Look around you. Look to your neighbor. These are the people who are digging their hands
into the dirt. And they're going to begin to take the first step: independence from
a corporate industrial food system. Take the first step towards community-based regional
food system that focuses on the health of our bodies, the health of the planet, the
health of the soil, and respects the farmers and the food for the precious gift that it
is. This is not a new idea. This is where we were in 1943, right? San Francisco had
one of the best victory garden programs in the country. We had hundreds of urban productive
gardens like this throughout the city. That's how you start to solve the food crisis; by
digging in.
If food isn't brought to the forefront, the people are going to bring it to the forefront
because people are asking questions. They're getting involved in organizations. And you
get those little bubbles in the water, a few minutes later the water is boiling over. The
bubbles are in the water.
I got involved because I saw the immediate needs of people who hungry.
The people here in this country are already seeing that the system the way it is, is not
working. What are you going to do as an alternative? There are other models out there -- ways
in which we are going to make our systems more socially just, more economically viable,
more environmentally sound and more important than anything, more resilient.
You could compare it to if you're painting or trying to mix colors to get a certain new
color. I think we're trying to get a more intense color for the good food movement right
now. And by linking up all the different people, it's giving us more colors to work with.
Richer colors. And I think more power in the system.
It's a challenge for everybody to look deeper and see that the issues are really complicated.
They're not black and white. And we need to look at every element as it is now. And
really look forward and see, well where do we want to get to and how can we get there?
Every neighborhood would have a corner store that sold fresh, healthy, affordable, local
food. And those stores would be owned by the people who live in the neighborhood.
We need to look at putting new community institutions into place that are part of the solution rather
than part of the problem. All we can do is change course. Right where we are, stop and
shift and do things differently
We were put on this earth to eat. That's it. And we just added all this. Whoever created
this said ok, let me, let me put some happy people on this planet and giv'em some good
food to eat and let'em go.
It seems to me that people get it when I put it this way. The twenty-two year old has lived
through 54% of all the oil ever burned. The ten-year old has lived through a quarter.
Now that points out the speed that this is coming on.
The solution then was bring more fossil fuel to bear on agriculture. Step up production.
More monoculture. more pesticide to support the monoculture, more chemical fertilizer
to support the monoculture. Drive down the price of food. And it worked. We have been
eating oil for thirty years, forty years. When we began industrializing agriculture
we were taking labor out of the farm and replacing it with fossil fuel and technology. Most of
the big innovations in agriculture were fossil fuel products. And they were very much the
products of World War II. We took the munitions -- ammonium nitrate fertilizer is bomb fuel
-- and we converted that to fertilizer. The same factories that were making bombs one
day and nerve gases, which became our pesticides. What those technologies allow you to do is
monocultures -- very large fields of the same thing. Moving from diversity to this
monoculture allowed you to greatly increase production. Monocultures are also supremely
vulnerable to pests. So you can't have a monoculture without pesticides to defend them.
And this has been our policy. We have rewarded farmers for planting monocultures. If you
are a corn farmer, we'll give you money to grow corn and soy. But if you want to put
in a row of broccoli, that land is permanently ineligible for subsidies. It is illegal for
you to diversify your farm.
For the past maybe fifty, sixty years our society has viewed food very much as a commodity.
And it's been mostly valued in terms of the economics of it. And it's also seen
as fuel for our bodies that we have to gas up and then we can go a few more hours and
we have gas up again. Eat so that you can do the thing that you are supposed to do;
you can be productive. There is something really, really missing. There is this hole
where the hearth should be in our society. And yet in our society we somehow think that
this fuel can come in like a little paper bag out of a window in a drive-through. And
we can gobble it up and then we can move on. It's not just destroying our health, that
kind of fast-food culture. I think it creates unhappiness and stress and you start looking
for what's that thing that going to make me feel better? You're this prime target
for advertisers to say, "oh, here's what's missing!" I really just think our bodies
are just chronically deprived of the nutrients that they need.
The food system is slowly poisoning all of us. It's almost like a silent, self-administered
genocide for the population. And we don't notice. If we just ate real food most of the
time, we'd probably be a whole lot healthier. But then you have to figure out, what's
"real" food? And what's "real" food doesn't come from concentrated animal feeding
operations and it doesn't come from the big poultry companies.
I think people have to realize that we are in a deep crisis here in this country, not
only economic, but ecological, and cultural and social. And food. There is a food crisis
here in terms of the quality of the food. There is a problem of obesity so there are
a lot of people that are eating too much and there's a lot of people that are eating
very little. The problem is that the crisis is hidden by all the subsidies, the bailouts,
and the printing of money that is coming out. It's hiding the crisis -- postponing it.
So people don't feel it like the people in developing countries feel it. When you're
poor, you're poor down there. Nobody is going to hide that poverty from you. Nobody
is going to dump subsidies or bailouts or anything like that.
It is a dysfunctional food system for the majorities, which works very well for a few
corporations and works very poorly for the majority of the people of the world. And is
beginning to work worse and worse for the people here in the United States.
So the fact that we are up against it is actually the most hopeful thing. Because there are
short-term problems -- the price of oil, water shortage. Problems that are much faster
than the long-term problems of climate that we are going to have to wrestle with. And
we are fortunate that the solutions to the short-term problems are solutions to the long-term
problems.
This is a lot easier of a problem because 7 times 2 X is just X minus 6. So I would
like for us to talk about Chapter 12, but also I know you guys have been behaving better
than I've ever seen you behave so I will share the bunnies with you guys.
