Act II

Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the flowers gone?
Girls have picked them every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where Have All The Flowers Gone?
Words & Music by Pete Seeger, 1955


The wheels on the bus are going 'round and 'round and it's comforting to once again experience the familiar pitch, lurch and sway inherent to these lumbering conveyances. Though it's not Priscilla or Julia on which I ride. Those twisted sistas each need a long hot shower, deep fascia massage and high-colonic cleansing. I'm on the Route 80 Golden Gate Transit bus for the short trip south from Sonoma to Marin to fetch my pre-historic 1993 Volvo 960 station wagon. Imagine, an automobile that runs on fossil fuel! How quaint.

In Petaluma, at the intersection of Petaluma Blvd. North and Washington Street, the former Sonoma County Bank building is now home to The Petaluma Seed Bank (Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company), an outlet for non-GMO, heirloom seeds. Like most mid to late 19th century and early 20th century bank architecture, the 1920s two-story granite building was constructed like the Rock of Gilbrator, as if to say to their clients...we aren't going anywhere. Those hapless customers could not have known that the Great Depression was waiting for them just down the block and around the corner.
 
Now, with its steel vault protecting heirloom seeds, instead of peoples' life savings, the formidable structure with its precious deposits would seem to say to the Big Six pharmaceutical and chemical companies - Monsanto, Dupont and Syngenta, Bayer, Dow, and BASF...check it out, suckers! we aren't going anywhere, either. And while elegantly symbolic, it's going to take a much greater counter-insurgency to combat the methodical proliferation of GE crops. The Big Six, in cahoots with the Frankenfood 15, have already seized a significant portion of the global seed industry and you know what they say – he who controls the food supply controls the world. It would be one thing if organic farms growing heirloom varieties could coexist alongside King Corn. The stark reality unfolding, I fear, is alarming. According to Organic Consumers Association:
 
"It is now widely acknowledged that GMO crops are a leaky technology -- 
 that it to say, genetically-modified pollen is spread naturally on the wind, by insects, and by humans. No one except perhaps some officials of the U.S. 
Department of Agriculture were actually surprised to learn this. GMO 
proponents have insisted for a decade that genetic contamination could never 
happen (wink, wink) and U.S. Department of Agriculture officials went along 
with the gag. And so of course GMO crops are now spreading everywhere by 
natural means, just as you would expect."

So, you have to wonder who's in bed with whom? and how come the United States is so consistently and glaringly out of step with the rest the world's nations in issues of national importance. Like health care, the environment, and education. If Peru's Congress can approve a 10-year moratorium on imports of genetically-modified organisms, as they just did, why can't we? The answer my friend is not blowin' in the wind, written on subway walls or tenement halls. You don't need to read between the lines, ask a cabbie for directions or buy a vowel from Vanna White. 
  
Still need a hint? Okay. Allow me to direct your attention to Wall Street. No, not the financial district named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan and the epicenter for the now viral Occupy movement. I refer, rather, to the 1987 movie of the same name, in which Michael Douglas playing the role of Gordon Gecko, a greedy corporate raider, takes a young and impatient stockbroker under his wing. In a phenomenal reversal of art imitating life, consider the following excerpt from a scene:

Gordon Gecko: The richest one percent of this country owns half our country's wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It's bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own. We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price per paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it. Now you're not naive enough to think we're living in a democracy, are you buddy? It's the free market. And you're a part of it. You've got that killer instinct. Stick around pal, I've still got a lot to teach you.

Remarkable, isn't it. And you thought Oliver Stone plays fast and loose with the truth? Amazingly prescient is what he was.

Where have all the dollars gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the dollars gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the dollars gone?
To the richest 1% every One
When will we start to learn?
When will we start to learn?

It is now standard operating procedure for the power elite, the corporatocracy, to keep the as-yet-enlightened-and-mobilized 99% in the dark. To keep them dumb. Wouldn't want the population to get any fanciful ideas. So let's create the illusion that voting will change the status quo. Let 'em think they've got a free press and unbiased media. Ply them with half-truths. Dangle concepts like hope and change in front of them. Distract them with mindless reality programs. Tantalize them with gossip. Re-direct their attention. (Look! A puppy!).

If they were ever to connect the dots, they might come to realize they actually have more power than they think. And the last time that happened...[gasp!]... good God, man...there was a bloody revolution.

The American Revolution. Act II.