Report: Global Food Security and Sovereignty Threatened by Corporate and Government "Land Grabs" in Poor Countries

Moderator's Note: From Democracy Now!, we received news of this important report from the Oakland Institute that finds rich countries and corporations acquired close to 49 million acres between 2006-2009 in one of the largest "land grabs" in modern history. These actions are entirely contradictory to the aims of the environmental and food justice movements. Please visit this link for a .pdf copy of the report:

Report: Global Food Security and Sovereignty Threatened by Corporate and Government "Land Grabs" in Poor Countries

New Mexico Acequias Receive $1 Million in Stimulus Funds

WHITHER COLORADO'S ACEQUIAS?

EL RITO, CO. We received this highly significant news item from the New Mexico Acequia Association (NMAA) yesterday. Apparently, on Wednesday, August 18th, on the Taos Plaza, Governor Richardson announced a major award of New Mexico's share of federal stimulus funds for acequias.  According to the NMAA, six acequias will receive about $900,000 for restoration projects that will help sustain agricultural traditions in Northern New Mexico.  The report quotes Governor Richardson: "This community irrigation system has been the foundation for our families, villages, agricultural economy for generations. Investing in the acequias supports the lifeblood of our communities," said Richardson.  "I am honored that these acequias will be part of the stimulus funds."

The award comes from discretionary funds that Richardson awarded as part of the federal stimulus package.  Richardson also acknowledged Congressman Ben Ray Lujan and Speaker Ben Lujan, who both spoke at the announcement, for their strong support of acequias.  Paula Garcia, Director of the New Mexico Acequia Association (NMAA) remarked, "Agriculture is our past but it is also our future.  These investments are also part of a cultural renewal in our communities.  Our acequias are getting stronger over time because of our return to the land." 

Frankie Romero, Commissioner for Acequia del Medio in Cordova said he was very grateful for the assistance he received from Kenny Salazar of the NMAA, the staff of the Interstate Stream Commission, and Portage Engineering.  "The older generation has taken care of our acequia.  Five years ago, my brother, my compadre and I took over to see if we could make a difference - and we did."

The six acequias receiving funding:
·        Acequias de Chamisal y Ojito, Taos County: $82,500
·        Acequia del Cano, Santa Fe County: $125,000
·        Acequia de Encinal y Canoncito:  $143,000
·        Acequia de los Gallegos, Rio Arriba and Taos: $143,000
·        Acequia del Medio, Rio Arriba County:  $165,000
·        Acequia de San Francisco, Taos County: $165,000

"The acequias are so rich with history and culture.  Their names reflect our patron saints, our families, and our connection to the land," added Garcia who spoke about the significance of acequias to the cultural heritage of New Mexico.  "We want to build on the success of these six projects to secure more resources for acequia restoration around the state." 

The acequia projects were selected through the Acequia Construction Program of the Interstate Stream Commission on the basis of being able to complete the projects in the next few months.  The remainder of the stimulus funds was for the New Mexico Land Grant Council to distribute to the thirty plus land grants for community projects such as mapping.
 
Colorado's Acequias Deserve Similar Help

This is a significant, visionary, and courageous policy decision on Governor Richardson's part and it also demonstrates how exceptionally well-organized and motivated the New Mexico acequias have become over the last two decades of organizing.

Colorado acequias are less well known than their sister ditches in New Mexico. In Costilla County, Colorado, which used to be part of Taos County until Colorado became a Territory in 1861. The 72 acequias in Costilla County irrigate more than 23,000 acres of prime bottom lands. This amount appears to exceed the acreage of the farm lands irrigated by all six of the New Mexico acequias that received this vital funding from Governor Richardson.

Located less than sixty miles north of Taos, the Costilla County acequia farms are the oldest family farms in Colorado. This is evidenced by the fact that their decrees are the first 37 adjudicated water rights in the entire State and the area hosts 5 Colorado Centennial Farms (which have to be continuously operated by the same families for at least 100 years to qualify for this designation).

The Colorado acequia farms have been previously recognized (scroll down to Chapter 9), in a study published in 2003, for the exceptional ecosystem and economic base services that they provide. These include some 10,000 acres of wetlands, wetland meadows, and riparian corridors that provide critical habitat and movement corridors for many native species including endangered fauna such as the Southwestern willow flycatcher and the Yellow throated warbler.

