Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

permaculture - [permaculture] Alarming: SWAT Team Raids Ohio Co-op

permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: permaculture

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Nicholas Roberts" <nicholas@themediasociety.org>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org, "permacultue discussion list" <pil-pc-oceania@lists.permacultureinternational.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Alarming: SWAT Team Raids Ohio Co-op
  • Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2008 04:33:55 +0000

hi Lawrence

I'd like to think that this is simply just an isolated incident, "a few bad
apples" or simply a tactical mistake.

Perhaps, the last spasms of the Bush presidency as it seeks to rush through
every ultra-right policy and action it can manage in its last days.

I do suspect, however. that there is a systemic aspect to this that will
continue during the Presidency of Our Obama. May the Supreme Diety Bless Him
and Hold Him Safe in Hiss Mission of Ch-ch-ch-Change.

My guess is that, the financial, economic, and other crisis, will be used by
the disaster-capitalists to push through much wanted ch-ch-changes... and
since organics food is now a corporate market - Organic Walmart, corporate
Biodynamics etc... the same brutal rules of corporate capitalism apply.

I can imagine a lobbyist or donor arguing "look, the damn hippies are
communists, dop smoking pagans, they have been flouting the laws, there food
is unsafe, and they dont pay taxes. You can get cheaper, safer organic food
at Walmart Organics (replace with whatever is the local corporate organic
outlet). God damn it Congressmen/Representative. We need to shut these
people down!"

one way to shut-down these independent, local, community projects is
compliance costs - legal, insurance, accounting, health... another is
massive interruption like this... a kind of Shock Treatment that would
almost kill any living thing

if there is a New Green Deal in the USA, one of the groups in that
coalition, will be liberal farm groups... and if Obama's history to date
means anything, that will not involve anyone or any group that has not
totally bought into the Green-Capitalism paradigm..

no doubt there will be lots of PR and some small things done for the
grass-roots organisations, but like under Clnton, Blair, Hawke-Keating
(Australia) the playing field balance will be quietly and deliberately
tilted towards the "good greens"... i.e corporate and financial capitalism
green start-ups and corporations

its interesting, perhaps extremely scarey to note, how this might also be
conisdered a part of a general domestic terrorism campaign against the
"watermelons" - green on the outside, red on the inside.. eco-communists...
these food coops are a hotbed of ecoterrorist activity.. its the Green Scare

obviously the Amish need to go to, pascifists...

to me, this is sounding a lot like the pre-war years in Nazi Germany..

remember folks, the Great Depression wasnt ended by the New Deal, it was
ended by World War 2. Which was started by a formerly liberal democracy,
that had slowly converted to a totalitarian fascist state

whether we can afford another anti-fascist war within the context of climate
change ?

obviously, this is heresy, and I will whip myself for my sins against Our
Obama Fatherland, Bless Him and Save Him and Protect Him from the
watermelons...







