Environmental & Food Justice

FOOD FIGHTS: Hunger Politics and Struggles for Autonomy & Resilience, Part II

2012-01-15T16:45:00.000-08:00

Moderator's Note: With this guest essay we post the second in a new series on FOOD FIGHTS: Hunger Politics and Struggles for Autonomy and Resilience. The series was launched in October 2011 and examines hunger as a longstanding neoliberal capitalist political project that intentionally, and sometimes perhaps inadvertently, punishes tens of millions in the USA and a billion-plus bodies in the Two-Thirds World suffering from malnutrition, hunger, famine, and the loss and disruption of native agroecosystems, foodways, and heritage cuisines.

The political project to homogenize and control the global food system dominated by a handful of multinational corporations and powerful nation states is capitalist at its core and manifest source. This reflects the culmination of five decades of American policies that made food into political weaponry, as Harry Cleaver presciently observed way back in 1977.

However, the series emphasizes the importance of developing a two-sided analysis that poses a dynamic tension between domination and resistance and so proposes to develop analyses of struggles against neoliberal capitalism and for the autonomy of the 99 percent.

The basic idea behind Cleaver’s 1977 article was that food is a type of political weaponry and that this became official US policy during the Nixon Administration when Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz declared that food was indeed part of the toolkit of American “diplomacy.” Secretary Butz announced this policy in 1974 with the simple statement: “Food is a weapon.”

To continue the series, we are posting a critical analysis by our colleague and fellow blogger, Dr. Pancho McFarland on Harry Cleaver’s article, “Food, famine, and the international crisis,” that brings the original analysis into contemporary context that also weighs in on the case for autonomy through grassroots urban agriculture.

From Weaponry to Sovereignty

by Pancho McFarland, Ph.D.

With my colleague, Dr. Devon G. Peña, I am interested in the application of the autonomia model to the study of food politics and a better understanding of the new social movements around food justice and food sovereignty. In this essay I discuss sections I and II of Cleaver’s visionary 1977 article. Throughout, I will add my own analysis of how this might apply to our food sovereignty struggles today.

Part I: Toward a class analysis of food systems

Cleaver’s critique of left (Marxist and non-Marxist) analysis of the world food system helps sharpen our understanding of the place of urban agriculture, especially community gardens and urban farms, in a working-class revolutionary movement. He says that non-Marxist critiques of the food system and food crises point to the consolidation of corporate power in agribusiness. Marxists agree but add imperialism as a central factor.

Cleaver forcefully argues that both critiques discount urban and rural working class consciousness, resistance and self-organization. He writes that in both of the ‘left’ perspectives “capitalism is seen as the only active force.” Cleaver’s addition is to show that the working-class has shaped global and national food policies through its active resistance to the ruling classes’ use of poverty and hunger as weapons in class warfare. Working-class self-organization forces capital to reorganize.

Here Cleaver’s analysis of working class self-organization around food helps the contemporary food sovereignty movement build upon earlier successes and failures. The article seeks to accomplish two things: 1) develop a class analysis of food as moments of class struggle and 2) apply this class analysis to postwar development.

Part II: Food and class struggles

Section II uses a dialectical approach to understanding food and the dominant capitalist food system. He opens the section with the following:

To undertake a class analysis of food, one must begin with the realization that there are always two sides to the issue, two perspectives corresponding to the two basic classes in capitalist society. Yet at the same time, the two sides are not separate but interact as aspects of interacting classes. As each side struggles for its own ends, those struggles impinge on and force changes on the other. For the working class, food is above all our basic consumption good—a fundamental requirement for us to live and enjoy life. For capital, food is primarily a commodity like others, and the organization of the production and distribution of food has made agriculture a sector of capitalist industry in which people are put to work and exploited.

For the capitalist, food is a commodity and a tool of control. Through the early and ongoing enclosures the bourgeoisie appropriates common land resulting in the dispossession of people from their primary means of subsistence, culture and autonomy. Rural people lacking a means of subsistence are urbanized, proletarianized, and controlled. This is the nature of capital accumulation. The remaining rural workforce is controlled “through the manipulation of land.” Capitalists’ “control over distribution…exercised through retail outlets and prices…” provides a strategic advantage over the urban proletariat.

At this point in Cleaver’s analysis we see how it resonates with a food sovereignty perspective. From this perspective we believe that issues of food injustice result from capitalist control over the means of agricultural production and distribution. These include agribusiness consolidation of land and control over the necessary inputs such as seed, pesticides, energy and machinery. Profit-driven markets are based not on serving people through providing everyone with sufficient amounts of food but on what yields the most profit. If people starve in the meantime, well, “that’s just the cost of doing business.”

However, as Professor Cleaver reminds us, “the working class is not passive before capital’s possession of this power.” Through the working classes’ centrality in the production and distribution networks we can lay claim to much of the ruling class’ power. Historically, the working class has fought for wages, sought control over production processes and the organization of their labor, demanded lower prices, engaged in direct appropriation and looting among other strategies and tactics.

Capitalist relations of production pit the producing sector of the working class (rural workers) against the consumer sector (urban workers). Consumers want quality food at a cheap price which means that rural bosses squeeze profits out of rural laborers through a less-than-subsistence-wage piece-rate system. Cleaver points out that “the fundamental power of food for capital is the power to force the working class to work to get it.” Even though it seems that the power of corporate agribusiness is overwhelming, we should recognize as Cleaver does that the working class has strategically used their division by fighting for wages and recomposing itself through migration.

Currently, the work of many in the food sovereignty movement has recognized this strategy of capital and begun to develop urban-rural relationships that, in large part, bypass the circuits of capital. Organizations in the Chicago area such as The Black Oaks Center for Sustainable and Renewable Living and the Healthy Food Hub operate in terms of communities not commodities. They are theorizing and enacting a new organization of labor which doesn’t divide rural from urban and dissolves the distinctions between producer and consumer.

Cleaver’s analysis continues by examining another food-based division in the working-class; that between the waged and the unwaged. The unwaged, namely housewives and small farmers, do a significant amount of work that allows the capitalist food system to function as well as the working classes to survive. The non-waged female sector of the working class has resisted their exploitation of their labor through entities such as the Wages for Housework movement. Peasants, too, are vulnerable since the power imbalance between them and the capitalists controlling distribution networks forces peasants into a semi-waged state in which they are forced to sell their labor power to the ruling classes through the production of agricultural commodities sold on a market controlled by capital. They, too, resist periodically.

The unwaged, like the waged, sectors of the working class use their marginal power and disadvantage as a strategy against capital. Cleaver explains that:

The experience of recent years in both urban and rural areas has demonstrated that the unwaged often indeed make themselves not available for work. In fact, this unavailability (for waged work) became one of the key elements of the crisis of capital in the 1960s as blacks, women, and students in the West turned to rebellion instead of jobs, and peasants in many countries undertook guerrilla warfare rather than present themselves to capital for development.

I want to posit here that retaking our labor power and our very bodies from capital through the self-edifying, unalienated labor of community and backyard gardening can be undertaken through an ethic of the ‘rejection of waged work.” Capital would be forced to reorganize or otherwise attempt to regain control of the two most important functions of the proletariat (at least as they see it): 1) its labor power to produce commodities that can then be sold for a profit and 2) its consumer power. If workers don’t buy commodities at prices above the wages paid for the labor to make the commodity, then capital loses profit. If workers refuse to work, that is, make commodities for the benefit of owners, then the bosses have nothing to sell.

The development of a local food economy that includes all sectors of the working class as common and sovereign owners of the land and agricultural resources takes away capital’s strategic advantage. We reject its imposed, alienated conditions of labor and its control over commodity distribution, especially prices. We now gain control over the most important thing: our means of subsistence. Mass exodus from the labor force for control over a sovereign local food system begins to make capital obsolete.

I believe that this worker self-organized activity along with the ecological limits of the planet will likely usher in a post-capitalist era. The questions are: What will this post-capitalist era look like? How will the working-classes mold this new era?

Cleaver’s lessons for an anti-authoritarian food sovereignty movement and a post-capitalist worker-organized society don’t stop here. He continues his critique of the leftist analysis of “students of imperialism [who] see only capital moving in the world.” He instructs that “We must see the international character of the working class and the circulation of its struggles for more, better and varied food.” The food sovereignty movement is international in scope. International discussions and transnational struggle against capitalism and for a truly democratic future are as important to working class strategies as are the locally organized and focused food economy strategies of community gardens, new rural-urban relations and the dissolution of the producer-consumer distinction within the working class.

La Vía Campesina has been at the forefront of international cooperation around food sovereignty. The hard work of member organizations and individuals has caused many of us to look to their lead in theorizing and implementing food sovereignty ideas, strategies and tactics. They are explicit in their international character. Their website describes the organization this way:

La Vía Campesina comprises about 150 local and national organizations in 70 countries from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. Altogether, it represents about 200 million farmers. It is an autonomous, pluralist and multicultural movement, independent from any political, economic or other type of affiliation. (www.viacampesina.org).

Numerous examples of the transnational character of the working class and international alliance building exist. Other recent high profile moments of international working class struggle against capital and its food system include The Landless Workers’ Movement of Brazil and the Zapatistas of Mexico. While each of these examples is unique and place-based, they have enjoyed international support from wide sectors of the working class and have taken pains to view their struggle from an international perspective. They are both locally-focused and internationally engaged. Careful attention to each of these movements can provide important lessons to our work in food sovereignty especially in the areas of food justice in urban settings.

Cleaver ends section II of his work by describing three important periods in the struggle over food between capital and workers. The rest of the work examines in detail each of these important moments. He ends the study with a summary of lessons a working-class orientation toward food might have to teach us in future struggles around food. Subsequent blog entries will address these aspects of Cleaver’s analysis.

Guest Blog: Farm workers, hunger, and anti-immigrant hysteria

2011-12-22T09:56:00.000-08:00

Moderator's Note: This is the fourth in a series of guest blogs by students in my University of Washington food sovereignty seminar. Teresa Bailey presents an insightful analysis that links anti-immigrant hysteria to the high incidence of hunger among undocumented farm workers.

Farm Workers: Fuel the U.S food system while going hungry

Teresa Bailey

The backbone of United States food production is the labor of immigrants from Mexico and Central and South America, many of whom are not U.S. citizens. The agricultural labor force is estimated to consist of 75 percent people born in Mexico; some estimates are that at least 53 percent of farm workers are undocumented.1 Undocumented and documented immigrants from Mexico are undoubtedly an integral part of the U.S. agricultural labor force.

When discussing immigration I must emphasize the structural violence perpetuated by the United States government that has devastated the Mexican economy, resulting in the high rates of immigration from Mexico. The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) enabled the dumping of U.S. subsidized corn and other crops on the Mexican market and at the same time the Mexican government discontinued land subsidies for campesinos. Local farmers, unable to compete with U.S. subsidized imports, went out of business. Thus, many former farmers were left with few to no options other than to travel to the U.S in hopes of making a livelihood to support their families.

Increasing violence associated with the drug cartels also contributes to the migratory flow and the inability of many to return to Mexico. United States residents are the number one consumers of the illicit products of the Mexican drug industry; this is another way in which the U.S. creates the conditions, which force many people in Mexico to risk crossing the border into the U.S. Finally, the increased militarization of the border has put an end to the revolving door policy in which Mexicans could work in the U.S. and then return to their families seasonally. As border crossing becomes more costly and dangerous, immigrants increasingly must remain in the U.S once they have crossed, and thus many are separated from their families for longer periods than was traditionally the case.

Mexican farm workers are filling a labor need that Americans are unwilling to fill, and are thus vital contributors to the U.S. economy. Despite this, as unemployment rates in America reach record highs, Mexican immigrants are scapegoated as villains stealing American jobs. Consequently, this has given rise to a wave of anti-immigrant legislation in many states across the U.S. The first being the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (SB1070), signed into law by the Governor of Arizona on April 23, 2010. The law requires immigrants to carry documentations at all times and allows law enforcement to ask for such documentation without a crime being committed. This is widely seen as racial profiling.

Many states have followed Arizona’s lead as extremist right wing groups in the country fuel anti-immigrant rhetoric and legislation including laws passed in Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, South Carolina, and Alabama. In Alabama, HB 56 is the most extreme of this state-level anti-immigrant legislation to date; it was passed in June 2011. This law requires public schools to check for documentation of school children, electronic verification of citizenship status by employers, and legalized racial profiling of Latinos. The law has been devastating to Alabama’s agricultural economy, as farm workers have left the inhospitable state causing a huge shortage in agricultural labor and billion dollar losses in the sector. This situation in Alabama is just one example of how important undocumented farm workers are to food production in this country.

These states, with their overtly racist and anti-immigrant agenda, do not reflect the only strategy adopted ort pursued by state legislators to make their states inhospitable for immigrants. In Washington state the 2011 legislative session witnessed numerous legislative proposals that used budget cuts to target legal and undocumented immigrants. The budget cut proposals included eliminating the State Food Assistance Program and cutting 26,000 undocumented immigrant children from access to health care through reductions to Apple Health for Kids.2 As far as passing anti-immigrant laws in Washington State, numerous proposals have been introduced including efforts to ban undocumented immigrants from acquiring driver’s licenses. What we saw in Washington was a covert attack on the undocumented immigrant community. Washington state may not require immigrants to carry documentation at all times or legally condone the racial profiling of Latinos, however it will cut health care for immigrant children and get rid of food assistance for immigrant families.

The Washington State Food Assistance Program was created under the governorship of Garry Locke in response to the Congressional decision in 1997 to bar immigrants from the receiving federal food stamps until they can provide documentation of five years of legal residence. The State Food Assistance program perfectly mimics federal food stamps, yet directly fills the gap felt by the immigrant community.

However, during the 2011 legislative session Governor Gregoire, with a 2 billion dollar budget deficit, proposed to eliminate the program entirely. To be fair, cuts were being made to many different government services and departments, however a heavy burden was on social safety net programs. But to eliminate a program completely rather than reduce its funding is a drastic step because there is a very small chance of the program being re-instated. This would have had a devastating blow, with 31,000 people losing their food stamps.2 The legislature decided to save the program, but cut the funding in half.

As the 2012 Washington State legislative session is set to begin, the state faces a fourth year in a row with a major budget shortfall and Governor Gregoire is proposing an additional round of 2 billion dollars in cuts. What is left of the State Food Assistance program, saved last year, is once again on the chopping block for complete elimination.3

The audacity of barring people from food assistance because of their citizenship status is disgusting. The bitter irony of such a decision is intensified when considering that the very same farm workers who put the food on everyone’s table have extremely high rates of food insecurity. In Washington State and across the nation, farm workers go hungry at rates several times higher than the national average, estimates show that 86 percent of farm workers experience food insecurity.4 , 5 Farm workers have very low incomes, averaging $11,000 nationwide.1 The nation’s food security depends on Mexican farm workers, yet these same farm workers struggle to put food on their own tables because they are paid so poorly and are barred from food assistance programs that other people with the same low incomes have access to. The Governor should not be eliminating the last remnants of food assistance to immigrant families, but should instead expand the program by not requiring any identification so that undocumented immigrants will have the option to support themselves and their families with food assistance. There needs to be a shift in the rhetoric that recognizes the important role undocumented immigrants have in our community.

1 U.S. Department of Labor, National Agricultural Workers Survey (2005).

2 Children’s Alliance, The Facts about the State Food Assistance Program (2010).

3 Office of the Governor, State of Washington, Proposed 2012 Supplemental Budget (2011).

4 Washington State Department of Health, Hunger in Washington (2008)

5 Weigel M M, Armijos R X, Hall Y P, Ramirez Y, Orozco R. The household food insecurity and health outcomes of U.S.-Mexico border migrant and seasonal farmworkers. Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health 9:157-69 (2007).

Guest Blog: Grocers in a Box?

2011-12-06T09:15:00.000-08:00

Moderator's Note: This is the third in a series of contributions by students from the food sovereignty seminar I am teaching at the University of Washington this autumn 2011 quarter. This post is from Laura Christie, who is pursuing a self-designed major in food studies. Ms. Christie’s contribution focuses on the development of a new model to address food deserts in the Seattle area, the so-called “Stockbox Grocer.” This concept is reminiscent of the traditional green grocer that was once a fixture in inner-city neighborhoods and is indeed making somewhat of a comeback today in many Seattle-area ethnically-diverse neighborhoods.

Stockbox Grocers Aims to Fight Food Deserts

Laura Christie

Food deserts are a well-worn topic in the food sovereignty discourse. Food deserts are residential areas lacking establishments selling fresh produce, meats, dairy and whole grains. Typically, inhabitants must travel several miles to find such whole foods; for urban residents that distance is one-mile and for rural residents it is ten, according to the USDA. In many food deserts, residents also lack personal transportation and must rely on increasingly inadequate public transit to get to grocery stores. What should be a ten or twenty-minute trip often turns into a two hour-long travail.

Using the census to quantify, the USDA estimates that 23.5 million Americans live in food deserts and unsurprisingly more than half (13.5 million) are low-income (USDA 2011). This number is likely an underestimate, especially if we account the number of undocumented immigrants and their families who are typically not included in the census, but are more likely to be both low-income and living in food deserts.

King County is relatively free of food deserts, as defined by the USDA. There are exceptions including south-end neighborhoods like Delridge, White Center, High Point, South Park, and others. Delridge is a neighborhood at the southern end of West Seattle; the majority of residents in this 8.5 square mile area are people of color with the largest population being Asian American, then African American, followed by Latina/o, with other ethnicities making up the balance (“City-Data”). A quarter of all Delridge residents were born outside of the United States, almost 10 percent speak very little English or none at all; Delridge has far fewer higher education degrees than the Seattle average and a lower yearly income (“City-Data”).

These demographics trends are consistent with areas considered food deserts. In the case of Delridge, shopping options are limited and consist of convenience markets that do not stock fresh fruits and vegetables. Grocery stores apparently find few business incentives to build stores in the area due to high start-up and operational costs and the perception of the lack of a guaranteed market that would take produce off the shelves before it must be thrown out. Of course, grocers in low-income and communities of color often sell produce well past expiration dates and are also known for selling inferior quality perishable goods.

What is the solution to the type of food desert faced by a neighborhood like Delridge? One possibility is the concept of Stockbox Grocers – an idea that is the brainchild of two graduate students from the Bainbridge Graduate Institute. The goal of these students was to find a small business solution to the challenge of getting fresh produce and whole foods to low-income, low-access areas. Their solution was to turn an old shipping container into a mini-grocery store that provides grocery staples (chicken stock, vegetable paste, etc.) and fresh foods (milk, eggs, produce, grains). Not only does this business plan get whole foods to food deserts, but they are able to do so and charge far lower prices because their overhead does not include high start-up costs, utilities, or worker wages.

One of the founders, Carrie Ferrence, states: “We take away the high set-up cost…We take away the high ongoing operating cost, and we focus on the inventory that moves most efficiently” and adds “Huge grocery stores are fairly inefficient…They depend on 15 percent of their inventory to carry the profitability of the rest of their store” (Bruder). Modern technology is also key to their low costs and efficiency. The store uses an iPad and a “Square” (a small credit card swiper that can be plugged into a smart phone) to process electronic payments and track inventory (Woodward).

The inception of Stockbox received a lot of attention; they are the recipients of a $20,000 grant from the Seattle Office of Economic Development and the King County Dept. of Health and another $12,500 from the University of Washington Foster School of Business. The $20,000 provided by King County is part of a larger $1.1 million dollar grant to get more produce and whole foods in convenience stores and corner stores in areas of low food access.

Stockbox Grocers debuted their shipping-container-store in Fall 2011 in the parking lot of an apartment complex in the Delridge neighborhood. Their first pop-up store was open for an 8-week trail period, closing in the first week of November (Ferrence, and Gjurgevich). Stockbox offered healthful options like fresh fruits and vegetables, dried beans, rice, pasta, milk, yogurt, cheese, eggs and nuts; but they also carry less health oriented foods like Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup, packaged macaroni and cheese and Jiffy Peanut Butter, because they wanted to provide foods people would actually buy (Thompson).

In deciding what to stock, the founders noted that: “Most families, most communities, buy the same five to 20 items, week in and week out, so they only need to go to a huge grocery store once or twice a month to get the remaining items” (Bruder). During their 8-week run they found that 25-30 people came in to shop each day, often commenting on how nice it is to have groceries nearby and telling their stories of previously having to walk very far or take several buses to grocery shop.

The founders are receptive to any advice or suggestions and when a customer suggests that they carry a certain ingredient that is more culturally or regionally appropriate, they quickly can add that to the shelves. Since Stockbox’s infrastructure consists of preexisting shipping containers, they "can drop a store into a community and have it up and running pretty quickly, rather than having to spend months building out a brick and mortar location” which increases Stockbox’s potential to have a huge impact on food sovereignty by being able to quickly target and act in the highest need areas.

So what does this do for food security? It is a necessary step towards better access to healthy foods. Of course, there are much more deeply seeded problems of income inequality, structural racism in the housing and employment sectors, and the demands placed on those working in low-income jobs (e.g., often longer hours, harder physical labor, poorer or non-existent benefits, and much lower pay); these conditions take time and energy away from one’s ability to grocery shop and prepare healthy meals.

