Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir at Joe's Pub in Manhattan

Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir at Joe's Pub in Manhattan.

(Photo: Facebook)

Organic Food Activists Take Thanksgiving Fight to Monsanto's Front Lawn

'What better day than Thanksgiving to remind the world that eating local, organic food is one way to stop this profit-mongering, biodiversity-destroying monopoly,' asks Reverend Billy

People around the country are pledging to make their Thanksgiving feasts as organic, local, non-GMO, and pesticide-free as possible, while healthy food advocates are taking their message straight to agrochemical giant Monsanto's front lawn.

Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir--a project of longtime activist and street preacher Bill Talen--in collaboration with the Organic Consumers Association, GMO Free Midwest, Gateway Garlic Farms, and The Greenhorns, are hosting an organic Thanksgiving dinner Thursday on the lawn of the world's largest biotechnology seed company in St. Louis, Missouri.

Participants, who have been asked "bring a plate, utensils, a cup, and a vegetarian or vegan dish to share," will gather at a nearby park at 1 pm, at which point they will march less than a mile to Monsanto's world headquarters.

Then, "after our Monsanto action we'll take our food to the activists, who may have forgotten to pack a lunch," Talen wrote on his blog, referring to demonstrators in nearby Ferguson.

"After a banner year performing in the United States and Europe to bring attention to the role of big corporations in climate disruption and poisoning of honey bees, Reverend Billy will conclude 2014 by confronting the company that is responsible for Agent Orange, PCBs, GMOs, Bovine Growth Hormone, Glyphosate and more," the group said of Thursday's planned action.

"Monsanto must be stopped," added Reverend Billy, who has been jailed more than 50 times protesting social and environmental injustices. "Monsanto is the devil and what better day than Thanksgiving to remind the world that eating local, organic food is one way to stop this profit-mongering, biodiversity-destroying monopoly."

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