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superhero~hipster~eco-cop~trickster
The Gaia Girl project features a female super hero who defends the planet against corporate villains, their PR henchmen, and governmental pawns. In addition to defending against bad corporate behavior, she spreads knowledge of environmental solutions.
Gaia Girl is both a real live performer and eco-activist with martial arts training, as well as an illustrated or animated character. The live, physical avatar of Gaia Girl exercises her freedom of speech at public events and other strategic media moments. The fictional, drawn version features fantasy adventures based on reality. Both manifestations explain the causes of environmental problems and how to address them.
The Gaia Girl project gives voice to the majority of the world's citizens whose concerns about the environment, social justice, and equitable economies are being drowned in a sea of neo-liberal, profit-obsessed hype. When she makes an appearence, Gaia Girl challenges spin-doctored "reality" that serves the interests of a tiny global elite, delivering a laser-sharp exposé spiked with humor. She wraps up with a pithy statement of alternatives to the wrong-doing of the villain(s) at hand, and swiftly and silently as she entered, departs the scene.
Gaia Girl is often assisted around the planet by the gaiatribe - eco-hip women in every country.
The website www.gaiagirl.org will
go live with the launch of gaia girl. The site will eventually have an
online comic book, chronicling the adventures of live action gaia girl,
and supplementing them with fantasy episodes that visualize a sustainable
future.
The gaia girl look combines hip street style with natural materials to symbolize the possibilities of living ecologically with style. Costumes incorporate rainforest rubber fabric (dark brown), recycled metal and other natural materials. The look is slick and futuristic, but also organic. A primary aesthetic influence is contemporary Japanese animation known as "anime" in video and "manga" in comic book form.
Favored Themes:
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Want to donate or get involved? email: gaiagirl@freeagency.net
- Water (privatization, pollution VS collective ownership, conservation, and stewardship)
- Energy (fossil fuel VS hydrogen, solar, wind)
- Agriculture (chemical intensive, genetically engineered VS organic & integrated pest management)
- Toxics (what they are and who's making them, how to avoid them, the alternatives)
- Natural resources (who's exploiting them, conservation and pollution reduction)
GENETIC ENGINEERING CAMPAIGN
As part of our on-going public awareness and action campaign on the dangers of genetic engineering, Free Agency co-organized a Biotech Roadshow in New York City, October 13 - 15, 2000 with the Genetic Engineering Action Network USA. The event featured speakers, activist workshops, art, videos, and free educational materials.
Presented with the Continuing Education & Public Programs at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, speakers included Ralph Nader, Barry Commoner, Andy Kimbrell of the International Center for Technology Assessment, Michael Hansen of Consumers Union, Charles Margulies of Greenpeace, as well as representatives from Friends of the Earth, the PIRGs, and Pesticide Action Network North America.
"From the Green Revolution to the Gene Revolution"
The Green Revolution was a joint government and corporate campaign that persuaded farmers to replace a multitude of indigenous crops with a few high-yielding varieties, dependent on expensive inputs of chemicals and fertilizers.
Just as the World Bank was a driving force behind the conversion of global agriculture to this chemical dependent, nutrient depleting and polluting system of food production, this brief reveals how the Bank is now promoting the spread of genetically engineered crops. (Co-authored by Christina Cobb, Free Agency, and Luke Anderson of the UK-based Genetic Engineering Network and author of Genetic Engineering, Food, and our Environment.)
HAITI EMERGENCY
HUMANITARIAN RELIEF DRIVE (The
main push for this grassroots drive in March 2004 generated substantial
contributions from individual donations. We still have direct contact
with the recipient in Haiti for additional charitable contributions) Through my nonprofit,
free agency, I am setting up a collection for funds to be sent to the
two public health institutions named in the article cited below, and will
try to get some specifically to Maggie Constance of the public Hopital
de L'Universite, and Sister Claudette Charles of the Asile Segineau. Please
give $10 or whatever you feel is appropriate.
As a 501 (c) 3
public charity, free agency can accept tax deductible donations. Any donations
made should be contributed as a check to Free Agency with "Haiti
Humanitarian Contribution" written on the memo line. Mailing address
is below.
Your donation
will be pooled and sent as a single check designated to these brave and
beautiful people trying to hold it together and the suffering people they
are desperately trying to help.
100% of this money
will be donated.
If you wish to
help, please contact us.
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Miami Herald, March 4, excerpt:
"In the emergency room, Ronald Degazon
lay in a swarm of flies waiting for a doctor to attend the infected remains
of an arm that was torn off just below the shoulder in a car accident.
He last saw a physician three days before. The smell of infection was
beginning to overwhelm the room. His mother, who sat with him each day,
anxiously asked if two visitors were doctors.
"We can't go to another hospital
because we have to have money," Degazon said. A moment later, a woman
named Mirelle Valentin was wheeled in groaning in pain, shot through the
stomach on the street minutes before. "Where is your stethoscope?"
she desperately asked a reporter.
In the next room -- a concrete space
as big as an auditorium -- one man lay alone, catatonic and clearly dying,
skin sinking into skeleton in a stark scene of emaciation. He could mutter
only his name, Gerard Pierre."
SHORTAGES One boy, Jeff, has hydrocephalus -- his
head misshapen and swollen to twice its normal size. He could die any
day. "He needs a shot to release the pressure in his skull,"
said Dr. Jessy Colimon, who showed up at the abandoned baby ward Wednesday.
"But each shot costs $400. We don't have it."
Next to him in the crib, an infant named
Monachy was severely malnourished, wearing a diaper decorated by butterflies,
his skin dry as an old man's, hanging off the bones. "Because of
the situation, we have to split one day of their food over three days,"
said Constance. She was awaiting relief from UNICEF.
A total of 20 babies were in the unit,
most frail and hungry-looking, one with infections all over his head from
lying in one position too long.
While the situation in Haiti is desperate,
there are many people like Constance scrambling to keep the nation afloat,
unwilling to give up. In the lush fields near Leogane, 20 miles west of
the capital, Sister Claudette Charles is a bundle of energy and optimism,
keeping her Asile Sigueneau for the old and ailing remarkably clean and
functioning on the most anemic trickle of resources.
"We're poor, but we're clean,' Charles
said, strolling through the courtyard with a big smile. The elderly residents
clasped her hand affectionately."
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Thanks for caring
+ sharing what you can.
HAITI'S VIOLENCE HAS SPARKED A HUMANITARIAN CRISIS THAT FOREIGN RELIEF AGENCIES
ARE ONLY BEGINNING TO ASSESS - AID SHORTAGE
The babies fared barely better. In the Section des Enfants Abandones,
where those forsaken at birth are kept, the supervisor, Maggie Constance,
and her helpers were still trying to feed them what little food they could
scrounge. Constance names all the little ones herself.