The historic, economic, cultural, and ecological values of the acequias of south central Colorado were actually extensively documented by a study I directed (1995-98) with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Ford Foundation. The results have been published rather widely, but the Colorado acequias have not received the same legal standing or economic support their sister ditches enjoy in New Mexico.

Laws sympathetic to acequia interests in New Mexico date back over a decade. In contrast, it was only in 2009 that the Colorado State Legislature addressed and recognized acequia systems as unique and distinct from the more modern and certainly more dominant law based on the Principle of Prior Appropriation. As was reported in this blog last year, the State Legislature passed the law in February and Governor Bill Ritter signed HB1233-09, The Colorado Acequia Recognition Law, in April 2009. Recognition of the ecological and economic values of Colorado acequias has been much more late in coming.

The Colorado acequia communities are vital to the regional economy not just of the San Luis Valley and south central Colorado but of northern New Mexico as well. This goes beyond the direct familial ties which are deeply rooted and extensive. Every year, many New Mexico acequia farmers come north to our county to purchase alfalfa, native grass hay, roasted chicos corn, posol corn, habas (Fava beans), and bolitas (beige creamy beans) from their fellow acequia parciantes in San Luis, Chama, San Acacio, and other local Hispana/o villages. In return, they bring us the famed New Mexico red and green chiles, peaches, and other fruits that we cannot produce here due to the higher altitude and colder clime.

In an event last year (2009) that marked the significance of the Colorado acequias, The Acequia Institute and the Rio Culebra Agricultural Cooperative (RCAC) hosted a visit from the Organic Seed Alliance (OSA) at Rancho Dos Acequias in San Acacio. The seed savers, exchange, research, training, and activist network visited the Colorado acequia communities after stops in New Mexico. The OSA recognizes and values the unique qualities and significance of the heirloom corn, bean, and squash varieties that we cultivate in Colorado and that are distinct from the lower elevation crops sown by our New Mexico colleagues. During the visit they also acknowledged the significance of our agropastoral system and agroecological, ethnobotanical, and horticultural adaptations to our uniquely high altitude and an under 90-day growing season.

Here's hoping that our Governor, Bill Ritter (D), and our State Legislators, in particular Senator Gail Schwartz (D-Vail) and Representative Edward Vigil (D-Ft. Garland) who are proven friends and supporters of acequia farmers, notice this bit of news and work to provide help to the economic vitality of acequia communities. As a farmer and a citizen with direct knowledge of the significance of Colorado's acequias, I call on elected officials to work with the acequia farmers to seek similar funding and to preserve and promote these cultural ecological treasures that have been too often overlooked and devalued.

Colorado's acequias are the bedrock foundation of the entire regional economy since they produce and maintain the landscapes, architecture, cultural traditions, folklore, and open spaces that every one values and appreciates.

An investment of economic stimulus monies in Colorado acequias would be a prudent, just, and sustainable infusion of needed help to boost our regional and local economies. This seems especially fair and timely now since there are new discussions taking place in Colorado on the establishment of a "Payment for Ecosystem Services" (PES) program to reward ecologically sustainable farmers that have a record of stewardship by farming in nature's image. Our acequias have been producing such ecosystem services (open space, wildlife habitat, maintenance of water quality, etc.) for over six generations.

GUEST FEATURE: Community Gardening in the New Mexico Borderlands

Moderator's Note: The following story was made possible in part by a grant from the McCune Charitable Foundation. It is another piece in Frontera Norte Sur's special coverage of the southern New Mexico borderland. Please visit their home page hosted at New Mexico State University at: Frontera Norte Sur.

FNS Feature

Let a Thousand Border Gardens Blossom

Kent Paterson

Arturo Esparza brought the visitor to the small patch of chile, tomato, eggplant and sunflower rising from the desert earth of Vado, New Mexico. As a summer wind lashed at the garden, scattered thunderstorms punctured the sky. Off to the east, a rainbow broke through the mist blanketing the craggy peaks of the Organ Mountains. Asked if he was afraid the turbulent weather would damage the planting at the doorstep of the Vado/Del Cerro Community Center Esparza was philosophical: "We'll see if it grows and if not, well, too bad."

