Stephen Anderson

Has your family farmed here long?

I have seven generations of family roots that are either buried or growing in this county.

Is there a future for farmers here?

That’s a very good question and I don’t think it’s just a question just for farmers, but it’s a question for consumers to be asking.

You know they give a lot of lip service to the so-called free trade agenda, but if they opened every market in the entire world to free trade, I still have to sell my produce to four of the grain and meat monopoly cartels. I am a victim of this global corporate monopoly.

Cargill, ADM, Tyson… they use the Chicago Board of Trade as a means of driving down the prices and defrauding working people of a fair wage.  Wheat is cheaper today than it was in 1948. They’ve gone from using slave labor to $240K combines and in fact the American farmer is still a slave to this global corporatism.

What do you make of the political apathy we’ve sensed while filming here?

The electorate today 60% of them have become so disenchanted that they stay home and don’t vote.  Most of us, red sate or blue state, we see that there’s no difference between the two political parties.  Politicians, you know, there a bunch of “:putrid purveyors of parsimonious pomposity” and they’re looking for the next election rather than worrying about the next generation.

What do you make of all the heated political rhetoric we’re hearing on the radio as we travel here?

The average voter sees no difference between the two parties they think that however I vote, we’re gonna take a different road but the ultimate destination is going to be the same.

So then we become divided — blue versus red, rural versus urban, old vs. young, man vs. woman, black vs. white vs. Mexican, republican vs. democrat.

They’re very sly, these politicians are, they’re clever when election time comes and they divide us they worry they’re gonna come and take our guns, they become one-issue voters on abortion or gay marriage, or social security, whatever they can scare that voter into think it’s the most important issue at that moment.

Both political parties have betrayed, not just the voters, but they’re betraying America and so it behooves us to start wising up.

Thomas Jefferson said we’re a government for the people, by the people and of the people. Do you think that’s still true?

I think that’s horse malarkey.  Take the USDA as a perfect example.  It was created the administration of Abraham Lincoln, and it was supposed to be the people’s agency and now it has become captive of the corporate global gangsters that are defrauding producers worldwide out of their products.

They call it the captive agency because it’s captive of these global lobbyists.  There are more lobbyists in Washington DC today than they’re anywhere  else in the entire world. How can we expect to have a democracy?

How can we get it back?

It’s not goonna be easy, big money rules pretty much, they say practice the golden rule — he who has the gold makes the rules and that’s the dilemma that we’re facing.

I think that to me the most important thing is that the public rise up and demand that we get out of this World Trade Organization.

I guess I’d say we have to save our economy if we’re gonna save anything  else.  All these other issues that they debate and bring into the forefront are gonna mean nothing if we destroy our own economy rushing headlong into a 100 billion dollar trade deficit with China a $400 billion federal deficit over $500 billion trade deficit trillions of deficit in social security and medicare funds. Does anybody think about the future?

I consider myself a bible-believing Christian and I think that morality is a big issue but I think at the same time I don’t think I should use the state or federal government to impose my beliefs on some other person.  We need to broaden it to beyond just this sex issue — the same sex marriage or abortion morality can reach out to encompass things like a living wage it has to do with providing children necessary healthcare. Is that a moral right?  Should we demand an education for children?

These one-issue voters should read that whole bible.

With these thousands of corporate lobbyists in DC, they’ve stolen our democracy from us and so you lash out or strike out at some issue that you still have  the power too make a difference.

Do you think the voters know they’re being played like this?

No, I don’t think they realize that 7 of supreme court justices have been appointed by a republican president, we have a republican administration, we have a republican senate, we have a republican congress if they truly believe what they say they believe, they’d overturn Roe vs. Wade tomorrow but they’re not going to do it because they’re using as a political issue over and over and over.  People got to think!

What is your view on the trend toward such large-scale, industrialized agriculture here?

You know we’re living in a day and age that most consumers don’t realize that the food of the entire world is at risk.  Every toxic concoction out of the devil’s own pantry is being sprayed on, fed to, or injected into livestock and crops.  The process is shipped globally you know when you stop to think about these people who tell us that GMOs are safe and BT corn is safe and BST milk is safe these same witch-doctors of sound science have no explanation about the explosion of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, attention deficit disorder, asthma and that grim, grisly hand of cancer that reaches out to every family in the world ask questions about your food and the water that isn’t safe enough to drink.

Many for the farmers we’ve met say that young people have no real commuinity left in these rural towns that they can relate to, and they think this has to do with some drug problems.  Your sense?

When I grew up, I had an idyllic childhood, for every time I walked through that door, Mom was there. And unfortunately children today, born into this society, don’t have that mother at home.  Economics have forced not just the father but the mother and older siblings, all to hold a job away from home.  Kids are being raised by the television set, and babysitters and how can we expect anything else from society

You know recently just this past week in this county, we had a shootin’.  In further southeast Kansas they just shot a sheriff out delivering a warrant.  You know we have to draw these lines and interconnect them between our economic conditions where people grab and cook drugs and make a quick buck because they can’t get a job that makes a living.

Any other changes you’ve noticed in Kansas and beyond?

We’ve seen an enormous concentration of wealth in the last 10 or 15 years. These corporations are gobblin up one another, they’re gobblin up their stockholders, they’re gobblin up their employees. You know how can Ken Lay of Enron still not have faced his day in court when he’s not only defrauded millions of stockholders, but tens of thousands of  their own employees and their retirement funds, and yet we have a judicial system that send Martha Stewart for lying.

That’s amazing to me that the American public and our voting patterns and habits. We’re willing to take all these little criminals and put’m in orange suits and fill up our prisons with them and we’ll turn around and put the big criminals in pin-stripe suits and send’m to Washington to run this democracy that people keep preaching about.

I’ll just end this interview with a very short poem that my granddad taught me when I was about 4 years old it goes like this:  “The human race is a funny lot, and sometimes act as humans not, their greed for money and the power to rule make them a rascal and a fool and whether you’re a blue or a red voter, can anyone deny that we have the rascals and the fools in charge of this nation?”

You know it behooves us all to reach out a hand to our fellow Americans no matter what walk of life they are, because our interests, while separate they may be, are also we’re dependent on one another.

Say your pledge one nation under god, you know, if we’re all under God shouldn’t we care about everybody else and their problems also?

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