Food Fight by Mckay Jenkins

Author:Mckay Jenkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2017-03-13T09:25:18+00:00

The Vote

Alika Atay didn’t care whether they danced, walked, or drove to the polls, he just wanted to get them there and get them to vote. The early returns did not seem promising. Local television and radio stations continued to bombard Maui residents with ads paid for by Monsanto and Dow, and the tactic seemed to be working: as Alika drove around, he noticed the polling places were empty. With just four hours left before the polls closed, exit interviews indicated that the industry side was winning 60–40.

Alika and his team began feverishly working Facebook and Twitter. They called everyone they knew. If you haven’t voted yet, get out and vote. If you have voted, fill your car with friends who haven’t, and get them to the polls.

“We had people working all the precincts,” Alika said. “We said, ‘Let’s make our signs the last things people see before they vote.’”

Autumn Ness said she was never in any doubt. She knew how many doors she had knocked on. Sure enough, when the final vote was tallied, supporters of the moratorium—a shoestring, grassroots organization battling $8 million spent by two of the biggest companies in the world—had won, with just over 51 percent of the votes. The vote to ban all GM farming on the island was decided by just a thousand votes.

“That night, when people read the results and the reality sank in that we had won, there were a couple thousand people gathered, hugging each other,” Alika told me. “I saw a lot of young people, a lot of Hawaiians, coming up to me and saying this was the first time they had ever voted. There were people who had given up on the system—the elders—they chose this time to say, ‘Maybe this will be worth it.’”

The celebrations were short-lived. SHAKA and the rest of the moratorium’s supporters knew the companies would take their victory to federal court, just as they had on Kauai and on the Big Island. So as soon as the votes were counted, they filed a lawsuit—unusual for the side that won an election—seeking to force the county to enforce the ban.

The next day, Monsanto and Dow Chemical filed their own lawsuit. Just as they did after the Kauai and Big Island votes, the companies claimed the Maui initiative had no authority to preempt state and federal laws that already regulated GMOs. “This local referendum interferes with and conflicts with long-established state and federal laws that support both the safety and lawful cultivation of GMO plants,” said John Purcell, a Monsanto executive.

Barry Kurren, the federal judge who struck down both Kauai’s bid to restrict GM farming and the Big Island’s own GMO restriction, issued an injunction, pushing for more arguments to be heard; the county agreed to wait several months to start enforcement.

Kurren reassigned the case to Chief Judge Susan Mollway, and on June 30, 2015, Mollway ruled that the county law was indeed preempted by state and federal law, and that the county had overstepped its authority by banning GMOs.

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