Meet the Anarchists

(That's a red herring, counters CAMP's Mark Bohnert: "When you're filing with the Secretary of State, you need a street address for your incorporation papers; you can't have a P.O. box. I filed for the incorporation of CAMP, and we did it at the Bolozone because there were other people living at the Bolozone who also filed for incorporation papers.")

A city ordinance permits surprise inspections on properties police deem to be a nuisance. That same ordinance also allows police to secure a property prior to its condemnation. "The first time I go [to a property], I take the police," says MacEnulty. "I'm unarmed. I don't have a bulletproof vest. I've got little kids I want to go home to."

The World Agricultural Forum was created to address big-picture ideas and problems associated with agriculture. Founded in 1998, the forum held its first congress the following year in St. Louis, where it has continued to convene every two years. A glance at the board of directors suggests the conference isn't going anywhere: executives from Anheuser-Busch, Monsanto and Emerson Electric; Peter Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden; Dick Fleming, president of the St. Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association; and a smattering of local academics. The advisory board is likewise a virtual smorgasbord of St. Louis impressives, including U.S. Senator Kit Bond, former Senator John Danforth, Congressman Richard Gephardt, and a host of CEOs.

This year's forum drew bigwigs from, among others, Monsanto, Dow Chemical, Dupont and IGA Grocery, as well as agricultural officials from Peru, New Zealand, Indonesia, Belgium, Australia, France, Brazil and more. The agenda included panels on free-trade agreements, technological advancements in agriculture and public-policy issues.

Civic leaders have worked hard to cast St. Louis as a hub for the industry, with one central aim: to lure new businesses to the area. Already the region is home to one of the most advanced biological engineering corporations in the world, Monsanto, whose name is nearly synonymous with genetically modified food. Add the chemical and biopharmaceutical company Mallinckrodt, life-science research firm Sigma-Aldrich and a few others, and you've got a little Petri dish that city fathers hope will multiply. "My administration strongly supports all efforts to establish St. Louis as the center of the 'BioBelt,'" Mayor Francis Slay remarked at a ribbon-cutting ceremony at Sigma-Aldrich's Life Sciences/High Technology Center in midtown last year. "The biotechnology industry has limitless potential to create good jobs, to generate wealth, and -- above all -- to benefit humanity. The city that emerges as the center of this industry will become one of the economic capitals of the new century. St. Louis is very well positioned to become that city, and my administration will do everything in its power to turn this possibility into reality."

What the mayor failed to mention, of course, is the fact that while the biotech industry embodies profound financial potential, equally profound are the ethical debates it tends to inspire. In other words, if St. Louis does indeed strap on the BioBelt, a maelstrom will arrive along with it.

"It's messy," says CAMP dweller Tom Hallaran, who moved here three years ago from college in Oregon to work on the human genome project at Washington University. "There's a lot that's tempting about genetic engineering," Hallaran concedes. But he adds, "You can say all you want about feeding the world, but Monsanto isn't concerned primarily with feeding the world. They're concerned with their bottom line; they're concerned with their stock price. So it's peripheral if golden rice feeds the world."

A lot of people share Hallaran's views and aren't afraid to say so. The same weekend the World Agricultural Forum came to town, Forest Park Community College hosted the seventh installment of Biodevastation, a smaller, much-less-monied international forum devoted to concerns about genetic engineering. Biodevastation's Web site detailed information about its St. Louis congress, which included panels such as "Resisting Genetically Modified Organisms in Africa" and "The Future of Indigenous Agriculture." Also included on the conference's home page was a link to a site maintained by the Flying Rutabega Circus Review, a traveling activist group that plies its trade on bicycles. Its site, in turn, detailed plans to convene in St. Louis the weekend of May 19 to protest the WAF and kick off a caravan trek to Washington, D.C. The Rutabegas' central meeting place was none other than the Community Arts and Media Project at 3022 Cherokee Street. Circus members began arriving in St. Louis on Tuesday, May 13; as they rolled in, CAMPers directed them to housing arrangements. A few stayed at CAMP, a dozen more stayed at Bolozone.