Busboys Books Presents: The Fight Against Monsanto’s Roundup: The Politics of Pesticides with Robin Esser & Mitchel Cohen
Date and Time
Mar 18, 2019 6:30 pm
Location
450K
450 K St NW, Washington, District of Columbia, 20001
Mar 18, 2019 6:30 pm
450K
Chemical poisons have infiltrated all facets of our lives — housing, agriculture, work places, sidewalks, subways, schools, parks, even the air we breathe. More than half a century since Rachel Carson issued Silent Spring — her call-to-arms against the poisoning of our drinking water, food, animals, air, and the natural environment — The Fight Against Monsanto’s Roundup: The Politics of Pesticides takes a fresh look at the politics underlying the mass use of pesticides and the challenges people around the world are making against Monsanto’s most dangerous creation, glyphosate.
The scientists and activists contributing to The Politics of Pesticides, edited by long-time Green activist Mitchel Cohen, explore not only the dangers of glyphosate — better known as “Roundup” — but the campaign which ended with glyphosate declared as a cancer-causing agent. In an age where banned pesticides are simply replaced with newer and more deadly ones, and where corporations such as Monsanto, Bayer, Dow and DuPont scuttle attempts to regulate the products they manufacture, what is the effective, practical, and philosophical framework for banning glyphosate and other pesticides?
The Fight Against Monsanto’s Roundup: The Politics of Pesticides explores the best strategies for winning the struggle for healthy foods and a clean environment. It takes lessons from activists who have come before, and offers a new, holistic and radical approach that is essential for defending life on this planet and creating for our kids, and for ourselves, a future worth living in.
Robin T. Falk Esser, PhD, earned her Ph.D. in Physiology & Biophysics (cardiac electrophysiology, neurophysiology, and pharmacology) at SUNY Stony Brook Health Sciences Center; published papers in Science and Nature, and co-authored scientific papers published in The Journal of Physiology, The Journal of General Physiology, and The Biophysical Journal. She was a New York City high school science teacher for 30 years, teaching Advanced Placement Environmental Science, AP Bio, and Chemistry, and was a recipient of the Siemens AP Science award for excellence in teaching (subject of NY Times articles and Tom Brokaw NBC Nightly National News interview on exemplary teaching). She is a life-long political activist; working as a teenager in the 1965 anti-apartheid mobilization, 1968 Poor People’s Campaign with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., against the Vietnam War and in the draft resistance movement, and with the Red Balloon Collective at SUNY Stony Brook.
Mitchel Cohen coordinates the No Spray Coalition in New York City (www.NoSpray.org), which successfully sued the City government over its indiscriminate spraying of toxic pesticides. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan and received his B.A. from SUNY Stony Brook, where he co-founded the Red Balloon Collective in 1969 -- a radical-thinking and creatively acting group that put their bodies and art on the line against the U.S. war machine and in defense of social and environmental justice. Mitchel ran for Mayor of NYC as one of five Green Party candidates. That primary election fell on Sept. 11, 2001, when life as we know it was changed forever. He was editor of the national newspaper, “Green Politix,” for one faction of the national Green Party (before being purged), as well as the NY State Green Party newspaper; chaired Pacifica radio's WBAI Local Board, and hosted a weekly show, “Steal This Radio,” for a different internet-based station. His writings include: The Social Construction of Neurosis, and other pamphlets; What is Direct Action? a book that draws on personal experiences as well as lessons from Occupy Wall Street; An American in Revolutionary Nicaragua; two books of poetryOne-Eyed Cat Takes Flight and The Permanent Carnival -- and scores of pamphlets, which he sells on the streets and subways of his beloved Brooklyn. His forthcoming book of poetry and short stories is called, The Rubber Stamp Man and will be available later this year.