The way jobs and hourly wages are structured make it much easier to stop at a fast food restaurant after work for dinner or to feed a family Of course, the ideal solution is to deal with the huge income inequalities in neighborhoods like Delridge, especially since those inequalities disproportionately affect communities of color. In the mean time, making real food accessible to low-access areas is critical. The stockbox idea provides one viable option, even under the structural inequalities that favor fast-food chains.

With its mobility, minimal input costs, and low prices, Stockbox Grocers may be an important “transitional” answer to the challenges and deprivations posed by urban food deserts. While it may be a temporary institution, it has potential to become a more permanent structure, especially if it can continue to sell at lower prices because of its lower operating costs. It would be fascinating to see if the Stockbox model became a neighborhood-managed worker co-operative.

Stockbox is still in its infancy but is proving to be innovative and receptive to criticism. For example, I would push Stockbox to have at least 50 percent of its product available for purchase with either SNAP or WIC credit, including all of the produce available for purchase by those programs. I would also suggest that anyone working at Stockbox be knowledgeable of food preparation; if a customer asks what s/he could make that is quick, easy and healthy, I would expect the Stockbox employee to be a source of accurate knowledge. I would encourage Stockbox to have recommended recipes posted next to certain items and provide short instructions on how to prepare certain vegetables, grains and legumes.

It is easy to critique any start-up and I am not without my own criticisms, but overall the Stockbox idea is innovative, resourceful, and so far relatively effective. With the success of the first one, they team is looking to open a permanent Stockbox in Delridge, Skyway and/or Southpark in Spring 2012 (Thompson). I encourage readers to go and see it first hand and offer necessary suggestions on how to improve this model; I also encourage readers to ask the more important questions about food deserts. How has structural racism manifested to create food deserts and whom do they effect? What is the point of having access to fresh, whole foods if the people in that neighborhood do not have the time to prepare it? How do structural inequalities affect access to healthy foods? While operations like Stockbox are helpful, they do not solve the

Bruder, Jessica. "A Start-up Tried to Eliminate 'Food Deserts'." New York Times 01 Nov

2011, n. pag. Web. 28 Nov. 2011

"Delridge Neighborhood." City-Data. City-Data.com, 2009. Web. 27 Nov 2011.

<http://www.city-data.com/neighborhood/Delridge-Seattle-WA.html>.

Ferrence, Carrie, and Jacqueline Gjurgevich. "Delridge Stockbox." Stockbox Grocers

Stockbox Grocers, 2011. Web. 26 Nov 2011. <http://stockboxgrocers.com/stockbox

-pop-up/>.

"Food Deserts." USDA. USDA, n.d. Web. 27 Nov 2011. <

http://apps.ams.usda.gov/fooddeserts/foodDeserts.asp&xgt;.

Thompson, Lynn. "Stockbox Brings Good Food To Where People Live." Seattle Times 06

Nov 2011, n. pag. Web. 28 Nov. 2011.

Woodward, Curt. "Stockbox Grocers: the Food Store That’s Kind of a Tech Startup (Inside a

Shipping Container)." Xconomy; Seattle. Xconomy, 11 Nov 2011. Web. 17 Nov 2011. <http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2011/11/09/stockbox-grocers-the-food-store-thats-kind-of-a-tech-startup-inside-a-shipping-container/>.

Guest Blog: Food Sovereignty for all Bodies

2011-12-05T14:28:00.000-08:00

Moderator's Note: This is another contribution from students in the food sovereignty seminar I am teaching at the University of Washington this autumn 2011 quarter. This post is from Zoe Emery Handler and it focuses on a seldom examined dimension of the struggle for food justice, namely the challenges faced by persons with differently bodied (qua, disability) experiences. I have certainly learned a lot I had never considered from this wonderful post by Ms. Handler.

Food Justice for the Differently Bodied

Zoe Emery Handler

Food security is an extremely flawed paradigm and yet still dominates contemporary conversations and discourses addressing world hunger. Working to only meet the caloric needs of the world’s poor oversimplifies the various types of nourishment – nutritional, cultural, and spiritual – that food plays in fulfilling people’s lives. Additionally, such a conventional model encourages the proliferation of monoculture profit-motivated mass food production that further disenfranchises peasant farmers and makes it nearly impossible for migrant workers and others involve in food production worldwide to earn a living wage.

Mainstream discourse about ‘food security’ only focuses on the need for the re-distribution of food rather than proposing radical re-imagining the way in which food is produced. However there is an emerging global movement calling for ‘deep food’ – food that is nutritionally adequate, environmentally sustainable (i.e. local, organic), culturally appropriate, and ethically produced. Leaders of the movement – including organizations like La Via Campesina – cite equality as a prerequisite for the attainment of universal ‘food justice’ and work to eradicate racism, sexism and classism across the globe.

Yet, in spite of their recognition of the role that structural violence and institutionalized oppression plays in food distribution, even these progressive forces for food justice fail to consider or propose solutions that can address the food inequality faced by differently-bodied persons. Recent research “suggests that more than a billion people in the world today experience disability” (World Health Organization); this constitutes a great segment of the global population. It has been proven that “work-limiting disability substantially increases the risk of food insecurity for low-income families” (Nord 2008). Such a significant and marginalized portion of the world’s population cannot be excluded from the conversation of food sovereignty any longer, and their participation is necessary in order to truly meet the goals of food sovereignty for all.

Barriers that now restrict differently bodied persons from accessing ‘deep food’ are multi-faceted, but primarily are rooted in economic inequities. Food insecurity disproportionately affects disabled persons simply because of lack of access to equal educational and employment opportunities that then decreases their earning power, limiting their options vis-à-vis food purchasing. Current programs in place in the U.S. that help persons with food insecurity - both with and without disability - are inadequate to meet the needs of their food consumption. One such example of a program is SNAP. “The average SNAP beneficiary received $125.31 per month in fiscal year 2009. If food stamps constitute a person’s entire food budget—as often happens, even though the program is intended to supplement recipients’ own money—that translates to just under $1.40 per meal”(Mason). It must be remembered that those who are differently bodied may also incur living costs directly related to the maintenance of their disability, making it more likely that food stamps will be the only resource for putting food on the table. Such a low budget for food limits the SNAP users access to fresh nutritionally dense foods, and instead drives beneficiaries towards convenience and ‘junk foods’ that are available in larger quantities at a lower price.

For differently bodied persons ‘deep food’ will also require things beyond the standard definition of nutritionally adequate, culturally appropriate, and ethically produced. Management of certain chronic illnesses - e.g. Diabetes - will require specific nutritional adjustments that differ from the nutritional needs of typically bodied persons. Additionally deep food must be physically accessible, something which will require the construction of food delivery systems which provide nutritionally and culturally adequate foods and the revamping of farmers markets and other such food sources so that they are equipped to deal with handicaps. Although adjustments in physical structure and accessibility are vital for including differently bodied persons in food sovereignty and deep food, such spaces must also be emotionally accessible. Widespread discomfort with disability and general misinformation about what it means to be disabled often results in differently bodies persons being subjected to demeaning behavior while exercising their right to autonomous food purchasing decisions. Making deep food accessible to disabled persons is a complex process but at the root of all such efforts there must be a push to work towards the elimination of the idea that the differently bodied exist as the ‘other’. Structural inequities of the disabled, emotional and physical inaccessibility and discrimination all result from the dehumanization of disabled persons. Before there can be true universal food justice for differently bodied persons, differently bodied persons must be seen as intrinsically as valuable as their typically bodied counterparts.

Works Cited

Mason, M.. "Food stamps for good food." The Nation. N.p., 2011. Web. 20 Nov 2011. <http://www.thenation.com/article/159160/food-stamps-good-food>.

Nord Mark, . "Disability Is an Important Risk Factor for Food Insecurity ." Amber Waves. N.p., 2008. Web. 25 Nov 2011. <http://www.ers.usda.gov/Amberwaves/february08/Findings/Disability.htm>.

World Health Organization, The World Bank. "World Report on Disability." World Health Organization. N.p., 2011. Web. 30 Nov 2011. <http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2011/9789240685215_eng.pdf.

Guest Blog: Food Freedom or Food Justice?

2011-11-30T14:06:00.000-08:00

Moderator’s Note: With this blog, we re-initiate a series of contributions by students in my University of Washington courses. This contribution is from a student in my Chicano Studies 498a Special Topics seminar, “Food Sovereignty Movements in Mexico and the United States.” The posting was prepared by Steve M. Sullivan-Zárate, Esq. and is a fascinating reflection on the possible opposition/contradiction between “food freedom” (a.k.a. consumer freedom of choice) and “food justice” (the abolition of hunger and the provision of adequate, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food).

“In Poor Taste”

A Glorious and Belligerent Treatise from the Age of Deep-Fried Consciousness

By Steve M. Sullivan-Zárate, Esq.

In favor of discourse surrounding buzzwords such as shade-grown, sustainable, slow-food, deep-food, fair-trade, seasonal, local, equitable, organic, and whatever else, a commonly overlooked topic in the dialogue surrounding food justice are the matters of convenience and taste. We can talk all we want about eating locally, sustainably, organically, equitably, and so forth, but when all’s said and done, when people have a choice about what they eat, there is always the risk that people will choose based on taste, convenience and comfort instead of the environmental or socio-cultural impacts. With this writing I would like to explore the paradox of Food Freedom and Food Justice.

It would probably behoove me greatly to begin by defining the key terms. After all, one hears the word Justice thrown around with the same impunity as the word Freedom. They’re often even used in collaboration, as though they are but two complementary flavors inhabiting the same delicious candy bar, arm-in-arm in the revolutionary struggle of peanut butter and chocolate. “Freedom and Justice for all”. To complicate the common, simplistic and unexamined definitions of Freedom and Justice, Albert Camus once famously said: “Absolute Justice is achieved by the suppression of all contradiction; therefore it destroys Freedom”.

This phrase seems to suggest a contrary interpretation; that instead of and far from being collaborative ideals, they are in fact, in their purest forms, actually in direct opposition to each other. Absolute Justice would mean that there really is “one correct way” whereas Absolute Freedom would mean the complete absence of taboo - every path open, just as valid as the next. “Every/any way” vs. “One way / the right way”. Freedom vs. Justice.

Humans naturally crave certain, specific tastes- sweet, salt, spice, and fat. This inclination wouldn’t normally be a problem except that we’ve ceased to eat food opportunistically like every other member of the community of life. Naturally, we would only very rarely come across enough sugar, salt, spice, or fat to pose a particularly grave threat to our health. The urge was always there throughout our evolution exactly because those foods were so scarce but we do need a certain amount of them in our diet. After the advent of intensive food production (which operates on the premise that all food is ultimately human food and is often referred to as “Totalitarian Agriculture”), we suddenly had access to huge quantities of foods that were cultivated to satisfy our hereditary urges for certain tastes. When you get right down to it, there are really good reasons for both why people eat at fast food restaurants or munch candy bars, and why the sale of fast/junk food is so obviously successful. Reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with economics...It’s convenient and tastes good. Nevermind that comfortable foods are harmful on any number of levels, they are not only cheap and convenient, but they also happily satisfy the tastes that we crave- sweet, salt, spice, and fat. Herein lies the problem of Freedom vs. Justice.

Consumer-citizens of dominant culture the world over (but especially Americans) have to choose between eating something because it’s seasonal, organic, healthy, etc..., or to eat something that they know comforts them, tastes very good, is quick and ready, and satisfies their evolutionary cravings. Activist groups have found themselves in the unsavory (pun intended) position of trying to argue against what tastes best to the human tongue and is most easily at hand. It’s like when parents admonish their children to eat their meticulously prepared Lima beans and Spinach “because it’s good for you” even though it tastes like... Lima beans and Spinach and you could have just thrown in a frozen pizza. In this way it could be considered Freedom to have a myriad of food options and the right to choose whichever, but it could be considered Justice to have “one right way” to eat: local, slow, deep, organic, seasonal, and all that.

And don’t mistake me and get all angry dear reader. I’m not saying that because foods are produced respectfully, they can’t taste good or be incredibly flavorful, but I AM saying that they usually don’t taste like a goddam Snicker’s bar so let’s do away with that critique right now. Junk food has a gravity all it’s own. If ice cream didn’t make you fat, have any adverse health effects, was readily accessible worldwide and could be produced respectfully/organically/sustainably/whatever, then who would eat fair-trade, shade grown, local organic broccoli instead? Come on now. And I’m a man that loves me some good steamed broccoli. The fact is that people gravitate towards quick food that meets their cravings. Heirloom squash is all well and good but people seem to like the McRib despite overwhelming reasons not to.

It’s news to me, but apparently every economist worth their salt (notably Paul Hawken, Richard Robbins, and Milton Friedman) knows that to maintain a healthy Capitalist economy it must increase annually by 3 percent. This implies three very important things to me: 1) There is an underlying assumption that infinite growth on a planet with finite resources is even possible, 2) people always need to sell more (and profit, which means selling something for more than you know it’s worth or buying for less than you know it’s worth), and 3) people always need to buy more. What happens when people are satisfied with what they have or want to live within their means? The economy falters and the entire apparatus of the dominant culture shows its fragility. In order to keep things running smoothly, businesses have created a competitive advertisement industry based entirely around carefully suggesting that people buy, suggesting that people... indulge. Like Burger King says: “Have it your way”.

Dominant culture fetishizes both consumption and Freedom, (hell, we invade other countries ostensibly just to spread the gospel), and what better way to demonstrate consumer freedom than an abundance of food choices? Even small town grocery stores have literally dozens of varieties of salad-dressing, pasta sauce, potato chips, chocolate and other products, not even counting the foods you mix and match yourself.

For a culture in which everything bends to the needs of the economic system, is it any great surprise that consumers have been fully indoctrinated into the notion that “the customer is always right”? We’re conditioned to the point that even the way we make friends and interact with other humans follows this mandate of comfort and indulgence. We can block phone numbers and online chat partners if anyone says word one with which we disagree. We can get delivery food or go through the self-checkout to avoid any possibly uncomfortable social interaction. Almost everything is considered disposable. At every point the “Westernized” consumer is encouraged to act based solely on comfort, convenience and taste.

The other day I overheard someone telling a friend that: “The only thing Americans fear is inconvenience”. I thought that was an apt appraisal. The battle here is unbelievably difficult because not only is it internal and subtle, but it counters the fairy-tale logic with which we’re all familiar. The struggle isn’t between the forces of what’s good and what’s evil, but the forces of what’s good and what’s easy.

This all begs a question though; If we are trained and strongly encouraged from birth to insulate, indulge, comfort, and make exceptions for ourselves in order to spur the economic system, then what does that mean for our strategy if we care at all about Food Justice?

Clearly the utopian ideal would be to convince every man, woman and child the world over to personally and moreover, voluntarily become comfortable with discomfort/inconvenience, and resolve to eat a certain way because it’s more Just, but it would be more than a little naïve to bank on that kind of worldwide, individualistic transformation.

At some point we have to bring up the effects of a Capitalist economy. At some point we have to acknowledge the unsustainability of the current system of food production. Certainly at some point we must address the fact that any FORCED change towards eating with deliberation and respect, will leave many people feeling mightily displeased by the limitations on their eating habits and resentful of those who forced the change. It might even result in backlash. Asking people to adopt what’s essentially an entirely new lifestyle is a tricky proposition. Is the plan just “wait for collapse” or is it still “wait for the universally voluntary transformation to a better lifestyle”? Could change take the form of a cultural shift in the way we view and interact with the world? If so, could that culture-shift withstand the mechanism of economy that already ruthlessly put down so many other, more firmly established cultures?

All of these are big questions, I know... but I keep coming back to that quote by Camus. If Freedom and Justice are indeed at opposite ends of the spectrum, then perhaps, like so many things in the world right now, they’re out of balance. Perhaps we need more Justice for our Food. It’s one thing to diagnose a problem, it’s entirely another to treat it.

South Central Farm Update: Leslie Radford on SCF and Occupy LA

2011-11-23T11:08:00.000-08:00

Moderator's Note: We are presenting a very insightful and significant update from Professor Leslie Radford, a long-time supporter of the South Central Farmers. In this update, Dr. Radford notes that instead of paving the way to restore the South Central Farm for the low-income and predominantly African-American, Mexican, Salvadoran, and Chicano residents of the Central Alameda neighborhood, instead of leaving them even two and a half acres for a soccer field, Mayor AntonioVillaraigosa and Councilmember Jan Perry are offering farmland to the predominantly white, and until recently mostly middle-class, occupiers of City Hall, people widely perceived as the symbolic children of Westside liberals. The offer itself will undoubtedly get more attention and add more to the environmental credibility of the two elected officials than the nail in the coffin of the South Central Farm ever will.

Why the Whole Movement Should Be Watching

What It Means to Occupy Los Angeles  

by LESLIE RADFORD

Los Angeles

All across Los Angeles you’ll find small, quiet occupations, clusters of tents sheltered by overpasses or erected in communities that emerge in the twilight and disappear at dawn. Most have been there for years, in places like Watts and Skid Row, a fact of life for much of Los Angeles south and east of City Hall.

Last night, the newest one, the biggest and noisiest, was offered a building, housing, and a farm. Occupy Los Angeles, just a little over 50 days old, has rattled the bars of City Hall, the building it surrounds, so emphatically that the monolith that is the City has rocked. Yesterday, the City signaled a buy-out deal to OccupyLA in exchange for removing the part of the encampment from City Hall’s south lawn.

Many of Los Angeles’s long-term advocates for social and economic change are trying to figure out what just happened. City Hall politicians played “divide and conquer” on a much bigger scale than deciding who gets to stay and who gets to leave the encampment. Community activists have whispered that the Occupy Wall Street movement across the United States is driven by people formerly of privilege, mostly white and with dashed expectations of a middle-class life. The City has forced Occupy Los Angeles to address that challenge, and where the movement goes next depends in great part on their next move.

Occupy Los Angeles, ensconced on the north and south lawns of Los Angeles’s City Hall, is the nation’s largest encampment associated with the ubiquitous Occupy Wall Street movement since Occupy Wall Street NYC in Zuccotti Park was dismantled in a police raid a week ago.

Although without a defining set of demands, Occupy Wall Street participants cite social justice, political accountability, and economic realignment as reasons to claim possession of land and visibility. The police raid on Zuccotti Park triggered a week of coordinated police incursions into Occupy encampments across the country, dismantling the sites and displacing the protesters. Except in Los Angeles.

Since before its inception OccupyLA has been unique in that it negotiated its encampment with City officials before the protesters took up residence on the City Hall lawn. Most in OccupyLA have asserted that the police belong with the occupiers as members of the 99% and have avoided encounters with police that might signal hostility. With the exception of an unexpected clash with police on Thursday morning and a nonviolent civil disobedience action that resulted in planned arrests Thursday night, OccupyLA as a whole has had no significant conflicts with LAPD.

Occupiers have come to know and chat with the uniformed police who stroll across the grounds in pairs. OccupyLA’s City Liaison committee has continued conversations with police and City officials, and after weeks of rumors, they announced an exchange offered by the City to the occupiers that would cede the most visible part of the lawn for some security for the occupiers. But it’s not that neat, and it’s not that easy. Dealings with City Hall never are.

First, there is the farmland. A couple of weeks ago, LAPD demanded the removal of garden boxes that some occupiers had carried to the lawn to grow food, apparently signaling to the City some interest among the occupiers in farming. And mind you, this is not a garden. A garden would be ambiguous; a Farm has special resonance in Los Angeles.But elected city officials have a more self-serving motive in offering a farm to the occupiers.

Just last week, at the behest of mayoral candidate Jan Perry, the City Council sold off land promised for a soccer field at the site of the former South Central Farm. In doing so, they most likely paved the way to turn the former urban gem into another pollution-pumping, gray and cold, low-wage manufacturing site. The grassroots blowback has been harsh on Mayor Villaraigosa who is busy defining himself as the green mayor of the Million Trees program, and, after he hit a taxicab while riding his bicycle, the champion of bike lanes. And it’s been harsher on LA City Councilwoman and mayoral candidate Jan Perry, who’s tying her election campaign to developers for the money, even as she paints herself to voters as the advocate for healthy eating and green space.

So, instead of paving the way to restore the South Central Farm for the low-income and predominantly African-American, Mexican, Salvadoran, and Chicano residents of the Central Alameda neighborhood, instead of leaving them even two and a half acres for a soccer field, Villaraigosa and Perry offer farmland to the predominantly white, until recently mostly middle-class occupiers of City Hall, people widely perceived as the symbolic children of Westside liberals. The offer itself will undoubtedly get more attention and add more to the environmental credibility of the two elected officials than the nail in the coffin of the South Central Farm ever will.

