Book Release Party and Smoothie Lab Anniversary
Freedom Voices and Reimagine invite you to join us in supporting the new book
Until the Streets of the Hood Flood with Green
The story of the Electric Smoothie Lab Apothecary (TESLA)
Please support the work TESLA is doing in connecting and growing community while offering vital nutrition and education for our children.
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Farmworkers—The Basis and Bottom of the Food Chain
By Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern and Christy Getz
Events in recent years have triggered a reawakening across the United States of a movement that acknowledges the importance of worker rights and of protecting the livelihoods of this country's working class. Historically, however, one group of workers has routinely been excluded from the gains made by the larger labor movement, i.e. farmworkers—the people who weed, pick, harvest, and pack, often in 100 degree weather, while routinely being exposed to hazardous chemicals.
Approximately 700,000 farmworkers reside in California at any given time. Farm employment is unstable and the average farmworker is employed for only seven months of the year (nine months in California). For female workers the employment season is even shorter. Jobs are scarce, even during high season. In California, about 350,000 jobs are available from April to October and 275,000 from November to March. Historically, migrant workers returned home during the winter months. However, with the increased militarization of the border, this practice has become harder and many migrants remain in the U.S. out of fear even in the rainy season when they have little or no income. And although a majority of farmworkers are male, women and children are increasingly crossing the border and entering the workforce, as men can no longer maintain a seasonal migration.
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Heritage of Healing: Ecology of Hope
By Kelly Curry
It's a bright sunny Sunday and I'm sitting in my homeboy's restaurant drinking a cup of his rich, black coffee. With ceiling fans whirling overhead, the last customer, of the last rush, hustles out the door. He nods goodbye to him and then turns to me, "What are you doing today?"
I tell him I'm working on a series of interviews with guys who have recently been released from prison and are now working the land and growing food for the community.
"What a joke." He says, grabbing the remote and pointing it towards the wide flat screen overhead, "Those guys don't stand a chance," he mashes the mute button, "why would anybody hire a ex-con when they can have a guy with no record, never did anything and works hard? You know what a thief does? They steal...you know what a junkie does? They use. End of story."
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McDeath
By Amanda "Panda" Deda
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The Lie of Growth and the Power of the Small— Vandana Shiva and Gopal Dayaneni
VandanaShivaRadoiRPE-Arise20-1.mp3
"The growing "bio-economy" is based on control, manipulation and commodification of life… things like microbial factories that are producing industrial food products, that will make fuels and pharmaceuticals, seeds and now even species." —Gopal Dayaneni
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Dr. Vandana Shiva, the internationally known author, scientist and advocate for small farmers and agroecology, spoke with Gopal Dayaneni of Movement Generation at the David Brower Center in Berkeley, California in September 2013. This conversation was part of a series of conversations hosted by the group synbiowatch.org that expose the growing "bio-economy," which Dayaneni calls "an economy based on control, manipulation and commodification of life… things like microbial factories that are producing industrial food products, that will make fuels and pharmaceuticals, seeds and now even species." U.C. Berkeley, The Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, and the private corporations that are subsidized by it, are central to this developing bio-economy. The federal government and multinational corporations see the bioeconomy as a new frontier to be conquered.
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Occupying the Future, Starting at the Roots
Occupied Urban Farmland in the Bay Area Highlights Privatization of Public
Universities and Corporatization of Public Trust
By Diana Pei Wu
On Earth Day—April 22, 2012—about 200 people, accompanied by children in strollers, dogs, rabbits, chickens, and carrying hundreds of pounds of compost and at least 10,000 seedlings entered a 14-acre piece of land containing the last Class I agricultural soil in the East Bay. Located on the Albany-Berkeley border in the Bay Area, the plot is owned by the University of California Berkeley. By the end of the day, they had weeded, tilled, and successfully cultivated about an acre of the land. By May 14, when 100 University of California riot police surrounded the tract and began arresting the farmers, Occupy the Farm had cultivated around two acres of the plot known as the Gill Tract.
The Occupy farmers have laid out footpaths around cultivated plots, created wildlife corridors, riparian zones, and protected areas for native grasses and a wild turkey nest, and set up a library and a kitchen. They have planted thousands of seedlings of corn, tomatoes, squash, beans, broccoli, herbs, and strawberries, including heirloom varieties from a local seed bank. Other plots have been reserved for agro-ecological research. There's also a permaculture garden for kids on the other side of a gazebo of woven branches where wind chimes tinkle in the breeze.
