From X Mon Feb 15 16:11:21 EST 1993 Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy,alt.activism,alt.society.civil-liberty,alt.individualism,alt.censorship,talk.politics.misc,misc.headlines,soc.culture.usa From: jad@hopper.ACS.Virginia.EDU (John DiNardo) Subject: Part 1, People Needing Work -->> Start a Community Food Co-op Message-ID: <1993Feb15.180237.18238@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> Followup-To: alt.conspiracy Keywords: People Needing Work -->> Start a Community Food Co-Op Sender: usenet@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU Organization: University of Virginia, FREE Public Access UNIX! Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 18:02:37 GMT Lines: 77 Some of Gary Null's recent broadcast discussions have gotten me thinking about the possibilities that might arise for people -- just ordinary, unconnected, unmonied people -- who might dare to start their own home-based businesses. Keeping in mind that the variety of possible types of home-based businesses is as expansive as the imagination of the person contemplating it, consider for now just one specific type of home-based business: the food co-op. The food co-op would be inherently beneficial to the community of customers who buy within it. That's obvious. But in subtle ways, too, the food co-op would benefit the individual and the society, as well, by fostering inter-personal communication and popular self-determination in consumerism and in liberating people from the oppressive exploitations of corrupt, self-serving politicians. For the many people who are out of work, and for those who face the threat of being out of work, the opportunity is waiting for you to breathe life into it. Create a community food cooperative. The dictionary defines "cooperative" as: "an enterprise that is owned jointly by those who use its facilities or services." However, the persons who run the food co-op deserve a fair salary for their work. The question would arise: "Why would running a food co-op be a promising way of making a living?" Here is one of numerous reasons which I intend to explore -- and it needs to be stated bluntly. The meat, the chicken, the fish, the dairy products, the grain products, the fruits and vegetables that we eat -- these foods are slowly poisoning us to death. If you were to drink one tablespoon of poison every day, from infancy, what do you suppose would happen to you by the time you reached middle-age? I submit to you that you are ingesting poisons each and every day of your life. Now, if your neighbor came to your door and told you that you could buy many or most of your foods WITHOUT that daily dose of poison, and that these pure foods are sold at the same price or at a lower price than the poisonous foods, certainly you would NOT say: "No thank you. I want to continue buying the poisonous foods at the same price." What you might say, however, is: "I don't believe that my supermarket foods contain poisons. We have a Pure Food Law that prohibits the contamination and the toxification of our foods. Our Government would simply not allow the food industries to poison us." That's what you might say. And therein lies the keystone which -- if yanked from the apex of the temple of consumer gluttony built by that one-eyed god in your living room -- would collapse the temple. The debris from that collapse would provide to enterprising individuals the building blocks, the customers, that they would need to build pure-food co-ops, and run them from their own homes, for the people of their communities. Start a research project. Ask your librarian to help you find information in books, journals and newspapers on food adulteration, food toxins, food additives, pesticides in grains, fruits, vegetables, meats, poultry and dairy products, antibiotics and carcinogenic hormones in meats and poultry, nutrient depletion of soils on agri-business farmlands, chemical food flavorings and colorings such FD&C red #3, #4, #5, yellow #6, sodium bisulfite, aspartame, modified food starches, and all the other weird chemicals whose names you can copy off the packages on your supermarket shelves. I'll obtain from Gary Null a bibliography identifying many sources of this kind of information contained in your library and in the nationwide inter-library loan network through which you can obtain library loans of virtually any book and photocopies of virtually any newspaper or magazine article under the sun. Then I'll post the bibliography. You will need to prove your case to your neighbors before you can win them over as customers. And please share your research findings with the audiences reading these networks. Post your information so that others can benefit from it. John DiNardo