NOTE: The anthropologist Glenn Davis Stone, Prof. of Anthropology and Environmental Studies at Washington University in St Louis, has a new photo essay Genetically Modified Crops: From St Louis to India published in Anthropology News – see the link below. The following text accompanies one of the images in the essay. It seemed appropriate on the day of a planned protest at Monsanto's 2012 Annual Meeting in St Louis.
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Resistance and Counter-Terrorism in St LouisÂ
Glenn Davis Stone
Extracted from: Genetically Modified Crops: From St Louis to India
http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2012/01/06/genetically-modified-crops/
In 2003 St Louis hosted the agribusiness-friendly World Agricultural Forum, prompting activists and scholars to plan a "Biodevastation" counter-conference across town. Advised by the FBI Counter-terrorism office, which had been egged on by Monsanto (FBI 2003, "Memo to Counterterrorism branch St Louis re: World Agricultural Forum," by FOIA request), city police arrested and detained would-be conference participants on charges later admitted to be baseless.
Here [in the picture] Ignacio Chapela (UC Berkeley), John Peck (Family Farm Defenders) and Jesse Reynolds (Students for Responsible Research) give presentations on effects of biotechnology on industry-academy relations. The empty chair was for speaker Sarah Bantz (Missouri Resistance Against Genetic Engineering) who had been arrested and jailed for allegedly driving with an unfastened seatbelt and for carrying Vitamin C pills.
The police had also arrested and detained members of an anti-GM group for bicycling without a license (a non-existent law in a city that does not issue bicycle licenses). Police also forced their way into a house where conferees were staying, claimed a box of roofing nails to be a weapon, slashed bicycle tires, removed artwork, submitted a woman to a strip search, urinated on the inhabitants’ clothing, and made arrests for inhabiting a condemned building (which had just been condemned by an inspector who came with the police).
The St Louis Police fought an ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] lawsuit for six years before issuing an apology and paying monetary damages (Ratcliffe 2009, "City police apologize for raids in 2003," St Louis Post-Dispatch, 25 Aug). Spring 2003. Photo courtesy Glenn Davis Stone