> Subject: [permaculture] Alarming: SWAT Team Raids Ohio Co-op -
>


> Subject: SWAT Team Raids Ohio Co-op
> From: Eric Pawlowski <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: Sustainable Agriculture Network Alarming: SWAT Team Raids
> Ohio Co-op
>
> Fri Dec 5, 2008 6:51 am (PST)
> http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/08/swat-team.htm
>
> On Monday, December 1, a SWAT team with
> semi-automatic rifles entered the private home of
> the Stowers family in LaGrange, Ohio, herded the
> family onto the couches in the living room, and
> kept guns trained on parents, children, infants
> and toddlers, from approximately 11 AM to 8 PM.
> The team was aggressive and belligerent. The
> children were quite traumatized. At some point,
> the "bad cop" SWAT team was relieved by another
> team, a "good cop" team that tried to befriend
> the family. The Stowers family has run a very
> large, well-known food cooperative called Manna
> Storehouse on the western side of the greater Cleveland area for many
> years.
>
> There were agents from the Department of
> Agriculture present, one of them identified as
> Bill Lesho. The search warrant is reportedly
> supicious-looking. Agents began rifling through
> all of the family's possessions, a task that
> lasted hours and resulted in a complete upheaval
> of every private area in the home. Many items
> were taken that were not listed on the search
> warrant. The family was not permitted a phone
> call, and they were not told what crime they were
> being charged with. They were not read their
> rights. Over ten thousand dollars worth of food
> was taken, including the family's personal stock
> of food for the coming year. All of their
> computers, and all of their cell phones we
> re
> taken, as well as phone and contact records. The
> food cooperative was virtually shut down. There
> was no rational explanation, nor justification,
> for this extreme violation of Constitutional rights.
>
> Presumably Manna Storehouse might eventually be
> charged with running a retail establishment
> without a license. Why then the Gestapo-type
> interrogation for a 3rd degree misdemeanor
> charge? This incident has raised the ominous
> specter of a restrictive new era in State
> regulation and enforcement over the nation's private food supply.
>
> This same type of abusive search and seizure was
> reported by those innocents who fell victim to
> oppressive federal drug laws passed in the 1990s.
> The present circumstance raises the obvious
> question: is there some rabid new interpretation
> of an existing drug law that considers food a
> controlled substance worthy of a nasty SWAT
> operation? Or worse, is there a previously
> unrecognized provision(s) pertaining to food in
> the Homeland Security measures? Some have
> suggested that it was merely an out-of-control,
> hot-to-trot ODA agent, and, if so, this would be
> a best-case scenario. Anything else might spell
> the beginning of the end for the freedom to eat
> unregulated and unmonitored food.
>
> One blogger familiar with the Ohio situation has reported that:
>
> "Interestingly, I believe they [Manna Storehouse]
> said a month or so ago, an undercover ODA
> official came to their little store and claimed
> to have a sick father wanting to join the=2
> 0co-op.
> Both the owner and her daughter-in-law had a
> horrible feeling about the man, and decided not
> to allow him into the co-op and notified him by
> certified mail. He came back to the co-op
> demanding to be part of it. They refused and gave
> him names of other businesses and health food
> stores closer to his home. Not coincidentally,
> this man was there yesterday as part of the raid."
>
> The same blog also noted that the Ohio Department
> of Agriculture has been chastised by the courts
> in several previous instances for its aggression,
> including trying to entrap an Amish man in a raw
> milk "sale," which backfired when it became known
> that the Amish believe in a literal
> interpretation of "give to him that asketh thee,
> and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away" (Matthew
> 5:42)
>
> The issue appears to be the discovery of a bit of
> non-institutional beef in an Oberlin College food
> service freezer a year ago that was tracked down
> by a county sanitation official to Manna
> Storehouse. Oberlin College's student food coop
> is widely known for its strident ideological
> stance about eating organic foods. It seems that
> the Oberlin student food cooperative had joined
> the Manna Storehouse food cooperative in order to
> buy organic foods in bulk from the national
> organic food distributor United, which services
> buying clubs across the nation. The sanitation
> official, James Boddy, evidently contacted the
> Ohio Department of Agriculture. After the first
>
> contact by state ODA officials, Manna Storehouse
> reportedly wrote them a letter requesting
> assistance and guidelines for complying with the
> law. This letter was never answered. Rather, the
> ODA agent tried several times to infiltrate the
> coop, as described above. When his attempts failed, the SWAT team
> showed up!
>
> Food cooperatives and buying clubs have been an
> active part of the American landscape for over a
> generation. In the 1970s, with the rise of the
> organic food industry (a direct outgrowth of the
> hippie back-to-nature movement) food coops
> started up all over the country. These were
> groups of people who freely associated for the
> purpose of combining their buying power so that
> they could order organic food items in bulk and
> case lots. Anyone who was part of these coops in
> the early era will remember the messy breakdown
> of 35 pounds of peanut butter and 5 gallon drums of honey!
>
> These buying clubs have persisted and flourished
> over the years due to their ability to purchase
> high quality organic foods at reduced prices in
> bulk quantities. Most cooperatives have
> participated greatly in the local agrarian
> economies, supporting neighborhood organic
> farmers with purchases of produce, eggs,
> chickens, etc. The groups also purchase food from
> a number of different local, regional and
> national distributors, many of them family-based
> businesses who truck the food themselves. Some of
> these food cooperatives have become large enough
> to set up mini-storef
> ront operations where
> members can drop in and purchase items leftover
> from case lot sales. Manna Storehouse had
> established itself in such a manner, using a
> small enclosed breezeway attached to their home.
> It was a folksy place with old wooden floors
> where coop members stopped by to chat and snack on bags of organic
> corn chips.
>
> The state of Ohio boasts the second largest Amish
> population in the country. Many of the Amish live
> on acreages where they raise their own food, not
> unlike Manna Storehouse, and sell off the extras
> to neighbors and church members. There is a sense
> of foreboding that this state crackdown on a
> longstanding, reputable food cooperative
> operation could adversely impact the peaceful
> agrarian way of life not only for the Amish, but
> homeschoolers and those families living off the
> land on rural acreages. It raises the disturbing
> possibility that it could become a crime to raise
> your own food, buy eggs from the farmer down the
> road, or butcher your own chickens for family and
> friends ? bustling activities that routinely take place in backwater
> America.
>
> The freedom to purchase food directly form the
> source is increasingly under attack. For those
> who have food allergies and chemical
> intolerances, or who are on special medical
> diets, this is becoming a serious health issue.
> Will Americans retain the right to purchase food
> that is uncontaminated by pesticides, herbicides,
> allergens, additives, dyes, preservatives, MSG,
> GM
> Os, radiation, etc.? The melamine scare from
> China underscores the increasingly inferior and
> suspect quality of modern processed institutional
> foods. One blog, commenting on the bizarre and
> troubling Manna Storehouse situation, observed that:
>
> "No one is saying exactly why. At the same time
> the FDA says it it safe to eat the 40% of tainted
> beef found in Costco's and Sam's all over the
> nation. These farm raids are very common now.
> Every farmer needs to fully eqiped [sic] for the
> possibility of it happening to them. The Farmer
> To Consumer Legal Defense Fund was created just
> for this purpose. The USDA just released their
> plans to put a law into action that will put all
> small farmers out of business. Animals for the
> sale of meat or milk will only be allowed in
> commercial farms, even the organic ones." December 3, 2008 7:09 PM
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> permaculture mailing list
> permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture
>
>
> End of permaculture Digest, Vol 71, Issue 9
> *******************************************
>
>




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page