At 6:30 Saturday night, I end up at the First Unitarian Universalist Church on Franklin Street. On the Web site calendar the event is called "Final Teach-In Planet Resistance & Alternatives." Like California itself, membership in Reclaim the Commons is apparently a state of mind, although a $5 contribution is appreciated and you can sign up to receive information by e-mail if you want to.

I pay my volitional registration fee, give one of my e-mail addresses, and pick up one copy of every brochure on the table. To the extent that the brochures discuss biotechnology, they focus almost entirely on the issue of genetically engineered foods. For the logical mind, this presents a bit of a quandary since the overwhelming number of companies at BIO are engaged in producing medicine and healthcare products. The Associated Press wire will notice this same disconnect on Monday. For those of us attempting a logical analysis, it is easy to use this missed communication as a reason to dismiss Reclaim the Commons and, after reading their literature, I am inclined to do this. But I will rethink my position shortly.

I nab an aisle seat in a front pew and open the first brochure entitled, "Keeping California Free of Genetically Engineered Food" by Californians For GE-Free Agriculture. My fellow Californians explain genetic engineering as, "a new process used by scientists to insert genes from various organisms (human, plant, animal, bacteria, or virus) into crop plants." So far so good. They go on to tell me that this technology, ".... differs fundamentally from traditional plant breeding in that it forces the exchange of genes across species barriers -- a process that does not occur in nature."

A process that does not occur in nature. This is the key although I don't immediately get it on Saturday night. I take a look around and think, yes this is God's wooden ship. God would build it this way. Oak floors, oak pews, sedately beautiful wood ceiling with crossed beams shaped like a ship's hull. Classic stained glass windows shining God's light on this classic activist crowd. White-haired 60's worriers. The lifetime committed. The pierced and the paisley. Young people with sensible Mohawks. Tonight they will come dressed for the new global church. No makeup, little jewelry except for humble stones from the Earth; turquoise, a small topaz, a bit of polished jade.

The podium remains empty, so I surmise that it will be a while before the Teach-In begins. I embark on further acts of coverage. I already have a general concept that Unitarians are into hip social action; harboring refugees from Central America or holding funeral services for counterculture heroes like Allen Ginsburg; very cool people. I begin to circulate. The vibe has a distinct flavor of mandated serenity. I approach a well-dressed woman with a haircut that obviously involved a professional. She appears to be about my age and is, in fact, a fifty-something doctor's wife who tells me that mechanized farming is evil and that all the best land has historically been inhabited by people who live in villages and use slash-and- burn agriculture. I move off thinking she needs to try her luck in the slash-and-burn section the Berkeley Bowl Market on her weekly visit. My next target is a young professional activist who tells me that that genetically engineered rice has ruined Thailand's water, no details available. Everyone I meet has stories of spectacular damage from genetically engineered crops but, like paranormal phenomena, no one ever seems to be in the right place with a real measuring device. The focus is on failures without a coherent alternative definition of success. The universal message from my pre-seminar survey is; we take it on faith that it's all a big lie. And so it goes until the Teach-In finally begins.

Looking over my notes, I see that services were convened by Luke Anderson, who looked like a rock star/surf dude and spoke with an impeccable English accent. This was in interesting juxtaposition to the panel, which seemed to contain no other Caucasians. Which was in even more interesting juxtaposition to the audience, which seemed to contain virtually no non-Caucasions. The other panelists mainly wore native dress of one sort or another; sashes, capes, and the implication of ritual ornaments. No one except Luke looked to have missed a meal, natural or genetically modified, in recent memory. Luke told us that we had an amazing night ahead. He was right but not, I suspect, in the way he intended.

The native garb of the panel turned out to be subliminal preparation for the true horror of the 21st century Ghost Dance that was about to unfold. The original Ghost Dance was an attempt by some North American Indian tribes to save themselves from the white man. The despair and nostalgia of the Ghost Dance invoked magical thinking to the maximum in a desperate last spasm by an indigenous population about to lose their entire way of life. It was an attempt to resurrect a continent full of dead people along with their entire ecosystem; including hundreds of millions of buffalo. They were, in fact, engaged in a supernatural reclamation of their commons.

But whatever the Indians did on the Great Plains, tonight's Ghost Dance was listless and anemic. From the beginning there was a sense in the audience of the dutiful obeisance that presides over a normal Sunday sermon, when you don't expect the minister to actually transform your life in a real way. But these people did sit awfully well. I consider that, for professional activists, the ability to sit often takes the measure of ones commitment. Pews, bus-benches, crowded old Volvos. These people know sitting in their souls, but I do not. I emerge from the First Unitarian Universalist Church with serious sciatic neuropathy knowing only that the people I have met are profoundly in favor of all that is natural, and deeply opposed to any pollution of their vital bodily fluids by artificial technology.

And yet I can't shake that spooky feeling that I have been clubbed with a hard and dangerous reality deceptively wrapped inside a gigantic wad of fuzzy thinking. I have attempted to decipher a congregation who despises globalization but believes in the global village. I have heard about the evils of NAFTA and the people's intrinsic right to food sovereignty. I interviewed a biofeminist who knows in her heart that vitamins are an insidious plot by the new military-industrial complex. As I walk down Franklin towards the ocean, a concept is focusing through the lens of memory. And I think, none of this garble, even the most fractured of these fairy tales can erase the reality that the green revolution was a complete hoax and that forcing genetically engineered food down the throats of unsuspecting hungry people is evil.

Those who remember the past are condemned to repeat it too; perhaps they are even inspired. I am beginning to remember and to synthesize. Reclaim the Commons is not in San Francisco to stop the members of BIO from finding a cure for cancer. They have made the tactical error of setting themselves up against all of BIO when, in fact, they are here because a few companies are pushing relentlessly to release the fruits of genetic engineering into the environment. This is the reality that has pushed the collective primal scream buttons of the environmentalists. They fervently believe that this technology is dangerous; and they may be right. But what is absolutely crucial to realize is that Reclaim the Commons does not have to be right in order for Monsanto to be wrong.

Although they can't articulate it, Reclaim the Commons has instinctively recognized the truth. Agricultural biotechnology is different. For most of the biotechnology industry, genetic engineering is just a means to an end. An advanced processing technology conducted under highly controlled laboratory conditions. Only agricultural biotechnology requires the immediate, wholesale, release of recombinant organisms on a global scale in order to create a profitable product. Therefore, only the agricultural biotechnology companies are in a hurry to flood the world with these new life forms. The horror stories retold by Reclaim the Commons may be true, false, or some shade of grey... but no farmer anywhere is waking up today thinking, "boy if only I had genetically engineered BT corn, my problems would be over." There are simply too many alternative and equally efficient crop production technologies available. Monsanto, the first and largest industrial player in ag biotech, is still the poster child for the utopian joys that will ensue from the release of recombinant organisms into the environment. They are in a hurry when the truth is... there is no reason to hurry.

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