Yay!
So I only have 5 bunnies so that means every other person.
Can I get one fifth of all these bunnies?
Well, not in this form.
Aw. Haha. Yay!
I grew up different, but I think that made me question the world because I think that
when people approach me they see me as someone who can't do something or having limits
that are their projection. I often break people's perceptions of what they think can be done
with just a few fingers.
Get the gloves. You want the gloves? You don't need no gloves?
You got some hand sanitizer?
Don't step on it. Walk on the side. Huh?
You got some hand sanitizer?
Yeah you can go to the bathroom and use the soap in the bathroom. That's the hand sanitizer.
[Laughs]
Why do you think we are weeding? Why do we have to get this grass out of here?
So it won't kill the strawberries.
Exactly. So the grass eats up nutrients that the strawberries need to grow. Many hands
make light work. Y'all heard that before? Anybody?
Nope. Never heard of it. Serious.
You know what I'm talking about though right?
Yeah.
What I love about strawberries is you don't have to plant them every year. You just plant
them one time and they come back. They love you. Hey what's with the language!?
I love these peas. I used to hate these as a kid. Then I started growing them and I developed
a taste for them. I learned how to do this in Mexico in a garden program. It was all
organic. They liked organic because it cut their costs down and raised their yields,
which is the exact opposite of what you hear here in the United States. Most of the farmers
that I still work with today are organic farmers. I don't think any of them are certified.
It's much too expensive for them. They're not interested in an export market anyways.
They are interested in feeding their own people. I think it's good to get your hands in the
dirt.
The vision is huge and to accomplish it is huge. Baby carrots. Except we don't whittle
ours down with a machine. Because we cannot change the economic system as it is right
now, we said, well let's try to take food out of the economic system a little bit and
go back to self-sufficiency as a concept. The woman who I'm working for she just decided
that she wanted to use her backyard to grow vegetables. And so it turns out we can have
enough to serve probably twenty people out of this backyard.
When I first got to Alemany it was basically just five feet high in annual weeds. In those
first eight months to ten months, Alemany Farm was kind of a gorilla garden because
we didn't have permission from the city, who owned the land. I actually didn't know
very much about farming at all. It was mostly due to my friend Justin, who was also involved.
He was basically teaching the rest of us, who were all amateurs, how to do what we were
doing. We just started going there and just tried to figure out, ok how are we going to
do this now?
So right now we're going to go over to the dining hall where people can come get served
a meal. It's probably for some people it's the only meal they are going to receive for
today. I was hungry one day and I said, free dining hall!? And I said ok let me go over
there and look. So I ate that day and I said well, how can I not just get served, but now
I can serve. And you're going to always deal with unless you create the paradigm shifts,
the larger systems. Only thing that connects everything -- you know food systems. Because
everybody eats.
I had sort of made a decision that I wasn't going to have children. You kind of have these
abstract ideas about population and the question is, "is it ethical to add another person
to the planet?" And also is it ethical to offer this planet to this person that you
care about so much. But then I got pregnant and am now just completely in love with my
baby. It gives you a different sense of urgency about what you see going on around you. Everybody
out there is somebody's baby. And we all need these things. We all need good food to
eat. We all need clean water to drink. We all need clean air to breathe. These things
aren't optional. They're really not optional.
My greatest hope is that we'll actually learn how to farm with nature. And now is
the moment when that struggle over the future is being understood. Food production is the
most impactful human activity on the planet earth probably. I mean in terms of landscape
impact there is nothing like agriculture. Because we have a generation of farmers who
weren't taught those methodologies and that frame of mind -- that we're going to work
with nature - they were taught to basically battle with nature. But we understand more
now because humans are evolving. Our knowledge is evolving. Our understanding of nature is
so much greater now than it was even thirty years ago. I think it's the greatest challenge
that human's face now -- how to actually produce food and not destroy the base upon
which civilization exists, which is the natural world.
The Bay Area is my place. I grew up here. So this is a place that is deeply written
into my cells and into my soul. My grandfather, he had a corner store and an apartment on
top and he raised a family and made a living and there is something very fundamental about
that I think appeals to me. The more supermarket chains and the more concentration there is
in the food industry, the fewer opportunities there are for people like my grandfather in
today's world to do what he did. I think that the way our international, industrial
food system works is destroying local economies not just in the flatlands of Oakland, but
all around the world. If we can't fix things in Oakland and we if can't fix things in
the flatlands we have absolutely no business trying to fix things anyplace else.
Honestly I said to a group folks the other day, we have to start thinking like squirrels
about our food and the food system that we have here in Oakland. Meaning that we should
have little micro-distribution points in our neighborhoods where there is always fresh
food available. We should have like mad gardens like this that are in their various stages
of development growing food and giving food to people and to educate people about food.
As long as we are thinking about food and it's part of our conversations in our communities,
I think that over time those sources will be there. People will think more wisely about
how they treat the earth and how they interact with people because all of that, it's all
connected.
A friend of mine calls my chickens "chicken Prozac." She says they really soothe her
when she looks at them and sees them scratching in the soil. And I think that seeing happy
animals and the thrill they get when I throw them some snails that we find in the garden
-- it's enjoyable to see them have a pleasurable life. Chickens have basically been bred to
be little egg bazookas that just shoot them out. Poof. Poof. Poof. My great grandfather
was born on a pig farm in these hills. He raised a lot of livestock on small plots like
this. My great grandfather fed the family during the depression so they could survive
during that harsh economic time, which we may be on the precipice of right now. I hope
not, but the world does seem kind of precarious.