Then there is the building. The City’s offer includes 10,000 sq. ft. across from City Hall for a dollar a year. The offer on the table is, almost assuredly, tied up with the City’s frantic divestiture of its Community Redevelopment Agency money before the state Supreme Court rules in January on the legality of the governor’s plan to redirect CRA funds from developers to schools and public safety.
The exact location is still undisclosed, as are most of the details of the City’s offer to the occupiers, but a likely site is the mostly-vacant Parker Center, the former headquarters of LAPD, now used mostly for its jail and communications facilities. Parker Center is also where protesters who attempted to set up tents at the Bank of America plaza on Thursday were booked. In spite of that, OccupyLA is renowned for its cordial working relationship with LAPD, and a neighborly arrangement between the police and at least some of the Occupying protesters, perhaps, not a contradiction.

And there is the offer of housing for the homeless now encamped on the south lawn of City Hall. In the geography of the encampment, the south lawn is perceived as the residence of the homeless, the drug users, and the stoners, all sources of friction for the activists on the north lawn. The City is asking for its front lawn back, and it’s willing to let the north lawn campers remain, at least for now. In exchange, the City is offering to open up new shelter for the homeless who will be displaced. The effort to fracture the 99% along existing seams of class and political tension is transparent.

What’s not so evident is that if the City can establish that it has provided 1,250 new beds in low-income housing since 2007, they get out from under a 9th Circuit order that allows sleeping on the sidewalk. That would leave the City free to resume citing and arresting those who do sleep outside or even sit on the sidewalk, the infamous practice Perry was fond of for cleaning up Skid Row in her district. As recently as 2010, Perry was railing against feeding people on the street. The entwinement of the protesters and the homeless, and the City’s insistence on not feeding people in public spaces, already has led to the closing of kitchen facilities at City Hall encampment.

Ironically, the court order allowing the homeless to sleep on the sidewalks is the basis for the occupiers’ encampment now going on at City Hall. Allowing the City to relocate the people on the south lawn to new low-income housing could precipitate the eventual end of the OccupyLA encampment at City Hall.

Back at the encampment, the occupiers are in the throes of debate about persistent key organizational questions, issues that the City’s offer are forcing to resolution. The determinedly direct and horizontal democracy of the Occupation, in which everyone is heard and everyone has equal weight, is being tested by the City’s insistence in dealing with a designated group. The line between those perceived as activists and those perceived as needing assistance turns out not to be as clear cut as the line between the north and south lawns. The impetus to cooperate with the police to avoid violence, long a mantra in this Occupation, has morphed into a corollary that, among the more confrontational of the occupiers, now looks like a blanket acquiescence to authority. On one hand, the deal is being hailed as a victory for the 99% and the power of OccupyLA and its tactics. On the other, it’s being denounced as a set up. And if there’s such a thing as a third hand, a large contingent of occupiers want to ask the City for more, up to and including the wholesale resignation of the mayor and city council.

And in the community, calls are already going out among grassroots groups for their own deals for 10,000 square feet in a city building and farmland, and people who’ve worked for low-income housing for years are shaking their heads. Wittingly or not, even before the deal has been consummated, the offer itself is throwing into bright relief the economic and racial divisions that simmer in Los Angeles. It remains to be seen whether those calling themselves the 99%, there on the City Hall lawn, can figure out how they can transcend the history of fissures that is Los Angeles.

Thus far, the inertia of OccupyLA has left it out of the Occupy Wall Street limelight. That may change in the next few days, as the largest standing encampment determines what course it and the Occupy Wall Street movement will take. Can the Los Angeles occupiers navigate their way and the movement though the seas churned by more experienced politicos, or will they inadvertently crash up against the complexities of realpolitik and real tensions in Los Angeles? The Los Angeles Times is already marshaling public support for the City’s offer.

At Tuesday night’s General Assembly, the people roundly rejected the City’s offer. A number of reasons were cited, but it seemed to me that chief among them was rejecting the whole idea of City Hall setting the terms of settlement.

It was reported that in meetings held since city officials made their original proposal, they have thought better of some or all of it. Negotiators reported that the terms were a lot less sure than they were yesterday. It was also reported that the City gave the occupiers until Monday to vacate. I’m not clear if the expectation to vacate was for just the south lawn or for the entire occupation. In either case, people clearly anticipated a confrontation on Monday. I missed the very end of the GA, but unless there was a hard block, the City’s offer was rejected.

LESLIE RADFORD is an adjunct professor of communications and a freelance journalist living in Los Angeles. She can be reached at LRadford@RadioJustice.net.

Food Justice in the City

2011-11-07T10:16:00.000-08:00

Food Sovereignty in Chicago

Pancho McFarland, Ph.D.

“Food sovereignty, urban food access, and food activism: contemplating the connections through examples from Chicago” (Agriculture and Human Values, Fall 2011), the recently published article written by scholar-activists Danny Block, Noel Chavez, Erica Allen, and Dinah Ramirez applies food sovereignty principles to urban food justice politics. Their examination of the community-based organizations, Growing Power and Healthy South Chicago, and interviews with residents of food desert communities shows the need for food justice activists to adopt a sovereignty perspective.

An important discussion in their timely study revolves around their critique of food access inequity as the central problem with the capitalist food system. The authors argue:

Food access inequities highlight how the experience of living in poorer communities is hugely different from the experience of living in wealthier ones and that these difference can even lead to increased death. However, their ability to highlight these inequities often leads to a public response that focuses on only food stores themselves, rather than a broader focus upon the broader inequities in economic investment, political and economic power, and health that the food desert issue highlights.

This analysis and critique of the “food access” discourse amongst food justice advocates and others is timely given the current media attention, nationally and in Chicago, of First Lady Michelle Obama’s food campaign. On October w5, 2011, Obama, former friend and current Chicago Mayor, Rahm Emmanuel, numerous politicians and businessman met to discuss food access. In addition, the new Mari Gallagher study reported that the Chicago population living in food deserts has been reduced by 40% in recent years. The Gallagher report and the food summit define the problem as one of food access that strategically-placed corporate chain stores could solve. The decrease found by Gallagher resulted from a few store openings and the emphasis placed on corporate interests at the food summit suggests that ‘food access’ is being turned into a market opportunity and catch-phrase.

On the other hand, Block, et.al., see lack of food sovereignty to be the primary concern within a food justice framework. Their definitions of food sovereignty provide us with insight into their critique of the ‘food access’ discourse promoted by big business and Obama. Their first definition comes from La Via Campesina: the rights ‘of each nation to maintain and develop its own capacity to produce its basic foods, respecting cultural and productive diversity…the right to produce our own food in our own territory…” Additionally, they explain that food sovereignty is ‘the right of people to define their agricultural and food policy.’ They also quote “Canadian policy activist Wayne Roberts” who simply defined food sovereignty as “when food is of, by and for the people.”

In essence, the problem is not one of access but self-determination. The problem is the entire system of social relations that we commonly call capitalism and the U.S. political system mistakenly labeled ‘democracy.’ The U.S. population, in general, has almost no power over their livelihoods. The ‘food economy’ is monopolized by a small number of corporations that determine what gets grown and raised, how it gets produced, and how food gets distributed and at what price. The profit motive trumps health and hunger or the cultural appropriateness of available food. Food sovereignty intervenes at the root cause of food inequity. Attention to questions of food sovereignty and economic self-determination focuses our food justice praxis away from simple engagement with the food monopoly and towards small-scale production and institution-building.

Somewhere Between Alinsky and Gandhi

Block, Chavez, Allen and Ramirez’s examination of Growing Power, and Healthy South Chicago and interviews with residents from the Englewood neighborhood in Chicago show us that food activists and residents see the problem as power and respect. They recognize that the cause of food access inequities lies in the power relations between them as working class people of color and the corporate food monopoly. They have identified the problem as one of lack of food sovereignty and racism stemming from the capitalist organization of society. The response must involve true democracy and community self-determination. Their study suggests that alternative food movements that don’t attend to these principles cannot effectively solve the problems associated with inner city hunger. As a result, they see the organizing principles of Saul Alinsky that have been developed by countless organizers and activists since the 1970s to be useful. The authors write:

[Alinsky’s] advice is to ‘never go outside the experience of the community’ (Alinsky 1969, p. 229). Activists have often done so, to their peril, as the power relations that result between the activists and the community may not be very different from those that would result from a plan put into place by the city government without community input.

Here is where the work of food justice activists and scholars like Drs. Devon Peña and Vandana Shiva in slightly different contexts intersects with food justice in Chicago. The traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) recognized and promoted by these scholar-activists in Meso-American diasporic enclaves in Colorado, Seattle and Los Angeles (Peña) and rural India (Shiva) speaks to not going ‘outside the experience of the community’ in achieving food sovereignty and community empowerment. Radical food projects must attend to Black and Mexican TEK and other cultural traditions. They must also be initiated with community leadership.

The critique of capitalism suggests a strategy incorporating the insights of Mohandas K. Gandhi and the Indian Independence Movement. A key strategy in the movement as articulated by Gandhi is the development of parallel institutions. The food justice movement should keep an eye toward marginalizing the capitalist food system through community institution building. If the problem as identified by food justice activists and food desert residents is lack of sovereignty, more chain stores in Black and Mexican neighborhoods does not provide a solution. We can’t be seduced by the glamour associated with Obama’s focus on food access. Instead we should build a strong local food economy that makes us independent of the corporate food monopoly.

2012 Farm Bill: Zombies of the House and Vampires of the Senate

2011-10-31T19:24:00.000-07:00

Moderator’s Note: We hate to bring you this Halloween special, but with this post, we launch a series of reports following developments and offering critical analysis and alterNative policy recommendations on the 2012 Farm Bill.

We start with a disturbing piece from our friends and colleagues at Food Democracy Now! While we have yet to confirm these allegations, if true then this is clearly yet another example of the perverse and systematic violation of our Constitutional rights to participate as a public and as farmers and consumers in shaping the public policy discourse for our nation's agricultural policies and spending priorities in a period that is unleashing deep cuts that could further damage access to safe and culturally appropriate food to a growing majority of people in America.

The Food Democracy Now! report alleges that a secretive group of U.S. Senators and Representatives are meeting with corporate agribusiness lobbyists behind closed doors to work on a secret deal for the 2012 Farm Bill that would effectively shut down public participation before the debate really gets underway. This is a direct threat to consumers, farmers, farm workers, food service workers, and the environment and is also hardly in the spirit of the open debate and deliberation one would expect in a democracy. This story further confirms our suspicion that we live in a Republic of Property, one that is based on the rule of private [corporate] property rights rather than the equitable rule of law.

Zombies of the Haunted House;

Vampires of the Seditious Senate

For the past several weeks, rumors of a “Secret Farm Bill” being hatched behind closed doors in Washington between only a handful of legislators and industrial agriculture lobbyists have been leaking out of Congress. Last week those rumors hit panic mode.

According to multiple sources in DC, the most corporately entrenched Senators and Representatives of the Ag committees are locked behind closed doors on Capitol Hill with agribusiness lobbyists trying to carve up the 2012 Food and Farm Bill in an intentionally hurried process that will kill any needed reforms for protecting family farmers, the environment and improving healthy food opportunities for all Americans.

If corporate greed gets its way, family farmers and food reformers will possibly be locked out of the conversation on reforming food and farming policy until 2017. It’s no wonder people are marching in the streets!

Click here to make a call to kill the “Secret Farm Bill”. We need your voice today - now more than ever. If you support local family farmers and sustainable agriculture for our future, please join this call to action.

If you think the ghouls of Halloween are serving up a frightening brew, wait until these creepy members of Congress write your Food and Farm Bill behind Closed Doors!

The Four Horsemen of the Farm Bill Apocalypse

Zombies of the Haunted House:

1. Frank Lucas – (R-OK) Current Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee

Lucas is so in the tank for industrial agriculture that earlier this year he proposed a hearing on the “over-regulation of agricultural biotechnology”.

Not surprisingly, during the 2009-2010 election cycle, Lucas received more than $317,000 from agribusiness interests, including $16,000 from Monsanto and $15,000 from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. What do you think they want now?

2. Collin Peterson (D-MN) Former Chair of the House Agriculture Committee

Peterson is widely known as “Cargill” Peterson for his love of defending industrial agriculture and has taken millions of dollars from agribusiness firms during his career; including $19,999 from Monsanto and $21,750 from the American Farm Bureau during the 2010 election cycle.

Vampires of the Seditious Senate:

3. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) Chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee

Rumors point to Stabenow as leading the push for the “Secret Farm Bill” because she doesn’t want to have to deal with crafting this complicated piece of federal legislation during an election year.

If you think Stabenow’s willingness to throw out real reform of U.S. food policy because she doesn’t want the “headache” during an election season, consider the fact that during the 2012 election cycle, from 2007 to now, Stabenow has pocketed more that $483,000 in agribusiness PAC and individual donations and is currently the top recipient of Agricultural Services & Products donations. Priceless! Kind of gives new meaning to the term, “Perks of the Senate”.

4. Pat Roberts – (R-KS) Senate Agriculture Committee – Ranking Member

Roberts is a known industrial ag favorite, that during the 2009 Senate confirmation hearing of Secretary Vilsack he went so far as to draw an outrageous picture of organic farmers as GQ reading porch sitters. If that weren’t bad enough, Roberts has already grabbed more than $706,000 in agribusiness cash for the 2012 election cycle, including political donations from the National Corn Growers Association, DuPont, Pfizer and Syngenta.

Click here if you want to tell these congressional leaders that they work for the American people and that you want to end the collusion between corporate greed and Congressional misdeeds. Tell Congress to Kill the Secret Farm Bill today!

http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/483?akid=398.324596.xdqUiG&t=10

Why the 2012 Food and Farm Bill Matters

There is nothing more essential and personal to us than the food we eat and the water we drink. Agriculture policy dictates the quality, availability and health of our food resources. U.S. food and ag policy is far-reaching throughout the world, determining the fate of all those who eat.

Typically the Farm Bill is conducted every five years, involving a lengthy process of public hearings in Congress and meetings with stakeholders across the country. At risk with this secret deal are vital reform programs of commodity subsidies (already on the chopping block), funding for conservation, organic conversion and important nutrition programs.

While members of Congress are working to find ways of cutting the budget, the currently proposed cut of $23 billion from the 2012 Farm Bill by members of Congress ag committees and the $33 billion in cuts proposed by the White House should not be made in haste or in any secretive backroom bargain that excludes the voice of the American farmer and eaters while taking advice from agribusiness lobbyists.

In a democracy, we deserve transparency and accountability, and in few places is this more personal or necessary than determining our food policy, where all stakeholders deserve a seat at the table, not simply those with the largest financial interest.

We are committed to this fight now, more than ever - please join us. Together, our voices will create the future we hope for.

Thanks for being a part of the solution and participating in food democracy,

Dave, Lisa and the Food Democracy Now! Team

Sources:

1. "Keith Good Farm Policy: Farm Bill Deal Offered to Super Committee", FarmPolicy.com, October 17, 2011

http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/474?akid=398.324596.xdqUiG&t=13

2. "Quick and dirty: Congress may rewrite the Farm Bill in two weeks", Grist, October 24, 2011

http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/475?akid=398.324596.xdqUiG&t=15

3. "Representative Frank D. Lucas 2009-2010, Sectors, 200-2010", OpenSecrets.org

http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/476?akid=398.324596.xdqUiG&t=17

4. “Representative Frank D. Lucas 2009 – 2010, Top 20 Contributors,” OpenSecrets.org

http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/477?akid=398.324596.xdqUiG&t=19

5. “Hearing to review the causes and consequences of government over-regulation of agricultural biotechnology”, House Committee on Agriculture, August 4, 2011

http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/478?akid=398.324596.xdqUiG&t=21

6. “Representative Collin C. Peterson 2009 – 2010, Top 20 Contributors”, OpenSecrets.org

http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/479?akid=398.324596.xdqUiG&t=23

7. "Senator Deborah Ann Stabenow 2007 - 2012 Top Industries", OpenSecrets.org

http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/480?akid=398.324596.xdqUiG&t=25

8. "Senator Pat Roberts 2007-2012, Top Industries", OpenSecrets.org

http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/481?akid=398.324596.xdqUiG&t=27

9. "Show Senator Pat Roberts that small farmers aren't little GQ-reading dilettantes", January 14, 200, Ethicurean

http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/482?akid=398.324596.xdqUiG&t=29

GEO Watch: Little Monsters

2011-10-26T22:27:00.000-07:00

Moderator's Note: We are posting, courtesy of purefood.org, a report filed by a group of soil scientists that conducted research on the effects of a genetically-engineered version of a naturally occurring soil bacterium known as Klebsiella planticola. This is a cautionary tale worth recalling given the recent approval not just of Monsanto's Roundup Ready Alfalfa but several dozen new transgenic food crops including sweet corn that will soon be on the market. This illustrates how under capitalism even a life-producing activity like farming is distorted to become a form of thanatopolitics - the politics of unregulated death meted out to farm workers and soil organisms alike.

Klebsiella-planticola

The Gene-Altered Monster
That Almost Got Away

Web Note: In the early 1990s a European genetic engineering company was preparing to field test and then commercialize on a major scale a genetically engineered soil bacteria called Klebsiella planticola. The bacteria had been tested--as it turns out in a careless and very unscientific mannner--by scientists working for the biotech industry and was believed to be safe for the environment. Fortunately a team of independent scientists, headed by Dr. Elaine Ingham of Oregon State University, decided to run their own tests on the gene-altered Klebsiella planticola. What they discovered was not only startling, but terrifying-- the biotech industry had created a biological monster--a genetically engineered microorganism that would kill all terrestrial plants. After Ingham's expose, of course the gene-altered Klebsiella planticola was never commercialized. But as Ingham points out, the lack of pre-market safety testing of other genetically altered organisms virtually guarantees that future biological monsters will be released into the environment. Moreover it's not only genetic engineering that poses a mortal threat to our soil ecology, the soil food web, as Ingham calls it. Chemical-intensive agriculture is slowly but surely poisoning our soil and our drinking water as well.

This article originally appeared in the Green Party publication Synthesis/Regeneration 18 (Winter 1999)

Ecological Balance and Biological Integrity

Good Intentions and Engineering Organisms that Kill Wheat

by Elaine Ingham, Oregon State University

A genetically engineered Klebsiella-planticola had devastating effects on wheat plants while in the same kind of units, same incubator, the parent bacteria did not result in the death of the wheat plants.

Consider that the parent species of bacteria grows in the root systems of every plant that has been assessed for Klebsiella's presence. The bacterium also grows on and decomposes plant litter material. It is a very common soil organism. It is a fairly aggressive soil organism that lives on exudates produced by the roots of every plant that grows in soil. This bacterium was chosen for those very reasons to be engineered: aggressive growth on plant residues.

Field burning of plant residues to prevent disease is a serious cause of air pollution throughout the US. In Oregon, people have been killed because the cloud from burning fields drifted across the highways and caused massive multi-car crashes. A different way was needed to get rid of crop residues. If we had an organism that could decompose the plant material and produce alcohol from it; then we'd have a win-win situation. A sellable product and get rid of plant residues without burning. We could add it to gasoline. We could cook with it. We could drink grass wine-although whether that would taste very good is anyone's guess. Regardless, there are many uses for alcohol.

So, genes were taken out of another bacterium, and put into Klebsiella-planticola in the right place to result in alcohol production. Once that was done, the plan was to rake the plant residue from the fields, gather it into containers, and allow it to be decomposed by Klebsiella-planticola. But, Klebsiella would produce alcohol, which it normally does not do. The alcohol production would be performed in a bucket in the barn. But what would you do with the sludge left at the bottom of the bucket once the plant material was decomposed? Think about a wine barrel or beer barrel after the wine or beer has been produced? There is a good thick layer of sludge left at the bottom. After Klebsiella-planticola has decomposed plant material, the sludge left at the bottom would be high in nitrogen and phosphorus and sulfur and magnesium and calcium-all of those materials that make a perfectly wonderful fertilizer. This material could be spread as a fertilizer then, and there wouldn't be a waste product in this system at all. A win-win-win situation.

But my colleagues and I asked the question: What is the effect of the sludge when put on fields? Would it contain live Klebsiella-planticola engineered to produce alcohol? Yes, it would. Once the sludge was spread it onto fields in the form of fertilizer, would the Klebsiella-planticola get into root systems? Would it have an effect on ecological balance; on the biological integrity of the ecosystem; or on the agricultural soil that the fertilizer would be spread on?

One of the experiments that Michael Holmes did for his Ph.D. work was to bring typical agricultural soil into the lab, sieve it so it was nice and uniform, and place it in small containers. We tested it to make sure it had not lost any of the typical soil organisms, and indeed, we found a very typical soil food web present in the soil. We divided up the soil into pint-size Mason jars, added a sterile wheat seedling in every jar, and made certain that each jar was the same as all the jars.

Into a third of the jars we just added water. Into another third of the jars, the not-engineered Klebsiella-planticola, the parent organism, was added. Into a final third of the jars, the genetically engineered microorganism was added.

The wheat plants grew quite well in the Mason jars in the laboratory incubator, until about a week after we started the experiment. We came into the laboratory one morning, opened up the incubator and went, "Oh my God, some of the plants are dead. What's gone wrong? What did we do wrong?" We started removing the Mason jars from the incubator.

When we were done splitting up the Mason jars, we found that every one of the genetically engineered plants in the Mason jars was dead. Wheat with the parent bacterium, the normal bacterium, was alive and growing well. Wheat plants in the water-only treatment were alive and growing well.