A junior at Gadsden High School, Esparza participates in Vado's Teen Outreach Program (TOP. According to adult leader Dora Dorado, the two-year-old program involves more than 150 young people in gardening, art, civic and other activities.

"The young people participate very well with it," Dorado said. "They learn how to plant according to the different seasons of the year. Hopefully, we can continue with the garden."

Lacking a regular budget, TOP's activities are supported by donations from participating non-profit organizations, Dorado said, adding that each young member receives a $25 gift certificate every month.

The Vado project is among a growing number of community initiatives in the borderland and Southwest that teach youth how to garden, run a small business, respect ecology and cooperate for the common good.

Located on the US-Mexico border in the low-income community of Anapra/Sunland Park, New Mexico, La Casita Community Center sponsors a group of young people that sells plants every Saturday morning at the summer farmer's market behind Ardovino's Desert Crossing restaurant.

Interviewed at the market, high school student and La Casita program participant Geraldo Munoz ran down his stand's product line: trees, herbs, fruits, sunflowers and potted plants. After four years of planting and market peddling under his belt, Munoz said he liked coming out to the market. "It's fun. I like to have fun," he said.

Taylor Moore, an adult volunteer for La Casita, assists Munoz and friends. "The kids get better selling and the market gets bigger," Moore said.

In addition to learning backyard farming, the six-year-old program teaches young people money management and allows them to practice English-language skills, Moore stressed.

The longtime community activist chuckled that a lot of trial and error goes into the project, such as when children "forget to water," but that many members soon overcome their hesitations. "They get over that hump," Moore added. "They blossom, just like a flower does."

At first impression, 12-year-old Desiree Telles is one of La Casita's blossoming flowers. A five-year veteran of the program, Telles already knows about business income flows. The young girl explained how money from market sales is divided up among participants and to pay for water costs and other expenses. "First time we came to Ardovino's we sold $300," Telles reported. "Sometimes we sell more than that."

A 20-minute drive north of Anapra and Sunland Park, Vado sits in the heart of southern New Mexico's Mesilla Valley. Home to several thousand residents, the rural community is surrounded by dairies, farms, pecan orchards, truck-stops and a cement plant. Like Anapra/Sunland Park, Vado is a federally-designated colonia because of the unincorporated town's historic lack of basic infrastructure including paved roads.

Settled heavily by recent immigrants, US-Mexico border colonias are sometimes stereotyped as crime-ridden slums. However, TOP's budding corps of gardeners and youth activists express community pride as well as the gleanings of future political leadership.

On a recent afternoon, TOP members attended the Community Youth Voice Town Hall. Breaking into small groups, a few dozen participants considered their own strengths as individuals, analyzed the positives and negatives of their community and then brainstormed solutions.

A bright-eyed middle school student, Melby Lozano said she liked helping friends out and enjoyed participating in TOP. "This was barely going to be my first year, but I really got along with the people in the community," Lozano said.

"I think we need a bigger park and more recreation centers for young people, so they won't hang out in gangs and all that," said Brenda Martinez, a Gadsden High School student. A better park, she added, would help get young people away from video games. "It would be healthier for them to go out in the parks and be in nature," she said.

Reporting back to the main meeting, small group spokespersons listed friendly people, environmental consciousness, bilingualism, family values, access to leaders, proximity to outdoor recreational activities, and the closeness and safety of the nearby big city of El Paso as among the strong points of their community.

For improvements, many youths suggested a bigger and better park, more lights, added roads, a drainage system, recycling programs, an emergency preparedness plan, paved streets, a swimming pool, enhanced law enforcement, a hospital, an ambulance, sports teams, jobs, and a newspaper.

Collected together and summarized, the recommendations will be passed on to New Mexico state lawmakers later this year, said Veronica Carmona, lead organizer for the Las Cruces-based Colonias Development Council and a convener of the Community Youth Voice Town Hall.

Other local groups that participated in the town hall included the Women's Intercultural Center, American Civil Liberties, Del Cerro RSVP Seniors, Centro Fuerza y Unidad, New Mexico Teen Pregnancy Council, and the New Mexico State University Government Department.