Because depression is coming. We ain't fooled. And when it comes, city's that have not
put infrastructure like that in are going to see anarchy. You're going to have poor
people who can't afford food and if they could afford it, the shelves are going to
be bare. This generation is not built for a depression. So when that pressure hits,
people react in all sorts of crazy ways.
I think there is plenty over on that side. Did you get the broccoli? Did you want to
weed the broccoli?
Sure!
You want this out, right?
Yeah the big radish. Here I'll show you where the broccoli is. In about 2004 I was
really intrigued by this notion of peak oil and the fact that our food system and most
of our systems are based on cheap fossil fuel energy. And I was really concerned with how
I personally and my community were going to respond to increasingly expensive foods. Clearly
a lot of it was on this macro-level that I felt like I had no control over -- the federal
government, even our city governments -- things that they could do. But really what I thought
is my experience is working grassroots with people and having people change their existence
through direct action. And so what I felt like was out of all of the issues -- transportation
and energy and all these things -- that food was something that people could really do.
Alemany is an interesting place because to one side is the neighborhood, The Excelsior,
and to the other side is Vernal Heights, both of which have long been working class. And
then right at the bottom there is the low income housing projects, situated of course
right next to the freeway.
It's just rough out here. It's real rough out here. Sometimes people can't come in
and out of their doors. Sometimes just to live out here, to get along with people -- sometimes
you have to blend in with the community. Even though at times you don't want to. But you
can get trapped.
I was really focused on, ok I want to start a food-growing project somewhere. And what
I realized was that the space next to my Mom's house was abandoned and didn't have anyone
there and was a perfect location to do it. We were trying to do organizing with the community
to figure what were their needs, what did they want to see there. And for the most part
what we heard was jobs. It's not something we as young, punk anarchists who were looking
to grow food had an ability to offer.
They want to work. And that's what would help keep these kids in school, get good grades.
They want to work.
It took a little while until we started meeting with people in the community and also got
in contact with people in the rec and park department. Eventually we got funding to have
a youth program where kids from the community were actually being trained in ecological
horticulture, learning those different systems of irrigation, how to plant, landscaping,
and all that stuff and getting paid to do so. We also do environmental education. And
so there are school groups. People come out from all parts of the city even sometimes
people from outside the city who come out and work a few hours doing whatever tasks
need to be done. And then at the end of the day we harvest all the produce that's available
and distribute it to all the volunteers. We also have a free CSA program. Twenty or so
families get a bag of produce twice week.
It's a farm in the city. We got a little country in the city. You ain't even got
to go down the highway. All you got to do is walk up here in the farm in San Francisco.
The garden projects that are going on in San Francisco and all the major cities in the
nation that are creating food for neighborhoods are vitally important in terms of transforming
the way people think about food, vitally important in shaping consciousness.
The only country where urban agriculture is massive is Cuba where you have fifty thousand hectares of
urban agriculture. That's about one hundred thousand acres of where they produce about
33% of the food that they eat in the major cities. And this came about because of the
crisis of Cuba.
Cuba is a very interesting case because Cuba allied itself with the Soviet Union and adopted
Soviet style agriculture, which is basically industrial agriculture. It's very similar
to U.S. agriculture. You know the large state farms, which were all mechanized, used tremendous
amounts of fertilizer and pesticides, were all monocrops. The basic industrial model.
And that fell apart when the Soviet Union fell. And Cuba had no more access to cheap
petroleum.
When you are confronted with a situation where you don't have petroleum, no matter what
you produce in the rural areas, you cannot bring it into the urban areas. That was one
of the big problems they were facing.
Just as that "special period," it was called, was taking off and Cuba was on the
brink of starvation, they couldn't turn to the west. They certainly couldn't turn
to the United States because there was an embargo. And so they turned to their old farmers,
their peasant farmers. And they said, you've got to feed us. Teach us again how to plow
with oxen. Teach us again how to fertilize with manure. Teach us again how you manage
and cultivate the old seeds. And luckily Cuba still had those farmers. The farmer-to-farmer
movement sent some farmers from Mexico and from Nicaragua over to Cuba and they put on
some workshops. They had all kinds of demonstrations. They taught about agricological approaches
to food production, sustainable agriculture, organic methods. And it exploded in Cuba.
Across the country the farmer-to-farmer movement grew to about one hundred and fifty thousand
in the space of five years. It took twenty years to grow that much in Central America.
But in Cuba, right away.
Which produces today on average about 16-20 kilos per square meter per year. That is a
huge productivity that I haven't seen any garden anywhere in the world that can have
that level of productivity only with organic methods and ecological horticultural methods.
I think the Cuban example just tells us that changes happen when you confront crisis -- a
deep crisis.
Oakland is divided by 580. We have the flatlands, which is here. This is East Oakland all the
way to West Oakland. 95% of all homicides occur in this area. Obesity, diabetes, chronic
illness, you name it.
I would love to be able to do something on this parking lot to start off. And to get
the youth involved in the community so that the city sees that this is a viable spot to
do something. So what's the agenda here?
Well the agenda is to bring some folks who haven't seen the store before to see the
store. And then to talk about some ideas about how this could be a fresh, healthy, affordable,
local food store.
I have a question. How long will the process take to get this place running?
We need the support of the people.
They're putting pressure to demolish this whole store. They haven't bought into the
idea of a community run store yet.
