When you buy organic, you should feel safe knowing that your food was raised without synthetic chemicals or genetic engineering. That's why we have the USDA organic label in the first place! But, in April, the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) will meet to decide whether they want to grant organic apple and pear growers yet another extension on ending the use of the antibiotic tetracycline. Sign the petition below demanding that the NOSB protect organic standards and take a stand against the use of tetracycline in fruit production today. Sign now and we'll deliver your petition signature to the NOSB.

Citizen videos take us to corners of the world that reporters cannot access, and put us on the scene long before investigators arrive. Average citizens now have an unprecedented ability to record, upload, and share what they see. Citizen video was responsible for the rapid circulation of news of Oscar Grant's fatal shooting. Citizen video was responsible for the rapid circulation of news of Oscar Grant’s fatal shooting. Think of the death of Oscar Grant in California, where video taken by fellow passengers was used to instantly spread awareness of his shooting by a transit officer, and was submitted as evidence in his court trial. Or the war in Syria, where mainstream news is banned but civilians and soldiers have taken up cameras and YouTube accounts to document the uprising. Citizen video is changing the roles of reporters, editors, and audiences. And it’s raising new technical and ethical concerns for those covering the news.

The American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC's) long history of influencing state legislators—sometimes even writing legislation for them—to pass laws and promote policies that advance a corporate profit agenda, and at times an extreme conservative agenda, is well documented.

As a new organizer, what fundamental campaign tools and organizing principles did you rely upon? How did you and other campaigners use these fundamentals in the campaign? What different kinds of personal skills do teams use successfully? What are the lessons that other activists, no matter their level of experience, can take from this campaign to win against powerful and entrenched special interests?

Engage and mobilize young people to take action in their schools and communities. While the simple decision to stop at the water fountain rather than the vending machine can make a real difference, students can make a a much bigger impact by becoming experts and advocates for the right to clean, safe, and affordable tap water. The lessons have been designed around middle school standards from the four core subject areas —English, Math, Social Studies & Science — but many of them are flexible to be used across the curriculum.

Outdated privacy laws are allowing the government to engage in a shopping spree in the treasure trove of personal information collected by companies. From warrantless wiretapping, to children being on the “no fly list” and peace activists branded as “terrorists,” the government has been spending time and energy building vast databases about innocent individuals. It’s time to upgrade privacy laws to ensure proper oversight of government access to private details of our lives. It’s time to stop paying for new technology with our privacy. It’s time to Demand our dotRights!

Tell Disney to guarantee deforestation and tiger extinction will no longer end up in the bedtime stories of American children. In March of 2010, RAN confronted the top ten US publishers of children's books with lab tests showing their books were being made from Indonesian rainforest destruction. Eight of these ten companies have now committed to stop using paper from controversial Indonesian fiber, but Disney has lagged behind. Disney still has no policy in place to prevent paper from some the world’s worst rainforest destroyers, APP and APRIL, from ending up in its books. Read more: Disney has a story they don’t want you to hear | Rainforest Action Network http://www.ran.org/disney#ixzz1MkrvBDMH

Scholastic announced that it would stop distributing “The United States of Energy,” a controversial fourth grade curriculum paid for by the American Coal Foundation. The materials were also removed from Scholastic’s website. Scholastic’s decision came after a two-day campaign led by the Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), Rethinking Schools, Friends of the Earth (FoE), Greenpeace USA, and the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD).

AMC2011 CONFERENCE AT A GLANCE JUNE 23, 2011 - JUNE 26, 2011

Welcome to the the Food Rights Network, a project of the Center for Media and Democracy. We are dedicated to investigative research and advocacy on crucial food issues.

The proposed settlement in the long-standing class-action lawsuit over Google's vast book-scanning project is dead, at least in its current form. In a ruling on Tuesday, the federal judge overseeing the case rejected the settlement, saying that it "would simply go too far," even though "the digitization of books and the creation of a universal digital library would benefit many." But he also urged the parties to consider revising the settlement, and suggested an approach that would deal with his major concerns.

New animated short and website.

A couple of weeks ago we presented Dr. Margaret Kripke of MD Anderson, co-author of the President's Cancer Panel report on the environment and cancer, which calls for a precautionary approach to public health, pre-market testing and regulation of toxic chemicals, with special attention given to bisphenol A (a real bad actor chemical)—all the things we have been talking about for over 10 years.

Most consumers today are confronted with wide array of seals, logos, and taglines declaring a products status as FairTrade, green, or certified in some way. These certifications have become an important tool for consumers in deciding how they want to spend their money, but they also have become so diverse and widespread that it can be hard to tell what they represent. What do those logos really mean? What are they rating? And who created them? Please join BEN and Dr. Michael E. Conroy for for this overview session of certification systems and learn the basics of how to rate the raters!

The successful nationwide organizing and subsequent protests in Egypt to oust the 30-year regime of President Hosni Mubarak have in part been facilitated by Facebook. But as media and technology commentators and human rights activists alike are noting, using Facebook for activism is fraught with risks.

Two Democratic U.S. senators are expected to vote "nay" on the reconciliation bill -- although their opposition will only be partially due to health reform.

