Today on Greenhorns Radio, Sev speaks to Faith Gilbert, author of the Greenhorns Guidebook Cooperative Farming, a how-to handbook on forming collaborative farm ventures, and the Vegetable Manager and Administrative Lead at Letterbox Farm Collective. Letterbox, which produces everything from vegetables to pasture rabbit (which you may remember from our post earlier this week), uses a cooperative model to increase worker investment and spread power horizontally through the farm.
“…why the things are what they are, how the things would be if they were as they should be, and how a path can be made from the things as they are to the things as they should be.”
These are the words of Peter Maurin who, along with Dorothy Day, cofounded the Catholic Worker Movement. Now 85 years later, the movement that started with a small paper that called for non-violence, voluntary poverty, and hospitality for the homeless, exiled, hungry, and forsaken has 240 communities that remain committed to these principles.
Brian Terrel recently addressed the National Catholic Worker Farm Gathering, and recalling the revolutionary spirit of Peter Maurin he had this to say:
For many of us, too, solidarity work and travel to places exploited by economic and other kinds of colonialism brought us to see that Peter was right when he pointedly insisted that issues of war and peace always are, at the heart, issues of the land and its use. In New York City or Los Angeles as in Jerusalem or Mexico City or San Salvador, the peace and good order of society requires justice on the land. It strikes us, finally, that even the food that we serve on our soup lines that is donated or gleaned from dumpsters depends on slave labor and is grown in ways that cannot be sustained. When the peace for which we yearn and struggle finally comes and our global neighbors will no longer be forced by debt and oppression to clothe and feed us but will use their own labor, land and water to care for themselves, how then will we live?
The vision of the Catholic Worker Movement parallels much of the aspirations of today’s new agrarians, as we seek ways to work with the land, minimizing our reliance on asymmetric power dynamics of a global world.
You can see Brian Terrel’s full transcript here and find out more on the Catholic Worker Movement Here.
Real Food Films is calling for filmmakers to submit projects by April 1st that correspond to the themes of:
Crafting Public Policies for Public Health: Taking on Big Soda
Building Power with Food Workers
Tackling Climate Change Through Food
Selected films will be included in their 2017 Organizing Toolkits, which will be jam-packed with educational materials for groups and individuals interested in working in food system reform.
The Sacred Stones Camp at Standing Rock has put out the call for immediate emergency action to stop the drilling below the Missouri River for the Dakota Access Pipeline after yesterday’s announcement by the Army Corps of Engineers of their intent to issue permission to proceed with construction, ignoring a previous order to conduct an environmental impact study on the project before doing so. Without action, drilling will likely begin today, Wednesday February 9, and the pipeline could be completed in 80 days.
If there were ever a time to flood TDP banks, shout outside of Army Corps of Engineers offices, and share this information widely, this is it. Find actions near you today!
We’ll leave you with this excellent quote from indigenous American Kandi Mosset in the Guardian today: “The Dakota Access pipeline is a symptom of the larger problem, which is the fracking that’s continuing to happen. Society as a whole needs to wake up and realize there are no jobs on a dead planet.”
It’s Tuesday, and we bet that you could use your daily dose of inspiration from people doing beautiful things in the spirit of hope and transformation. It’s another day, and we have another rad collective farm for you– and for this one, we are calling on the Greenhorns community to help amplify and support the voices and work of people of color who are doing incredible work in food justice, community building, and the resistance of oppression.
Introducing Earthseed Land Cooperative! A “transformational response to oppression and collective heartbreak: a model of community resilience through cooperative ownership of land and resources,” created by a visionary group of “black and brown parents, activists, artists, educators, business owners, farmers, and researchers, who came together to remember our relationships to land, to livelihood and to each other.”
The Cooperative is committed to centering the voices of people of color and other traditionally marginalized communities. They grow food with the intention of increasing access to fresh produce, offer classes and youth programs, and offer a retreat and sanctuary space for activists and artists. In their own words, “Our work is to support our members, our compañerxs in resistance, and our broader communities: to grow food, to grow jobs, to grow movements, to grow spirit and mind; to hold ceremony, to hold our differences, and to hold our common liberation.”
I’m sorry, I just can’t write any more without a firm and capitalized, HECK YES.
And now, to the point: Earthseed Land Cooperative has recently found a new home for their Tierra Negra Farms in 48 acres of pasture and woods in North Durham, NC., and they need help to get their programming and farming firmly rooted in this new ground.
Don’t have money to give, there are more ways to help!
AMPLIFY: Give them some love on Facebook, send out an email with our campaign info, tell your friends and family!
CONNECT: Build a bridge to people/organizations who should know about the work that we do? Share our project with your people who want to see Black and Brown folks in the South reclaiming land for our common liberation with the blessing of Indigenous community and our ancestors.
Friends, it’s clear to us that the activism bug is sweeping the nation. Suddenly even my once-apolitical mother is calling her senators every day. It’s beautiful, and it’s important. On this note, we’ve got one URGENT request for you today: please, please add the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to your call and write lists. President Trump may have put the fast track on the Dakota Access Pipeline, but you still have the opportunity to voice your opposition to this dangerous and unnecessary project!
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ public comment period on the proposed 1,172-mile-long pipeline is open now, and the Water Protectors at Standing Rock need your support before the comment period closes February 20, 2017.
From Via Campesina, the organization of peasants and agrarians across the world, comes a list of needs from farmers living and working in the occupied territories of Palestine. In early November a delegation of representatives from social, political, unions, and farmer organizations from Spain met with the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) in Palestine to discuss needs of the rural communities.
From the statement:
[We see] the path toward Food Sovereignty as a tool for resistance, a way to feed their population and to maintain their culture and identity, to survive the violence of the occupation and to remain on their land – a path that in addition unites them in brotherhood with peasants and farmers throughout the world.
