Reply #82: If you're fighting the USDA, then it is a political act. I wasn't really directing my comments to [View All]

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born farmers and rural peoples. I was directing my comments toward urban and suburban consumers who buy these products as well as stores like Whole Foods and many urban co-ops that carry all sorts of trash. My partner is a pig farmer who left Texas A&M over factory farming so I know some aspects of the struggle.

Lifestyle is not a political act for the working classes. Maybe for the farming classes, but not the working classes. Survival is the name of the game for us. If you're born in North Jersey or South Philly, you're strapped with tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt and you're working retail, rural farming is not a likely possibility for you. No more than someone who grows up on a farm and goes to Ag school is likely going to "make it" in the world of television or finance. There are green libertarians who insist that all of NYC and LA should "pick up and move" to the country. Good god I can't think of a greater disaster. And where would they move to? With no savings, living paycheck to paycheck. Heck a lot of urban working class folks dream of "a house in the country."

Everything is of political value, but not everything is not a political act. And if buying organic is a political act then it is a small and ambivalent one so long as its picked by migrant labor, etc. Buying organic is a pittance in comparison with what the cities can do. Organizing towards an urban general strike to shut down Monsanto and utilizing CSAs to provide food for the people during the general strike is far more productive--in fact its more productive even if it never comes to fruition because it educates the masses about the issue quickly.