Last Friday, the USDA and big business lost, and activism won. The saga of how the USDA was forced to drop proposed business-friendly regulations that would have allowed all manner of ugliness--toxic sludge fertilizer, irradiation, altered genes, and much more--into foods labeled organic (first reported in Seattle in Stump Talk, ETS!, Jan. 6 '98) is a phenomenal story. The USDA received some 200,000 letters, faxes, and e-mails from outraged consumers on an issue that was utterly invisible five months ago.

It's hardly a definitive victory in the struggle to clearly label the food we buy and eat. The same regulators will be drawing up the next proposed regulations "from scratch," probably hoping to "scratch" public input next time. Continued vigilance and pressure will be needed. But those 200,000 responses came "from scratch," too, in a movement that mushroomed-- organically, no less--in mere months. It should give heart to any citizen concerned that the accelerating grip of big business on public policy is unstoppable. How it happened holds important lessons for all such grass roots struggles. Here are a few:

The issue hit home. People may not care what happens in Kosovo or East Timor, but everybody puts food in their bodies, and even in late capitalism, many of us care what's in that food. This was not an abstract issue. The impact was direct enough to motivate many people who rarely do so to act.

The issue was non-ideological. Truth in labeling food cannot be said to be a Republican or Democratic, left or right issue. People couldn't pigeonhole; they needed to make up their own minds. Many did.

People are tired of being lied to and insulted. Advertising is, by definition, lies. Everyone knows it. For once, they could talk back.

Protesters included business allies. The "legitimate" organic food industries--the ones whose livelihoods and profits were threatened as giant agribusiness set its sights on market share--chimed in. In Seattle, this led to the rather hypocritical spectacle of PCC, a Safewayesque co-op that has for years assiduously avoided politics and run "competing" independent organic retailers and growers out of business, suddenly finding its founding values once it was the one being stepped on. Who knows, maybe now that they've tried it...

Everything's faster now. The Internet has done for grass roots organizers what NAFTA and the WTO have done for corporations. Even five years ago, it is inconceivable that such a response could have been marshalled in a matter of months. For spreading resources--such as the proposed standards themselves--and word of mouth, the Web and Internet, while still elitist, are now invaluable for rapid organizing. Even when used to stop abusive technology.

Nothing's solved yet. Those regulations still need to be drafted. The movement that's been generated, thanks to the USDA and Monsanto et al, could also use a positive agenda--not just better proposed regulations, but community support of organic farming. In Seattle, money to help all-organic markets, pea patches, and community-supported agriculture (CSA), for example.

Finally, freedom of speech counts. Of course, this should include the right to mention if a product is free of, say, bovine growth hormone or irradiation. But another kind of free speech is threatened, too. Even as astonishing anti-corporate victories like organic food standards and last year's mobilization around fast track show the organizing potential of the Internet, efforts to commerialize and restrict this new medium are well underway by both corporations and governments. Access to the Net must be widened, and barriers to free speech on the Net dropped. Otherwise, what is rapidly becoming the most essential means of free public exchange of information in a democracy may be lost as soon as we get it.