I've had quite a few people ask me to write a book about Prop 37 as it happened from the very beginning. They want to learn the flow of how things shifted from one person to a ballot initiative campaign. What were the crucial points along the way, who were the players and how did it all come down from one person on January 20, 2011 to election day?
I've been resisting to a certain degree as I don't know the direction I want it to take.
Do I want it to be a tell all with all the dirty downlow? People do like reading that stuff, after all.
Do I want it to be the slick public face of what our media team would have portrayed?
I always opt for the truth. But the truth can be scary to tell because of ramifications both anticipated and unforeseen.
In the anti-GMO world, it is no secret that there was dissention behind the scenes during our campaign. The story told is that we lost because we were outspent by a factor of 8 to 1. I believe we lost at the ballot not only because of being outspent, but because we never united as a movement.
The nonprofits outside our circle of the steering committee had territorial issues so showed up late, half way or not at all...or, as in the case of a few of them, were destructive to the campaign. Businesses that should have donated to the campaign didn't until the end or not at all. Most of the professionals involved had issues with me. I had issues with most of them. They had issues with each other.
The only place that had little to no dissent was the grassroots.
While there were differences of opinion, for whatever reason we came together with one common purpose: to get our foods labeled if they contained geneticially engineered ingredients.
We had no other agenda- no funders we were courting, no one to impress, no databases we needed to pad or protect. We knew that none of that mattered if we wanted labeling. We simply wanted GMO labeling and we were willing to donate huge blocks of our time and energy to that end.
Outside this haven, though, it was brutal. I left the campaign exhausted, ill, and crispified...not because of our opposition or the stress of a political campaign,but because of having to constantly fight the groups and people who were supposed to be our allies, our support, our compatriots against a larger "enemy."
I'm not angry from the pit of my stomach any more. My body, mind and spirit are not all the way back, yet, but are healing. I've decided to write and tell the truth to hopefully give this one last gift to the movement...a message that if we want change, it's time to do some house cleaning and that if we are to win this larger battle we have to find a new way or we will burn out completely and our movement will die.
We have to take the wisdom of the past and the knowledge of how to have structure for action in times of strong effort, but to not get stuck there. We need to find a new way to do politics because the old way has not and will not work here and we are running out of time before it's too late for our food system.
