Michael Schmidt talks about the fight over Site 41: “The Right for Water — Eight Days of Personal Resistance”

Police arrive at dump site 41 to arrest Michael Schmidt for the first time.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

I woke up with incredible inner pressure regarding dumpsite 41. A decision on the one year moratorium to stop construction will be coming next Wednesday. For over 20 years I have been following the growing resistance to the insanity to built a dump on the Alliston aquifer, one of the purest waters in the world. Rumors were swirling around that they will try to bring in the first load of garbage before the crucial vote. That itself was enough for me; I had to act to keep the pressure up until the last minute.

Thursday, August 20, 2009
We drove to Tiny Township and around 12 pm I started blocking the main entrance after I talked to the Natives who had set up camp opposite dumpsite 41. Huge gravel trucks, a fuel truck and several service vehicles could not enter dump site 41. OPP negotiators arrived after 20 minutes to convince me to let the work continue until the vote next Wednesday. Nobody trusted anybody anymore. The smell of corruption in regard to this project was too obvious. I stood my ground. After all, it was about the future of our children. On the other side of the road, many resisters showed their support, chanted and thanked me.

Organic Pastures’ Mark McAfee on raw milk issues & the Michael Schmidt case

Mark McAfee is not only one of America’s leading exponents of raw milk, he also operates the largest-scale raw milk dairy in the United States and possibly the world. This is an excerpt from a piece recently published by Kimberly Hartke on the Hartke is Online blog, as part of her Michael Schmidt month:

“Consumer’s needs are driving the demand for raw dairy

Organic Pastures' Mark McAfee takes the podium at the International Raw Milk Symposium in Toronto, Jan. 2009

With the advent of the pasteurizer in 1893 (first called the par boiler) far more than bacteria were killed. The pasteurizer killed personal responsibility. The pasteurizer disconnected and marginalized the farmer and made his quality efforts irrelevant. The pasteurizer killed enzymes and good bacteria and nutritional values. The pasteurizer produced a dead partial food out of a once vital alive and complete whole food. The pasteurizer started milk markets toward a 100 year long slow death as more and more people could not drink dead milk and became sick from it.

This was a death marked by dairy lies that covered its own demise and cover stories of its false benefits and a racist blame game against broad categories of people for their innate deficiencies from a pasteurized dairy invented deficiency called “lactose intolerance” or “Lie” (abbreviated and very true in deed). Literally no one has lactose intolerance…instead it is “ pasteurization intolerance” and nearly anyone can drink raw milk just fine. Yet the dairy industry has invented a blame game that tells Asians and blacks and American Indians that they are not white enough to drink milk. That they have a deficiency. This is a false science and a huge dairy lie. It was their dead food product made toxic by their own shelf life extending technologies that was the problem. It was not the consumer’s fault, regardless of race. The pasteurized milk industry has created a racist blame game and this is the very tip of the iceberg….many more lies lay deep in the political and economic game of selling dead food from industrial farms that do not know any of their customers, personally.

Urban farming post updated now

Much of last week’s posting was done from a phone. That’s why some posts had a very simple look to them and why other posts were strangely truncated — guess I didn’t allow time for the entire post to be uploaded. Which is just a preamble to saying that those posts are now up in their fullness. It was especially the post on urban farming that was missing most of its content. So if you found that intriguing, you might want to go back now and read the rest of it, now that it’s all up on the blog. Here’s the link.

Also check out the links to mainstream news stories that have been added in the comments following the recent Site 41 postings.

Raw milk “Pepsi challenge” in Romania

Here’s a different kind of raw milk story from Romania. This is from the blog “Arabian Drum – Peace Corps Blogs. The following is an excerpt from a post called “The Pepsi Challenge“:

Milking goats in Romania. Photo Tim Clayton, Sony World Photo Awards.

“Raw milk is very easy to find, here in Romania. Bunici (grandmas) typically stand on the busy before-noon street corners, and lean against brick walls or warped garden rails. Placed before them are a few ‘recycled’ 2-liter soda bottles filled with warm, raw milk, so white that it glows. If you want the milk, all you have to do is identify a spot where one of these old women typically stands and sells each morning, and go early before all of her bottles are gone.

I wanted raw milk, as MB has been expounding its goodness. I also wanted to try making my own yogurt, and I figured it would taste best with milk drawn from an animal only a few hours before. Krzyczk came to visit, and we were walking along the piata lane outside of my bloc late one morning. There’s a bunica that peddles milk at the end of the road, but she typically disappears after 10:30.

Site 41 victory — council votes for one-year moratorium on dump over aquifer

Yesterday’s news, reported today on the Bovine. Again from Marianne Else:

Dear Everybody,
I have just come from the Simcoe County Council Chambers and first of all the council voted to have all charges reversed that had been laid by the OPP police against all who had been arrested including the 350 000 dollar fine for Vicky M, so Michael Schmidt should be included in this also……

The council session started at 11 am and by 11:30am we were asked to leave chambers because the council wanted an in camera session for half an hour which turned out to be 3 hours before we were let back in.

