Call to Action: WHAT NOW?
Fruit of the Devil is a big book. At its center is the story of people in a diverse community struggling to protect themselves and their watershed from pesticide poisoning. Murder and Romance plot threads weave the characters’ lives together, as they dive deep into social and environmental problems that are still of grave concern to all of us today. See more about the real life story that inspired this “Cli-Fi” “Eco-Thriller” in Mary’s Author’s Statement. The author’s hope is that readers will enjoy and be entertained by the book. But, upon reaching the end of the story, a number of readers have shared that they felt a call to “do something” — to become socially engaged in one or another of the issues raised in Fruit of the Devil. To that end, ways to find out more about some of these social and environmental justice issues are described below.
During its 35 years of operation, the Monterey Bay Salmon & Trout Education Program (STEP) inspired nearly 100,000 young people to become watershed stewards and champions of the environment. In the 1980s, Santa Cruz County STEP students helped to initiate the federal listing of Monterey Bay Coho as an endangered species. But by 2000, the Monterey Bay Coho (“Silver Salmon”) was considered extinct in the Corralitos Creek watershed. In 2014, due to the low numbers of Steelhead (“Rainbow Trout”) returning to spawn, California Department of Fish and Wildlife determined that they could no longer permit Steelhead eggs to be incubated in classrooms. The Monterey Bay STEP program was terminated. Although conservation measures continue, and it is hoped that the MBSTEP program can one day return, all Monterey Bay salmonids, critical to the overall biodiversity of the Pacific Salmon population, are currently considered to be at high risk. http://planetwatchradio.com/salmon-restoring-an-endangered-species/
The Earth is currently on the precipice of the Sixth Great Extinction, the start of a new geologic era—the Anthropocene—during which it’s probable we will loose three-quarters of all species on Earth, due to human-caused disruptions of natural cycles. It is essential that we make every effort to preserve the biodiversity of life on this planet.
The California Birth Defects Prevention Act legally passed by voter initiative in 1984, “… required DPR to acquire certain toxicological data for registered pesticide active ingredients in order to make a scientific determination that their continued uses will not cause significant adverse health effects.” Satisfactory data was never provided by the industry for methyl bromide, yet the EPA continues to allow agricultural use of the chemical into the twenty-first century, in complete disregard of California citizens’ legal mandate. Follow-up is needed.
As of 2017, methyl bromide was finally {mostly} phased out as a field fumigant in California, after receiving years of federal exemptions from the international ban. The strawberry industry still relies on the pesticides Chloropicrin and 1,3-Dichloropropenene — along with a toxic brew of other estrogen, reproductive, endocrine, and immune system disruptors; neurotoxins; and carcinogens. It is well known that there are synergistic effects to combining these pesticides, but so far no systematic studies have been made.
New research from UC Berkeley and UC Davis, including the now famous CHAMACOS Study, links exposure to these brain-harming pesticides with lower IQ, autism spectrum disorders, and learning disabilities. Yet by 2019, the problem of toxic pesticide drift into the schools had still not been addressed. In the first year of Trump’s presidency, his EPA Chief Scott Pruitt swept aside seventeen years of research and the scientific concerns from his own agency about the brain-harming chemical chlorpyrifos, produced by DowDuPont, ruling that farmers can continue to use the chemical. However, California, Hawaii, and New York have implemented state-wide bans on the neurotoxin. – See more at: http://www.pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2017/04/03/state-ag-commissioner-troxler-pleased-epas-ruling-allow-brain-damaging-pesticide-crops/
On April 24, 2019, Audet & Partners, LLP filed the first widespread class action lawsuit against Monsanto based on the established link between Roundup weed killer and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. On May 13, 2019, a California jury awarded plaintiffs Alva and Alberta Pilliod a verdict of $55 million in non-economic and economic damages in addition to $1 billion each in punitive damages against Monsanto.
A new generation of dedicated Santa Cruz and Monterey county school teachers have reinvigorated the struggle to protect the more than 500,000 California school children who spend their days within a quarter mile of hazardous pesticide applications. See more about thegroup carrying on Farm Without Harm’s work — Safe Ag SafeSchools (“SASS”) — on the web at http://www.safeagsafeschools.org/and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/safeagsafeschools
In 2014, according to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, 1.2 million children were trafficked worldwide for sexual exploitation.