From that experiment, we might suspect that there's a problem with this genetically engineered microorganism. The logical extrapolation from this experiment is to suggest that it is possible to make a genetically engineered microorganism that would kill all terrestrial plants. Since Klebsiella-planticola is in the root system of all terrestrial plants, presumably all terrestrial plants would be at risk.

So what does Klebsiella-planticola do in root systems? The parent bacterium makes a slime layer that helps it stick to the plant's roots. The engineered bacterium makes about 17 parts per million alcohol.

What is the level of alcohol that is toxic to roots? About one part per million. The engineered bacterium makes the plants drunk, and kills them.

But I am not trying to say that all genetically engineered organisms are technological terrors. What I am saying is that we have to test each and every genetically engineered organism and make sure that it really does not have unexpected, unpredicted effects.

They have to be tested in something that approximates a real world situation. I've worked with folks in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and I know the tests the EPA performs on organisms. They often begin their tests with "sterile soil." But if it's sterile, then it's not really soil. Soil implies living organisms present. If you use "sterile soil" and add a genetically engineered organism to that sterile material, are you likely to see the effects of that organism on the way nutrients are cycled, or on the other organisms in that system? No, you're not likely to. So it's probably no surprise that no ecological effects are found when they test genetically engineered organisms in sterile soil. They really need to put together testing systems, which assess the effects of the test organism on all of the organisms present in soil.

What do we mean, organism-wise, when we talk about soil? Agricultural soil should have 600 million bacteria in a teaspoon. There should be approximately three miles of fungal hyphae in a teaspoon of soil. There should be 10,000 protozoa and 20 to 30 beneficial nematodes in a teaspoon of soil. No root-feeding nematodes. If there are root feeding nematodes, that's an indicator of a sick soil.

There should be roughly 200,000 microarthropods in a square meter of soil to a 10-inch depth. All these organisms should be there in a healthy soil. If those conditions are present in an agricultural soil, there will be adequate disease suppression so that it is not necessary to apply fungicides, bactericides, or nematicides. There should be 40 to 80% of the root system of the plants colonized by mycorrhizal fungi, which will protect those roots against disease.

What happens when you apply the most fungicides and pesticides to soil? In every single case where we have looked at foodweb effects of pesticides, there are non-target organism effects, and usually very detrimental effects. The sets of beneficial organisms that suppress disease are reduced. Organisms that cycle nitrogen from plant-not-available forms into plant-available forms are killed.

Organisms that retain nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, magnesium, calcium, etc. are killed. Organisms that retain nutrients in the soil are killed. Once retention is destroyed, where do those nutrients go? They end up in our drinking water; or end up in our ground water. You and I as taxpayers have to pay in order to clean up that water so we can drink it.

Wouldn't it be much wiser to keep those organisms present in the soil so those nutrients would be retained and become available to the next crop of plants instead of ending up in our drinking water where we have to pay in order to have clean drinking water? How do you do that? You get the
organisms back into the soil. If you grow the proper number and types of bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes and microarthropods, mycorrhizal fungi in the root systems of the plants, you can do away with pesticides. It's been done. We can reduce significantly the amount of fertilizer that goes into that soil. In experiments that have been done all over the country, all over the world, inorganic fertilizer inputs have been reduced, or are not added at all, without reduction in plant growth. Where green manure or legumes are not available, approximately 40 pounds of nitrogen fertilizer, once every four years, are still necessary.

Let's talk about why today's conventional agricultural systems require such massive inputs of pesticides and fertilizers. When a healthy soil is first plowed out of native grassland, for example, the disease-suppressive bacteria and fungi, protozoa and nematodes are present. For the first 5 to
15 years after plowing native grassland you don't have to use any pesticides. No fertilizers are required because there is natural nutrient cycling, natural nitrogen retention, and disease suppression. As you plow that soil, you start to kill the beneficial organisms, you lose the organic matter, and you lose the food to feed the beneficial organisms. After about 10 to 15 years, if you're not adding back adequate plant residue to feed those organisms, you lose them, and start having significant disease problems. Then you either leave that land and farm elsewhere, or in the US, we used fertilizers to keep yields high. As more and more of the organisms were killed by the salt effect of the fertilizers, and the constant plowing mined out more and more of the organic matter, starving the beneficial organisms to death, disease became a serious problem. And we started using more and more pesticide to knock the disease back.

In California, around 1955, those disease problems became so severe that they thought they would lose agricultural production. So the University of California came up with a better way to kill those disease-causing organisms. It's called methyl bromide. This chemical kills disease-causing organisms-but it also kills everything else. There is very little natural disease suppression going on in agricultural soils in California.

How many organisms are left in strawberry fields that have been methyl-bromided 2 to 3 times a year for the last 14 years? There are no microarthropods left. There are no beneficial nematodes left; only root feeding nematodes. And there is nobody to control root-feeding nematodes in those soils. How many protozoa are left in that soil? None. You cannot cycle nutrients. There is nobody home to make nitrogen plant-available. So what do you have to do? You have to add fertilizer. We force ourselves to have to add fertilizer. We have no other choice if you're going to grow those plants in those soils.

How many fungi do you have left in that soil? No beneficial fungi-they're all disease-causing. How many bacteria are left? All are gone, except for 100 per gram of soil. We should have 600 million per teaspoon in that soil; we have 100 left. There is nothing left to retain nitrogen in those soils, nothing. So you apply fertilizer. What happens to the fertilizer? Whatever fertilizer contacts the roots of the plants is indeed taken up; the rest of it flushes through the soil into the ground water, into the river.

Take Santa Maria River in California as an example. This land has had methyl bromide applied 2 to 3 times a year for the last 14 years or more. Fertilizer is applied as sidedress when strawberries are planted. About two weeks later, the river goes up to around 150 parts per million nitrates. What is the toxic level for nitrate for humans? Ten parts per million nitrates is what the EPA tells us. It used to be three parts million but that level was increased. Can you drink that water in the river in the Santa Maria valley? Not unless you'd want to die. You would destroy your kidneys pretty fast if you drank that water. It is high in nitrate. It is so toxic that you can't even put that water back on the plants. The high nitrate burns the plants.

We have a simple solution for this problem. Get the right kind of organisms, the right numbers of organisms, back in the soil and let them start performing their functions again. Put food for the organisms back into the soil; put the organisms back into the soil. It's that simple. Send us your soil samples and we can tell you whether you have that food web in your soil.

How are you going to fix that set of organisms it if you don't have a healthy foodweb? We can help you with that question. We can indeed move towards that time when we really don't need pesticides anymore; where you only apply fertilizer once every four years and in very small amounts. We can move to a sustainable agriculture. It takes time and effort, but it is possible.

This article is adapted from the presentation the author gave on July 18, 1998 at the First Grassroots Gathering on Biodevastation: Genetic Engineering.

See also: Holmes, M.T., Ingham, E.R., Doyle, J.D., & Hendricks, C.W. (1998). Effects of Klebsiella-planticola SDF20 on soil biota and wheat growth in sandy soil. Applied Soil Ecology, 326, 1-12.

SOUTH CENTRAL FARM UPDATE

2011-10-21T18:21:00.000-07:00

SCF to Occupy LA City Hall

Farmers Join with Central–Alameda Residents

To Halt Sale of Last Piece of Urban Farm‏

SOUTH CENTRAL FARMERS

Tezozomoc 818 527-6384

For immediate release

Info (800) 249-5240

Time: Monday, October 24, 2:00pm - 5:00pm

Location: Los Angeles City Hall, Room 1010, 200 N. Spring St., Los Angeles, CA 90012

Los Angeles Councilmember and Mayoral candidate Jan Perry just can't give her constituents in the Central-Alameda neighborhood a break. On Monday, October 24, Perry will meet with City Council’s Budget & Finance Committee to propose that the Central-Alameda residents give up a proposed City soccer field at 41st and Long Beach for improvements to another park eight blocks away.

The South Central Farmers, who lost their Farm of two generations to Perry's determination to industrialize the east side of her district, will be at the meeting with area residents to demand that the City fulfill its promise to the community and build the park.

The proposed soccer field isn't just any park. It's what remains of the South Central Farm, just 2.7 of the original 14 acres that provided this impoverished neighborhood in the heart of a food desert with fresh produce. Six years ago, the City sold the South Central Farm, the largest urban farm in the United States, for $5.3M and stood by as developer Ralph Horowitz demolished it. The City left the neighborhood with only the promised soccer field.

Again with the help of Perry and his allies on the City Council, Horowitz now hopes regain the 2.7 acres to sell all of original fourteen acres as a block to PIMA Development, a garment industry conglomerate rumored to be affiliated with Forever 21. In an Associated Press story, the San Jose Mercury News reported that PIMA is requiring all 14 acres as a condition of sale. In exchange, the approximate $3M price tag for the 2.7 acres will, according to Perry, be invested in improvements to Fred Roberts Park.

New buyers who are attempting to buy the land have set conditions to overcome Forever 21’s 2008 failure of attempting to build a warehouse; by requesting that the 2.7 acres allocated for park use in 2003 settlement with Jan Perry and the City of LA be also sold to them. Jan Perry has spearheaded the push for erasing the last vestiges what was once the largest urban farm in the United States. The City has deployed its discursive spin by calling this project the “PIMA development”. This conglomeration is nothing more than the Oedipal child of Forever 21. The PIMA development is short for Poetry, Impact, Miss Me, and Active, which are widely known as subcontractors for Forever 21.

In 2008, Forever 21 proposed to place a massive trucking facility on the 41st and Long Beach location. The City Planning Commission issued a preliminary declaration that the planned development had no significant environmental effects. Alarmed residents of the working class community, organized by the South Central Farmers Support Committee, collected thousands of signatures, packed a Planning Department meeting to overflowing, and testified for hours in opposition to the proposed development. The Planning Commission reluctantly reversed itself, requiring an Environmental Impact Report before construction for the shipping center could begin. The project was shelved.

A similar project, proposed by the PIMA group, emerged about six months ago, and Perry appears to be pushing for the sale of the land before the state ends funding for Community Development Grants. Without state aid, the land has little value to developers while large swaths of developed industrial warehouses and transportation centers are vacant. Because the land originally belonged to the Harbor Commission, Perry took the matter to them in August. In the face of pressure by the Farmers and residents at their meeting, the Harbor Commission punted and sent the matter to City Council without a recommendation.

Giving up their source of healthy food added $5.3M to City coffers, and still their Councilmember doesn't think they deserve two parks in the neighborhood. Area residents believe otherwise. On October 13th, Perry's staffers were run out of a meeting at Fred Roberts Park where they were pitching the sale of the soccer field land. Residents complained of being a “sacrificial community” for the developer friends of politicians. Silvia Duran, a 30-year resident near the proposed park, declared, “Jan Perry has always ignored us when we have complained of all the traffic and noise!”

Jan Perry has allied herself with Pueblo Del Rio low income housing complex. She will bus in residents from the housing complex and Fred Roberts Park for a free lunch before the Budget and Finance Committee meeting. However, most residents are determined to halt the industrialization of their neighborhood, with its attendant home value depreciation, impaired health, and noise and diesel pollution. The neighborhood lies along the Alameda Corridor, a major truck route carved out of low-income residential and commercial neighborhoods over the past two decades between the Los Angeles Harbor and downtown rail lines. The taking of the South Central Farm is the most recent of a long history of land transfers, including the Cornfields, Chavez Ravine, and the Ballona Wetlands, from publicly held quality of life spaces to commercial and industrial developers.

In the 2003 sale of the Farm land, the City sold Horowitz the land for something slightly more than $500,000 per acre. Today, with the real estate market in shambles and vacant warehouses littering Los Angeles' industrial and commercial zones, Horowitz has agreed to contribute close to $1.4 million per acre to Perry's district, roughly three times the rate he and the city negotiated in the initial deal at the apex of the real estate boom.

In an L.A. Superior Court hearing challenging the sale of the Farm in 2006, Perry testified that the soccer field would be a public benefit mitigating the loss of the Farm. But in a recent letter to the Harbor Commissioners arguing now for the sale of the soccer field, NBC LA reports that Perry acknowledged the consequences of industrial development on her residents, declaring that the soccer field is impractical because of area pollution and, ironically, citing the same 2008 Environmental Impact Report that had stalled the project before. Removing the planned park could reduce some costs for mitigating construction and operation pollution for the developer and the buyer, but it would have no effect on long-term neighborhood pollution exposure.

Until the South Central Farm was demolished, its healthy food, healthy air, and healthy lifestyle were palpable relief for residents overwhelmed with nearby industrialization. When Horowitz posted an eviction notice on the Farm's chain link fence, hundreds of supporters occupied the Farm, and city residents, celebrities, and farmers from around the globe pressured the City Council to preserve the Farm. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa interceded between the Farmers and Horowitz until the developer declined a full-price offer from area non-profits to save the Farm. That chapter of the Farm history is the subject of several documentaries. The Farm remains an international symbol of low-income residents creating their own environmental justice.

The Blue River Declaration

2011-10-16T05:06:00.000-07:00

The Blue River Declaration: An Ethic of the Earth

A truly adaptive civilization will align its ethics with the ways of the Earth. A civilization that ignores the deep constraints of its world will find itself in exactly the situation we face now, on the threshold of making the planet inhospitable to humankind and other species. The questions of our time are thus: What is our best current understanding of the nature of the world? What does that understanding tell us about how we might create a concordance between ecological and moral principles, and thus imagine an ethic that is of, rather than against, the Earth?

What is the world?

In our time, science, religious traditions, Earth’s many cultures, and artistic insights are all converging on a shared understanding of the nature of the world: The Earth is our home. It will always be our only source of shelter, sustenance, and inspiration. There is no other place for us to go.

The Earth is part of the creative unfolding of the universe. From the raw materials of the stars, life sprang forth and radiated into species after species, including human beings. The human species is richly varied, with a multitude of persons, cultures, and histories. We humans are kin to one another and to all the other beings on the planet; we share common ancestors and common substance, and we will share a common fate. Like humans, other beings are not merely commodities or service-providers, but have their own intelligence, agency, and urging toward life.

We live in a world of nested systems. Living things are created and shaped by their relationships to others and to the environment. No one is merely an isolated ego in a bag of skin, but something more resembling a note in a multidimensional symphony.

The world is dynamic at every scale. By processes that are probabilistic and often unpredictable, the world unfolds into emergent states of being. Our time of song and suffering is one such point in time. The life systems of the world can be resilient, having the ability to endure through change. But changes create cascades of new events. When small changes build up and cross thresholds, sudden large transformations can occur. Thus the world in its present form -- the world we love and inhabit -- is contingent. It may be, or it may cease to be. If the Earth changes in ways that undermine our lives, there is nothing we can do to change it back.

The Earth is finite in its resources and capacities. All its inhabitants live within its limitations and by its rules. And although life on Earth is resilient and robust, rapid irreversible changes and mass extinction events have occurred in the past. As a result of ignoring the Earth’s boundaries, we are on the brink of causing a transformation of the Earth and the sixth great mass extinction.

Our knowledge of the Earth will always be incomplete. But we know that the world is beautiful. Its life forms, unique in the universe, are wonderful in their grandeur and detail. It follows that the world is worthy of reverence, awe, and care.

Who are we humans?

We humans have become who we are through a long process of biological and cultural evolution. As do many other social species, we possess a complex and sometimes contradictory set of possibilities. We are competitive and cooperative, callous and empathetic, destructive and healing, intuitive and rational. Moreover, we are creatures of consciousness, emotion, and imagination, beings through whom the universe has evolved the capacity to celebrate its own beauty and explore its own meaning in the languages of science and story.

We are dependent on the sun and the Earth for everything. Without warmth, air, water, and fellow beings, we would quickly die. At the same time, we are co-creators of the Earth as we know it, shaping with our decisions the future of the places we inhabit, even as our relation to those places shapes us. In this way, we are members of a community of interdependent parts.

Humans are beings who search for meaning. Our beliefs about the origins of the cosmos influence the way we relate to each other, to other living things, and to the habitats we both depend upon and constitute. Sometimes, we experience wonder and awe at the mysteries of the universe, and fall silent in reverence. Yet, as we strive to comprehend the world, we often divide it into hierarchies of value ― pure/impure, spiritual/material, human/subhuman. Although we often exclude and exploit those we judge less valuable than ourselves, we yearn for belonging.

We are born to care. From the first moments of our lives, we seek connection. We deeply value loving and being loved. We find comfort in close connection to other people, other species, and to the wild world itself.

We are adaptable and resilient. Our imagination gives us the ability to envision alternative futures and to adapt our behaviors toward their achievement. When we are at our best, we develop cultural systems in which we, other living beings, and ecosystems can flourish.

We are moral beings. We have the capacity to reason about what is better and worse, just and unjust, worthy and demeaning, and we have the capacity to act in ways that are better, more just, more worthy, more beautiful.

Because we are these things, we can change. Because we are these things, change will be difficult.

How, then, shall we live?

Humanity is called to imagine an ethic that not only acknowledges, but emulates, the ways by which life thrives on Earth. How do we act, when we truly understand that we live in complete dependence on an Earth that is interconnected, interdependent, finite, and resilient?

Given that life on Earth is interconnected, we are called to affirm that all flourishing is mutual, and that damage to the part entails damage to the whole. Accordingly, our virtues are cooperation, respect, prudence, foresight, and justice. We have the responsibility to honor our obligations to future generations of all beings, and take their interests into account when we reflect on the consequences of our actions. To discount the future, to take all we need for our own well-being and leave nothing for others, is unthinkable. We should take only what the Earth offers, and leave as much and as good as we take. To live by a principle of reciprocity, giving as we receive, re-creates the richness of life, even as we partake of it. Then, our harvests are respectful and thoughtful. We learn to listen, which means that we learn to value congeniality, patience, fairness, and moral courage, which creates the possibility of heroism in the face of disagreement and discord. Moreover, the new ethic calls us to remedy destructive distributions of wealth and power. It is wrong when some are made to bear the risks of the recklessness of others, or assume the burden of others’ privilege, or pay with their health and hopes the real costs of destructive practices.

Given that humanity is inescapably dependent on the Earth for gifts both material and spiritual, we are called to be grateful and humble. To be grateful is to express joy for the fertility of the Earth, to be attentive to its gifts, to celebrate its bounty, and to accept responsibility for its care. Humility is based on an understanding of our own roots in the soil; we recognize the danger we face and the damage we do when we get that wrong. So we are well-advised to be humble about our claims to knowledge; and with art and heart and science, to strive for continuous learning that is open to evidence from all ways of knowing and from the Earth itself. The generosity of the Earth models generosity in our relations with others, and calls for collective outrage when we fail in that duty. A new ethic calls us to defend and nurture the regenerative potential of the Earth, to return Earth’s generosity with our own healing gifts of mind, body, emotion, and spirit. We can find joy and justice in sustaining lives that sustain our own.

Given that the Earth’s resources and resilience are finite, human flourishing depends on embracing a new ethic of self-restraint to replace a destructive ethos of excess. Greed is not a virtue; rather, the endless and pointless accumulation of wealth is a social pathology and a terrible mistake, with destructive social, spiritual, and ecological consequences.

Limitless economic growth as a measure of human well-being is inconsistent with the continuity of life on Earth. It should be replaced by an economics of regeneration. Simple life styles that include thriftiness, beauty, community, and sharing are pathways to happiness. Celebrated virtues are generosity and resourcefulness.

Given that life on Earth is resilient, humanity can take courage in Earth’s power to heal. We can find guidance in the richness of diverse cultures and ecosystems, if we honor and protect difference. Equality and justice are necessary conditions for civilizations that endure, and truth-telling has strong regenerative power. Virtues we can embody are human courage, creative imagination, and perseverance in the face of long odds. The effect of humans on the land can be healing; our obligation is to imagine into existence new ways to live that create resilient and robust habitats. If we can undo some of the damage we have done, this is the best work available to us. On the other hand, damaging the natural sources of resilience ― degrading oceans, atmosphere, soil, biodiversity ― is both foolhardy and an offense against the future, not worthy of us as rational and moral beings. If hope fails us, the moral abdication of despair is not an alternative. Beyond hope we can inhabit the wide moral ground of personal integrity, matching our actions to our moral convictions. Through conscientious decisions, we can refuse to be made into instruments of destruction. We can make our lives and our communities into works of art that express our deepest values.

The necessity of achieving a concordance between ecological and moral principles, and the new ethic born of this necessity, calls into question far more than we might think. It calls us to question our current capitalist economic systems, our educational systems, our food production systems, our systems of land use and ownership. It calls us to re-examine what it means to be happy, and what it means to be smart. This will not be easy. But new futures are continuously being imagined and tested, resulting in new social and ecological possibilities. This questioning will release the power and beauty of the human imagination to create more collaborative economies, more mindful ways of living, more deeply felt arts, and more inclusive processes that acknowledge the ways of life of all beings. In this sheltering home, we can begin to restore both the natural world and the human spirit.