If the city wants to demolish this what's going to happen to this place?
They'll fence it off and they wait for a developer who come in and build some housing.
No I think it would be better to build a community store here with organic produce.
You need this store here, but the only problem we're going to have is that we have to work
out something with the food bank because the food bank provides this neighborhood with
food four times a week. Free food. And most of the people in this neighborhood are Latino
and they like organic food. I think they have experience in the field, they know that all
those little pesticides don't do your food any good.
Doesn't do your body any good either.
In Oakland we have what some people call "food deserts" and other people call "food apartheid"
because you have huge areas -- neighborhoods, complete neighborhoods -- which basically
can't get good food. They can't get fresh vegetables. They can't get whole grains.
They can only get this cheap, processed, packaged food, which is actually expensive. They've
got to travel miles and miles to find a supermarket and oftentimes those supermarkets don't
have the best food either.
We need to bring in healthy foods so that we can start having choices and fight the
health problems that have been going on. So that that murder rate can go down.
I grew up in a neighborhood like that. I can remember at the age of 5, my friend Crystal,
her father was a known drug dealer and his brains got blown out when I was what, seven
years old, in the middle of the street at nine o'clock at night. My brother, who sold
drugs with the neighborhood drug dealers down the street and who eventually died from drug
overdose, he learned all of this stuff from these guys and ultimately he died from that.
People who experience stuff like that, they don't want to come back. I joined the Air
Force. It was when I went to Kuwait in 2000 that I was able to understand the connections
between the military industrial complex, what's that's all about, and how it affects communities
of color all around the world. The reason why I came back is because I learned about
all those connections. I wrote on the destruction of 7th street in West Oakland. How BART, when
building the overpass -- where the train goes from West Oakland to San Francisco, that
whole area -- how it destroyed those four thousand black-owned businesses that were
on that street. People were doing well there. People owned land. People were making money.
People were taking care of their families, but when BART was built there it wiped out
business for lots of people. It wiped out whole communities. If I'm going to do this
anywhere in the world I better start in my own neighborhood. I better start where I grew
up and that makes the most sense. How we doing everybody?
Alright.
Everybody here?
Yeah.
Is everyone here right now?
Yeah! We're here!
Alright. My name is Jason Harvey. I am a long-time resident of Oakland. I grew up at 9303 E street
down in alphabet city. Folks know where that is?
Yeah. Sure do.
Tonight is just a big overview of what the Hope Collaborative is about, what we hope
to achieve, some things like that. So we just want to give you a lot of information at once.
We found that people travel 20-40 minutes one-way to get to a supermarket. And most
people do shop in supermarkets. People outside of the neighborhoods do not know this. They
think you do not cook. They think you do not eat healthy food or care. How many people
don't care about what they eat? Thank you. How many people here cook meals at home? Thank
you. How many people want fresh, healthy affordable food? How many people here like what you find
here in the corner stores? Thank you. The point is, corner stores as you already know
don't have much fresh food.
No they don't.
And what they sell is expensive.
Yeah it is! Embarrassing!
What happens when the husband has to go to work and there is only one car? Where does
the mother go to get milk?
The corner store.
Right. So we want to make sure that that corner store has healthy, affordable food. So what
can we do? What solutions can we find? And that's what we're all searching for.
The amount of land that is available in Oakland -- where you have the most food insecure
people, where you have the highest concentration of liquor stores, where they don't have
access to any fresh food, not even Safeway -- there's 200 hectares, that's about
400 acres of available land. Well that land should be given to the people so that they
can produce food.
It really did come out of just living in this community, seeing the conditions. There are
no grocery stores here and there is a wealth of corner liquor stores. I saw that and I
also saw that there is all this vacant land, there are all these empty lots that are just
sitting here. So as a person with a background in gardening, those empty lots to me looked
like, "wow, gardens!"
You want a strawberry? You want to go help her set up the eggs?
It was responding to what seemed like people wanted.
Oh what are these? Greens? Oh, turnips. Yeah.
We started growing food here and then it wasn't enough. And so then we said ok let's see
if we can borrow some more empty lots. And that wasn't enough. And it always flowed.
It was never difficult. People would always ask us how did you do outreach to the community.
And we never did outreach. It was word of mouth.
Mmm. Seeds for arugula.
That's the best part of growing a garden is collecting the seeds.
We are really about how can we really significantly grow produce in the city? How can we do that
while involving our community?
In 2007 I quit my job, went to UC Santa Cruz Farm and Gardening Program and I got a certificate.
I learned how to farm organically and grow food organically. And I wanted to take that
knowledge and that skill and pass it on to the students here at the alternative high.
People at Berkeley High have determined that they can't fit in somehow at Berkeley High
and they send them here. That says to me they need more. If they're not making it in mainstream
-- in the Berkeley High -- and you separate them out, well you give them more services.
It's just the opposite. They give them less. And five years ago they didn't even have
any food. They didn't even have any lunch. We're going to do bean soup today. Now remember
last week I was talking about how vegetables can be used for breakfast. There's nothing
wrong with vegetables for breakfast. There's nothing wrong with soup for breakfast either.
When you eat Lucky Charms and they got a pink charm in it, where do you think that color
comes from?
Artificial flavors? I mean colors.
Open up your mind. Try things. Don't just say, oh I've never done it before and I
feel funny doing it. You always feel funny doing something the first time.
Alright, I'm here.
Yay! Joy! Hi Joy! Joy!
