Stop Monsanto Now: Crucial Shareholder Resolution Coming Up

Protesting Monsanto, San Francisco (msdonnalee)

by SumOfUs

Monsanto: it's one of the greatest corporate scandals of our time.

This mega-corporation has paid off our politicians, taken over our regulators, and bullied public opponents into submission while it silently monopolizes our food system with its genetically-engineered products.

Now a brave group of Monsanto shareholders are making a stand - the crucial vote is only one week away, and they desperately need our support to force Monsanto to face up to the risks associated with GMOs.

Monsanto has been keeping us and its shareholders in the dark for too long - this shareholder resolution tells Monsanto to be open with the risks of GMO.

This is a serious shareholder proposal, and some big, credible investors are already supportive. But many of the biggest investment and retirement funds that invest OUR money are lining up to vote with Monsanto bosses against transparency.

These big institutional investors think that no one's watching them - and unless we do something now, they'll be right. Together, we can make sure shareholders know what's up and that we're watching - and secure their votes against Monsanto's corporate racket.

The vote happens in just one week. We understand if you can't, but if just 5,000 of us can chip in $1 now, we can launch our urgent campaign to tell Monsanto to come clean on GMOs.

Here's just some of what we could do if we all chip in now:

• Secure advertising in Monsanto's home town of St Louis, Missouri, so that shareholders hear our message as they arrive to vote and know we're watching
• Send organizers to St Louis to raise a media storm outside the shareholder meeting with creative tactics, to make sure the public knows what's happening
• Buy a small, strategic stake in Monsanto - so that we can speak out as shareholders ourselves and demand they act

This shareholder resolution is legitimate, serious business - Harrington Investments Inc. is telling Monsanto to come clean, and they need other big shareholders to back them. 

If the resolution gets a high vote, it would send a very clear signal that Monsanto should disclose the risks associated with GMOs: including contamination of non-GMO crops, damage to "non-target organisms" like bees and other pollinators, and soil contamination.

But Monsanto's board is refusing to back the proposal, despite claiming to be transparent and even though the resolution doesn't require them to disclose any proprietary information.

Meanwhile, the company has spent more than $15 million is California and Washington alone to defeat proposals to label GMO food - a measure that over 90% of Americans support.

Can you chip in just $1 now to stand up to Monsanto and support these brave shareholders in their campaign? We know you might not be able to, but if you can we really appreciate your support.

Big institutional shareholders invest the funds of people like us - but too often they vote against our own interests and cozy up to management. It's only when we publicly hold them to account that we can change this.

We're already reaching out to big Monsanto shareholders to call on them to act - but we need to be able to tell them that we've got the whole SumOfUs community behind us, and we need to be able to show them that we're ready to make a media storm at the shareholders' meeting to hold them to account.

We know what we need to do: get institutional investors to speak to the expert advisors to win their support, show thse investors we'll be there to hold them to account, and to keep piling the pressure on with national and international media coverage - but we can't do it unless we all come together to make it happen.

If we don't, then Monsanto's shareholders will know that no one is watching when they vote down this crucial resolution on GMO transparency.

Can you chip in just $1 now to fund our campaign to tell Monsanto to come clean on the risks associated with GMOs? This is the only shot we'll get to directly change the direction of Monsanto this year.

Thanks for all you do,
Paul, Lisa, Johnny and the rest of us.

SumOfUs is a worldwide movement of people like you, working together to hold corporations accountable for their actions and forge a new, sustainable path for our global economy.

Behold the Most Bike-Friendly Apartment Complex in North America

(Photo: Kokkai Ng / Getty Images)

by Andri Antoniades, Take Part: http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/01/16/bike-friendly-apartment-buildingin-portland

A Bay Area native, Andri Antoniades has previously worked as a fashion industry journalist and a medical writer: full bio follow me

Finding a parking spot in most major cities is like playing a competitive sport: with too many cars vying for too few spaces, ruthlessness can often trample civility.

But that may not be the case for one neighborhood in Portland - well, as long as the ride is a bicycle.

Currently under construction in the city’s Lloyd District, a cycle-centric apartment complex named Hassalo on Eighth has 1,200 bicycle parking spaces in its design.

That’s believed to be more than any other apartment building in North America. The firm responsible, GBD Architects, is considering adding even more.

The Bikes Have Arrived. But Will New Yorkers Ride Them?

Bike Portland reports that each of the 657 apartments will be assigned at least one designated bicycle spot, leaving several hundred more that developers are confident will be in heavy use.

“Since the project location is really at the crossroads of two transit lines and surrounded by pretty affluent and well-established neighborhoods, we have been looking at the parking facility as being more of a bike hub for the neighborhood,” says GBD’s Kyle Andersen. He envisions the project serving commuters and shoppers in addition to residents.

It’s too early to tell how many more spaces may be added, but Andersen says his hope is that the hub will include a bicycle valet and an on-site repair service".

“It’s really a trend that we’re seeing in terms of housing development or apartment complexes,” says Carolyn Szczepanski, director of communications for the League of American Bicyclists, a national cyclist advocacy group. “This desire to have a bicycle in your life is really starting to dictate the way cities are developing.”

Hassalo on Eighth is a natural fit in a city already ranked as the most cyclist-friendly in the country, according Bicycling Magazine. Portland’s bicycle traffic across four of the area’s main bridges has increased a staggering 322 percent since 1991.

Currently, about 6 percent of all of Portland’s commuters bike to work, outranking any other major U.S. city at a rate that’s about 10 times the national average.

Portland may be leading the nation in cycling enthusiasm, but residents in other regions are pedaling fast to catch up.

Dear City 3.0 is a crowdsourced website that lets residents in more than 350 urban areas around the world chime in on important civic issues. Globally, the most often-repeated message left by users is a plea for more bike lanes.

“This is by far the most popular topic in any city in the word,” the project’s developer, Mikael Staer, told FastCoExist. “Everywhere you click in, that's probably the first thing people are talking about.”

The convenience of biking past car-clogged streets, however, is almost incidental in comparison with the economic benefits that can be reaped by those who cycle regularly. Once again, the city of Portland proves it.

Between 2002 and 2008, when cycling increased by 40 percent, bike-related industries brought $90 million to Portland’s economy and provided locals with almost 1,200 jobs.

Even on an individual level, cycling can be its own economic stimulus package. The average annual cost of operating a car in the U.S. is $8,220, whereas the annual cost of maintaining a bike is $308.

Public health care also gets a significant boost from bicycles. A November 2011 study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, found that if 30 million Midwesterners replaced half their short car trips with cycling, 1,100 lives and $7 billion in mortality and health care costs could be saved each year.

The most obvious gains, however, are those that affect the environment.

In Europe, a 2011 study from the European Cycling Federation found that the EU could slash its transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent if citizens from every EU country cycled as much as those in Denmark, where the average person logs almost 600 bike miles per year.

It’s going to take time for car-loving U.S. citizens to reach the feverish levels of love that the Danes have for cycling, but we’re making some strides in that direction.

“Over the past five years especially, there’s been a significant rise in bicycle participation and bike commuting as evident in the federal data that we see,” says Szczepanski. “And there’s been a real sea change in seeing bicycling as a real attribute and something that people are looking for in a lifestyle.”

Still, most major U.S. cities have been slow to catch up to the demand for better bike lanes. But at least if you live in Portland, you’ll have plenty of places to park.