November 2011

The Blue River Quorum

Meeting in the ancient forests of the Blue River watershed in Oregon, the Blue River Quorum includes J. Baird Callicott, Madeline Cantwell, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Kristie Dotson, Charles Goodrich, Patricia Hasbach, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Katie McShane, Kathleen Dean Moore, Nalini Nadkarni, Michael P. Nelson, Harmony Paulsen, Devon G. Peña, Libby Roderick, Kim Stanley Robinson, Fred Swanson, Bron Taylor, Allen Thompson, Kyle Powys Whyte, Priscilla Solis Ybarra, Gretel Van Wieren, and Jan Zwicky. The Quorum was convened by the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word (springcreek@oregonstate.edu) with funding from the Shotpouch Foundation, the Oregon Council for the Humanities, and the USDA Forest Service.

GEO Watch: GMO-Free Seattle Events for World Food Day

2011-10-15T08:56:00.000-07:00

Moderator's Note: The Seattle host committee of GMO-Free Washington has organized a series of educational events focused on the theme of "GMO foods" October 18-19. We invite our Seattle-area readers and followers to attend. This includes a listing of final events during Non-GMO Month in conjunction with World Food Day. Below is their press release.

GMO-FREE SEATTLE LECTURES AND FILMS (OCTOBER)

How much do you REALLY know about genetically modified foods? Are you aware 90% of the food you eat at home and in restaurants includes genetically modified ingredients and is sprayed with Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide? Are you aware that 80% of the (non produce) food in natural foods stores is GMO?

If the food you and your family eat is NOT organic, or labeled non GMO – chicken / turkey or beef OR any food containing: Sugar, Soy (found in almost everything), and Corn or Canola, then 90% of these foods are likely genetically modified, with the potential to affect your DNA, and have likely been sprayed with Roundup.

Our food supply is in jeopardy and Monsanto is attempting to own the world food supply. Monsanto brought us Agent Orange, sprayed dioxins and owns 90% of seeds that are used to grow sugar (beets), soy, corn and canola.

Please help us by volunteering no matter how much time big or small.

Please join us by sending an email with your contact information to : INFO@GMOFreeSeattle.com or call 206 290-0409, or visit www.GMOFreeSeattle.com, go to: GMO Documents, then go to New GMO reader.

Also check out great short video on webpage: “It’s Time for Food fight With FDA”.

SCHEDULE OF NON-GMO MONTH AND WORLD FOOD DAY EVENTS

Tuesday, Oct. 18 at 7:00 PM

“WHY WE MUST STOP PROLIFERATION OF GMOS” - WITH JEFFREY SMITH Marlene’s Market & Deli Natural Foods, 2565 S. Gateway Ctr. Pl, Federal Way 98003.

Jeffrey Smith, founder of the Institute for Responsible Technology and author of Genetic Roulette and Seeds of Deception will discuss his work in this free talk. More info: (253) 839-0933 - No reservations, please arrive early! (Also see GMO events on 10/19).

Wednesday October 19, 2011, 4:00 to 5:00 PM

GMO RALLY - SEATTLE POST-WORLD FOOD DAY – GMO FREE SEATTLE West Lake Center; 1601 5th Ave; Seattle, WA 98101-3654; (206) 467-1600.

Come celebrate, hear the obstacles. Bring friends. Jeffrey Smith – founder Institute for Responsible Technology (IRT); International bestselling author and GMO expert; Goldie Caughlan - (Ex) PCC Nutrition Educator for past 28 years; Phil Bereano – UW Professor Emeritus, Technology and Public Policy; Others TBA.

Please help us by volunteering no matter how much time big or small. Please send email with your contact information to: INFO@GMOFreeSeattle.com or call 206 290-0409; www.GMOFreeSeattle.com, go to:GMO Documents, then go to New GMO reader.

Also check out the great short video on the webpage: “It’s Time for Food fight With FDA”.

Wednesday October 19, 2011, 6:30 PM

JEFFREY SMITH “NAVIGATING A WORLD OF GMOS” at University Christian Church; 4731 15th Ave. NE, Seattle, WA 98105; 206-522-0169

Jeffrey Smith – founder of the Institute for Responsible Technology (IRT) will speak on “Practical ways to navigate through this GMO infested world...Learn practical tips to eating out in restaurants, shopping in food stores (even natural ones)”. Come early at 6:30 to talk to local Vendors and stores, Taste Non GMO treats and beverages; Pre event - 6:30 (Theo Chocolate anyone??) ; Jeffrey Smith talk - 7PM.

For more information and resources go to: GMO Free Seattle at www.GMOFreeSeattle.com

FOOD FIGHTS: Hunger Politics and Struggles for Autonomy & Resilience

2011-10-07T20:22:00.000-07:00

For many of the world's peoples it makes no sense to be displaced from multigenerational ancestral agroecosystems created by culture and nature together for the self-provisioning of food in exchange for a low-wage starvation job on land ravished by a monoculture mass producer of organic strawberries for privileged, i.e., spoiled and gluttonous, American consumers.

Moderator's Note: With this post we initiate a new series on FOOD FIGHTS: Hunger Politics and Struggles for Autonomy and Resilience. The series will examine hunger as a longstanding neoliberal capitalist political project that intentionally, and sometimes perhaps inadvertently, punishes tens of millions in the USA and a billion-plus bodies in the Two-Thirds World suffering from malnutrition, hunger, famine, and the loss and disruption of native agroecosystems, foodways, and heritage cuisines.

The political project to homogenize and control the global food system dominated by a handful of multinational corporations and powerful nation states is capitalist at its core and manifest source. This reflects the culmination of five decades of American policies that made food into political weaponry, as Harry Cleaver presciently observed way back in 1977. As part of this series we will be posting Cleaver's article, "Food, famine, and the international crisis," in ten segments over the course of the next few months. The repost will include comments by ejfood that bring this analysis into contemporary context.

Food as political weaponry became official US policy during the Nixon Administration when Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, declared that food was indeed part of the toolkit of American "diplomacy." Butz announced this policy in 1974 with the simple statement: "Food is a weapon."

This policy has also involved the imposition of the American corporate agribusiness model of high-input scaled-up monocultures, and more recently of the endless iteration of products delivered by the proponents of the biotechnology and transgenics paradigm. We have covered this aspect over the years - for e.g., in reports on the Gates Foundation and its Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa and the various transgenic crops marketed by Monsanto through our GEO Watch Series.

By the time, Butz declared food as political weaponry, indigenous and other marginalized communities were well on their way toward the current epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and myriad other health problems directly linked to the destruction of their food sovereignty and place-based agroecosystems and the imposition of modern westernized diets amidst other forms of structural violence linked to capitalist maldevelopment.

What the Food Fights series proposes to do is examine the two-sided nature of these political conflicts and struggles. Capitalist agriculture is not the only political project around. There is an alterNative political project, fostered and circulated among the world's communities, that focuses on rebuilding or protecting local place-based agri-food systems.

This includes overarching commitments by indigenous and traditional farmers to protect native land race crops, regenerate traditional agroecosystems, and engage in affiliated struggles for genuine "land to the tiller" practices to resist and reverse the concentration of agricultural land under the Green Revolution and now under the current land and crop genome grabs across the Global South by the corporate and governmental sectors from the USA, Europe, China, and other globalizing capitalist nations.

These varied alterNative struggles are collectively known as the food sovereignty movement and intersect with the broader global environmental justice movements that seek ecological democracy or environmental self-determination for marginalized communities of the poor and First Nations across the planet.

These movements conjoin the sociocultural and ecological sides of sustainability with resilience. They do so by addressing the inequities of class, race, gender, and other capitalist-inscribed differences that rationalize exploitation and environmental degradation and risk, and then linking these to struggles for the autonomy of the common, the place-based communities that are today actively rebuilding local solidarity economies.

These struggles are highly complex and widespread: The iconic example is of course the global grassroots network, La Via Campesina. But there are numerous other forms of movement organization, community-building, and circulation of struggle in the creation of these autonomous food-based solidarity economies. The work of the South Central Farmers Feeding Families in Los Angeles and now Buttonwillow is also an iconic example of the intersection of EJ with food sovereignty. We are already creating or regenerating the post-capitalist food system!

There are also a wide array of bioregional and other geographically-distinct yet overlapping terrains of struggle. The series will envision how alterNative struggles represent strategies and organizational forms that are at once bioregional and post-capitalist. We will explore how the rise of local place-grounded communities of resistance, practicing their constituent power by creating spaces of autonomy, are effectively challenging the long immoral arc of the Age of Empire and its perverse use of food as political weaponry.

For us, food is a source of political creativity rather than political weaponry. It is an act of creation and reproduction rather than of destruction for accumulation (of monetized wealth). It is an existential condition expressed by the right of all organisms to have access to water and food to live and flourish rather than a death-meting privilege ruled by the eternal "natural" law of the so-called free market. It is a collective and interdependent rather than an individualist and independent endeavor. It is a community rather than commodity relationship. It is relationship as collaboration and regeneration rather than exploitation and degradation.

This then is a series dedicated to the idea of alterNative food ethics: The diversity of indigenous, decolonial, self- and place-healing practices producing and sharing food as conviviality and exercising our obligations to serve as respectful self-restraining fellow co-inhabitants of Earth, our only home.

To launch this series, I am posting a short piece on the debate between locavorism (eating locally) and cosmovorism (eating globally). I am arguing against an emerging dominant perspective that deceptively makes the case that eating globally can sometimes be more "sustainable" than eating locally.

The debate as currently framed from conventional and even alternative food security vantage points is astonishingly ethnocentric because it dismisses the diverse voices of the food sovereignty movement on the issue of precisely the choices that people want to construct.

Food sovereignty advocates reject the export-oriented cash crop model that privileges American consumer preferences and demand for winter-season organic kiwi, avocados, or heirloom tomatoes.

Food sovereignty movements are focused more on transforming the sociocultural and ecological wrecking ball of Global North organic cosmovorism back into resilient local agri-food systems that can meet the principle of autosuficiencia alimentaria (local food self-sufficiency). For many of the world's peoples it makes no sense to be displaced from multigenerational ancestral agroecosystems created by culture and nature together for the self-provisioning of food in exchange for a low-wage starvation job on land ravished by a monoculture mass producer of organic strawberries for privileged, i.e., spoiled and gluttonous, American consumers.

Part 1: Locavorism as First-World Food Fetish?

A recent article in the influential Foreign Policy journal begins with the following statement:

"With supermarket chains from Whole Foods to Safeway trumpeting their healthy produce from farmers just down the road, buying local and eating non-genetically modified organic food is surely the best thing for you and the planet. And that's something government should get behind, right?

Actually, no -- these First-World food fetishes are positively terrible for the world's poorest people. If you want to do the right thing, give up on locavorism and organics über alles and become a globally conscious grocery buyer. This should be the age of the "cosmovore" -- cosmopolitan consumers of the world's food." [Emphasis added]

"First World food fetishes." "Cosmovore." What a mouthful.

These two ideas present a fundamentally flawed argument about the political and ecological sources of hunger in the USA and the Two-Thirds World. The logic is flawed in several ways.

We first need to remind the "experts" and pundits that local food WAS a Two-Thirds World invention, that is, until the wrecking ball of the Green Revolution regrettably dismissed and devalued the deep agroecological and ethnoecological knowledge of indigenous farmers. The advent of a return to local foods in the USA was actually largely inspired by the persistence of local food systems and localized cuisines outside the USA and by the rise of movements like La Via Campesina well before the term (or the concepts behind) locavorism became fashionable.

The people of the Two-Thirds World do not need enlightened assistance from the likes of American and European agricultural experts. They do not need anyone telling them what is or is not terrible. Reparations for past crimes against the foundations of local agrobiodiversity? Bring it on. Now that would be the type of justice needed before the peoples of Earth engage in reconciliation with Empires past and present.

The "fetish" surrounding food does not spring from locavores asserting unreasonable demands to fulfill their preferences for foods that satiate some privileged appetite for local and organic produce. The real underlying fetishism of food is that the capitalist system transforms food into a commodity -- a wooden-headed thing with a price. Pay or starve. There is no uglier fetishism that the tyranny of the dances with prices imposed by global commodity chains that are created and operated for the benefit of and by the very same forces that habitually use food as political weaponry.

As for the hungry poor of the world becoming "cosmovores," well, USA consumers have already colonized the entire planet to serve our table so we can have avocadoes from Mexico and Chile during the winter. Now take a careful look and see where that has gotten us and the rest of the planet? Climate change? Land degradation? Loss of biocultural diversity? Displacement of indigenous peoples and erasure of their ecological wisdom? Extirpation of native land races? Damage to the genomes of humanity's key cultivars? Production for cash crop exports instead of local food needs? The patenting of living organisms? Increasing hunger? Diminished control by women of their reproductive cycles and health? Do we really need a longer list of some of the consequences of the American version of organic and yet predatory cosmovorism? And we want to continue spreading this "good food is global" gospel?

The Two-Thirds World response in a nutshell? "Go back to eating your own landscapes with all the crops you like. We choose to be self-provisioning and to not go hungry any longer so you can happily eat organic fruits and vegetables in the winter!"

But this is not just about the triumph of organic cosmovorism over food sovereignty's insistence on the need for local self-sufficiency as a fundamental principle. The author of the Foreign Policy article, Charles Kenny, also goes on to celebrate the Transgenics Revolution, or Second Green Revolution as some pundits call it. So, this is not about global organics, but transgenic cosmovorism?

Kenny celebrates the advent of so-called GMO (Genetically-Modified Organism) crops, a term I have long rejected as inaccurate since all plants and animals that are part of our agri-food systems were genetically-modified through millenniums of human practice based on selective breeding and cross-breeding. The extraordinary diversity of land race maize, for example, is a consequence of local practices and place-based iterations of varieties originally developed from a relative of a wild grass that was modified by farmers over generations, continuing to this day, to eliminate the wild grass's shattering qualities and to increase the yield, durability, and nutritional value.

...the very source of threats to this agro-biodiversity is exactly the biotechnology proposed...as the appropriate, more pragmatic, and unbiased approach to ending hunger in the Global South. That one of the centers of this Transgenics Revolution has failed to resolve hunger in its own communities, the USA itself, is of course not mentioned.

I prefer the term genetically-engineered organisms (GEOs) to emphasize the basic difference between conventional cross-breeding and hybridization and transgenics: The recombinant DNA technology used by biotechnologists crosses the boundaries between plants, animals, micro-organisms, and viruses. The practices that created all the world's crops from wild relatives do not violate these boundaries.

This is an important distinction because the very source of threats to this agro-biodiversity is exactly the biotechnology proposed by Kenny as the appropriate, more pragmatic, and unbiased approach to ending hunger in the Global South. That one of the centers of this Transgenics Revolution has failed to resolve hunger in its own communities, the USA itself, is of course not mentioned.

Kenny's article is rather disingenuous and misleading on several points. In the article, the author asserts that The World Health Organization (WHO) recently found that "no effects on human health have been shown" from eating transgenic foods. However, and this is a big caveat, the WHO report notes that while there is no evidence, yet, of adverse impacts on human health from the consumption of GEO foods, the agency also suggests that more independent (third party) research on risks is called for.

My review of the WHO report reveals that Kenny misrepresents the report and the UN organization instead makes the following assertion:

Gene transfer from GM foods to cells of the body or to bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract would cause concern if the transferred genetic material adversely affects human health. This would be particularly relevant if antibiotic resistance genes, used in creating GMOs, were to be transferred. Although the probability of transfer is low, the use of technology without antibiotic resistance genes has been encouraged by a recent FAO/WHO expert panel.

Encouraging transgenic food crops that avoid the use of antibiotic resistance genes is an existing policy for many reasons and Kenny fails to acknowledge that fact among other objections that pose scientifically-based arguments against the risks posed by GEOs.

Also Kenny fails to mention the fierce debates over and the diverse movements aligned against transgenics on the basis of arguments related to the social side of "sustainability." In response to a frequently asked question about the legal implications of transgenic crops and their associated patenting regime, which many critics see as directly threatening the autonomy of plant breeders and seed savers, the WHO declares that:

...intellectual property rights are likely to be an element in the debate on GM foods, with an impact on the rights of farmers. Intellectual property rights (IPRs), especially patenting obligations of the TRIPS Agreement (an agreement under the World Trade Organization concerning trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights) have been discussed in the light of their consequences on the further availability of a diversity of crops. In the context of the related subject of the use of gene technology in medicine, WHO has reviewed the conflict between IPRs and an equal access to genetic resources and the sharing of benefits. The review has considered potential problems of monopolization...

This does not sound like a complete endorsement of transgenic crops and the issue of seed savers and plant breeders rights continues to be of tremendous valid concern to people and farmers in the Global South. At the very least, Kenny should have reported on the full WHO position instead of selecting only those parts that resonated with his own conclusions and assumptions.

The fight over food is far from over. What seems clear at this point is that a wide variety of so-called experts and pundits are constantly peddling half-truths and outright distortions or misstatements of fact. The ethical and environmental and health bottom line is this: We are still in the earliest stages of the predictive ecology of transgenics but the food sovereignty movement will not abandon the quest for local food self-sufficiency. It will not forsake and forgo adoption of diversity as resilience for an uncertain top-down corporate-driven process of upscaled transgenic monocultures that will surely lead to the extinction of our planet's most vital life-affirming asset -- biocultural diversity. It will not cede the ethical ground of self-reliance and diversity as keys to resilience to the Global North corporate and consumer beneficiaries of transgenic cosmovorism.

A truly science-based public policy on this issue would embrace the Precautionary Principle and ban these GEOs until the risks have been thoroughly evaluated. But this is not just about the reduction of the risks to public health or threats to the environment including non-GEO crops. This is also about autonomy and the self-reliance of farmers and local land-based communities. The promotion of commercial agricultural biotechnology proceeds without all the evidence necessary for a decision on how to use (or not use) technologies that affect all organisms on the planet, and it proceeds with little regard for the creativity, resilience, and adaptability of local farming communities across the planet.

The beauty of the idea of locavorism in the USA and the rest of the Global North is that we would as consumers and producers stop changing the foods that local and native peoples co-evolved with. We would encourage their autonomy because they have already decided that they embrace agroecology and want to produce for the sake of their own food self-sufficiency. How can we be against that demand for the basic liberty to decide what the land around you produces and to what aims?

This basically means that locavorism in the Global North allows us to stop exporting environmental violence to other people's local places. We would end our privileged regime of exporting so-called negative externalities to other ecosystems across the planet and this would obviously likely require that we become better stewards of our own local ecosystems, which is a good thing. We would then perhaps reduce our overall ecological footprint on the planet by not exporting environmental violence.

Whether the issue is transgenics or cosmovorism, the food sovereignty movement offers an ethic derived from the deep ecology of the agroecology paradigm. This model is grounded in the principle of local food self-sufficiency as a basic human right and declares that this capacity can only be attained through the restoration of place-based commons, which are the heritage landscapes and ancestral ecosystems that local cultures have co-evolved with. At stake is nothing less than the autonomy of local place-based communities and the resilience of ecosystems, and this is both a human and an Earth right.

Blue River Ethic - Prelude to a New Environmentalist Call to Action

2011-10-04T13:34:00.000-07:00

I just returned from a four-day working retreat at the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon. The gathering was organized by our colleagues, Charles Goodrich and Kathleen Dean Moore, of the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University.

The "Andrews" - comprising the 15,000-acre watershed of Lookout Creek in the western Cascades - is part of the UNESCO "Man and the Biosphere" (MAB) program and is considered a unique part of humanity's biological heritage. It is also a site for the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program, a collaborative of more than 1800 scientists and students investigating ecological processes over long temporal and broad spatial scales.

Those of us gathered together in the Oregon mountains this past weekend prefer to call this place the "Blue River Biosphere Reserve," in deference to a place name that more accurately reflects the ecological qualities of this mossy rain forest, which is inhabited by ancient Douglas Fir, Western Red Cedar, and Pacific Yew - there are some patches that have 500 year-old trees.

I am left wondering about the Kalappian First Peoples: What were their place names for these towering ancient groves? What would the Kalapuya Talking Stones say to us today if we really knew how to listen to their stories? Would they reveal the aboriginal knowledge stored in the names of sacred groves and somehow reveal some deeper truth? I left the gathering without an answer to that question, but no less re-invigorated by the political commitment to change and interdisciplinary knowledge and experiences learned and shared by all in attendance.

I was at the Blue River Reserve to participate in a four-day gathering of environmental scientists, ethicists, writers, and artists who were challenged to address the state of the world in view of climate change and to address other conditions that have thrown us into the "Eye of the Storm," a convergence of social, cultural, ecological, economic, and spiritual crises.

We drafted a call to action that includes a direct reference to the critique of capitalism, colonialism, and the "presumptions of private property" in order to champion a place-based "commons" approach to our relationship to each other and the Earth - our only home. The group includes some heavy-weight scientists like Mark Hixon and Fred Swanson.

I am wondering if this was and is a political moment when influential scientists start to stand with the understandings, hopes, and aspirations of the growing Occupied Wall Street and other new social movements against Empires large and small?

We will be posting the entire text and some journal notes and other documents from the gathering of colleagues that produced the Blue River Ethic in the coming days and weeks as part of a series on the quest for post-capitalist environmental ethics.

