we can return local reporters to local beats.
This video is dedicated to the DREAMERS, Your courageous actions forced Obama to curb deportation and offer work authorizations for nearly 1 million young people!
The song is entitled, You Had Me At Hola by Lonnie Ray Atkinson (with Anitek).
For a radical participatory musical movement:
28th Street Billboard is altered with political message
Yesterday, we received pictures and a statement from an anonymous source about a Pure Michigan billboard ad on 28th Street near Division.
The Pure Michigan billboard featured a person kayaking in Lake Superior with a big Coca Cola logo. The billboard was altered with a quote from former Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini, “Fascism is a merger of state and corporate power.”
The photos were sent to us with the following statement:
The Great Lakes State’s tourism office is advertising across the country the “Pure Michigan” experience thanks to cash from its corporate sponsor Coca Cola. Partnering with a company that has covered up the deaths of Colombian union leaders and encouraged droughts in India through water theft sends a twisted message to Michigan farmers, workers, residents and visitors.
Michigan residents must question such a relationship. We’re promised more revenue from tourism at the expense of blindly accepting this progression towards fascism, tying our (decreasingly) publicly elected leaders to exploitative corporate interests. We’ve chosen to enhance Pure Michigan’s message with a quote from the 20th century’s most noted fascist. Michigan, beware.
The claims made against Coca Cola are verifiable. There has been an ongoing campaign to challenge Coca Cola in its role in the murder of dozens of union leaders at Coke bottling plants in Colombia, starting in the late 1990s. The Killer Coke Campaign has been effective in getting Coca Cola contracts discontinued at numerous universities across the country, along with activists engaging in direct action at shareholder meetings. The campaign has even produced a feature length documentary entitled, The Coca Cola Case.
The other claim of theft of water in India is also verifiable, based on the information at the site India Resource Center (IRC). According to the IRC:
Communities across India living around Coca-Cola’s bottling plants are experiencing severe water shortages, directly as a result of Coca-Cola’s massive extraction of water from the common groundwater resource. The wells have run dry and the hand water pumps do not work any more. Studies, including one by the Central Ground Water Board in India, have confirmed the significant depletion of the water table.
This is just one of the many claims from the IRC about the devastating impact that Coca Cola has on communities and farmers in India. However, the IRC is not the only entity to challenge Coca Cola’s theft of water. The US-based organization Food & Water Watch has also documented Coke’s abuses, particularly their bottle water brand Dasani.
In regards to the tactic of billboard alternation, it’s not a new tactic. In the US the Billboard Liberation Front has been altering billboards for decades and the feminist group the Guerrilla Girls has engaged in billboard alteration when those ads have been demeaning towards women.
Monsanto Faces $7.5 Billion Payout to Brazilian Farmers
This article is re-posted from CorpWatch.org.
Monsanto, the largest seed corporation in the world, may have to pay as much as $7.5 billion to five million Brazilian soy farmers.
The company has long dealt out severe legal sanctions against farmers it suspects of “pirating” its seed. But now the farmers have turned the tables on Monsanto, by suing the company and winning.
Genetically modified (GM) soy production in Brazil began illegally in 1998 with seeds smuggled in from Argentina. Farmers favored the engineered product because it was resistant to Roundup herbicide (another Monsanto product) making it easier to plant. In 2005 Brazilian president Luiz Inacio “Lula” Da Silva, realizing that many farmers had switched over, legalized Roundup Ready soy despite the misgivings of environmental activists. Last year the country planted 30.3 million hectares of GM crops, most of which were soy.
Most of this soy is exported to Europe, where the soy is used to feed cattle and for biofuels, and to China, whose burgeoning beef industry has an enormous and ever growing demand for cattle feed. Soy comprises 26 percent of Brazil’s farm exports.
That same year, Monsanto began to charge Brazilian growers a two percent tax for their GM soy production. Farmers that buy seed from Monsanto are also required to sign a contract in which they pledge not to save seed for future harvests, a millenia-old custom among farmers.
Monsanto penalized farmers who did not keep GM soy strictly separated from non GM soy. (also marketed by Monsanto) If tests of non GM soy crops uncovered Roundup Ready soy, Monsanto required farmers to pay a three percent fee.
