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http://www.counterpunch.org/ross02222011.html
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06-Mar-11 10:33 PM
http://www.counterpunch.org/ross02222011.html
More revealingly, H.W. Scripps owns the Home and Garden cable TV station, with 85 million subscribers, along with a shop at home network and the Food Network, while being ensconced in the interests of the largest seed and pharmaceutical corporations in the world. From the animal testing labs to Monsanto and Novaris to your television set in one great whirlwind. This is, of course, not to mention the Scripps family's ties to hospitals and permanent cosmetics companies. (According to one website, A 'Wellness Day' will be coming to a Scripps Hospital near you.) To round out the portrait of monopolization and graft, H.W. Scripps owns a small conglomerate of at least six newspapers in South East Florida one of which, the Jupiter Courier, is the weekly rag that serves the same city where all this is taking place: Jupiter, Florida. Suffice it to say, until the treesit came up, coverage of Scripps had been one dimensional to say the least, but the reigns of human nature are starting to slip from the grasp of industry. Risking SLAPP suits and charges under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, activists maintained a 56-hour vigil outside of the Scripps Research Institute with rotating protests in solidarity with the treesit. The combination of on-the-ground direct action, media work, letter writing, and months of grassroots organizing has paid off with surprisingly good coverage from local television stations and newspapers that are not in line with the Scripps family. Scripps has even dug themselves into a little hole in the eyes of the public by reneging on their promise to employ locals to staff their lab, so the campaign is likely to generate support from more diverse sectors of society than it otherwise would. Although Scripps employees are up to their necks in Greenwashing, joining international symposiums on biodiversity while animals from all around the world are dieing in their labs, the public is becoming increasingly savvy in avoiding the quagmire of public relations and lies upholding their logic. Recognizing the urgent need to reclaim urbanizing spaces from miserablist biopolitics, Everglades Earth First! and other activists are taking a stand against development by occupying the last bits of wild heritage left through peaceful methods and holding onto it, quite literally, for dear life. Alexander Reid Ross writes for the Earth First! Journal For more information on this subject, visit evergladesearthfirst.org, or email floridatreesit@gmail.com
2 of 2
06-Mar-11 10:33 PM