So it was educational and a little boring, but I did it by myself and was ready to go for day one.
I was hoping to keep a moderately faster pace for the event, but many people had difficulties finding the right locations or had computer difficulties. But overall, I achieved my goal to communicate more about Monsanto.
Only 23.1% of the class knew about Monsanto’s practices before this event.
And only one person said they learned nothing from the event.
So the other 92.3% took something away from the event, Awesome!
Here is what some people learned:
“I learned about some instances of Monsanto's actions that I was not yet familiar with.”
“I was never really informed about this topic issue, so it was really interesting learning the dynamics socially, politically, and ethically involved with this corrupt corporation.”
“Probably the fact that the company is able to own techniques and even SEEDS. That corporations exploit workers, ruin the environment and falsify documents are not exactly rare secrets, but I have to admit, this is a new level of legal sleaze.”
“I felt it was very interesting learning about the mass suicides in India, as a result of the Monsanto plague that has been spreading all around the world. It's also crazy the punishment is greater in Tennessee of obtaining the seeds than having cocaine.”
While I tried to teach everyone something, there were a few concerning responses regarding what was learned:
“Not much”
“environmental issues”
“Protesting is everywhere.”
“monsanto is bad.”
Responses like these show a lack of interest in the topic. While my event was simplistic, it was intended to let each participant use their own will. Those who did not pay attention or do not care about what they eat (or where their food comes from) would be less interested.
I wanted participants to use their own brains to develop this protest more, but they were resistant to doing so. Most participants did not help communicate the reason for protesting when in SecondLife. I found that I was the only person really trying to talk more about Monsanto with people.
While I wish the locations for the protest I had chosen were more populated when we visited them, I guess we made do. When I originally went to visit those locations, they each had at least 10-30 people on them.
There also seemed to be difficulty following the class around from location to location. This could be easily rectified if the class all became friends on SecondLife. When friends, it allows you to invite people to teleport to your location.
One comment that I thought was particularly interesting said that my event was “funny free.” I’m sorry that my sarcasm is not as funny to the class as it is to me. I made several sarcastic jokes during my presentation, and no one laughed, so I figured the class wanted dull and dreary presentation time. The educational and professional feeling was only my reaction to my crowd.
Overall, I think I taught most people something about the harms of Monsanto and most people enjoyed the disruption that the protesting caused at the dance event. Hopefully, people will want to continue to learn more about Monsanto and prevent their growing destruction.
Here are some links to articles for more information:
Vote for California GMO Labeling Bill
Monsanto taking over dairy industry
News updates about Monsanto
So many issues to answer for
And these are some images from the protest event:
No comments:
Post a Comment