Outside the Vado/Del Cerro Community Center where the meeting was held, colorful visions splash walls lining a small park and playgrounds. Paused on the edge of the garden, Arturo Esparza detailed the mural painted on one wall by young artists. The art displayed hot air balloons, an eagle, a horse and mountains. "Whatever little kids think of," Esparza summarized. Inspired by the existing work, Esparza contemplated the next mural in the works. "Hopefully we do a good job," the young gardener said.

Latina/o farmers and the USDA

DECADES OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IS FOCUS OF LAWSUIT

This blog post provides a view that has not been accounted for in the mainstream media reports on the recent settlement agreement involving the case of Latina/o farmers against the United States Department of Agriculture. Namely, the problems of institutionalized racism extend beyond the local FHA/FSA farm loan and credit committees to encompass the entire range of USDA echelons and agencies including the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Agricultural Extension Service and its research stations, and the land grant college complex as a whole. The white-male and corporate agribusiness domination of all levels of the USDA remains the root of institutionalized racism. 

El Rito, CO. According to a news report coming out of KRIS-TV with an Alice, Texas origination line,  the ongoing battle of Latina/o farmers against decades of racial and ethnic discrimination within the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and its state and local agencies and affiliates continues with efforts by a group of attorneys to rally and educate local farmers about the status of the original lawsuit as a class-action discrimination lawsuit. Women farmers in a separate lawsuit have also been integrated into the search for a settlement agreement.

The legal work underlying the case dates back to the later days of the Clinton Administration and the lawsuit was originally filed in the year 2000. I discussed the case and its implications in a 2002 policy report prepared for the Second National People of Color Leadership Summit held in Washington, D.C. in October of that year.  For a copy of this Summit policy paper go to this link and scroll down to the list under "Land Use, Sustainable Development, and Resource Rights." The lawsuit against the USDA successfully alleged that loan officers denied applications from Hispanics based on race.

According to the report, the government has offered a $1.33 billion settlement that would give each Latina/o farmer about $50,000 in compensation for past discrimination.

The report alleges that the attorneys for the plaintiffs are upset that black farmers were given much larger settlements, totaling $2.25 billion. "People lost their family farms, not because of bad crops, not because of bad weather, but because of the color of their skin," said Attorney Steven Hill, a partner in the Washington D.C.-based law firm of Howrey L.L.P.

The  KRIS-TV news report continues: "Justice demands that there be a fair, just, transparent settlement for Hispanic farmers and ranchers that is in parity with what has been provided for black farmers," Hill said.

Farmer David Cantu said, he is still waiting for the full payout on a loan he believes he should have received a long time ago. "By law, they have two weeks to notify me yes, or no," Cantu said. It has been three years and he has yet to hear from them.

Although the "Stop USDA Discrimination" campaign is national, the group stopped in Texas, because there are more than 28,000 Hispanic farmers in the state, with the majority of them residing in South Texas.

"As the census said there are 28,000 Hispanic farmers in Texas. I would say a substantial portion of that number is being discriminated against," Cantu said.

The attorneys believe many area farmers are unaware of the racial bias. "I suspect [sic] to find lots of victims of discrimination that probably don't know about the existence of this lawsuit, and to bring the fact of the lawsuit to their attention and the fact that they need to get involved if they want to participate in the settlement process," said Hill.

The group of attorneys will continue traveling across the country looking for more farmers to take part in the lawsuit.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack says the settlement offer for women and Hispanic farmers is still pending; adding that congress still has to find the money to pay out all of the claims.

Institutionalized Racial Discrimination in the USDA Involves More Than Loan Bias

While the KRIS-TV report is accurate on the facts of the lawsuit and proposed settlement,  it fails to dig deeper into the origins of the lawsuit and the more complicated and extensive nature of the racial discrimination that has characterized USDA programs for decades dating to the earliest Post World War II period. The lawsuit focuses on the loan programs, but discrimination has been evident in other areas including agricultural subsidy programs, conservation programs, and other areas that involve the formation of local boards and committees. All of these programs, according to the report I prepared in 2002, have also been problematic at best.