Canción de San Isidro

2011-09-18T12:59:00.000-07:00

We are presenting the first of several original songs that we hope our followers and readers will enjoy. This song is entitled "San Isidro" and is dedicated to the Patron Saint of the Farmer, a 12th century well digger (posero) and acequiero in Madrid.

Recorded July 2010, Rancho Chiquito, El Rito (San Francisco), Colorado.

Blue Coyotl has always been

Devon G. Peña - guitars, charango, clay flutes, keyboards, Taos drum, kalimbas and other percussion, vocals; song composition and arrangement.
Larry Brannon - flutes, percussives, Kawai synthesizer; recording and mixing.

Also available at: http://soundcloud.com/dpena/12-san-isidro

12 San Isidro by dpena@uw.edu

Food Justice in the City

2011-09-09T15:49:00.000-07:00

‘Feeling Like a Slave’...in the Moments

of a Garden Pedagogy

Pancho McFarland, Ph.D.

September 5, 2011. Roseland Community Peace Garden.

“I feel like a slave,” Amina exhaled loudly.

I responded, “It’s hot, right?”

The high humidity and 90 degree temperature at 10am made work difficult. Amina and a few other students affirmed that and the weeding and seeding of a large raised bed made them feel “how slaves must have felt on Southern plantations.”

After a brief discussion, the crowd began to develop a consensus that the hot humid air and hard work were unbearable even as they smiled and joked. I took this opportunity to suggest that this work and slavery were, in fact, the exact opposites. “This work is the exact opposite of slavery. The collectively-worked community garden can provide true freedom. Know what I mean?”

When no one responded affirmatively, I continued. “What made slavery horrible was not the agricultural work but the relations of production. In fact, the work that slaves and migrant farmworkers do today is some of the most dignified, noble and important work that can be done. We are fed from their labor.”

The small crowd of students in the conversation grew as their attention was piqued by this line of argument regarding slavery. Their understanding of the slave and sharecropping eras was that manual agricultural labor itself was one of the central horrors of slavery. Repositioning agricultural work as a highly dignified, yet denigrated, craft was something that most in the discussion were willing to explore.

I continued with the impromptu lecture on dignified versus alienated labor, slavery, racism and liberation: “The problem with slavery was two-fold: First, a human owning another human is obviously wrong. Second, is the super-exploitation of a body. Their work and bodies, which we know are dignified, become degraded as the products of their labor are claimed by the owner for self-enrichment. The owner now owns the amazing, wonderful product made with the blood, sweat, and tears of another’s labor. In essence, the owner steals the product of slave labor. If the slaves owned the products of their labor it, first, would not be slavery nor would the labor seem undignified and horrendous.”

Some took the long, deep pause for reflection as a change to get back to the, in some ways, easier labor of weeding and harvesting a bed of snap beans. Others wanted to continue the conversation in the shade.

“As we have been learning in class, we have very little control over the products we consume, especially food. What we eat and how it is produced are determined by others. Having no self-determination is the very definition of slavery. Ya see? Then, without the ability to determine what and how you eat (remember food sovereignty?) your health and, by extension, your life and that of your family and community is controlled by someone else. Their concerns for profit will always determine what they provide. Your health goes unconsidered.”

Connecting the dots, Amina responds, “That’s like when we did our community maps. We found that there were no good stores in Roseland. But, in the place where the better-off live, they got rich white people there, they have that store with the health food and organic.”

Deuce adds, “That’s because they don’t care about Black people. All they care about is making money.”

“Right!,” I interjected.

“So, how can community gardens and a local food economy solve the crises of food access (all the junk food and lack of access to real food in the hood) and food sovereignty (community determination regarding the production, distribution and consumption of our food and the ecological impacts of our decisions)? How can the work we do in the gardens help us achieve greater freedom? Remember when we all stood around and discussed what we wanted to plant in the four new beds we had just weeded? The students nodded. “How did we decide?”

Brian said, “We talked about the food we liked and about what would grow this late since its late in the summer.”

“That was a collective, community process!! We decided. We are growing it. Not wage slaves on a corporate plantation. We had control over our labor and the decisions about what we will eat. Freedom.”

The conversation continued in this vein for a few more minutes until it was time to resume our weeding and harvesting mustard and turnip greens.

Those who took some vegetables home also took a new way of seeing the much-maligned greens that generations ago helped Black people survive the atrocities of slavery, sharecropping, and lives of limited opportunity and structural violence under Jim Crow segregation.

Often, middle-class and aspiring middle class Black students run from the culinary and other traditions of their recent ancestors. They connect these foods and labor activities with the hard life in the South.

Another oft-heard remark in the community garden and food justice classroom is a variant of the following: “My grandma left the South to get away from this.”

Berdie added to the line of critique one day saying, “She said the White man worked them like slaves and sometimes they had their way with the women. You couldn’t even walk down the streets because if a white person walked on the sidewalks you had to move into the street.”

A chorus of students chimed in telling stories that elders in their family had told them about the South. What became evident during this conversation was that none of the complaints about the South during the early 20^th century had anything to do directly with agriculture and rural life itself but with the racist apartheid system that controlled Black people’s right to move and degraded or dismissed their skilled artisan or farm labors.

I seized upon this as an opportunity to share an alterNative history, geography, and political economy with the young people I work with in the garden.

Continuing with the lesson: “People’s experience with nature and their surroundings is determined, in good part, by how their political economic and social systems are structured. It’s important to differentiate between the factors that made rural and agricultural life for Blacks intolerable and those factors that didn’t necessarily cause them anguish…When we watched the movie about Immokalee, remember? We talked about questions of labor and food justice. The migrant farmworkers, Mexican and Haitian, provide the tomatos that we eat in our tacos from Taco Bell. Everyone benefits except for the workers. It’s the structure of labor that people hate not necessarily the labor itself. For example, the pace of work in these sweatshops in the field is inhumanely high since the workers’ wages are determined by a piece-rate system that pays them mere cents for a 50 pound bucket of tomatos. If workers controlled the pace, product and other factors of their labor, then it wouldn’t be so awful. If they owned their labor and the products of their labor, like we own this garden, they may not have developed the same feelings regarding agricultural labor.”

The young gardeners all nodded in agreement and Amina smiled, a knowing smile that came from this new found sense of the dignity and skill of her own work in the Roseland community garden and that of her ancestors from the South.

A major obstacle to community participation in the community garden and larger food justice movement is this type of initial visceral response that many have to seeing young people of color engage in agricultural labor. The relations and organizational forms of production are rarely analyzed. Instead, the type of labor and the wages earned through it become the basis upon which work is evaluated and judged. Agricultural labor in community gardens is thus miscast as akin to agricultural labor under slavery, sharecropping, or migrant worker-dependent agribusiness factories in the fields.

The notion of private ownership, especially of land, is another factor obstructing participation in community gardens. Many in our neighborhood have a hard time believing that something can be collectively-owned and managed. Their only exposure to ownership is individual, private ownership.

Capitalist relations of production, and the centrality of private property as the central category for determining control of the means of production, are deeply ingrained in our legal, moral, and ethical systems. As Hardt and Negri have argued: The USA is a Republic of Property; it does not just live by the rule of law, it abides by the rule of [private] property.

Given this context, it is difficult for many to imagine a society free of capitalist production relations and individualist ethics. The idea that the workers can own the products of their own labor and that a collective could own a productive enterprise often creates misunderstandings about the community garden and the nature of self-determining and unalienated labor in the garden. It is a central goal of garden pedagogy to overcome these barriers to food sovereignty and community self-determination.

EJ Victory: Kettleman City Activists and Chem Waste Corp.

2011-08-26T09:56:00.000-07:00

Moderator's Note: We do not often get good news like this coming from our most vulnerable fence-line communities in the environmental justice movement. This particular development highlights the resilience of the EJ movement. Kettleman City has been at the forefront of EJ struggles since the 1980s. It is remarkable and encouraging that the tenacity of these heroic activists has finally produced an action that could change the politics of risk management in our nation's solid waste landfills, which are too often the sites for illegal dumping of toxic wastes that should be handled by separate entities and facilities designed to address the attendant higher risks posed by toxic substances.

$1 MILLION EPA ENFORCEMENT ACTION AGAINST CHEM WASTE

For Illegal Disposal of Hazardous Wastes & Faulty Laboratory Analysis at Kettleman Toxic Dump

Breaking News August 24, 2011

El Pueblo Para El Aire y Agua Limpio/People for Clean Air and Water and Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice

Contact: Maricela Mares Alatorre/El Pueblo – Kettleman City (559) 583-0800
Bradley Angel/Greenaction 415-722-5270 (cell)

Kettleman City Residents, Community Groups & Greenaction Applaud Massive Fine

Call for US EPA & Other Agencies to Deny Permits to Expand the Toxic Waste Dump

Kettleman City, CA – Kettleman City residents and community and environmental justice groups today applauded the US EPA for issuing a one million dollar enforcement action against Chemical Waste Management in response to major violations of the law at the Kettleman Hills hazardous waste landfill.

Kettleman City community groups El Pueblo Para El Aire y Agua Limpio/People for Clean Air and Water and Kids Protecting Our Planet, along with their ally Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, welcomed the massive fine and called on US EPA and other regulatory agencies to finally deny permits for the proposed expansion of the Chemical Waste Management hazardous waste landfill.

Long time Kettleman City resident Maricela Mares Alatorre said “I am grateful that the EPA is bringing enforcement against Chem Waste because they obviously need it. But I find it alarming to think that they are still considering an expansion of this giant toxic waste facility. Obviously they need to fix their violations, not add to the problem by adding more waste.”

“These serious violations prove that permits to expand the giant toxic waste dump must be denied,” said Bradley Angel, Executive Director of Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice. “These new violations along with decades of chronic violations prove that Chem Waste cannot comply with their permits or the law. If a resident had this many serious violations of the law, they would be in jail.”

The U.S. EPA’s settlement with Chemical Waste Management requires the company to pay a $400,000 fine and spend an estimated $600,000 to comply with environmental laws after the facility failed to properly manage waste at its landfill near Kettleman City, Calif.

Today’s settlement is a result of a joint U.S. EPA and California Department of Toxic Substances Control investigation in February 2010. An analysis of the landfill’s records showed that the facility’s laboratory had not been following proper quality control procedures since 2005. The investigation found records indicating the facility disposed of waste that did not fully meet standards for treatment prior to disposal. In addition, the facility disposed of hazardous waste leachate from the landfill without assuring the leachate met treatment standards.

For more information about Chem Waste’s decades of violations: http://www.epa.gov/region9/kettleman

GEO Watch: Update on Monsanto Drought-Ready Corn

2011-08-16T07:52:00.000-07:00

Moderator's note: We are presenting a post from the Food Democracy Now! team on the ongoing fast-track USDA review for approval of Monsanto's genetically-engineered organism (GEO), a new drought resistant corn known as MON 87460. While the period for public comments has passed (August 12), we urge our readers and followers to write Secretary Vilsack at the USDA and express your opposition to this dangerous transgenic technology. We will follow-up with a deeper analysis of this technology next week.

Apology: I wish to apologize to my followers and readers for the sharp drop in activity the past two months. I was designated as the lead author of an amici curiae brief in the Save Ethnic Studies lawsuit against HB2281 in Arizona and only just completed that work. Things should pick-up again with the help of my food sovereignty friends and colleagues.

TELL THE USDA TO REJECT MONSANTO'S NEW DROUGHT-READY CORN!

As if genetically engineered alfalfa, corn for ethanol, sugar beets, and most recently Kentucky bluegrass for lawns weren't enough, the Obama USDA is now poised to approve another unnecessary GMO crop, in lieu of independent scientific data and practice of precautionary principles.

Currently, Monsanto is seeking approval from the USDA of a drought resistant corn known as MON 87460, which Monsanto claims achieves better results under low-water conditions compared to other varieties. Even the USDA’s own assessment shows that MON 87460 is no more “drought-tolerant” than current corn varieties nor does it have the true long-term potential benefits to meet drought conditions that farming with organic corn can bring to farmers.

Unfortunately, like all GMO approval processes in the U.S., the USDA has relied heavily on Monsanto’s own corporate science and failed to get adequate independent, peer reviewed data regarding the safety of this new GMO drought corn or of Monsanto’s claims.

It would appear that the “science” used to rationalize the approval for yet another GMO crop is biased to the benefit of Monsanto, ignoring the needs of farmers, the environment and the health of the population.

Let your voice be heard - Tell the USDA today to reject Monsanto’s GMO drought-resistant corn:

http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/399?akid=362.204975.Dqiawj&t=9

British Scientists Find GMO Horizontal Gene Transfer

In what can only be a glaring scientific oversight, the USDA assessment readily admits that “horizontal gene transfer” of DNA is a common event in nature, but somehow diminishes the potential for the novel genetic components found in Monsanto’s GMO drought corn to be capable of such leaps. Current ag biotechnology relies on a crude insertion of GMO genes done in scattershot fashion, which are by their very creation designed to cross previously untraversable genetic barriers imposed by nature.

More alarming is the fact that scientists in England have found that “horizontal gene transfer” of one of the main GMO genetic components found in MON 87460 has already occurred. Just last year scientists at University of Bristol “identified a natural process they say that would allow synthetic genes to move across GM organisms and out into the wild.”

According to the USDA’s own assessment, Monsanto’s GMO drought corn “was developed through

a plant pathogenic bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens mediated transformation”. It is the same Agrobacterium tumefaciens that British researchers found that “‘transforms’ plant tissue at ‘plant wound’ sites and ‘clearly demonstrates that when placed together on damaged plant tissue, Agrobacterium readily transforms associated fungi’”.

It is hard to understand how scientists at the main U.S. government oversight agency could miss these facts in their own assessment of a new GMO crop, but like previous administrations, officials in the Obama administration appear more interested in fast-tracking Monsanto’s GMO technology.

Tell the USDA that they need to reject Monsanto’s studies of their own products and demand more independent peer reviewed data before it can approve any more GMO crops.

Monsanto’s Missing GMO Genes: Where did they GO?

On top of this, the current USDA assessment for Monsanto’s GMO drought corn readily admits that multiple GMO genetic components “did not get incorporated into the transformed plant”. Even as Monsanto attempts to diminish this alarming finding, the USDA also admits “a 22 base pair length of genomic DNA got deleted at the insert-to-plant DNA junction in MON 87460.”

Despite these disturbing scientific anomalies, which the USDA calls “minor genetic sequence modifications” the agency concludes there is no “biologically meaningful difference between MON 87460 and conventional corn.”

Do you believe them?

Bt toxin from GMO Corn Found in Pregnant Mothers

This past spring, further punctuating the point of gene trasference from plants to humans, Canadian scientists alarmingly discovered traces of the Bt toxin from GMO corn - engineered to release an insecticide - in 93% of blood samples taken from pregnant women and 80% umbilical cords tested.

This discovery comes in spite of promises by ag biotech companies such as Monsanto that this was not possible.

For any mother or parent such findings should bring about a sobering awakening that U.S. governmental regulatory agencies are not adequately doing their jobs and that more independent peer reviewed studies must be conducted before any more GMO crops are approved by the USDA or the Obama administration.

Click here to send in your public comment to tell the USDA that they need to reject Monsanto’s studies of their own products and demand more independent peer reviewed data before they can approve any more GMO crops.

http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/399?akid=362.204975.Dqiawj&t=12

Thanks for participating in food democracy,

Dave, Lisa and the Food Democracy Now! Team

Sources:

1. “PLANT PEST RISK ASSESSMENT FOR MON 87460 CORN” U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/403?akid=362.204975.Dqiawj&t=14

2. “Scientists Discover New Route for GM Contamination”, November 4, 2010 Farmers Guardian.

http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/401?akid=362.204975.Dqiawj&t=16

3. “GM food toxins found in the blood of 93% of unborn babies”, May 20, 2011, UK Daily

Mail.

http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/402?akid=362.204975.Dqiawj&t=18

Thanatopolitics and the deepening crisis of capitalism

2011-08-13T10:30:00.000-07:00

Moderator's Note: "The markets are not working" and "capitalism is self-destructing." This is the message from the mainstream economist, Dr. Nouriel Roubini, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. Of course, the antidote to this class war is a movement of the multitude - of the 90 percent of us that work for a wage, are unemployed, poor, homeless, displaced, and dispossessed; and who do not own capital but are the direct material and immaterial living labor source of the wealth appropriated by corporations as profiteering excess and hyper-speculation in the commodification of risk. The so-called excess capacity Roubini refers to is really a code word for "let them eat mud pies," like the displaced Haitians have done since the 2010 earthquake that we so quickly forgot. This crisis is capital's death march against the multitude: It is thanatopolitics: a direct attack on our ability to live. We face the prospect of mass extinctions of entire multitudes of human beings from climate change and other ravages unleashed by capital's second contradiction: The tendency to destroy the very natural conditions that are the basis of our collective existence. At ejfood we will continue to report on and analyze this growing social movement for autonomia - for our self-valorizing as human beings partnered with our localities and homes.

We present the video clip from Roubini's interview with WSJ.

GEO Watch: Court ruling may allow suits against transgenic crops

2011-08-06T10:18:00.000-07:00

MINNESOTA COURT RULING ALLOWS ORGANIC FARMERS TO SUE CONVENTIONAL AND BIOTECHNOLOGY OPERATIONS FOR TRESPASS DAMAGES

An article posted to Natural News (August 3, 2011) reports on a significant legal ruling that allows organic farmers to sue neighboring agricultural operations that use agro-industrial chemicals or transgenic crops.

Minnesota's Star Tribune has reported that the Minnesota Court of Appeals recently ruled that a large organic farm surrounded by chemical-laden conventional farms can seek damages for lost crops, as well as lost profits, caused by the illegal trespassing of pesticides and herbicides on its property.

Many observers believe this case will set an important precedent and apply also to cases involving contamination (introgression) of transgenes from genetically-engineered crops.

Current Monsanto ad for its "Improve Agriculture" campaign.

Many of my followers and readers recall the numerous incidents involving lawsuits filed by Monsanto against non-GMO farms whose crops were inadvertently contaminated by transgenic material. In many of these cases, the defendants ended up becoming bankrupted by Monsanto, even though Monsanto's patented materials were the trespassers at fault. Now, it looks like the reverse, and true form of trespass and infringement, will be the case.

The seed and food sovereignty movements need a victory like this and the growing incidence of litigation like the Minnesota case is the strategy that will work best under current political and legal conditions.

We will continue to follow developments in this and related forthcoming cases.

Obama Administration issues MOU on EJ

2011-08-04T12:23:00.000-07:00

Moderator’s Note: We are posting without comment an important communique from the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), the principal advisory panel to the President on all matters related to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the organization, mission, and administrative policies of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other federal executive agencies. The letter posted here addresses President Obama’s Memorandum of Understanding on Environmental Justice and Executive Order 12898 which will inform all thirteen departments in the Cabinet as well as three agencies that affirmed commitment to embrace and enforce the nation’s environmental laws in a manner that results in equality and citizen participation. Active links to the MOU are provided in the text of the letter. I am pleased to announce that ejfood will host a symposium on this MOU later this year.

COUNCIL ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY ANNOUNCES NEW OBAMA ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE POLICY COMMITMENT

Dear friends,

On behalf of CEQ, I am pleased to share with you the exciting news that today, the Obama Administration announced the signing of a “Memorandum of Understanding on Environmental Justice and Executive Order 12898” (MOU). Through this MOU, CEQ along with 13 departments and 3 agencies have reaffirmed their commitment to ensuring that all Americans receive the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards, equal access to the Federal decision-making process, and a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work.

Today’s MOU advances agency responsibilities outlined in the 1994 Executive Order 12898, “Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations.” This Executive Order directed each of the named Federal agencies to make environmental justice part of its mission and to work with the other agencies on environmental justice issues as members of the Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice (EJ IWG). The MOU broadens the reach of the EJ IWG to include participant agencies not originally named in Executive Order 12898 and adopts an EJ IWG charter, which provides the workgroup with more structure and direction. It also formalizes the environmental justice commitments that agencies have made over the past year, providing a roadmap for agencies to better coordinate their efforts. Specific areas of focus include considering the environmental justice impacts of air emissions and commercial transportation, and strengthening environmental justice efforts under the National Environmental Policy Act and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The MOU also outlines processes and procedures to help overburdened communities more efficiently and effectively engage agencies as they make decisions.

13 departments and 3 agencies joined us in signing the MOU, including two departments and three agencies not included in the Executive Order (denoted with an asterisk) – Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Justice, Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, Department of Defense, Department of Education*, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Homeland Security*, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of Interior, Department of Labor, Department of Transportation, Department of Veterans Affairs*, General Services Administration*, and Small Business Administration*.

Today’s announcement is just the latest in a series of steps the Administration has taken to advance environmental justice. Last December, many of you joined us for the White House Environmental Justice Forum, where more than 100 community leaders shared their experiences and expertise with Cabinet members and other senior-level officials from a range of agencies. Since that time, the Administration has been working hard to elevate the Federal environmental justice dialogue and to take actions to reverse the inequities in communities overburdened by pollution. Agencies across the Administration have been working both independently and in collaboration to launch a number of initiatives. These efforts have only laid the ground work to achieving environmental justice for all Americans. Stay tuned to the EJ IWG home page for environmental justice updates in the coming months, including the release of agency-level Environmental Justice Strategies.