From April to June of 2018, U.S. President Trump ordered border patrol officers to forcibly take nearly 2,500 immigrant children —breastfeeding infants to seventeen-year-olds — away from their parents. The children were imprisoned (some of them in cages) in makeshift facilities in various border locations, and have since been secretly shipped to unknown locations around the U.S. A billion-dollar private prison industry has quickly developed to construct permanent internment camps for the children, the location of the facilities shrouded in secrecy.
No adequate records of the children’s identity, the location of the facilities where they’re being held, or the identity and whereabouts of their parents has been kept. Parents of many of the children have been deported to untraceable rural locations in Central and South America, while their children continue to be held in U.S. “tender age” prisons. Many of these children will never see their parents again. Whistle blowers have begun leaking troubling images and first-hand reports about the condition of the children, which show them being drugged, beaten, and abused. As of June 2019, at least seven children under the age of 10 have died of neglect in captivity.
The larger issue of Juvenile Justice must be addressed in our country. One organization working to assist gang-involved youth and young adults is Homeboy Industries, founded by Father Gregory Boyle.
Public cries for immigration reform have gone unheeded, and legislation put forth by the Democratic House of Representatives has been ignored by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Colonialism and genocide against Native Americans, are not only part of our country’s history, but continue to this day. Yet our indigenous First Peoples persist and stand strong against assaults to Mother Earth, such as the Standing Rock occupation to resist a dangerous oil pipeline threatening much of the water of the country. Water is Life.
The free, public, high-quality educational system in the U.S. is being systematically dismantled under the Trump Administration by Department of Education appointee Betsy DeVos. Her appointment was widely contested by parents, teachers, unions, and highly qualified educational experts and researchers, and was only approved when Vice President Pence stepped in to cast a deciding vote. An unqualified billionaire with no experience in publiceducation, DeVos has demonstrated her ignorance of basic math, and her rejection of scientific data on school policies and performance. She has worked for decades to undermine teachers unions and has long supported unaccountable, Christian-motivated, for-profit charter schools and vouchers, which drain public schools of critical resources and offer no choice for the most vulnerable students — those with special needs, those who don’t speak English, and those living in poverty. She is an enemy of intellectual freedom, freedom of religion, gender and racial parity, and respect for diversity.
DeVos and her family have contributed billions to promote their elitist, racist agenda by interfering in U.S. elections.
DeVos’ brother, Erik Prince, founded the Private Mercenary Army — Blackwater. According to some sources, Blackwater has contributed at least a million dollars to the NRA.
Plastic debris in the oceans is a growing threat. As of 2018, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a collection of floating plastic trash —primarily suspended, often microscopic, particles in the upper water column — has grown, by some estimates, to more than 600,000 square miles — twice the size of Texas and three times the size of France, with a similar area of man-made marine debris within the North Atlantic Gyre. Cities around the country are responding to this threat to our oceans’ health by passing ordinances to ban plastic grocery bags, plastic straws, and restaurant take-out containers. Scientists, inventors, and entrepreneurs are developing initiatives to clear and repurpose the debris.
“No More Mermaid Tears”, one such project, is a youth-led initiative with the goal of empowering young people as ocean defenders capable of addressing coastal plastic pollution. http://planetwatchradio.com/no-more-mermaid-tears Other significant youth-led initiatives have emerged around the urgency of climate change. See Greta Thunberg and Our Children’s Trust landmark legal case.
The consequences of climate chaos are being felt around the globe. Climate scientists now predict that your grandchildren may never get to walk in an old growth redwood forest, or see a wild salmon or a whale. The 2015 Paris Accord was a hopeful signal that the world’s governments will take effective action to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate the consequences of global warming. Although President Trump has formally rescinded the United States’ commitment to the terms of the Paris Accord, citizens in communities everywhere are taking matters into their own hands, working locally to rein in pollution, curb social injustices, and transition their food, water, transportation, education, health, and energy systems for a sustainable future.
Your help is needed. Dive in!