The patterns of institutionalized discrimination that I on reported in 2002 included the following allegations, most of which are NOT addressed or resolved by the terms of the current agreement:

1. Persistent patterns of inequitable and discriminatory treatment of farmers of color as a collective class of mostly smallholders by the programs and policies of the land grant college and agricultural extension service complex. These patterns included the setting of scientific priorities and technical practices embraced by professionals in the land grant college-extension service and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) that favor and privilege the needs, priorities, capacities, and technologies of white- and male-dominated corporate agribusinesses.
   
2. Persistent patterns of inequitable treatment and discrimination against farmers of color in the settlement of debt and foreclosures, denial of loans, allocation of subsidies, disaster assistance, crop loss insurance, and other policies that have caused the displacement of farmers of color from the land base.
   

The problem of racial discrimination in the USDA is not limited to the Farmers' Home Administration (FHA), Farm Security Agency (FSA), and other credit and finance systems that are part of the federal government and the private sector. The discrimination in the FHA and FSA occurs because the local committees that have historically run these programs have been dominated by white males.  Our allegation is that these same patterns of institutional racism extend from these local USDA (FSA) committees well into the land grant college and agricultural extension service complexes as well.  Problems within the NRCS are rampant as has been reported in a prior blog posting.

In the coming weeks, we will be reporting on these other aspects of the USDA's continued failure to substantively, rather than just procedurally, address the patterns of institutionalized discrimination that plague programs and agency bureaucracies from the local committees through the highest levels of policy-making and administration. The increased representation of diversity within the USDA's highest echelons is not sufficient to transform the entire corrupt and deeply embedded edifice spawned by the predominantly white male and corporate agribusiness constituency that still dominates the farm credit and subsidy system but also the research, development, science, and technology programs in the NRCS and extension services and beyond the USDA in the land grant college complex.

Indeed, as this blog goes to post, I have just received news from the Rural Community Development Resource Center for Latino Farmers in Yakima, WA that Latina/o farmers in the Yakima Valley are facing bankruptcy in part because private loans for small farmers have become harder to obtain due to the collapse of the credit markets and the new and tougher bank regulation laws that were recently implemented in the aftermath of the Derivatives Depression.

A group of Latina/o farmers led by Luz Bazan Gutierrez organized a forum for the farmers to meet with bankers, federal officials from the USDA, and other interested or collaborative parties. Bankers at the forum said they have money to lend but are allegedly "handcuffed by regulators." However, to us this sounds like a neoliberal ruse, since the collapse of credit occurred well before the Obama Administration moved to adopt new regulations.

The USDA's FSA provides "last resort" loan programs for farmers who cannot get private bank financing but the maximum of $1.1 million is considered insufficient by most of the Washington State Latina/o farmers. Farmers present expressed a desire for a higher FSA cap to give them access to the larger programs available to fruit warehouses, processors, and dairies.

It sounds like the Washington State farmers at the forum were just the victims of the old pass-the-buck and blame-the-regulators ruse. This is an example of the new forms of institutionalized racism: Nothing blatant or overt, but an indirect and covert reliance on rules that do not bend, favor the large corporate growers, and break the small family farmers.

Food Justice in the City

Food Justice in the City Book Review

Furness’ One Less Car and an Anti-Capitalist Vision of Our World

Pancho McFarland

Austin, TX.  Winter, 1995.  Hundreds march from the Eastside to the Mexican Consulate chanting slogans, carrying signs and celebrating freedom in solidarity with the Zapatistas of Southern Mexico and their vision of a new world based on community autonomy, direct democracy and local control of culture, production, consumption and land use.

The raucous demonstration comes at a time when the Mexican government and U.S. military advisers embark on a violent offensive against Zapatista communities pushing hundreds into the mountains without shelter or food.  Both the U.S. and Mexican governments are on alert. Apparently, so too, is the Austin Police Department who is determined to protect the interests of the Mexican government at the consulate from the peaceful protesters. .

Hundreds of Critical Mass bike riders join the marchers.  Masked revelers on bikes lead the chanting mass.  APD gets tense. As the bikers and marchers meet with words and hugs of encouragement, APD goes on the offensive; dragging people off of bikes, roughing some up and arresting others..

The reputation and numbers of Critical Mass in Austin had been growing and the powers that be in the Texas Capitol fear the power of bikers and others coming together to create a different society, a different way of living that would make the rich obsolete.  Had hundreds come to downtown Austin to buy products made by disempowered wage slaves in developing countries they would have been welcomed.