In 1978 I was a single mom and my daughter was having health problems. And she developed
petite mild seizures. She wasn't sleeping properly. She had behavior problems. She wasn't
doing well in kindergarten. All of the products on your tables have lists
of what's in it. I want you, as a group, at your table, to come up with how many grams
of sugar are in the products at your table. I took her to the doctor and they said, we
don't know what's wrong with your daughter, but we're going to give her Ritalin to control
the seizures. And I was like, no. I mean if you don't know what's wrong with her how
do you know what you're giving her. 120 grams of sugar in this can.
No, 126.
Excuse me. 126. Let me make sure we get it right.
We realized that she was getting severe allergic reactions to processed foods. Particularly
petrochemicals, artificial color, artificial flavor, and preservatives that have petroleum
as their base. So we changed the way we ate. From that day to this. My whole family actually.
And it took about two weeks -- a little more than 2 weeks -- and all of her symptoms all
went away. And I realized there was a difference in me. You know I was different. Learning
how to read labels was my first food awareness exercise in my life. So this heightened my
awareness about food -- the importance of food. And to think that something you put
in your mouth can affect your behavior. It was a very revolutionary idea.
So this is an all fruit smoothie. It doesn't have any yogurt or anything. How many of you
have ever been to Jamba Juice?
Oh yeah! All the time! Jamba Juice is my favorite!
You like Jamba Juice?
Yeah I love it!
Well I think this is better than Jamba Juice. That's just my opinion.
Well then give me a double.
No, I ain't given you no double. So this is what I'm loving about the smoothies.
It's a premium. You guys all come in and try to scam smoothies out of me.
I got a witness.
He worked, but he didn't work double. I made an announcement. Didn't I? Didn't
I make an announcement? Whoever weeds with me gets double smoothie. I made an announcement.
This is what I do, I say oh my goodness! You guys like the smoothies? Smoothies are great!
We'll have strawberries in the smoothies this summer before you get out of here. We'll
have some strawberries. But we won't have some strawberries if you don't get out here
and weed this garden right now. And so it's always back to the strawberries or something
that they can relate to and value right at this moment and understand. And I'm trying
to connect the importance of farming and gardening to their stomachs directly, to the table,
to their experience, and then of course to their behavior.
So what are some of the vitamins that are in the fruit that we are eating? What are
the fruits? Anybody remember I put in?
I saw you putting the oranges in.
Yep. Vitamin C. Absolutely. Now what is vitamin C good for?
Your immune system.
Immune system. Absolutely. Who else? You can get up in the morning, make a blender-ful,
drink some of it, put some in a container or a thermos and bring it to school.
I'd make a 40oz! Messing with me.
40oz, ok. That's a lot
Food for me, it should be a subject at school. Period. Not somebody who's going to be pre-med
student or a nutritionist. No. Everybody learns about nutrition just as part of their daily
day. And that does happen when you have a garden. The good gardener is also talking
about the importance of nutrition. How do you harvest this food? How do you prepare
this food? What does it do for your body? What's the essential vitamin in it? If people
get to know that and appreciate that, that sort of sets the appetite for lunch.
Oh my god! It's good!
What's it taste like? Oh my god, I was like...I can't eat that stuff in the morning.
It's really good. Just try it.
It's delicious isn't it?
You didn't even try it.
No.
Man, I should have told y'all people anybody who don't eat my soup don't get smoothies
next time.
You know I always try everything you bring. Every time.
As long as you try it. I didn't say eat it. I said as long as you try it.
Alright you want me to try it? Will it make you happy if I try it?
Yeah.
Ok then I'll try it.
Too late.
Alright y'all let's go do smoothies.
Sweet. My favorite part of the day.
If they have that skill and that knowledge then it would be passed on to the next generation
this would be a healthy family that's producing healthy kids. Now we've got a healthy community.
Oh my god we've got a healthy nation.
When I was 7 years old I had a garden on the side of my house. When I was 10 years old
I worked with elders who lived in our neighborhood, who were really into gardening and would grow
10lbs cabbage heads and all these different fruits and vegetables. I started to think
about that; I did that as a kid. In high school, at Castlemont, I worked with setting up a
school garden there. I said wow, I've been doing this for my whole life, but I'm just
now starting to connect the pieces in my adulthood. I see canneries here in Oakland. I see all
this fruit that's dropping on the ground. I see youth out there gathering it up. I see
them working with adults and canning and preserving that food. I see that food being distributed.
I see this whole food system being connected here in Oakland. And I see the people leading
that charge.
Imagine if you will, if you owned the store within a five-block radius of your house.
Every time you go to that store you receive a profitary check. Imagine that for a second.
Right now we're going to other people's stores, buying stuff and that money goes out.
Now through the collective power of a community that money stays in and recycles because you're
receiving a profitary check every month or every quarter or every year. Imagine that
for a second. Now you got people who have hope.
Local ownership, that's the key. Local ownership, where the neighbors own the store. All the
profits of the store goes out to the residents, which then recaptures the wealth. You're
looking at 150,000 potential people who can be brought online. People who have never even
heard of the stock market would now be stockowners. When people have ownership, they have a future
they can give to their children, that makes them get involved and want to participate.
And communities can come together around that. And it's not just the stores, but the whole
delivery system -- from the farming networks to the processing and distribution centers.
That creates a whole new economy.
Misa, financial report.
So in spite of our all difficulties last week we did really, really well. We had 360 orders
for $25,023.72. So our adjusted gross is $22,968.47.