The biotech industry claims that the farmers either knowingly or unknowingly mix the two strains together. It has long downplayed the allegation that GM seeds spread through pollination or inventory errors, a process known as “genetic contamination.”
In 2009 a group of rural syndicates from Rio Grande Do Sul, Brazil’s southernmost state, took Monsanto to court, charging that separating GM and non-GM soy was virtually impossible and that therefore the “Monsanto tax” was unjust.
“The issue is that segregating GM and conventional soya is difficult, since the GM soya is highly contaminating”, http://www.nature.com/news/monsanto-may-lose-gm-soya-royalties-throughout-brazil-1.10837 João Batista da Silveira, president of the Sindicato Rural de Passo Fundo and one of the leading plaintiffs, told Nature magazine.
In April 2012 a Rio Grande Do Sul judge ruled that Monsanto’s fees were illegal and noted that the Roundup Ready seed patent had already expired in the country. The company was not only ordered to stop collecting the royalty fees but to also return all such fees collected since 2004. Such collected royalties amount to $2 billion.
Monsanto appealed the ruling but was dealt another blow on June 12 when the Brazil Supreme Court decided unanimously that whatever the Rio Grande Do Sul courts rule on this matter should apply to the whole of Brazil. This caused the number of plaintiffs to balloon to five million and the total royalty owed to rise to $7.5 billion.
Monsanto also claimed that when farmers saved seed to replant it in the following seasons, they were required to pay royalties every season. But the plaintiffs counter that Brazilian law allows them to save seed.
“Monsanto gets paid when it sells the seeds,” Jane Berwanger, lawyer for the farmers told MercoPress. “The law gives producers the right to multiply the seeds they buy and nowhere in the world is there a requirement to pay (again)… Producers are in effect paying a private tax on production.”
In an official statement, Monsanto stated: “While the lawsuit lasts and the courts do not render a final decision on the merits, the royalty collection system for the use of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready technology will continue operating normally based on legal safeguards established.”
Toxic Impact Of Roundup Ready Soy
In 2008 Chemical Research in Toxicology published a study by Gilles-Eric Seralini, a French specialist in molecular biology and professor at the University of Caen, that indicated that Roundup is lethal to human cells. According to his research, doses far below those used on soy crops cause cell death in a few hours.
In 2010 Chemical Research in Toxicology, published a peer-reviewed study by Argentine embryologist Andres Carrasco, leading researcher at the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research and director of the molecular embryology laboratory at the University of Buenos Aires, which determined that glyphosate, Roundup’s active ingredient, is extremely toxic for amphibian embryos in doses much lower than those used in agricultural sprayings, as much as 1,540 times lower.
See Biosecurity Project Puerto Rico for more.
This article is re-posted from Opensecrets.org.
The Supreme Court’s historic preservation of President Barack Obama‘s health care overhaul — including the controversial individual mandate — carries huge implications for Americans and how they purchase health insurance. While the full effects of the decision will not be felt until the law’s rollout is completed in 2014, the court’s ruling already has had an immediate impact on the political money race.
Opponents and supporters of the law immediately leaped on the decision as a messaging and fundraising opportunity. Romney campaign spokesperson Andrea Saul tweeted that Mitt Romney has raised over $2 million since the court’s morning ruling — a figure likely to grow as debate over the ruling spreads. Others sending out fundraising appeals following the decision included fellow Republicans Rep. Steve King (IA) and Ohio Senate candidate Josh Mandel. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee also moved quickly to get in on the action, sending an email this morning celebrating the ruling and soliciting donations
Conservative groups that have spent millions attacking the law also jumped into action. One such group, Americans for Prosperity, told Politico within an hour of the decision that it is launching a $9 million advertising campaign opposing the legislation. AFP, founded by conservative billionaire David Koch, is a 501(c)(4) social welfare nonprofit, meaning that it is not required to disclose its donors. However, a Center for Responsive Politics investigation discovered that the group is the recipient of millions in grants from other nonprofits that appear to exist as vehicles to funnel anonymous contributions to support conservative 501(c) groups.
