Small Farmers Key to Combating Climate Change
Media Silence doesn’t mean All is Well in Gaza by Amy Goodman
US Police Train Mexican Police to Torture by Kristin Bricker
Organic Farming Can Feed the World, say researchers from the University of Michigan
I just read Grace Lee Boggs’ introduction to the book ‘Revolution and Evolution in the Twenty-first Century,” an update of the book that she and Jimmy Boggs wrote back in the 70s. One of the points that struck me most was her idea that the “new American revolution,” must be the first social movement which fights not for a “higher standard of living,” but rather a “higher standard of humanity.”
The incident of a Wal-mart employee being trampled to death on Black Friday should be enough for people to pause and think about this. The fact that people continued to shop while police tried to empty the store upon realizing the man’s death should be enough to be cause anger and disgust at the rampant consumerisim in the country. Unfortunately, our “love of stuff” is so deeply embedded in U.S. culture, and with several wars going on that are claiming many more lives each week, I doubt that one man’s death will be the public’s wake-up call. For me, though, it is further evidence that consumption in the U.S.A. has reached a pervasively toxic, and in this case fatal, level that must be reduced to save ourselves and this planet which we share with so many others.
I found this part of a Common Dreams news article about the incident, Our Destructive Love of Stuff, by Leonard Pitts, Jr., to be very accurate:
“But it’s not just our common vulnerability to mob psychology that ties the rest of us to last week’s tragedy. It is also our common love of stuff. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a starker illustration of our true priorities. Oh, we pay lip service to other things. We say children are a priority, but when did people ever press against the door for Parents’ Night at school? We say education is a priority, but when did people ever bang against the windows of the library? We say faith is a priority, but when did people ever surge into a temple of worship as eagerly as they do a temple of commerce?”
Ay, this world we livin’ in. I’m hopeful though. Small, dedicated groups of folks all over the country are taking their lives back into their own hands, their communities back from destructive corporations and government policies, their dignity and autonomy back from an electronic box that continuously attempts to degrade them and convince them that by purchasing an iPod or a new car they can be redeemed. People are excited and laughing and sharing ideas. Small organic farms are popping up all over the place. And when you’ve got weeding and planting and harvesting to do, who would have the time to figure out how to use that new gadget anyhow?
I am hoping for this to be a useful tool in developing, nurturing, and building upon my interests and passion related to small-scale organic agriculture, autonomous social movements which utilize small-scale organic ag., the historical, political, social and cultural contexts and consequences of people’s relationship with land, possibilities for the future, etc.
Here I hope to document and research, engage and discuss, organize and deconstruct. I have the same excitement at the beginning of this project as one feels when patting soft, brown soil over a tiny seed. So much potential, so much life, where will it lead?
It will also be a reconciliation.
Radicals require roots 