The whole idea of the community-supported kitchen was to create a model that would be
replicable throughout the country. Anybody can come down and see how things were made.
We're not about hiding recipes. We're about sharing information. That kind of accessibility
into a kitchen is very unusual. That not only can you see, but you can actually come in
and do it. Here's an apron. Here's a knife. Let's chop some broccoli. We're a worker
owned cooperative. So there's 5 worker-owners and we all have an equal share in the business.
We ended up financing the kitchen through loans from members of the community, rather
than -- we never had a bank loan and we didn't go to a bank. We are very committed to supporting
local farms and providing the kind of nutrient-dense food for families that they can't get anywhere
else based on traditional diets. One of the things that we do a lot of in the kitchen
is we make bone broths. Bone broths are throughout the world known to be incredibly nourishing.
They're incredibly rich in minerals that you're body really needs -- calcium particularly.
The term is nutrient dense and they are. Every calorie is packed with nutrients. That's
the idea of nutrient-density. So if you eat a lot of broth, you need less meat. Your body
needs less protein. And so this is a way that traditional cultures throughout the world
nourish themselves economically and ecologically. The idea was not the boneless, skinless chicken
breast or the meat patty. You use the whole animal -- you use the organ meats, you use
the fat, you use the bones -- you make broth. Making food this way -- processing food this
way -- is really a lost art in our society. But at Three Stone Hearth we're trying to
rediscover those arts.
Butchering an animal for me always is a very mixed emotional time. I feel a lot of sadness
and then I feel also a certain amount of respect for that animal and a responsibility. But
also I feel a certain connectedness to that animal. It's always tense and difficult.
And I usually try to get the animal to be calm and relaxed. I use a pellet gun and get
a pellet into the brain so that it's brain is scrambled immediately and so it's an
instantaneous changing. I meet a lot of meat eaters who are freaked out that I have such
a connected relationship to the animals that I eat. They say, oh I could never do that.
And I think that's a representation of our alienation in our society that people don't
really know where their meat is coming from. And as I talked about injustices in the world
and people looking the other way, I think people also do that with meat. They want to
eat meat, but they don't want to know where it came from and I think that's wrong. So
I feel like as a meat eater it's my place to try and educate people where does meat
come from. And yes this bunny is meat and those boy baby goats back there are meat and
that's where it comes from. And people should face that or consider being a vegetarian.
Nature is cruel and kind. It's beautiful and ugly all at the same time and we need
it to survive.
I definitely think of myself as a city person primarily. After this experience living rurally,
it's kind of been more defined for me. It taught me a lot about my own work ethic -- my
own interest in farming. And I realized that what I liked more than anything else was the
knowledge of it -- was understanding it, was practicing it to know more, to get feedback
from the actual experience, but not to spend my entire life doing it. My personal goal
and desire is to be a catalyst to help start projects and organizations and businesses
that will train new farmers in the city environment. ...spot where we want to do heavy agricultural
production -- that's usually more when you get into floatation. You know we just
want to make sure we're not growing the same thing over and over. And in a small scale
like this...
My thoughts right now are really around how do we scale up the work? We reach hundreds
of people and for those individuals what we're doing is extremely significant. But we need
to really look at thousands of people -- there are 30,000 people in West Oakland -- we really
need to reach them. If I had a million, two million, three million dollars right now,
I would bring our backyard garden program to the whole city of Oakland. These projects
are springing up everywhere.
I took about 2 months with a friend of mine where we traveled around the state interviewing
people -- farmers, activists, non-profit workers, people who lived in farmworker communities
-- all these different people who had something to do with what I was considering the sustainable
food system. If we roll down these roads - these country
roads - we see these other dairies and it looks just like a poop stew or something.
It is. It's a monoculture of manure.
And my goal was to really get a sense of who was the system? What was it? And what were
the main challenges to actually making a sustainable food system more mainstream?
So the water pollution, the extinction of the species, the extinction of the salmon,
the air pollution quality, the cancer rates, are all yields of your design. You're just
not booking them on your balance sheet. And so how do we look to becoming eco-literate
and go into the university of deep wisdom, which are native ecosystems and emulate that
with our agricultural endeavors.
Just feeling like I really am part of a movement -- there are people all over who are doing
very similar things. And we have a lot of very similar values. Sometimes there are different
approaches. So I'm always interested in how you get
people to see themselves as more than consumers; to see themselves as political actors in every
aspect of every day of their lives. I feel like people in this country act like the only
thing you can do to be political is vote for a new president every four years. And that's
why having a garden - or participating even better in a community garden where you're
working with other people - that's directly engaging in that struggle. You're directly
growing food. Making this positive change. As well as challenging the things you don't
like. The only way that change has ever really happened has been when people create these
grassroots, alternative movements combined with actually putting political pressure on
the system as it is.
We're right now in the midst of writing a memo for the USDA and we'd love to bounce
that off you because what I'd love is to have us echoing each other so that the USDA
is getting the same kind of data you're giving to the White House.
I would say that 10% of my job is trying to figure out how rich changes to an organization
could work. 30% of my job is networking, meetings, making new connections. 60% of my job is writing.
If we're going to be a movement, we have to think about the language. The language
becomes a way of seeing the journey to a new place.