AFP received more than $1.9 million from the Center to Protect Patients’ Rights — a secretive non-profit that distributed more than $44 million in 2010 to conservative nonprofit groups.The Koch-family run Claude R. Lambe Foundation contributed another $504,725, and Donors Trust — a group which distributes the funds of its donors primarily among conservative organizations — gave over $7.4 million
The health sector was a major contributor to congressional candidates during the 2010 cycle, giving over $97 million to members of the 111th Congress. Pharmaceutical companies, insurance firms and health professionals were essentially even in their giving to Republicans and Democrats. Hospitals, nursing homes and labor groups, however, heavily favored Democrats.
And PACs and employees of health-related firms have already poured millions into the 2012 races.
As of the end of the first quarter of 2012, the top lifetime congressional recipients of health sector money were with 2008 presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) with over $11 million, 2004 White House hopeful Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) with nearly $10 million and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) with $5.5 million. This table shows the top congressional recipients of contributions from the health sector since 1989. And click here for a spreadsheet showing health sector contributions to all current lawmakers.
| Name | Health Sector 1989-2012 | Health Sector 2012 |
| Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) | $11,062,952 | $3,850 |
| Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) | $9,843,298 | $94,595 |
| Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) | $5,503,663 | $685,597 |
| Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-UT) | $5,201,802 | $1,178,274 |
| Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) | $4,721,349 | $1,082,321 |
| Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) | $4,658,893 | $798,050 |
| Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) | $4,623,309 | $1,150,675 |
| Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD) | $4,510,210 | $555,001 |
| Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) | $4,183,984 | $256,578 |
| Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-NY) | $4,161,249 | $77,250 |
Obama has been the biggest recipient of health dollars so far this cycle by a fair bit, with over $6.5 million, compared to second-place Romney‘s $4.2 million.
But nine of the top ten congressional health money recipients are Republicans. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) have all taken over $1 million from the health sector this election cycle.
Overall, Republicans in the current Congress have received $229,089,771 from health interests since 1989, while Democrats have received $205,355,027.
Today’s ruling was just one more hurdle cleared by the Affordable Care Act. As the bill was debated during the 2008 election and over the first year of Obama’s presidency, it both underwent major substantive changes — including the abandonment of Obama’s signature public insurance plan — and was lobbied extensively by a variety of interest groups.
Both the pharmaceutical and insurance industries spent over 1.4 billion each lobbying the federal government from 2008-2010. The Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers Association, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, America’s Health Insurance Plans and Pfizer spend tens of millions each on lobbying while supporting the individual mandate and opposing the public option.
The American Medical Association spent $43 million lobbying Washington; the group supported the House Democrats’ public insurance proposal, but opposed planned cuts to Medicare payment rates. The American Hospital Association was another big spender, allocating $41 million to lobbying while supporting the mandate and opposing both the public option and reduced reimbursements to hospitals.
Correction, 6/28: The text of this story has been changed to reflect the fact that Mitt Romney has received $4.2 million in contributions from health interests in the 2012 cycle, not $3.87 million as the post originally stated.
Earlier today, a group of health care providers, connected to the coalition known as the Michigan Consumers for Healthcare, hosted a press conference in response to the US Supreme Court’s decision to affirm the Affordable Care Acts (ACA).
Those present at the press conference were celebrating the Supreme Court’s decision as a victory for the American people. Eli Isaguirre, with the Michigan Consumers for Healthcare group said, “With the Affordable Care Act validated by the country’s highest court, the key protections for Michigan families will move forward.” Isaguirre also said the State of Michigan now needs to move quickly to, “create a state health exchange that would empower Michigan consumers to make better healthcare decision.”
Isaguirre’s affirmation of the court’s decision today was affirmed by Chris Shea with Cherry Street Health Services, Jennifer Feuerstein with the Gerontology Network and Kathy Humphrey with Planned Parenthood of West and Northern Michigan.
According to the speakers today, the affirmation of the ACA will mean:
- Insurance companies cannot deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions
- Preventative services will be offered without copays
- There will be no annual lifetime caps on coverage
Kathy Humphrey also stated that this decision was a victory for women and their families. She said that women are often faced with the difficult choices in today’s economy of being able to pay for health care or to pay the rent. “More and more women have also been struggling to have access to birth control, which we see as a fundamental health care service.”
