The uncle Tom award.

• Author: Matthews, Jonathan
• Position: Black Struggles for Justice

A couple of years back I wrote a piece called "The Fake Parade." It was about a march at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg that had been widely reported as a protest by poor Third World farmers in support of GMOs. A leading light of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) declared the march "a turning point" because "real, live, developing-world farmers" had begun "speaking for themselves." What they had to say seemed pretty unpalatable to the environmental and development NGOs that have raised concerns over GM crops. A commentary on the march in The Times (London) was headlined, "I Do Not Need White NGOs To Speak For Me," while, during the march itself, a "Bullshit Award" was presented to the Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva for being "a mouthpiece of western eco-imperialism."

"The Fake Parade" showed the march was a charade. For instance, the main "developing-world farmer" quoted by the man from BIO turned out never to have farmed in his life. Instead, Chengal Reddy headed a lobby for big commercial farmers in Andhra Pradesh that aspired to becoming the operational arm of the trade association for the agrochemical companies active in India. Similarly, the "media contact" for the march and for the "Bullshit Award" was the daughter of a US lumber industrialist who had worked out of various free market NGOs such as the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute. Her specialty was "counter protest."

Of course, such attempts to position biotech's soap box behind a black man's face neither began nor ended in Johannesburg. In late 1999, for instance, a street protest against genetic engineering in Washington, DC, was disrupted by a group of African-Americans bearing placards such as "Biotech saves children's lives." A Baptist Church from a poor neighborhood, the New York Times revealed, had been paid by Monsanto's PR firm to bus in the counter-demonstrators. Johannesburg does seem to have been a kind of watershed. Since then, Monsanto's fake parade has really begun to hit its stride. From US administration platforms to UN headquarters, from Capitol Hill to the European Parliament, we've been treated to a veritable minstrelsy of lobbying.

Let's pick up the trail amidst the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day observances in New York City this January. That was when the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) invited some 700 diplomats, scientists, journalists, and Gotham High School students to come and consider the "implications and reality" of biotechnology at UN headquarters. CORE's "World Conference" was presided over by His Excellency Aminu Bashir Wali, the Ambassador of Nigeria.

After lunch came the premiere of the film "Voices from Africa," showcasing the results of "CORE's fact-finding trip to Africa." The film opened and closed with comments by CORE's National Chairman, Roy Innis, who explained that it was his concern about hunger in Africa that led him to go there to see for himself and to investigate the potential for biotechnology. The film concluded with Innis saying, "We have to do everything possible to ensure that the African farmer has access to this new technology which potentially can do so much to improve his quality of life."

In a talk on...