The people from the Council of Canadians ( Maude Barlow) finally sent out for pizza as we had no lunch. Council meanwhile had lunch brought in and they kept working in camera.

Finally we were let back in at 2:30 pm and it took then until 6 pm when the majority of the council voted for a 1 year moratorium and they will meet again next month to MAYBE abandon Site 41 altogether…..lets hope — because otherwise they’ll have to spend money to winterize the site which means they have to put all the clay back etc….

So for now everyone was happy and very very relieved….

Many many blessings to everyone

from Marianne in Hawkestone

PS I just spoke to Markus Schmidt and he now knows that Michael should be released from Jail….

Michael Schmidt released from jail after second Site 41 arrest earlier this week

This just in from Marianne Else:

Hi Everyone

I just came from the court house in Barrie, where Michael Schmidt had his bail hearing.

He was released, at noon today Aug 27, 2009, into the custody of his son Markus who was there to take a weakend Michael home. 7 other supporters of Dump Site 41 were there to make sure that Michael would be released after 3 days of fasting in jail, as Michael – on principle – does not eat or drink anything when arrested.

They had him under surveilance in Penetang because of the health issues involved. He came into the courtroom in handcuffs, I was pretty shocked as I had never seen anybody in handcuffs.

TIME talks “high cost of cheap food”

“Getting Real about the High Price of Cheap Food” is the title of this story on the state of agriculture in America — which is certainly something everyone should care about these days. Here’s an excerpt from this recent Time magazine story. The big news here is that such a mainstream news source as TIME is taking up this issue in a serious way — this may mean we’re approaching a tipping point in public awareness.

What the World Eats -- the Revis Family of North Carolina, from the Book

“Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won’t bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics. The waste produced by the pig and his thousands of pen mates on the factory farm where they live goes into manure lagoons that blanket neighboring communities with air pollution and a stomach-churning stench.

He’s fed on American corn that was grown with the help of government subsidies and millions of tons of chemical fertilizer. When the pig is slaughtered, at about 5 months of age, he’ll become sausage or bacon that will sell cheap, feeding an American addiction to meat that has contributed to an obesity epidemic currently afflicting more than two-thirds of the population. And when the rains come, the excess fertilizer that coaxed so much corn from the ground will be washed into the Mississippi River and down into the Gulf of Mexico, where it will help kill fish for miles and miles around. That’s the state of your bacon — circa 2009.

Urban farming changes the landscape

Urban farming advocate Will Allen introduces the concept in this YouTube clip:

Life, Art and Chickens, Afloat in the Harbour — an excerpt from the NY Times story;

The social dimension is very much a part of the Waterpod "mix". P: Michael Nagle for The NY Times

“Over two live-in visits a month apart, this reporter became one of the crew, pitching in on the dome cover-raising and daily tasks like feeding the chickens — four hens produce breakfast, lunch and dinner — and tending the vegetable gardens that line the boat’s rails.

Why everyone’s so upset about Site 41

Here is a message from Michael Schmidt:

Dear Friends

I urge you to read this piece of information, so that you understand why I have taken and will take more drastic actions in the near future. Go to the website http://stopdumpsite41.ca/ try to understand how crucial immediate actions are.

All the best to all of you

Regards Michael Schmidt

What’s the big deal about the water?

In 2006, University of Heidelberg Professor William Shotyk, a world-renowned scientist whose research sets an international benchmark for measuring the effects of human activities on water, tested the water at Dumpsite 41.

Visiting Canadian finds raw milk is “just another roadside attraction” in Vermont

Here’s a charming little “what I did on my vacation” essay from Toronto Dowsers head honcho Marilyn Gang:

Imagine finding signs like this along the road in Ontario.

I recently returned from a lovely 3 weeks in NY and Vermont, attended the Dowsers convention, and a brief event in Vermont boggled my little brain and I would like to share this with you:

At the checkout line in a Manchester, Vermont supermarket (Shaw’s), the bag boy — about 15 was rosy cheeked, and friendly and I could tell he was excited about something. When I asked him what it was, this sweet young
man said “We are moving our cows to the Addison County Fair (Vermont’s largest agricultural fair, celebrating their 60th year as a family oriented community tradition.) tomorrow.”

When I told him I was from Toronto, he said he’s also excited at [ in 2010] attending the big — Jersey or Guernsey event in Ontario.

Even though I had lived in Vermont I was not too clear on the milk rules in Vermont. I asked him if it was possible to get real milk in the area and he responded: “Sure. Just go up the road to Dorset. You’ll see a barn on the side of the road with a sign.”