However, this group isn’t here to buy the fruits of exploited labor under global capitalism but to question the system that has enriched Power at the expense of working people.  We walk and ride bikes choosing to opt out of the very petroleum-based economic system that is set on destroying the indigenous people of Mexico..

By developing a “body rhetoric” (94) with our bikes, our styles, and our bodies we engage in a critique of capitalism and colonialism and participate in a temporary autonomous zone in which we imagine living the impossible “by creating conditions in which people can actively imagine something different by physically doing for a brief moment in time” (91).  In those brief hours we engaged in participatory politics that we hope will be repeated a thousand times over by everyone at the event and fellow travelers across the globe; one at odds with the politics of automobility, authoritarianism and environmental destruction currently dominating the planet.

Chicago, Summer 2010.  Reading One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobility (2010, Temple University Press) by Zack Furness brought back these memories of the anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian, anti-violence politics and organizing that swept through the Left beginning around 1994.  In the wake of new strategies by the international elite to further enclose and privatize our world that fostered low intensity conflict in Latin America and Africa and genocidal warfare in the Middle East, many have turned to the bike as a symbol and practice of radical localism, direct democracy and community empowerment.

DIY bike culture (see chapter six), like backyard garden networks, community gardens and the food justice movement, in general, involve practices of self-determination and self-reliance at the same time that bicycle co-ops and non-profits critique petroleum-based “development” in developing countries through shipping bikes and pedal-powered machines to communities throughout the global South and in poor communities in the U.S.  In addition, “outlaw” bike culture including custom builders and “freak” bike clubs challenge us to rethink technology, the uses of bicycles, and the territorialization of urban space by a politics of automobility steeped in our environmentally unsustainable and violent addiction to petroleum.  Bike culture, especially its more critical aspects, is not the solution to global inequality, lack of food security, and environmental degradation but it must be part of a larger strategy for community self-determination that will be the answer to the collective problems of the working classes, indigenous and people of color under capitalism.

Furness examines these issues and more.  This thoroughly researched volume of cultural and social movement history explores the politics of automobility.  Furness explains that automobility “refers less to a form of transportation than an ideologically and symbolically loaded cultural phenomenon” (6).  Automobility is also a system: “the assemblages of socioeconomic, material, technological, and ideological power that not only facilitate and accelerate automobile travel but also help to reproduce and ultimately normalize the cultural conditions in which the automobile is seen as the technological savior, a powerful status symbol and a producer of both ‘modern’ subjectivities and ‘civilized’ peoples” (6).

Beginning with Chapter 2, “Becoming Automobile,” the author explains how U.S. culture and commerce has been structured around the automobile and the role that bikes have played in it.  This turn towards the automobile was and is not a neutral cultural and economic change but has furthered inequality by enriching and giving a transportation (thus, economic) advantage to the wealthy and shifting resources away from the poor and their needs and toward automobile transportation initiatives like highways, automobile research and development, and oil exploration.  The very same cultural, political and economic institutions and systems that cause the food injustices that are my concern in this series remake the world and the individual city through the image of the automobile.

The processes whereby the car comes to dominate urban space and transportation budgets result from struggles between the wealthy and the working classes that include the use of laws to usurp public space and ideology to convince people especially men that driving and automobility were a key aspect of the American Dream and American identity.  Urban planners and government officials build cities and develop them in a manner that privileges automobility at the expense of public health, bike riding as a safe form of transportation and walking.  There is an “inequality of mobility on U.S. streets” (75). 

Throughout the book Furness addresses the ideological dimension of automobility that reconstructs the United States as a “republic of drivers” whereby to achieve the American Dream and full citizenship in the “America” one requires a car (7).  Chapter 5 is particularly insightful in this regard as it examines the manner in which bikes have been depicted in popular American film.  In this chapter Furness examines “how the representations of cyclists in films and television both produce and reproduce the cultural norms of automobility” (109).  Adult male bikeriding is depicted as uncool, inappropriate, and unmasculine in movies.   The man who rides a bike is a sissy and a loser; think Pee Wee Herman and the lead character in The Forty Year Old Virgin. On the other hand, possessing a powerful car is a sign of masculine virility.  Examining a wide-range of films Furness shows us how “driving is culturally employed in the performance of heterosexual masculinity…” (114).  

