Will Monsanto Vow to Do No Harm?

Guest Blogger: Reverend Nathan Walker, First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia

Directors from Monsanto came to the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia for dinner to discuss the ethics of biotechnology. When asked, “will you vow to do no harm,” Monsanto replied, “We already do no harm.” In the spirit of “Food Revolution” listen to Reverend Nate Walker’s summary of Monsanto’s response to the proposal to develop a modern Hippocratic Oath that could lead the entire field of biotechnology to “do no harm, to do good, and to be just.”

Click here for the full text: http://bit.ly/MinistryWithMonsanto 

Or click here to listen to the audio recording: http://natewalker.podbean.com/2010/07/18/ministry-with-monsanto/

When I was a kid, my parents never used the word “organic” unless I would complain about having to shovel manure out of the horse stalls and off into the garden or woods from our bright green John Deer tractor trailer bed.

“It’s all organic kid; it won’t hurt ya, it’s nature’s fertilizer” my dad would say. And, being me, I would roll my eyes and as I shoveled, I would dream of living in a high rise apartment where the term “organic fertilizer,” or the daily need to weed the vegetable garden would never enter into my daily life. I preferred ballet class, trips to the public library and shopping at the mall to stalls, weeding and picking string beans. We didn’t label it anything at the time, but “organic” and “back to nature” was just how we lived. Like most kids, I kind of took the benefits of my upbringing for granted.

I grew up on an organic family farm after all, with horses as pets and wild raspberries growing up around our swing set. Picturesque, pastoral and home grown. It wasn’t until I had to start fending for myself in “the real world” of post-collegiate life that I realized I had a pretty nice set-up at home.

I now realize how amazing it is to walk out your back door and have all the ingredients for a healthy dinner ripening at your finger tips. Literally, we would have wild organic asparagus for dinner sometimes when it would sprout up – all on its own – just next to the raspberry bush.

Today, I am a city dweller, and I have a whole new appreciation for the life my parents provided to me and my siblings. We were spared from pesticides, preservatives, from hormones and tasteless vegetables. Tomatoes are supposed to be juicy red on the inside you know.

Like many, I find myself trying to grow my own container gardens in the city, while always searching for locally grown organic produce, from local produce stands in my neighborhood.

Just last week, we enjoyed a family dinner where my youngest sister Rebecca and my dad had a flavor, taste-off as to who grew the best sweet, yellow corn. Dad won. He’s been at it for 40 years and has quite perfected the science and the art of growing his own food, with love, at home.

I hope someday to do the same. But for now, I cherish my visits to the family homestead, and shop locally and organically whenever I can.

-Kim Kunda

kkunda@mindtv.org

MiND Marketing Manager (and vegetable enthusiast!)

As LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) Pride Month comes to a close, I wanted to take the opportunity to thank everyone for getting involved, and to reflect on the incredible programs, community effort and energy that made this month on MiND an incredible success.

For starters, our little non-profit TV station presented more than 10 hours of feature-length, LGBT documentaries on MiND TV and on globalMiND. These documentaries are important. They tell the diverse and wide-ranging stories of people in the LGBT community - from rural Pennsylvanians to the out and proud in the streets of the Castro in San Francisco.

On MiND, we also presented more than 11 new programs from our staff - and from YOU in the community! Six of these programs, “Mazzoni Center: 30 Years Later,” “LGBT Peer Counseling,” “The Attic Youth Center,” “Giovanni’s Room: Making Gay a Career,” “Knoxville Reflections,” and “My Right Self,” premiered at our “LGBT Stories” event on June 16^th! Thank you to our partners at the Mazzoni Center and at the William Way LGBT Community Center for co-presenting this event with us.

Supporting and being part of the LGBT Community in our region is important to us here at MiND for many reasons. For some of us here - it’s personal; the LGBT community is our community. Simply stated, we care, and we want to do our part. For our organization, it’s important for us to support people and communities who are traditionally marginalized.

MiND is a media outlet for all voices to be heard, and we are especially passionate about providing a forum for voices who don’t usually find representation (or who find misrepresentation) in mainstream media. Our local LGBT community is strong and growing stronger, and here at MiND, we hope we help move that forward.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people often confront homophobia, discrimination, gender hostility, and even hate speech and hate crimes. Did you know that 40% of all homeless youth identify as LGBT? And, according to the non-profit organization, Parents and Friends of Lesbian and Gays, 50% of all gay and lesbian youth report that their parents reject them due to their sexual orientation. These are just a few of the realities that we need to overcome and improve.

At MiND, we hope that by airing the programs we air, and by bringing the community together at events to create public dialogue, that we are, in some small way, helping to increase tolerance among different kinds of people, thereby making the community-at-large a little kinder, a little more understanding and a whole lot more supportive. Even if one parent sees our programs, and can understand a little more of where their child is coming from - we think that’s a success.

We can make progress - but we have to do it together. Please share the MiND programs above, and your own programs with others. By sharing our stories, we can make an impact.

Thank you to everyone who submitted videos for LGBT Pride month - your voices help shape the world we live in, and thank you to everyone who is working on the ground level at LGBT organizations in our community.  Your work is appreciated, respected and celebrated.

Thank you,

Kim Kunda

Next Up: Piazza at Schmidts Screening of “LGBT Stories” 

Join us on June 30th for the final screening of “LGBT Stories” on the big screen at The Piazza at Schmidts! See you there, 6-7pm! Email for more info: kkunda@mindtv.org.

Coming Soon: July’s Theme of the Month is “Violence Prevention.”