Four Detroit public high schools have decided classroom time should be used to train 60 students to work at Walmart.

How do you talk about worker rights to people who are illiterate about worker rights issues?

Issues: Academic and scientific freedom; Freedom of opinion and expression; Freedom of thought, conscience, and religion

Most Americans expect that their laws are only passed after some period of public debate between Republicans and Democrats or their news-channel proxies. However, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) may be an exception to this rule, and if it is signed, many United States laws concerning the Internet and ownership of data may become substantively different.

There's more to fair trade gifts than tote bags re-constructed from rice bags (as cute as they may be) or coffee, tea and chocolate (as delicious as they are).

Richard Keil stands ankle-deep in the tidal flats below Seattle’s Magnolia Bluff, tugging some test strips from his backpack. The bluff rises gently behind him, and the rippled sand is slowly disappearing beneath the rising tide. Before him, Puget Sound sparkles in the July sun.

In what is being described as the biggest change to how the Internet works in 40 years, the ICANN Internet oversight organization has finally approved plans to allow Web addresses to include non-Latin letters, such as Arabic and Chinese, instead of just www.whatever.com.

The Aspen Institute today releases the 2009-2010 edition of Beyond Grey Pinstripes, a biennial survey and...ranking of full-time MBA programs.

Federal Communications Commission Chair Julius Genachowski proposed two rules Monday that would preserve the Internet’s status quo of openness and equality.

Although there is growing awareness of the deceptive tactics antiabortion-rights crisis pregnancy centers use to restrict abortion access, CPCs also have a lesser-known "broader agenda, ... not only to induce women to 'choose life' but to choose adoption," The Nation reports.

It turns out that academics, at least in lore insulated from the pitches and rolls of the private sector, are not immune to the effects of recession. Even a cosseted tenured professor like me, creature of the humanities, unable to tell a bull from a bear, a credit default swap from a collaterized debt obligation, realizes that times are tight and that the economic downturn has changed everyone’s world.

About 100,000,000 girls in the world go to work instead of to school, according to estimates of the UN International Labor Organization. More than half of these, or 53,000,000, work in hazardous jobs in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, domestic services, and commercial sex, and 20,000,000 of these girls are under 12.

Since 1970, for two income family with two kids: * Mortgage payments: up 76% * Healthy families that are getting employers sponsored health insurance: up 74% * Owning multiple cars: up 52% * Child care: up 100% +++ * Taxes: up 25%

"Stop enlisting teachers to sell toys, make-up, and brands to students through book clubs."

Thursday was day 115 of the Age of Obama, and to celebrate, a merry mob of media activists, academics, entrepreneurs, and government biggies packed the seventh floor of the Newseum in Washington, DC to attend Free Press's Changing Media Summit. There, they received The Word.

At the end of the 2006 school year, children’s nutrition advocate Dorothy Brayley had a disturbing conversation with a local dairy representative. He had come to her office to discuss participation in the summer trade show of food providers she runs as director of Kids First Rhode Island.

When Ryan T. Muneio was tailgating with his parents at a Michigan State football game this fall, he noticed a big tent emblazoned with a Bank of America logo. Inside, bank representatives were offering free T-shirts and other merchandise to those who applied for credit cards and other banking products.

Pass Up the Poison Plastic - the PVC-Free Guide for Your Family & Home lists the most common consumer products made out of PVC and safer PVC-free products including baby products, children's toys, electronics, and more.

CorpWatch and KPFA Radio Launch "Afghanistan 2008: Seven Years After the Taliban" Multimedia Project Collaboration.

With innovations such as solar panels and a biodiesel bus, Bloom High School in Chicago Heights is going green.

For decades, laws have required many government agencies to seek public participation in the establishment of environmental policies. And for decades critics have derided the requirement as producing little more than confusion, delay, expense, distorted science and, as a government report once put it, “a proliferation of opportunities to misinterpret or misapply required procedures.”

A practical and inspirational guide to overcoming barriers of class and race. Again and again social change movements--on matter s from the environment to women's rights--have been run by middle-class leaders. But in order to make real progress toward economic and social change, poor people--those most affected by social problems--must be the ones to speak up and lead.

In a recent class at Abraham Clark High School in Roselle, N.J., business teacher Barbara Govahn distributed glossy classroom materials that invited students to think about what they want to be when they grow up. Eighteen career paths were profiled, including a writer, a magician, a town mayor -- and five employees from accounting giant Deloitte LLP.

As You Sow congratulates Scholastic Inc., the largest publisher of children’s’ books, for adopting an industry-leading environmentally preferable sourcing policy, including strong commitments to recycled content, supply chain certification, and clean production methods.

Angela Greene has a tough job: she and her workcrew scale the rooftops of Richmond, California to run wires, lay racks, and bend metal piping. Yet in the end, when she unfurls a gleaming solar panel over her community, it feels easy to save the planet.

The first-ever investigation of Wal-Mart's local property tax records finds that the retail giant systematically seeks to minimize its payment of taxes that support public schools and other vital government services. That is the key finding of Rolling Back Property Tax Payments, a report released today by Good Jobs First, a non-profit, non-partisan research center in Washington, DC.