Today’s Supreme Court decision was an interesting one in that it was Justice Roberts who had the deciding vote, something that those who supported the ACA did not expect. Author and activist John Stauber had an interesting response to Roberts’ decision by stating, “It was a brilliant move by far Right Chief Justice Roberts to side with the Dem-appointed Justices and uphold ObamaCare. After all, this is a massive victory for corporate power, forcing citizens to buy an expensive insurance product that won’t serve our needs very well but will profit industry, in lieu of receiving real health care.”
Such sentiments were widespread on Indy media sources today, such as Democracy Now, which was devoted a whole hour to this issue on their show. The debate on Democracy Now ranged from those enthusiastic about the Supreme Court decision to those who thought it was a good first step, to those with a more critical view of what the ACA will really provide.
We asked Eli Isaguirre after the press conference today if the Michigan Consumers for Healthcare group was planning on pushing for even greater health care access for Americans and supporting a Medicare for all or single payer system. Eli said that they “definitely wanted to move forward with improving the healthcare system beyond the ACA,” but that for right now they were going to focus on getting the State of Michigan to implement the provisions of the ACA in this state.
The National Nurses United organization, which represents thousands of nurses across the country, said in a press release today that the Supreme Court’s decision should not be seen as an end in itself. “The Affordable Care Act still leaves some 27 million people without health coverage, does little to constrain rising out of pocket health care costs, or to stop the all too routine denials of needed medical care by insurance companies because they don’t want to pay for it.”
The group Physicians for a National Health Care Program, a group dedicated to a Single Payer Health care plan, also weighed in on the Supreme Court’s decision today.
Contrary to the claims of those who say we are “unrealistic,” a single-payer system is within practical reach. The most rapid way to achieve universal coverage would be to improve upon the existing Medicare program and expand it to cover people of all ages. There is legislation before Congress, notably H.R. 676, the “Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act,” which would do precisely that.
What is truly unrealistic is believing that we can provide universal and affordable health care in a system dominated by private insurers and Big Pharma.
The American people desperately need a universal health system that delivers comprehensive, equitable, compassionate and high-quality care, with free choice of provider and no financial barriers to access. Polls have repeatedly shown an improved Medicare for all, which meets these criteria, is the remedy preferred by two-thirds of the population. A solid majority of the medical profession now favors such an approach, as well.
While it was clear that the coalition of groups that held a press conference in Grand Rapids were celebrating the Supreme Court’s decision, it is clear that so much more needs to be done to guarantee that health care is a right deserved by all.
This Day is Resistance History: Malcolm X and the creation of the Organization of Afro-American Unity
Forty-Eight years ago today, Malcolm X gave the first speech upon the founding of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), the entity he co-founded after leaving the Nation of Islam.
Malcolm states in his speech that the OAAU is modeled on the Organization of African Unity, the coalition of post-colonial African nations that sought to become independent of European and US interests.
The OAAU presented its charter that day, which lays out both their principles and goals as a new organization. Here is how the charter begins:
We, Afro-Americans, people who originated in Africa and now reside in America, speak out against the slavery and oppression inflicted upon us by this racist power structure. We offer to downtrodden Afro-American people courses of action that will conquer oppression, relieve suffering, and convert meaningless struggle into meaningful action.
It was clear that the OAAU was calling for systemic change and not just reformist measures that were motivated by desegregation. This call for more radical change within the Black community is further reflected in the organization’s basic aims & objectives.
Self-determination
We assert that we Afro-Americans have the right to direct and control our lives, our history, and our future rather than to have our destinies determined by American racists, we are determined to rediscover our true African culture, which was crushed and hidden for over four hundred years in order to enslave us and keep us enslaved up to today…
We, Afro-Americans — enslaved, oppressed, and denied by a society that proclaims itself the citadel of democracy, are determined to rediscover our history, promote the talents that are suppressed by our racist enslavers, renew the culture that was crushed by a slave government and thereby — to again become a free people.