We're working to combine the NGO, the Dept. of Ag. In California, the Dept. of Health
and the Dept. of Education to bring to bear about ten million dollars of money from -hopefully
the CDC -- in order to really leverage and get more good food to low income families,
to the farmer's markets because we're doing this double voucher program. When you
change your paradigm you have to re-conceptualize it. You have to think differently to create
the world differently. The other big piece is to bounce the thinking off people. And
that happens in the meetings. So what I have here is basically is our port
that grew out of the policy that was created for San Francisco, which is a regional food
policy in which the city is going to commit to buy regionally with it's buying power.
It's going to develop up to 40 urban farms in the city.
Talking about an idea. The struggle over what do we really mean by the reintegration of
human beings into the natural world as manifest to the food system. But that has to be bounced
off other people. If it just stays up in one person's head or a bunch of people in their
own silos, then it doesn't mean anything. You have to bounce the ideas and create synthesis
in the way people think.
Connect at a local level. And I think that we probably have a sympathetic audience over
there. So I'll give it a good pitch.
That would be great. And then they get to have the conversation
at USDA and then their going to have it with the Congress. Eventually all that thinking,
which begins in all those different rooms on peoples' computers, ends up being written
into law over time. That's the system of how society changes, I think. That's how
I conceptualize it anyway.
There are possibilities in this city. Oakland has high unemployment in a lot of these neighborhoods.
And as I said, there is tremendous spending power there, that if captured could be put
into jobs -- local jobs in the community. And one of the key challenges that we've
experienced in terms of barriers is this issue of scaling. How to actually scale the models
that we see beginning to work at the ground level? That are starting to take root. That
are starting to integrate into a more comprehensive solution. When we looked at our performance
as one single, small organization, we found that over almost seven years of work, time,
effort, blood, sweat, tears, budget and staff, we had met less than 1% of demand in the community.
Less than 1% of total demand in the community. And that was for me a very significant wake
up call to the imperative of scale. That there are grassroots innovative models that need
to get traction - that need to get bigger. But we've hit the ceilings as practitioners
at the grassroots level. We've hit the ceilings again and again and seen oh, policy is major.
You know we're doing all this work for sustainable agriculture. And it works. And yet, these
are still small islands of sustainability. Even if you're more resistant, more resilient,
more sustainable, spread the wealth better, feed more people, employ more people, it won't
make a difference if the food system is not democratized. It's not enough just to be
a good farmer. In fact you also need to be an advocate and an activist. And you need
to create the political will in order to make the changes that you need.
It's a political change. It's social and political. And the only people that are going
to change that are social movements -- massive social movements.
We're open to a dialogue to deal with this and get them to approve it. And support us.
Please support us because this is for you as well.
In other words, you need to have control over the food system so that the people who are
doing the things that work can actually have a chance. And the other people who say, hey
that's great, let's do that, actually have a voice.
We are the 99! We are the 99!
That's where it comes a new concept, called the "Food Summit" concept, which is developed
by the Via Campesina in the developing world. It's basically a concept on not only food
security, not only access to food, but also to provide all the resources that people need
in order to have food. That is land. That is the seeds of the crops that are not patented
-- the local seeds that have been preserved. The water. The education and the human capital.
Everything that is needed -- all those components have to be present.
This isn't something one legislates even though it entails legislation and policy and
what not. It's something that is socially learned. And that means sharing our knowledge,
sharing our experiences. As people move towards food sovereignty, they not only have to share
amongst themselves, they have to share with others. How did they do this? How did you
do that?
By educating people, by engaging in discussion, by promoting more awareness of what's going
on in other parts of the world maybe people can see that if in other countries it's
possible, it is also possible here. This is concretely happening in other countries. And
I think it's time now for the North-South exchanges. Not just the North always teaching
the South, but the South has a lot to teach us today in terms of alternatives to the system.
Farming is the kind of work that people are really, really hungry for. Anyone can do this.
Anyone can find a place that is misused or unused and get a group of people together
and go and start using it to grow food and empower your community to connect to each
other and be themselves.
The struggle to preserve this land, I think, needs to continue. Focusing on closing the
gap between production and consumption is perhaps the most revolutionary act that can
happen today because then it will also have implications in terms of energy use, in terms
of greenhouse emissions, in terms of resilience to climate change, and in terms of food justice.
I like to refer to the "Occupy Moment," not the "Occupy Movement" because I think
that we've all been working towards different projects. The food justice projects that have
been happening before Occupy, they're going to keep going. And now they are just inspired
and influenced by the tactics and the models and the rhetoric of the Occupy Movement. Now
we're at this Occupy Moment where we're able to take that opening, where people are
actually having to have to discuss these issues and confront them. Even people in power who
don't want to discuss these issues are having to deal with them. We have an opportunity
to actually bring this up and to combine the Occupy Moment -- the Occupy Movement -- with
all our values as the food movement. And that's what I think is happening here.
Things are happening. It's like seeds being planted. The mass population doesn't know
there is this bubbling coming up. And the longer this goes on, the more people will
join and see the common cause that we all have.
We're not going to be able to just wait for the senators to realize that food justice
is important or for the president to decide that Monsantos' dollars for his campaign
are not as worth it as his constituents' voice. We can't wait for these things to
happen because they never will happen. We know where power really lies. Power lies in
people. And we intend to start slowly, but certainly taking back the power we know we
have from those who have been deciding arbitrarily that they are the ones who know what's best
for us. We're doing it with diverse communities - trying to do it openly and transparently.
And hopefully create some of the structures that we want to see exist in our future, democratic,
ecological, economically just society. But also have a good time while we're doing
it. Grow some food for some people. Be out in the sun working together. I think there
are so many ways in which this kind of action defines both the opposition to the things
that are wrong and the creation of what's right.
