Organic Consumers Association Newsletter #207

Organic Empowerment 2010: Taking Action Locally

#207, January 7, 2010

Hello Viewers,

Health, Justice and Sustainability News
from the Organic Consumers Association

Edited by Alexis Baden-Mayer and Ronnie Cummins

In This Issue:

• Ten Strategic Local Campaigns
• 1. Locally Grown Organic Food
• 2. Local Currencies and Community Banks
• 3. Health Care Access, Including Natural and Integrative Medicine

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Organic Empowerment 2010: Ten Strategic Local Campaigns

#1: Locally Grown Organic Food

Making affordable, locally and regionally-grown organic food available to all, rich, middle-income and poor, must become a top priority for city and county governments across the nation. Making the transition to organic food and farming stimulates the local economy, improves public health, sequesters enormous amount of climate destabilizing greenhouse gases, and protects the environment. As global warming intensifies, scientists warn that a continuation of current &quot business as usual&quot practices will lead to a catastrophic seven degree Fahrenheit temperature rise by 2100. Our only hope is to make energy-efficient and climate-stabilizing organic food and farming the norm rather than just the green alternative.

Learn more and take action at OCA’s Breaking the Chains campaign – home of our Buy Local, Organic and Fair Made campaign

#2: Local Currencies and Community Banks

Unregulated Wall Street gambling crashed the economy, prompting Bush and Obama to hand over $14 trillion to our so-called &quot Too Big to Fail&quot banksters! Meanwhile, almost nothing has been done to stop the avalanche of foreclosures and job losses. The US economic system seems diabolically designed to suck money out of local economies and ordinary working people. We can reverse this trend by pulling our money out of Wall Street and the big banks, and instead investing in local currencies, credit unions, and community banks.

Learn more and take action with OCA’s Breaking the Chains campaign

#3: Health Care Access, Including Natural and Integrative Medicine

The health care debate has occurred mainly at the federal level, and, with 6,000 corporate lobbyists and nearly a billion dollars being spent by the insurance industry to influence the outcome, public support for universal, single-payer health care is likely to lose out to a plan that would force each of us to buy expensive, inadequate health insurance. OCA is calling on the public to boycott the &quot profit-at any-cost&quot medical insurance industry and support local alternatives like state-level single payer health care coverage, local universal health care, and health care providers who have opted out of the insurance industry. States and localities need to be pressed to protect the right to practice – and access – midwifery, naturopathy, and alternative integrative medicine.

Learn more and take action at OCA’s Health Resource and Action Center

Next Week:

• #4: Organic, Fair Trade and Union Made Procurement
• #5: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Compost
• #6: Reduce Energy Use and Build a Renewable Energy Infrastructure
• #7: Tell the Toxic Industrial Food Producers to Take a Hike
• #8: Implement the Precautionary Principle
• #9: Eliminate Corporate Personhood to Protect Democracy
• #10: Make Peace At Home

Read more: 10 Local Causes to Work for in 2010

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LOCAL NY NEWS OF THE WEEK

NY – Get Involved Locally

• Learn more about OCA related action alerts and other news in NY here.
• Join NY discussion groups in our forum.
• Post events in NY on our community calendar.

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