We greatly value your continued support on environmental justice issues. If you have any questions about today’s announcement, please don’t hesitate to ask!

Thanks,
Nikki and Matt

Council on Environmental Quality
Executive Office of the President
Office: 202-456-3621

La lucha por la sierra: Acequiero aesthetics

2011-07-21T19:36:00.000-07:00

Moderator's Note: This is a short excerpt from my forthcoming book, The Last Common:

Endangered Lands and Disappeared People in the Politics of Place (2012). I decided to share

this particular excerpt because I have known Carl for a long time and I finally have some

photos of some of his spectacular woodcarvings. If you want more information, about Carl's

work, please contact us. Please do not copy, circulate or cite this work until the book is

published.

Con el acaquí: La Sierra and acequiero

aesthetics

Carl Jaquez is also known affectionately among his friends as “JC” and “The Guru”. The

second nickname developed because, well, he looks the part and has the countenance of a

wise bearded Zen Master. He is a fifth generation native of La Sierra, and a direct descendant

of sheepherders and acequia farmers who settled Cañon (as Chama Canyon is known

locally) in the 1860s.

Carl works as a farm and ranch hand. He also does a brisk largely money-free business fixing

and welding broke-down tractors and other ailing farm equipment and implements. He has

rescued my hay operations from disaster several times after the old New Holland mower-

swather broke down. But Carl does a lot more with his welding skills besides dedicating these

to fixing his friends’ vintage farm machines.

Carl is an extraordinary and vastly underappreciated ‘folk’ artist. He welds metal pieces

together to make signs and artwork, but he is also a highly talented wood carver. That is

an understatement. When I was last visiting Carl this past June 2011, I walked into his

workshop in Cañon and saw his latest wood carving. I swear that on first glance I thought it

was a live Bald eagle. I am a discerning collector, and I have never seen such

a majestic and realistic wood carving of a Bald eagle.

Bald eagle carving by Carl Jaquez of Chama, Colorado.

We got around to talking about La Sierra and Carl mentioned that he was yet to receive a key

for access to the common. We discussed the various strategies that lawyers for the Land

Rights Council (LRC) were pursuing to make certain that the herederos from Chama,

Vallejos, and Los Fuertes received their keys.

Carl turned our conversation back to the artwork. I asked him where he got the wood for his

carvings: “Do you get these from La Sierra?”, I asked.

He replied: “Yes. There are different types of wood all over this area, here in the Cañon and

other places on the mesa tops around here. In La Sierra there are some really outstanding

wood pieces, really dense, really hard. Also, any of the older snags washed smooth by river

water and rain. Higher up, there is the Bristlecone and the Engelmann spruce. Both of those,

when they die, produce a very fine, smooth, and heavy wood.”

So, what is the Bald eagle carved from?”, I asked.

“That piece was carved from an old dead cottonwood”.

We walked outside because Carl wanted to show me another piece made from a different

type of wood. The piece was outside by one of his wood piles and it was shrouded in a

tattered old plastic tarp. He removed the tarp and slowly revealed the work-in-progress. It was

a Native or Chicano man, holding his fist up in the air in a cry of protest.

Native protestor woodcarving by Carl Jaquez.

I asked: “And what kind of wood is this?”

Carl explained: “I am carving this out of el acaquí”.

“Al…al…no, acaquí…?” I stammered since I had never heard this word before.

He confirmed: “Yes. We call it acaquí…the bristlecone pine. It is one of the hardest woods

around. Some people use that word to refer to any wood that is very dense, heavy, and

hardened by age. Con el acaquí…I make better pieces, with a lot more detail, because that

'type of wood does not chip or crack very easily. But it is very hard to work with. Very slow

going”.

I asked Carl if I could see some of the furniture he has been making for some years now. I

explained how my wife, Elaine, had seen some chairs and a sofa on a previous visit and she

was very interested in making a purchase.

We went inside Carl’s adobe home and greeted his wife. With her permission to enter, Carl

showed me the three pieces. The two chairs and sofa were handcrafted from native Mountain

willow harvested from the Cañon and La Sierra.

Willow sofa by Carl Jaquez.

As we discussed the techniques he uses for making the furniture, our conversation turned to

the significance of all this handicraft production. I had so many questions: How did he learn

this skill? Who taught him? Could he make a living at it? How long had he been doing it?

Did he have his artwork on display in galleries? Who were his clients? Carl politely answered

all these questions and more, but we ultimately came back to the issue of access to La Sierra.

Carl helped me realize that not everyone exercising use rights to La Sierra is out to graze

livestock, cut firewood, or gather construction materials.

For a few “commoners” like Carl, La Sierra is the deep source of an acequiero aesthetic. The

mountain provides the raw material for his artwork and furniture making. Yet, these rights

are not specifically defined under the terms of the Lobato trilogy. Like wild-crafting, the use

of La Sierra to make art is not exactly a right that is officially granted to herederos and

successors. Of course, as Carl observed,” “I go up and get firewood and find a piece to work

on. How is that any different”?

The use of La Sierra for making art is not something I had considered very seriously before

this conversation; I don’t think any one had really given this much thought, including the

lawyers, judges, and court recorders involved in the Lobato case. But how are we to deny Carl

his right to find La Sierra as an inspiration and source of materials for his artisan handicrafts?

Food Justice in the City

2011-06-24T11:46:00.000-07:00

Backyard Foraging

Pancho McFarland

The city as designed from the mechanical and authoritarian mind privileges the ruling classes and destroys biodiversity. The mechanical mind relies on the power of oil-based machines. The authoritarian mind controls the ability of subjects to eat. We should reclaim streets, parks and other urban common spaces and liberate them from elite control. Through an edible urban landscape design we can put these spaces to use for the good of everyone.

Roseland, Chicago, IL
June 10, 2011

Lunch:

Baby mustard greens, 2 handfuls

Mint, 2 handfuls

Basil, 1 handful

Rose petals, 2 roses

Baby green leaf lettuce, 5 leaves

Baby Georgia collard, 1 handful

Balsamic vinegar, 2 splashes

olive oil, splash

Pink Himalayan salt, pinch

Black pepper, dash

A lush backyard with very little grass makes for a perfect lunch for a forager. The rose and mint come back year after year providing part of a daily feast from the kitchen garden/yard. Mustard and collard greens add wonderful flavor to a salad or eaten straight off of the plant when young. Lettuce, planted early each year, rounds out any backyard salad from Spring through Fall. A light dressing of store-bought organic olive oil and vinegar mixed with fresh spices purchased from the Healthy Food Hub (something akin to a buyers’ co-op organized by the Black Oaks Center for Sustainable and Renewable Living) finishes off the foraged feast.

Encouraging biodiversity in the backyard through planting edible perennial plants, quick-growing and abundant greens, and flowers (perennials and annuals), and many different kinds of seedlings and seeds provides one with opportunities to eat. On a brief morning stroll in the yard I snatch leaves from the numerous greens, rinse them and pop them in my mouth. As I go to the spigot on the southside of the house, a wild mulberry bush obstructs my path. I take the opportunity it provides to pluck a couple handfuls of dark purple berries. Quick rinse. Devour the berries. Pick a few more. Repeat.

Daily grazing excursions such as these can be an important supplement to an urban dweller’s diet and lifestyle. Foraging the urban landscape and grazing in a semi-tended backyard as part of a strategy of community resilience and autonomy and lifestyle in a post-carbon age has many advantages. First, foraging does not rely on oil. Second, if done systematically, it can provide a family with all its sustenance. Combining foraging with other strategies of community control of its food supply can solve some of the problems of the current oil-based, unsustainable and undemocratic global corporate food system. These problems which have been well-covered on the ejfood blog include lack of food sovereignty, lack of access to healthy food and water, pollution, climate crisis, peak oil, violence and racism.

Grazing or foraging should be taught to members of our communities as a means of community survival. The young who will be even more impacted by the increasing food injustice should be a focus in this educational strategy. Along with community gardens, CSA’s and other strategies of a local food economy, those of us in the food justice movement need to learn techniques associated with foraging. Foraging and design techniques that increase the possibilities for foraging should be incorporated into our training. We might incorporate these practices in a design for a new city and new communities.

Eating the City

Through creating an edible urban landscape we can more easily provide for ourselves. This urban landscape would contain common spaces for fruit and nut orchards that belong to everyone. Large perennial gardens or farms are also be part of the urban commons. Fruit and nut trees line pedestrian, mass transit and bicycle roads. Private cars are non-existent. In between the trees we grow perennial herb gardens. Somewhere, perhaps on the sides of buildings and along fences, vining plants find the correct conditions to grow abundantly.

A city designed with common spaces providing numerous foraging opportunities could be democratic and sustainable. The city as designed from the mechanical and authoritarian mind privileges the ruling classes and destroys biodiversity. The mechanical mind relies on the power of oil-based machines. The authoritarian mind controls the ability of subjects to eat. We should reclaim streets, parks and other urban common spaces and liberate them from elite control. Through an edible urban landscape design we can put these spaces to use for the good of everyone.

Regardless of urban design, we should learn the techniques of foraging. Even while the city is not currently designed for easy access for foragers, there are many plants grown throughout urban environments that could provide us with sustenance. We need to be aware of how to forage in the city. Beyond learning what is and is not good to eat, we have to develop an ethic that sees foraging as a dignified and ethical behavior. Foraging is dignified, self-edifying labor. It is labor performed outside of the alienation and indignity of capitalist labor where one’s efforts go to enrich an owner. Instead, this labor directly benefits the worker and his family. It is also an ethical practice in that it does no harm to other species. Foraging does not use poisonous chemical inputs nor does it rely on cheap wage slavery in far-off places. It does not contribute to the exploitation of the Earth, human beings nor Earth’s non-human species.

European colonizers and their settlers viewed the foraging practices of indigenous peoples that they would eventually subjugate as lazy and therefore examples of their uncivilized nature. This view of foraging (and later even of farming and farmwork) has stayed with us as part of strategy to denigrate the laboring, especially peasant, classes. So, besides the difficulty of convincing a ruling elite to give up control of the city and its common spaces, we have the additional problem of convincing the subjugated working-class urban population that farm work, horticulture and foraging are valuable, ethical and honorable practices. The conflict-laden road to a community-controlled, democratic, and sovereign local food economy requires overcoming ideological and political obstacles to foraging. Regardless of the outcome of struggles over food justice and urban design, community, family and individual resilience will require this new urban foraging.

South Central Farm Update: Environmental Justice Leader Writes Letter to Jan Perry

2011-06-11T10:52:00.000-07:00

Moderator's Note: We present a letter written by Dr. Robert D. Bullard of Clark Atlanta University, considered the most prominent leader of the environmental justice movement. Dr. Bullard submitted the letter to the Honorable Jan Perry, a member of the Los Angeles City Council. Councilmember Perry represents the South Los Angeles district that is home to the 14-acre site of the legendary South Central Farm at 41st and Alameda. Ms. Perry is running for Mayor of Los Angeles and could succeed Antonio Villaraigosa. In the letter dated June 6, 2011, Dr. Bullard asks Ms. Perry to consider endorsing the newly re-energized and growing campaign for the restoration of the South Central Farm. The food sovereignty movement envisions the South Central Farm as the hub of a 'green jobs' economic revival to benefit area residents and all of L.A.'s inhabitants and visitors. I urge followers of this blog to do the same and emulate Dr. Bullard's vital and eloquent contribution to this discourse.

Please prepare a letter calling for the restoration of the South Central Farm and mail it to Councilmember Perry at the address provided in Dr. Bullard's letter below. Ask for an official endorsement of this campaign to restore the nation's largest urban farm that is envisioned as the key in a grassroots plan to build a more 'green' future for South Los Angeles. Note that the Farm was and can once again be a significant community-based asset for the preservation of agroecological and ethnobotanical knowledge, the self-reduction of poverty-as-deprivation, and healthier nutrition through access to culturally appropriate, organic, and self-provisioned fresh fruits and vegetables.

The South Central Farm can once again be a home for the multi-generational farmers of the Mesoamerican Diaspora and other marginalized communities in L.A. It can bring youth and elders of diverse race, ethnic, and national origins together to rebuild this community space and urban commons. They can again share their knowledge and labor to cultivate rare heirloom varieties of edible and medicinal plants while rebuilding intercultural trust and a sense of place and community. The Farm can make our most vulnerable communities less subject to the policing of random acts rooted in structural violence including those that lead to drug abuse and gang activity.

An investment in South Central Farm as a community hub ties the aims of food sovereignty with the social justice struggle against structural violence, historical trauma, and over-policing. As Councilmember Perry herself recently stated: There is no reason why South Los Angeles needs to look like a "prison industrial complex."

This agroecological and multicultural oasis was home to hundreds of heirloom varieties of herbaceous plants, row crops, creeping and crawling vines, cacti, and fruit trees. This biodiversity was the root and branch of a diverse community's traveling food ways and heritage cuisines. The South Central Farm must be re-rooted in place so the community can lead the resurgence of an urban commons that will help all people rebuild L.A. through a movement for a green solidarity economy. As Dr. Bullard so eloquently put it in his letter to Councilmember Perry: "I call on you to dispense with politics as usual and do the right thing and support this noble effort to recreate a vital source not just of food for the hungry, but the basis for creating jobs and solidarity across racial, ethnic, and class differences."

Letter from Dr. Robert D. Bullard to Councilmember Jan Perry

June 6, 2011

Clark Atlanta University
Environmental Justice Resource Center
223 James P. Brawley Drive
Atlanta, GA 30314

Honorable Councilmember Jan Perry
CD9 City Hall 200 N. Spring St., Rm. 420
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Dear Honorable Councilmember Jan Perry:

I am often called the “Father of Environmental Justice,” but the truth is that the people on the ground, working through their courageous grassroots organizations, are the real founders and heroes of the movements for environmental and food justice. One group of such heroes is the South Central Farmers Feeding Families in Los Angeles.

Over the years, I have followed developments in this most iconic of all environmental justice campaigns. The site of the South Central Farm is emblazoned in our memories as a symbol of this movement: From the efforts led by the late Juanita Tate against the LANCER project to the establishment of the nation’s largest urban farm by a multiracial and multiethnic coalition of farmers, this hallowed ground in the heart of the Alameda industrial district has inspired us to continue the struggle and seek new and innovative ways to restore the ecology and health of our urban landscapes and communities. The South Central Farm remains one of the premiere examples of what the grassroots can do when empowered to become self-reliant and provided the space to create opportunities that make all our communities healthier and stronger.

We were saddened and dismayed when in July 2006 the farmers were evicted and this extraordinary urban oasis was bulldozed and its agroecological treasures destroyed. But the people and community are resilient and the South Central Farmers have gone on to establish what is one of the most successful examples of community-based agriculture in the country outside Bakersfield. But the absence of the farmers in their original urban locale has left a huge wound and void that can only be addressed by recreating the farm at its original Alameda site.

I understand that we have a new opportunity to re-establish the country’s largest and most diverse urban farm on the same site that has sat neglected and overcome by weeds and rubbish. The LA Times editorial board has endorsed this effort and that is a monumental shift that we have all noted with hopefulness. The South Central Farmers have a viable, just, and equitable plan to make this dream come true. I have reviewed the case and the proposals put forward by the farmers and must declare that this is not just a wonderful opportunity to do something for environmental justice, it is a moral obligation that all our elected officials must come out in support of a just campaign to restore a vital source of food sovereignty and community-making for the people South Los Angeles.

The restoration of America’s most notable urban farm is not just sound social justice policy; it is wise policy for the rebuilding of our local food systems and food sovereignty. It will have a positive economic development impact and promote a grassroots mobilization to spread this amazing model of urban agriculture to other communities and places. This is not just the right thing to do in
terms of social justice; it is the ethical thing for elected officials to do in order to promote economic opportunity and harmony among all people of South Central.

I am in agreement with the South Central Farmers and their many supporters that “there is no justification to support another warehouse or other narrow-use industrial structure to take that space in a neighborhood already blighted...” I agree with their plan for an urban farm, cultural heritage center, park, jogging paths, and other assets that would be a better and higher use of this space.

We often hear appeals for ‘green jobs’ and the Obama Administration has certainly made this a catch-phrase for federal, state, and municipal policies that promote cities that can follow the path toward a just sustainability. The proposal by the South Central Farmers would be a critical demonstration project to show our nation how to build a ‘green jobs’ economy. This is of utmost significance since the area around the site is characterized by high unemployment.

The proposal by the South Central Farmers will mean that we no longer have to settle for choosing between jobs or a clean and safe environment. That sort of ‘economic blackmail’ has long plagued our most vulnerable communities. I know you will agree that the restoration of the South Central Farm will not just create a source of fresh, organic, and culturally-appropriate foods, it will generate jobs and strengthen community stability by discouraging drugs and gang violence, forces that undermine the very same local economic revitalization efforts that you have led. The economic impact of the restoration of South Central Farm will be considerable: The project has the potential to generate a substantial number of long-term green jobs tied to this urban commons.

The environmental justice movement has long supported the goals of the South Central Farmers and I am once again expressing my unqualified support for this campaign to restore the urban farm. I call on you, as a key elected official involved in this issue, to endorse and support the campaign to restore the South Central Farm. I call on you to dispense with politics as usual and do the right thing and support this noble effort to recreate a vital source not just of food for the hungry, but the basis for creating jobs and solidarity across racial, ethnic, and class differences. The South Central Farm will become the most significant urban agriculture site in the country again and a source of long-term green jobs. Surely, you will want to be part of this notable struggle for social justice, ecological democracy, and sustainable economic development.

In 2003, you wrote eloquently in support of the farm stating, “The community garden at 41st and Alameda is a vibrant oasis where families from across Los Angeles County come to grow nutritious food, celebrate a diverse community, and learn about family values...I support these gardeners and their right to garden.” Well stated, Ms. Perry! I call on you to immediately convene a press conference to announce your renewed support for the campaign to restore America’s urban farm. The environmental justice movement will be in your debt for this expression of solidarity with the people of South Los Angeles.

Respectfully,

Dr. Robert D. Bullard Edmund
Asa Ware Distinguished Professor of Sociology
drrobertbullard@gmail.com and www.drrobertbullard.com

South Central Farm: The Struggle to Restore America's Largest Urban Farm Continues

2011-06-03T10:32:00.000-07:00

Moderator's Note: We are pleased to share this important news video report from KNBC in Los Angeles on the revitalized and growing movement to restore America's largest and most diverse urban farm, the South Central Farm, a 14-acre agroecological oasis that was bulldozed in July 2006. We will provide an updated analysis and extended interview with Tezozomoc early in next week's blog posts. Apologies for the embedded advertisement, I could not figure out how to clip the video to delete that.

View more videos at: http://nbclosangeles.com.

Sodexo Update III: Faculty Opposition Grows

2011-06-01T17:10:00.000-07:00

Moderator's Note: We are posting a letter released today and dated May 24, 2011. The letter is addressed to Dr. Phyllis Wise, UW Interim President, and was prepared and submitted by the faculty of the Department of Global Health, School of Public Health, University of Washington.

We fully endorse this letter and urge other departments and academic units at UW to submit their letters to the administration in support of termination of the Sodexo contract. The AAUP Local Chapter has also prepared an eloquent letter in support of the demands articulated by the student organizations.

FACULTY IN DEPARTMENT OF GLOBAL HEALTH

CALLS FOR TERMINATING SODEXO CONTRACT

May 24, 2011

To: Phyllis Wise, UW Interim President
Fr: Department of Global Health, MPH Faculty
re: UW Sodexo Contract

It has come to our attention that U. W. students affiliated with United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) has been urging the UW to drop its multi-million dollar contract with Sodexo, the multinational food service provider that provides concessions at Husky Stadium and other athletic venues. Our assessment of the evidence for the claims against Sodexo (including the TransAfrica study) is that there is substantial international controversy regarding the company's business practices. The charges against the company range from racial discrimination, repression of union rights, the payment of substandard wages in the U.S. and abroad, and price gouging. We understand Sodexo's 2008 revenues totaled more than $20 billion, with profits exceeding $1 billion. We understand Sodexo operates in 80 countries, is the world’s 22nd-largest employer, and has 355,000 employees.

Our Department's mission is "to close the gap between the world’s 1 billion people who experience relatively good health and the 5 billion who experience much lower levels of health," and our goals are to address the causes of, and help provide solutions for, disparities in health around the globe. Our first value in our value statement is to work to promote social justice and health equity and respect for disadvantaged individuals and populations."

Given these priorities and values, we feel moved to request the University of Washington to respectfully listen to the students who are presenting the case for re-examining the Sodexo contract, and to investigate the claims more carefully and thoughtfully than seems to have been done to date. It is inconsistent to value social justice and poverty reduction as the important components of global public health in our teaching, research and service, while at the same time engaging in business practices that undermine these values.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.