National unity
Sincerely believing that the future of Afro-Americans is dependent upon our ability to unite our ideas, skills, organizations, and institutions…
We, the Organization of Afro-American Unity pledge to join hands and hearts with all people of African origin in a grand alliance by forgetting all the differences that the power structure has created to keep us divided and enslaved. We further pledge to strengthen our common bond and strive toward one goal: freedom from oppression.
Despite the more radical platform, the OAAU and Malcolm also made it clear they wanted to work with any and all Black organizations that were truly committed to racial and economic justice.
At the founding meeting, Malcolm X stressed the importance of escaping terms like “negro,” “integration,” or “emancipation,” insisting that such language was inherently pejorative and antithetical to the ideology of the OAAU. The OAAU called for African American run institutions within the black community as well as increased participation in mainstream politics. In order to keep the OAAU strictly in African American hands, Malcolm X insisted that there be no monetary donations from non-African sources. The organization also refused membership to whites.
The OAAU was targeted by the FBI and its counter-intelligence program known as COINTELPRO. The FBI was concerned about the creation of the OAAU and its possible alliance with other radical groups in the country that were calling for systemic change.
The OAAU had created chapters all across the country during their short life spam, which was only a year, since the group loss many members after Malcolm was assassinated in February of 1965, just 8 months after the organization’s founding.
For more information on the OAAU, we recommend reading William Sales book, From Civil Rights to Black Liberation: Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-American Unity, which you can read online. Here is also a video excerpt from Malcolm’s speech at the OAAU on June 28, 1964.
Grand Rapids Occupy plans re-occupation on July 4
Like many other cities around the country, Grand Rapids is planning a re-occupation on the 4th of July.
Those involved in Grand Rapids Occupy have not been inactive, they have been connecting with other struggles, holding meetings and engaging in skill sharing with people in West Michigan who are fed up with the current political and economic system.
People re invited to join the re-occupation at Monument Park in downtown Grand Rapids. According to GR Occupy:
In order to make the occupation work, we want to encourage people to come with their ideas for actions, workshops (for example, Can you do a talk on Smashing patriarchy? Capitalism? Direct Action? Or have relevant [or even not so relevant] skills to share?) We have plans for some workshops – for example direct action and know-your-rights type stuff, but we really need everyone to step up and participate. In addition there will be time to come together to talk about why we are all here and what we’re going to do from here.
Occupy Grand Rapids
Wednesday, July 4
Noon
Monument Park (corner of Fulton & Division)
For updates go to their Facebook event page https://www.facebook.com/events/370897669615374/.
The Grand Rapids food justice group Our Kitchen Table will be hosting the first of four canning workshops at the Sherman St. Church, located in the Southeast part of Grand Rapids.
Canning is a great way to preserve your own food, eat fresh and healthy food all year round, without all of the negative environmental consequences of eating food out of season. IN keeping with the spirit of seasonal eating, these workshops are centered around seasonal foods in Michigan, beginning with strawberries, then pickles, tomatoes and ending with applesauce.
According to the OKT blog:
The Saturday skill-shares will take place from 2 to 4 p.m. so you can shop at the Southeast Area Farmers’ Market and the stop by to learn how to preserve the produce you just purchased. OKT especially hopes that learning how to preserve produce will add even more value for folks making purchases with Double Up Food Bucks. Also, if you learn how to preserve fresh produce, you don’t have to worry about it spoiling before you have a chance to eat it.
Here are the details for this Saturday’s canning workshop, followed by the information for the other three.
- 2-4 p.m. Saturday June 30 Strawberry Jam and Drying Fresh Herbs, Sherman St. Church kitchen, 1000 Sherman St. SE
- 2-4 p.m. Saturday July 28 Pickles and Freezing Fresh Herbs, Madison Square CRC, 1441 Madison SE
- 2-4 p.m. Saturday August 25 Canning Tomatoes and Oven Roasting Tomatoes with Herbs for the Freezer, Madison Square CRC, 1441 Madison SE
- 2-4 p.m. Saturday September 29 Canning Applesauce and Herbal Teas, Madison Square CRC, 1441 Madison SE
For more information contact OKT at 616-570-0218 or online at http://oktjustice.org/contact/.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 