From X Mon Feb 15 16:11:21 EST 1993
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy,alt.activism,alt.society.civil-liberty,alt.individualism,alt.censorship,talk.politics.misc,misc.headlines,soc.culture.usa
From: jad@hopper.ACS.Virginia.EDU (John DiNardo)
Subject: Part 1,  People Needing Work -->> Start a Community Food Co-op 
Message-ID: <1993Feb15.180237.18238@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
Followup-To:  alt.conspiracy
Keywords: People Needing Work -->> Start a Community Food Co-Op
Sender: usenet@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU
Organization: University of Virginia, FREE Public Access UNIX! 
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 18:02:37 GMT
Lines: 77


Some of Gary Null's recent broadcast discussions have gotten me
thinking about the possibilities that might arise for people -- 
just ordinary, unconnected, unmonied people -- who might dare to
start their own home-based businesses.  Keeping in mind that the
variety  of possible types of home-based businesses is as expansive
as the imagination of the person contemplating it, consider for now 
just one specific type of home-based business:  the food co-op.

The food co-op would be inherently beneficial to the community of
customers who buy within it. That's obvious. But in subtle ways,
too, the food co-op would benefit the individual and the society,
as well, by fostering inter-personal communication and popular
self-determination in consumerism and in liberating people from 
the oppressive exploitations of corrupt, self-serving politicians.

For the many people who are out of work, and for those who face 
the threat of being out of work, the opportunity is waiting for 
you to breathe life into it.  Create a community food cooperative. 
The dictionary defines "cooperative" as: "an enterprise that is
owned jointly by those who use its facilities or services."     
However, the persons who run the food co-op deserve a fair salary
for their work.

The question would arise: "Why would running a food co-op be a
promising way of making a living?"  Here is one of numerous
reasons which I intend to explore -- and it needs to be stated
bluntly.  The meat, the chicken, the fish, the dairy products, 
the grain products, the fruits and vegetables that we eat -- these 
foods are slowly poisoning us to death. If you were to drink one
tablespoon of poison every day, from infancy, what do you suppose
would happen to you by the time you reached middle-age?
I submit to you that you are ingesting poisons each and every day
of your life. 

Now, if your neighbor came to your door and told you that you could
buy many or most of your foods WITHOUT that daily dose of poison,
and that these pure foods are sold at the same price or at a lower 
price than the poisonous foods, certainly you would NOT say:
"No thank you. I want to continue buying the poisonous foods at the
same price."  What you might say, however, is: "I don't believe that
my supermarket foods contain poisons. We have a Pure Food Law that
prohibits the contamination and the toxification of our foods. Our
Government would simply not allow the food industries to poison us."
That's what you might say.  And therein lies the keystone which -- 
if yanked from the apex of the temple of consumer gluttony built
by that one-eyed god in your living room -- would collapse the temple.

The debris from that collapse would provide to enterprising 
individuals the building blocks, the customers, that they would 
need to build pure-food co-ops, and run them from their own homes, 
for the people of their communities.

Start a research project.  Ask your librarian to help you find
information in books, journals and newspapers on food adulteration,
food toxins, food additives, pesticides in grains, fruits, 
vegetables, meats, poultry and dairy products, antibiotics and
carcinogenic hormones in meats and poultry, nutrient depletion of
soils on agri-business farmlands, chemical food flavorings and 
colorings such FD&C red #3, #4, #5, yellow #6, sodium bisulfite,
aspartame, modified food starches, and all the other weird chemicals 
whose names you can copy off the packages on your supermarket shelves.

I'll obtain from Gary Null a bibliography identifying many sources 
of this kind of information contained in your library and in the
nationwide inter-library loan network through which you can obtain 
library loans of virtually any book and photocopies of virtually any
newspaper or magazine article under the sun. Then I'll post the
bibliography.

You will need to prove your case to your neighbors before you can
win them over as customers. And please share your research findings
with the audiences reading these networks.  Post your information  
so that others can benefit from it.

      John DiNardo