Furness argues convincingly that automobility dominates the thinking and designing of transportation infrastructure and the designs and uses of cities.  In addition, this politics of automobility further privileges the wealthy and discriminates against the poor and people of color.  The same concentration of power that causes food deserts, the loss of food sovereignty and lack of food access creates cities that privilege automobility and the car driver over bicycling.  This inequality also harms us in that automobility is a very ecologically unsound set of beliefs and practices.  Inasmuch as ecological problems are disproportionately felt by people of color, automobility contributes to environmental injustice and racism.  The politics of automobility especially enriches those in the petroleum industries who earn billions every year off of our transportation decisions.

These and other critiques of the white capitalist patriarchy (wink to bell hooks as Zack Furness deftly examines issues of race, class, gender and colonialism in the book) are addressed in the book’s examination of Critical Mass (chapter four) and biketivists of all sorts (chapters 6 and 7).  Chapter 6 relates the intersections between punk and a bike counterculture that develops in the U.S. and Europe in the 1980s and continues today.  The fundamental cultural trait of both is a do it yourself (DIY) politics and aesthetics.  DIY bike culture continues the critique of capitalism from an anti-authoritarian position that holds self-determination to be a central organizing principle of a new society.  DIY allows people to be more in control of their environments than a capitalist consumer ethic that relies on big businesses and government to supply us with our needs.  DIY gardeners can marginalize the largest four monopolistic food companies who dominate the food supply.  As they develop communities of growers, they begin to control much of their food intake.  In the same way, DIY bikers can become self-sufficient and develop transportation alternatives for themselves and their communities through learning to repair bikes and being committed to ride them as their central form of transportation.

Other biketivists address warfare and inequality under capitalism.  Furness’ discussion of them reminds me of my own anti-war biketivism.  In 2002 and 2003 many anti-war and/or anti-capitalist protests took to the bike to promote their vision of a different society in which imperialistic warfare would cease as petroleum use became obsolete.  I rode a bicycle as my central mode of transportation in those years.  I pulled my children in a cart attached to my bike.  We rode to the library for homeschooling, to the supermarket and co-op for groceries and to the bike trails for exercise and leisure.  I rode my bike to work.  Everywhere we went including the peace rallies my cart proclaimed my resistance.  The makeshift, DIY cardboard sign attached to the back read “Stop Bush’s Oil Wars: Ride a Bike.”  

As I stated earlier, bike riding alone can not end our reliance on petroleum nor bring about the end of global capitalism.  I knew this at the time but believed the message and the body rhetoric of the bike served to bring attention to the relationship between U.S. imperialistic warfare in the Middle East and transportation.  My rolling ad for a post-petroleum society brought out emotions in pro-peace and pro-war advocates alike.  Many cheered and wanted to discuss biking and alternative transportation.  Pro-war advocates jeered and ridiculed me as un-American.  One large man in a cowboy hat chased me and my children down the street shouting obscenities and calling me a communist and a terrorist supporter.  With my children in tow I got away as my bike proved faster than his walk.

Furness’ discussion of Critical Mass and bike co-operatives and other organizations that donate bicycles and pedal-powered machines to communities in need of them addresses how many share an anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, anti-war politics and use the bike as both a powerful symbol and effective strategy in developing parallel institutions that are much more democratic, ecologically-sound, and egalitarian.  Organizations like Working Bikes in Chicago (where I picked up really good bicycles this summer), DIYers and Critical Massers present a lucid critique and intriguing vision of a new city, new economic practices and new social arrangements.  In developing a powerful argument for the “right to a bikeable city” (see chapter 3) they also address questions of inequality and authoritarianism.

One Less Car causes us to critically examine the cultural politics and political economy of transportation in ways that most of us have never done.  It also causes the reader to think about the possibilities for organizing our societies and cities in ways that are non-authoritarian, ecologically sound and egalitarian.  Using the bike and contemplating its myriad possible uses is an important avenue for creatively and critically re-assessing how we live.  Furness’ work is a welcomed contribution to the all-important dialogue that is continuously developing in the food justice, biking, environmental justice and related movements.