This is lateral and it's growing outward and there's more and more people involved
every time. Everybody having a say, everybody being involved. And so this is just a small
microcosm of what I hope can grow into a bigger political system in this country. Am I too
lofty? Yeah. Too idealistic? So what. I love it. I love the way it feels here.
So we're talking about social movements that are not necessarily revolutionary, arm
struggle movements, but are movements that can make changes because of the pressure that
they are putting on their local politicians. And also they are putting their own politicians
in power -- like the MST in Brazil. The MST in Brazil is a movement of landless people
-- 10 million people -- that already took over more than 10 million hectares of land
-- that's the size of Italy. Regardless of what the government says. And the government
has to negotiate with them and explicate the land in order to give it to them.
We're not alone. We're not the minority. We're not the fringe. We're the cutting
edge. And there are cutting edges all over the globe.
I need to constantly remind myself that the world has always been crazy. That people have
always lived in crazy times because you look around and it seems nuts. I went from the
peak oil, I am going to escape to the country, I just need to learn how to grow food first,
to the only place we're going to solve these issues is the city.
I feel like I'm part of a large group of people who are trying to steer a boat through
an incredible storm. And there are a lot of people in mainstream agriculture and organic
agriculture and industrial food systems. Even in those places I come across lots of people
who see the same problems and want to deal with it. And so I have lots of hope when I
see that. So, it's good.
We have to find lots of ways to rediscover that food can connect us to the earth, to
animals, to plants, to our families, to our friends, to the farmers, to all the hands
that bring that food to us. It's just assumed in so many societies that you won't eat
without acknowledging that whole web of connection that every plate of food has.
We've changed it all. And I think that the basic tenet of life is to wake up in the morning,
work really hard growing food. Share the work and the experience with your community and
your family. Come home, prepare a harvested meal -- a great, well-cooked meal -- and
have fun and laughter. That's the day. That's the life. That's what it was about. And
we've added too many things to it. And that's why a lot of us are ill. We don't take care
and eat the food that we're supposed to eat. That's a huge mushroom boy.
There's an old saying, if you keep doing what you're doing, you're going to get
what you got. And that's what society is going to happen to society. We're going
to keep having this crazy cycle of violence, crazy cycles of disparity, inequity, injustice.
But when you try to do the right thing -- when you forsake your interests for the betterment
of your fellow man, that's a proper cause. That's how you fight the bad with the good.
You fight evil with love. So that's what we're trying to do. I'm going to catch
this ride ok.
Ok thank you Leon.
Ok c'mon. Stand. Stand. It's amazing the amount of denial around the problems on this
planet. Or our potential to screw this planet up. I hope the world doesn't go all Mad
Max on us. It could happen. Ok, let's go. C'mon. Hup, hup. C'mon
let's go. C'mon. Let's go.
What? What is that?
Goats.
Goats, huh?
Yep. I hope that sustainable living could be one
of the things that could allow people to disengage from the destruction around them and engage
in building something and communities here in the city. I hope that we're like a seed
of possibility that might sprout.
This is the tip of the iceberg right here - all of the vegetables and things like that.
But the massive underside of it is thousands of worms and decaying matter. And all sorts
of interesting microbiological activity happening down here that just blows my mind the more
I learn about it. You just take these little bulbs and you just
stick'em all around and hide them in the garden. Make sure you get them right under
the soil. You put them down like maybe an inch in the ground.
This thing already got one Mr. Harvey.
Oh it's cool. You can just make sure that goes to the bottom because that's where
the roots go out. I put garlic in my sicket. I put garlic in my eggs too.
Oh yeah, that's hecka good.
Some old gentleman who lived around the school came over and we were talking about the garden.
We were excited about it. And he said, oh baby we did this before. We had a garden here.
Y'all just don't know we had a garden here. We had a victory garden here. Gardening
is a tradition here at Malcolm X. I'm so glad to see you back. And I was like this
is the history. We thought we were doing something new and should have known that the history
of the school's been there a hundred years - somebody had a garden there. This is not
nothing new we're doing here, but it is a renewal in a way if you think about it.
Because what have we done in our society. We have added iPods and technology and communication
and cars and telephones and texting and sexting and all these things. But we've forgotten
why we're here. What's the most important thing? You can't text, iPod, sext, or anything
without good health. This is hard work, but it's fun too. It can be. So I'm doing
the Zen meditation -- this is what I call it. So I'm telling them in the classroom,
you guys want to go out and do some Zen meditation? And their like yeah, yeah what's that!?
And I'm like, it's gardening. It's weeding.
I think it's a real opportunity to truly understand and feel -- you know physically,
emotionally feel -- the fact that we're not separate. That we have to come together
in communities in order to deal with the messes that we've created.
Good afternoon!
Buenas tardes!
Buenas tardes! Como estan?
Bien!
How are you doing?
Is everybody having a good time?
Bienvenidos! Come estan pasando?
This is a very special event. We are blessed today to have Ollin Yolitzli, which is an
Aztec dance troupe. It is a way to bless the community and this garden project and this
area. The dance is going to be a blessing dance. Whoo! Listen to that. That's the
wind. That's the spirit.
Es el viento. Y los spiritu.
I thought, so why don't we start a culinary class -- get people job skills they needed.
So we started the culinary program. And I was in that coach class to see how it went.
And now they're about to go out and do their thing. It's what you can be and what you
can do in this moment.