Environment the Focus of Performance Festival

This Saturday at Club Passim

By Susie Davidson

CORRESPONDENT

Performance artists, musicians, puppeteers and concerned viewers will partake in a special kind of harvest fest this Saturday from 2:30-5:30 p.m. at Club Passim.

“Saving the Harvest: A Festival for Sustainable Food,” a free event organized by the Boston Chapter of Clean Water Action’s Safe Foods Campaign, will be presented in collaboration with Passim’s Veggie Planet restaurant. Speakers and performers at the event will creatively portray the ways current food production methods of overprocessing and overpackaging ultimately deplete water and other resources, along with precious nutrients.

In addition to Clean Water Action, participating groups will include the Mass. Northeast Organic Farming Association, EarthSave Boston, the Council for Responsible Genetics, the Boston Vegetarian Society and Equal Exchange. Performers and speakers will include Ellery of Blue Heron Organic Farm, who grew the event’s food, Somerville sketch comedy troupe Late Night Players, political folk artist Guy Medilow, NOFA representative Jack Kitteridge, poet and Spare Change News editor Mark Goldfinger, performance artist Ian Thal from the Cosmic Spelunker Theater, who will have an Oct. 14 solo show at Passim, comedian Peter Dutton and Genetic Engineering Campaign Coordinator for Clean Water Action Linda Setchell. Performance troupe Class Acts was also tentatively scheduled at press time.

Although she stressed the value of incorporating the arts into working for social change, Setchell emphasized that “the focus is on stopping genetically engineered food and supporting local agriculture.”

Clean Water Action, a national non-profit organization, works, through grassroots groups and campaigns, to empower citizens and communities to achieve clean, safe and affordable water, decrease health-threatening pollution and create environmentally-friendly jobs and businesses.

Recent efforts of the Boston group, located downtown at 36 Bromfield St., include “Room to Breathe,” a report on cleaning up the state’s antiquated and contaminated coal and oil-fired power plants without impacting energy delivery, and “Death, Disease and Dirty Power,” detailing the health impacts of power plant pollution.

Clean Water Action’s highly organized campaign of over 150 environmental, health, civic, religious, youth and community groups was instrumental in Jane Swift’s ultimate decision, shortly after taking office, to require 50 to 75 percent reductions in smog and soot emissions from the “Filthy Five,” the state’s worst power plants, over the next three to seven years; her legislation also set a national precedent in reduction of mercury and carbon dioxide.

Their Safe Foods Campaign, a coalition of over 85 scientists, chefs and environmental organizations, is currently targeting Shaw's Supermarkets to remove genetically engineered ingredients from their own brand’s products. “Shaw's UK parent company J Sainsbury,” explained Setchell, “removed GE ingredients from store brands in 1999, but has refused to extend the same protections to the U.S.” Local groups in Cambridge have focused on the Porter Square Star Market for over one and a half years; she reported that over 1000 postcards have been sent to that store manager alone, and since October 2000, 16,000 to Shaw's headquarters, and said that a March 2000 anti-GE "Biodevastation Rally" in Copley Square drew over 4500. The Oct. 5 event is a part of this campaign.

“We hope that people will come out to Club Passim on Sunday,” said Setchell, “to learn more about where their food comes from, how it's grown and why some of those processes for growing food such as chemical pesticides and genetically engineered seed are bad for the environment and ultimately public health. The event is also designed to provide the general public with the opportunity to learn about sustainable food alternatives such as Community Supported Agriculture Farms, Farmer's Markets and organic food production.”

People will have the opportunity to sample locally grown vegetables on pizzas made by Veggie Planet, and meet the farmer who grew them.

For more information contact Clean Water Action at 617-338-8131 or lsetchell@cleanwater.org.