DGH MPH faculty

Stephen Bezruchka

Fred Connell

Karen Cowgill

Donna Denno

Ann Downer

Amy Hagopian

Wendy Johnson

Aaron Katz

Mary Anne Mercer

James Pfeiffer

Letitia Reason

Julia Robinson

David Roesel

Kenny Sherr

Clarence Spigner

Sodexo Update II: Please sign this petition

2011-05-27T10:20:00.000-07:00

Moderator's Note: We present this link to an important petition organized through Change.org for the University of Washington student-led struggle against Sodexo. Please see our earlier blogs of May 19 and May 12 for more information.

Change.org|Start an Online Petition »

La Lucha por la Sierra

2011-05-22T11:37:00.000-07:00

‘the continuous, open, and notorious use’ of the commons

NEW LAWSUIT ALLEGES SUBDIVISION DEVELOPER IS
BLOCKING ACCESS TO LA SIERRA COMMON LANDS

“I have always understood that, before 2006, each ride I went on with my neighbors and friends was simply part of a deeply rooted and apparently renegade [sic] custom, a longstanding local tradition of trespass [sic] or more accurately, as the Colorado Supreme Court justices described it: ‘the continuous, open, and notorious use’ of the commons by the local people...So, per the rationale of the Supreme Court, and local custom, this was not trespass but the continuation of a pattern of historic uses dating back to the 1840s and 50s. The people had not crossed the fence. Instead, the fence had crossed the people, as an elder retired sheepherder once told me.

Between 2002 and 2003, in a remarkable and much discussed series of three decisions, the Colorado Supreme Court restored the historic use rights of the plaintiffs in the Lobato v. Taylor land rights case. The legendary case involves plaintiffs' use rights on 80,000 acres of common lands in the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant (merced). This is an alterNative paradigm unfolding right before our eyes.

Culebra Peak - Heart of La Sierra Commons.

The grant encompasses a total of 1 million acres and most of the 1843 merced was enclosed by private owners including the portion at stake in the Rael-Lobato trilogy; on the New Mexico side of the grant, some of the land ended up in the public domain as part of the Kit Carson National Forest (including portions of the Valle Vidal) but local heirs successfully re-acquired title to more than 30,000 acres as part of what is today known as the Rio Costilla Cooperative Livestock Association (RCCLA) lands.

The land in this case involves 80,000 acres of La Sierra that were enclosed in 1960 by Jack Taylor, a direct descendant of President Zachary Taylor. As the Colorado Supreme and lower courts deliberated the case in the mid to late 1990s and early 2000s, ownership of the land underwent quite a series of turnovers: In 1997, the Taylor family rejected an offer from the State of Colorado and local community (through La Sierra Foundation) to purchase the land. Instead, Zachary Taylor, Jr. sold La Sierra to Lou Pai, the infamous CEO of Enron Energy Services. After the collapse of Enron, in 2002, Pai sold the land to the current title holders, Bobby and Dottie Hill and their partners.

The Lobato trilogy of decisions effectively re-authorized 150 years of the exercise of rights of usufruct by heirs and successors of the original Mexican land grant settlers. The highest state Court thereby legtimized the deep relationship between local people and their watershed commons. Families that could verify they were still living and working on properties that were privy to the original 1860s hijuelas issued by don Carlos Beaubien, and who had been denied due process in the wake of Jack Taylor's 1960s Torrens quiet title action, were to be designated as beneficiaries of these rights to the commons that the local people call La Sierra (the Mountain).

These bold and unprecedented decisions reversed four decades of often demeaning and ethnocentric misjudgements by earlier district and appeals court judges that continued to ignore the unresolved due process and equal protection problems of the case. The Lobato trilogy thus marks one of the most significant recent developments in the Chicana/o land grant restoration movement because it reversed decades of ill-advised lower court decisions that unjustly terminated the unique place-based ecological governance of common lands across the Southwest.

The three decisions, it should be noted, were not based on the logic of any claims ultimately grounded in an appeal to the confirmation of the terms of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Instead, plaintiff's legal counsel in Lobato v. Taylor creatively and effectively pursued restoration of historic use rights by using the Master's Tools [sic] and basing the claims on adverse possession, estoppel, and prescriptive easement - a legal strategy we will have to discuss in a later post.

The hijuelas are the coveted deeds recorded in county court clerk documents that conferred title to private long-lots in the acequia-irrigated agricultural bottom lands and also granted use rights to such inhabitants of the long-lots to the timber, grazing, and wildlife resources of the 80,000 acre La Sierra commons.

Extensiones (long-lots) along the San Luis Peoples Ditch.

In an often overlooked passage in the third and final decision, the Colorado Supreme Court majority opinion noted the importance of this decision in terms that actually emphasize the value of the persistence of the acequia farming way of life:

The Costilla County landowners, whose property rights are at issue, are the present-day descendants of 1850s frontier farming families who were recruited by Carlos Beaubien to move north from the Taos area in New Mexico and settle in what is now southern Colorado.

Beaubien acted from self interest: without settlers, he could not perfect his rights to the one million-acre Sangre de Cristo land grant because the Mexican government made settlement an express condition of the grant to Beaubien. To convince these families to move north, Beaubien granted the settlers access to the wooded, mountainous area to graze their animals, gather firewood, and harvest timber to build their homes and outbuildings. Without these property rights, subsistence farming on the valley floor would have been impossible.

At trial, many current residents of Costilla County testified that, for over one hundred years, the use of these rights was widespread by the families residing in the region. These residents testified that it was general knowledge in their communities that the Taylor Ranch could be used to graze their animals, gather firewood, and collect timber. According to trial testimony, the mountainous tract purchased by Taylor had been known simply as "la merced," roughly translated from Spanish to mean the gift or grant. [Lobato v. Taylor, Case No. 00SC527; bold emphasis added]

Of course, the reference to "subsistence farming" is an allusion to the acequia agricultural communities that settled the land grant.

The old enclosure of La Sierra by Jack Taylor, et al. has been reversed and the commons restored in a manner that remains unparalleled across the Southwest or other parts of the world where such community-based land use systems have evolved and remain under attack.

Despite the victory in Lobato v. Taylor, the process involving the actual exercise of these rights of usufruct to La Sierra by local people remains contested and, sadly, is now also a matter of litigation. There is a wave of "new enclosures" that we are only now starting to confront. These struggles are related to the late arrival of high-end subdivisions in the privatized foothills below La Sierra.

Access to the Commons and the New Subdivision Enclosures

The principal problem in the current struggle is the construction of barriers by the owners of the Torcido Creek Ranch, Mountain Lake, and other subdivisions. These barriers have been erected on roads that have been used over six generations to gain access to La Sierra for the exercise of what are now considered Constitutionally-protected rights of usufruct.

Over the decades since roughly 1984, I have participated in numerous trips into La Sierra that involved riding horseback along various paths using the Torcido Creek trails. I have always understood that, before 2006, each ride I went on with my neighbors and friends was simply part of a deeply rooted and apparently renegade [sic] custom, a longstanding local tradition of trespass [sic] or more accurately, as the Colorado Supreme Court justices described it: ‘the continuous, open, and notorious use’ of the commons by the local people.

So, per the rationale of the Supreme Court, and local custom, this was not trespass but the continuation of a pattern of historic uses dating back to the 1840s and 50s. The people had not crossed the fence. Instead, the fence had crossed the people, as an elder retired sheepherder once told me.

Access to La Sierra Commons is frequently on horseback.

This access road and related trails have been used since the 1840s, well before permanent settlement -- originally by sheepherders and then cattlemen. All along, elk hunters, seeking food for the family table, have engaged in subsistence hunts. The subsistence hunt was largely criminalized as "game poaching" after Jack Taylor enclosed the commons in 1960 and the State of Colorado suddenly started to see dollars in sponsoring and regulating the business of trophy elk hunts and promotion of wildlife ranching.

The latest battle involves the principal historic and southernmost route for access to La Sierra through the myriad Torcido Creek trails. The main Torcido access road is visible in historical photographs as a county road dating back to before the 1960s and indications from those photos suggests the road and trails were by then many decades in use. Old-timers I have spoken with recount that the Torcido Creek drainage provided access to several important grazing and hunting grounds including, to the south and over the range crest, the upper reaches of the Valle Vidal in what is now public land in New Mexico. The Torcido was also a conventional route linking to the Cuates Creek drainage and its meadows and outstanding (now logged-out) subalpine spruce-fir forests. The Torcido also provided access to trails leading up and over into the Alamosito Creek meadows due north-northeast across La Sierra itself.

What the plaintiffs in this new case are alleging is that the subdivision owners and managers are interfering with the use rights of the heirs and successors since the road that has been blocked is a major historic point of access to critical use areas across the common lands.

The plaintiffs list, seeking class certification inclusive of all heirs and successors in the Lobato v. Taylor case, is led by Pete E. Espinoza, Jr., a rancher and former County Sheriff; Joe Gallegos, a former County Commissioner, San Luis Peoples Ditch Mayordomo, and Colorado Centennial Farmer; Juanita Martinez, a farmer and land rights activist; Shirley R. Otero, a farmer and former President of the Land Rights Council; and Delmer Vialpando, a rancher and current President of the Sangre de Cristo Acequia Association.

One key legal point in the initial pleadings will be the determination that the Torcido Creek Road has been, and should continue to be, considered as a county road under C.R.S. § 43-2-201(1)(c). This would help establish a bonafide basis for a claim of prescriptive easement by the beneficiaries of the Lobato v. Taylor certified class with access rights to La Sierra.

We will report on this lawsuit as it progresses through the Colorado district and presumably appeals courts. The principal aim of the plaintiffs, as recently related to me by three of the participants, is the need for the community to assert and defend clear access points and routes for access to La Sierra based on historic patterns of use in place since the 1840s.

My own interpretation of the significance of this claim is that it could have some unintentional effects that go well beyond the justly articulated issue of access rights to the commons. The presence and assertion of the "commoners" - engaging in their constitutionally-protected rights of access - may discourage the subdivision developers and investors from actually developing the various subdivision units affected by this case. Earlier efforts to resist the approval of these subdivisions as a threat to the integrity of the watershed of the acequias may also come to play an important corollary role shaping and informing this struggle as it continues to unfold.

NOTE: La Lucha por La Sierra occasional series is based on selected and revised excerpts from a forthcoming book that I am working to complete in 2011 for publication in 2012. If readers and followers quote from the materials presented in this series, I would be most appreciative that colleagues follow the fair use doctrine and include this source citation: Originally published by Devon G. Peña in the Environmental and Food Justice Blog (date); also forthcoming: The Last Commons: Endangered Lands and Disappeared People in the Politics of Place (Arizona, 2012) .

Sodexo Update

2011-05-19T09:10:00.000-07:00

Western Washington University drops Sodexo; UW students continue organizing pressure in Seattle

Moderator's Note: We are posting the following information provided by University of Washington students on a matter that is time sensitive. If any of you have been following the Sodexo Campaign on the UW Campus, there's a rally today -- Thursday, May 19 at 330 pm on the University of Washington campus at Red Square. This is a message from USAS, See below.

Yesterday, Western Washington University dropped Sodexo after students protested worker rights abuse.

The UW is now the only public university in the state where Sodexo still has a contract.

That's Embarrassing.

For seven months, the UW Kick Out Sodexo Coalition and UW United Students Against Sweatshops have been fighting to kick Sodexo off our campus for their countless labor and human rights violations.

After 27 UW student arrests, the support of 18 student groups, an ASUW resolution, a faculty letter, GPSS support, and community outrage -- not to mention documented human rights abuse in 5 countries -- what more does President Wise need to terminate our University's contract with Sodexo?

President Wise's excuses are old and tired, the time to terminate is NOW. Her backdoor deals with Sodexo must be stopped.

Join in the fight for justice at the UW Kick Out Sodexo's biggest rally yet! Tell President Wise to stop ignoring the concerns of her students and start holding human rights violators accountable for their abuses!

When: Thursday, May 19 at 3:30 pm

Where: Red Square

Questions? E-mail uwkickoutsodexo@gmail.com

And for more general info on the Kick Out Sodexo campaign, see http://kickoutsodexo.org

The Challenges of Acequia Farming

2011-05-18T15:05:00.000-07:00

Ghosts of the Coyote Adobes

The old and the new. It is a binary of course; and a quite old one at that. Ghosts can cross that divide...

It grieves me to report that the forces of high-end gentrification are starting to sprout across our acequia farm fields. Ever since San Luis and the other Culebra River villages in what is now southern Colorado were first settled, starting in 1851, the community has largely avoided three things: (1) permanent loss of private and common lands; (2) loss of acequia water rights; (3) and displacement caused by the aggressive infusion of wealthy newcomers and speculators. We have survived enclosures, gold mines, and logging deforestation of La Sierra. Will we survive subdivisions and gentrification?

Alpenglow sets old jacal ablaze next to the South Vallejos Ditch.

Locals here like to say we have avoided becoming another Taos. Most of the riparian long-lot farms irrigated by acequias are still inhabited by descendants of the original families that settled here. The high altitude; long harsh winters and short growing season; and geographic isolation all contributed to our community's alleged "underdevelopment." This has been a blessing, creating a space for the persistence and resilience of this bioregion's unique Indo-Hispano culture.

San Luis, Colorado is described as the "Oldest Town in Colorado," but I prefer to think of it as the "Last Town in Northern Mexico." It seems more accurate. Colorado did not exist when the Culebra villagers settled on the expansive high altitude terrain of the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant. This was New Mexico Territory and part of Taos County when the first irrigation ditches were dug out by hand across the sagebrush and blue grama prairies.

People in the Culebra communities have traditionally built their homes from hand-crafted adobe bricks and fashioned roof beams (vigas) and ceiling slats (latillas) from Ponderosa pine, Doug Fir, and aspen. As their families expanded, new rooms and additions were added, producing the distinct briocolage architecture of the historic acequia homeland. To this day, whenever possible people continue to use whatever materials are locally available.

However, many local people in the Rio Arriba bioregion can no longer afford the costs associated with today's adobe buildings that must meet modern construction codes. Instead, residents today are more likely to purchase a mobile home or a "modular" home. Over time, many residents lay stucco or plaster over the exterior of these prefabricated units and may even construct additions - new rooms, patios, decks, or storage units (dispensas). Over time, the prefabricated units become "naturalized" to the adobe vernacular - the structures start to look like the traditional bricolage adobe home.

The photo displayed below is an abandoned homestead located off the South Vallejos Ditch about a mile down the road from our home in El Rito. I know the family that built this home and they still live and work a bit down the road from this site. The home is not occupied but the land is still irrigated and grazed by livestock.

The original home was a flat-roof fuerte - literally, a "fort" and it had no windows and instead had "rifle holes" that the residents used to defend themselves. The original structure was built in the 1900s and the pitched-roof was added later in the 1920s, a result of Mormon influences from the West side of the Rio Grande. The home was abandoned during World War Two, reoccupied for a time when a veteran came back from the Viet Nam War, and then abandoned again in the 1980s. It now stands, like a sentinel, and is one of the many dozens of such abandoned adobe homesteads that I have come to call the "Ghosts of the Coyote Adobes."

Fuerte de adobe and Acequia Vallejos-Sur.

Then there is the 'new.' In this case, we have a 6,000 square-foot Santa Fake-styled McMansion (see photo below). This 'Silly Putty' monstrosity was built on one acre of acequia-irrigated land on the South Vallejos Ditch on a Colorado Centennial Farm located about a 100 yards from the abandoned adobe fuerte pictured above. But the overall ecological footprint is much larger and affects an entire 8-acre meadow of water rights on la Acequia Vallejos.

Of course, the progressive owners followed the latest in LEED-certified design standards and installed a large solar array on the ground facing due South. The carbon footprint of this new Taco Deco estate may be smaller, what with the solar array and special insulation materials used in construction, but the cultural ecological footprint is massive and of long-term consequence.

Santa Fake McMansion or Taco Deco Estate?

I read this not just as a sign of creeping gentrification but as a threat to the viability of acequia water rights. The intriguing twist to this version is that it involves a descendant of a local family with deep multigenerational roots in place. The heir has returned home after making good in the world about and becoming wealthy. This surely represents an investment in one's nostalgic love of place. But we've seen this before: Loving it to death.

The ghosts of coyote adobes wait near by; easily overlooked or ignored. Yet, they are stoutly grounded; quietly and unobtrusively persistent. Like the acequia culture, the coyote adobes will survive, transforming themselves to be sure, but always with an eye toward the realization of our ancient water democracy.

Reports from the Ground of the Food Justice Movement

2011-05-12T09:24:00.000-07:00

University of Washington Students Protest Against Sodexo

Twenty-Five Arrested

From the Mountains of Colorado. May 11. This past Tuesday night I received an urgent email from a former student involved in the UW Kick Out Sodexo Coalition inviting me to a vigil on Wednesday evening. I could not attend since I am on a research trip to Colorado. I am posting this report as my small contribution to this important campaign.

Sodexo is a major transnational food systems and facilities management corporation. It employs 380,000 people in 80 countries and it currently supplies the concessions at UW athletic facilities under a five-year contract expiring in June 2012.

The Coalition set a deadline, May 10, for UW Acting President Phyllis Wise to cut the contract with Sodexo. The President showed no intention of moving forward with the contract cut.

In response to the President's inaction, the students held a vigil on Wednesday night at 5:00 to wait for an announcement. The email invited me to attend and make a brief statement on the issue. Unfortunately, I am on a research trip to Colorado and could not attend the vigil.

The vigil was designed to encourage President Wise "to make the right decision about human rights and to mourn the University's continued relationship with a systematic human rights abuser." The vigil was organized as "an opportunity for the community to come together around food, music and speakers in support of students who have been pushing for this contract cut for over seven months, saying that we are aware that the decisions we make at this prestigious university, such as the companies with whom we contract, has an impact on the global community."

Now, I have learned that UW Police arrested about 25 University of Washington students during the vigil Wednesday evening after an hours-long sit-in by at least 50 activists at Gerberding Hall. According to reports from the students, they were cited for trespassing and released.

Over the past 2-3 years, the student-led Coalition has conducted careful and systematic research on Sodexo including interviews with employees who have confirmed that the company uses intimidation tactics to discourage unionizing. Outside the U.S., Sodexo has received international condemnation for denying workers basic rights like work breaks, full or overtime pay, and numerous other abuses documented in reports by Human Rights Watch and TransAfrica Forum. During an event organized by the Coalition, a Sodexo worker from the Dominican Republic spoke about being fired for trying to form a union.

According to UW administration officials, the union-busting actions of the corporation are insufficient as grounds for terminating the contract.

This is utter nonsense. Had I been present at the vigil I would have urged President Wise to embrace this righteous campaign. We have been here before and the boycott of South Africa, led in many quarters by college students, was a major force behind the dismantling of the apartheid regime there. As a result of the South Africa struggle, many universities and colleges have established socially responsible investment committees to monitor and respond to social and environmental values by using the power of disinvestment or proxy votes to bring about changes in corporate governance and management-worker relations.

If the University of Washington aspires to be a global leader in environmental sustainability and social justice; if it intends to be a serious force for democracy and workers' rights; then it must terminate its relationship with Sodexo.

Responding to pressure from growing student activism over the past few years, the UW has added corporate responsibility to the criteria it will use to evaluate contractors in the future. This is only one small step. The bigger and more meaningful step is for the UW to act immediately by terminating the Sodexo contract.

Food justice and food sovereignty demand this "wise" action.

Environmental & Food Justice

FOOD FIGHTS: Hunger Politics and Struggles for Autonomy & Resilience, Part II

Guest Blog: Farm workers, hunger, and anti-immigrant hysteria

Guest Blog: Grocers in a Box?

Guest Blog: Food Sovereignty for all Bodies

Guest Blog: Food Freedom or Food Justice?

South Central Farm Update: Leslie Radford on SCF and Occupy LA

Food Justice in the City

2012 Farm Bill: Zombies of the House and Vampires of the Senate

GEO Watch: Little Monsters

Klebsiella-planticola

The Gene-Altered Monster That Almost Got Away

Ecological Balance and Biological Integrity

SOUTH CENTRAL FARM UPDATE

The Blue River Declaration

GEO Watch: GMO-Free Seattle Events for World Food Day

FOOD FIGHTS: Hunger Politics and Struggles for Autonomy & Resilience

Blue River Ethic - Prelude to a New Environmentalist Call to Action

Canción de San Isidro

Food Justice in the City

EJ Victory: Kettleman City Activists and Chem Waste Corp.

GEO Watch: Update on Monsanto Drought-Ready Corn

Thanatopolitics and the deepening crisis of capitalism

GEO Watch: Court ruling may allow suits against transgenic crops

Obama Administration issues MOU on EJ

La lucha por la sierra: Acequiero aesthetics

Food Justice in the City

South Central Farm Update: Environmental Justice Leader Writes Letter to Jan Perry

South Central Farm: The Struggle to Restore America's Largest Urban Farm Continues

Sodexo Update III: Faculty Opposition Grows

Sodexo Update II: Please sign this petition

La Lucha por la Sierra

Sodexo Update

The Challenges of Acequia Farming

Reports from the Ground of the Food Justice Movement

The Gene-Altered Monster
That Almost Got Away