We are only exaggerating a little when we say that these ideas are too big for google: originally a GoogleDoc, Indivisable was so popular that the traffic overloaded GoogleDocs and has been moved to its own website. The 24-page document was written by former congressional staffers and uses Tea Party strategies as a model for grassroots resistance of Trump initiatives in congress. The basic idea is that, though progressives may not agree with the Tea Party’s values, their basic strategy successfully dead-ended most of the major legislative projects of the Obama administration– and these tactics can be adapted for use in the name of “inclusion, tolerance, and fairness.”
While we abhor the idea that this kind of stalemate partisan politics will continue to be business as usual in congress, we have to admit that the authors are clearly well-educated, thoughtful, and careful in their approach. At the very least, this guide is easy to read, informative, and provides an excellent refresher course in American civics. At the very best, it offers those of us who care about continuing to make our society more inclusive, most just, and more peaceful a hand up out of feelings of powerlessness. As such, this is considered required Greenhorns reading.
If there is one thing that we’d like to spotlight these days, it’s change makers and organizations that are doing really great and innovative work across the country. Enter: Ecologistics, a nonprofit organization based in the Central Coast of California whose mission is to “To create a resilient and healthy community for the residents of the California Central Coast that is environmentally and economically sustainable.” If that sounds boring or generic to you, it’s not.
First of all, we think everyone could use an introduction (or refresher course) on their value of deep ecology, which is squarely pitted against “shallow ecology” or environmentalism that is based solely on anthropocentric human survivalism.
Secondly, we’d love to see more “activist incubation” programs pop up around the country. Ecologistics has fiscal scholarships available for activists and visionaries who would like to implement progressive projects without filing for their own 501(c)(3)s. The company is able to act as an umbrella agency so that small projects can receive grants that are required to go to tax-exempt entities– acting as an intermediary that can support small groups and independent ideas.
CONTRADANCE to Protect Otis State Forest / Sandisfield from Kinder Morgan’s Connecticut Expansion Pipeline
Saturday, January 14th, 7 p.m., West Cummington Parish House, 27 W. Main Street, West Cummington, MA
Proceeds to support legal work of PLAN-NE. Music by Steve Howland, Calling by Sadie Stull, Food from Alice’s Kitchen!
A little background: the Connecticut Expansion Pipeline is slated to run through Massachusetts’s Otis State Park, an old growth forest that is protected from development by the state constitution. Currently being fought in court, approval of the project undermines state sovereignty and threatens the health of wetlands, rivers, and the gorgeous Spectacle Pond. You can read a good summary of the project and its opposition from the Berkshire Eagle and learn more about the opposition to the pipeline from No Fracked Gas in Mass.
We hear their statement. We stand with it, and we’d love to BOOST it through the network! Greenhorns, read and distribute widely!
La Via Campesina Statement on Syria Situation
(Harare, December 8, 2016) The war in Syria goes on, never ending bombardments directly aimed at the civilian population, destroying any social infrastructure including hospitals, food markets and food production. At the moment the regime is on its way to destroy totally East-Aleppo and other cities and regions will follow. Despite the incredible aggression of the Syrian government together with supporting governments and loyal paramilitary groups against the Syrian people, a strong resistance fighting for a political and democratic alternative exists. Syrian peasant and citizens keep on defending themselves, fighting for a self-determined future and demand a political solution of the conflict.Continue reading →
In just a few weeksBayer and Monsanto are getting ready to file their merger with antitrust authorities in Europe and the U.S.. If they succeed, we are facing a nightmare scenario: more bee-killing neonics in our fields, more toxic glyphosate on our plates, and more corporate control over our food supply.
Regulators can still stop this merger, but they’re already getting hammered by corporate lobbyists pressuring them to back off.
That’s why we need to move fast — antitrust regulators have a limited amount of time to take action, and the clock is already ticking.
Disillusioned by a cultural story of consumption and alienation, a newly married couple are called to action. Carrying with them their unborn child, they embark on a year-long journey around the UK, searching for the seeds of an alternative culture and with it hope for the future.
we the uncivilized: A Life Storyresonates deeply with our sick and nagging sensation that our world of strip malls, fossil fuels, and convenience is not nourishing– in any sense of the word– to the people who live in it. The film is a “grassroots documentary project” that speaks to and with activists, artists, permaculturalists, and others seeking alternative ways of living with each other and within nature.
The film has just wrapped up a year-long tour, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have a chance to see it! Organize a screening in your own community. We’d LOVE to see this come to the US.
Burn Zone, is Danny Lyon’s newest published work. Burn Zone is a Cri de Coeur directed at the artist community and our youth asking them to join the fight to save planet Earth. In it, photographer and filmmaker Danny Lyon, tells the story of his return to New Mexico after thirty years and the dramatic changes caused there by the use of fossil fuels. Continue reading →
Ever late to the party, The New York Times is finally giving Standing Rock some much-deserved coverage. This gorgeous and inspiring video (and its accompanying article) gives sober context to Thanksgiving celebrations all over this country last week.
Caitlyn Huss, 25, a manager of a vegan hostel in Los Angeles, was closing up late one night last month when the tent flap opened and someone dropped off a deer that had just been killed by a car.
“We knew we had to find an elder from the sacred fire to come and bless it, then find someone who could skin it for us,” she recalled. “It was crazy.”
Not incidentally, Severine and Krista spent the afternoon making saurkraut to send to Standing Rock. And foraged apples from a 150 year old tree..
The events that are transpiring in North Dakota, though horrific, are providing a context for new agrarians, Native Americans, veterans, peace activists, climate activists and people from all across the country to unify in a land occupation that is about protecting the commons. We are moved and we are hopeful.
the irresistible fleet of bicycles 