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Restaurants and Race
Discrimination and Disparity in the Food Service Sector
By Saru Jayaraman
Walk into any fine-dining restaurant in an American urban center and you will observe: white workers serving and bartending; workers of color clearing tables, preparing food, and washing dishes.
Like the segregated buses of the Jim Crow South, the restaurant industry has reserved the best jobs in the front for whites, while workers of color are relegated to the back (unless they are bussing tables in the front). Both restaurant workers and employers admit that this stark divide along color lines is commonly accepted industry practice based on notions of skills, table manners, language ability, and appearance. Thanks to a legal framework that demands proof of discriminatory intent, this obvious form of segregation has existed mostly unchallenged until recently.
With over 10 million employees, the restaurant industry is the nation's second largest private sector employer—just behind retail—and the largest part of the nation's food system. The industry continues to grow rapidly, even as other sectors decline during the current economic crisis, and is considered a gateway of opportunity for immigrants and low-wage workers of color from all over the world. However, research shows that in the country's largest urban areas, only about 20 percent of all restaurant industry jobs provide living wages and benefits. (There are some instances of waiters and bartenders at fine-dining places in urban centers earning between $50,000 and $150,000 annually.)
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Related Resources EJ & CJ
ARTICLES ON ENVIRONMENTAL AND CLIMATE JUSTICE
Los Angeles Coalition Wins Health Clinic and Jobs from Developer
Greening for All
"Detroit Shall Burn No More!" Incinerator Fight Heats Up
By Jeff Conant
Rebecca Solnit on Climate Change
By Dayton Martindale
Introduction: Catalyst or Catastrophe?
By B. Jesse Clarke
Arise! Introduction by Jess Clarke
Mililani Trask: Indigenous Views
By Mililani Trask
Fact Sheet: Deadly Air Pollutants
Pittsburgh Youth Promote Environmental Justice
Energy Policy and Inner City Abandonment
By Carl Anthony
Contaminated Contracting in Post-Katrina New Orleans
By Rita J. King
Connecting Struggles Across Issues and Borders
By Virali Gokaldas
Environmental & Climate Justice Research
No Coal in Oakland, A Report on the Campaign
Source: No Coal in Oakland
ReGeneration: Young People Shaping Environmental Justice
Source: The Movement Strategy Center
Source: PRRAC
Source: Institute of Urban Planning
Good, Green, Safe Jobs: The Los Angeles Green Retrofit and Workforce Program
Source: UCLA-LOSH
NO REDD!
Source: The Indigenous Environmental Network
Building Healthy Communities from the Ground Up: Environmental Justice in California
Source: Communities for a Better Environment
Driving Change: Reducing Vehicle Miles Traveled in California
Source: Public Policy Institute of California
The Color of Food
Source: Applied Research Center
California at the Crossroads: Proposition 23, AB 32, and Climate Change
Source: Berkley Law University of California
AB 32 Could Save Billions in Energy Costs Study finds household savings up to $670 in 2020
Source: Center for Resources and Solutions
Source: Lawyers's Committee
SB 375 Impact Analysis Report
Source: Climate Plan
Toxic Waste and Race at 20
Source: United Church of Christ
Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States
Environmental Justice and the Green Economy
Source: EJ Stimulus
Source: Metropolitan Transportation Commission
Other Worlds are Possible: Human Progress in an Age of Climate Change
Source: The New Economics Foundation)
Climate Change: Crisis and Challenge
Source: Global Justice Ecology Projecta>
A Climate of Change: African Americans, Global Warming, and a Just Climate Policy for the U.S.
Source: Redefining Progress
The Climate Gap: Inequalities in How Climate Change Hurts Americans & How to Close the Gap
Source: University of Southern California College
Subprime Carbon? Re-thinking the World's Largest New Derivatives Market
Source: Friends of Earth
The Impacts of Sea-Level Rise on the California Coast
Source: California Climate Change Center
National Security and the Threat of Climate Change
Source: Center for Naval Analyses
What You Eat Affects Climate Change
Source: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Seeing People Through the Trees: Scaling up Efforts to Advance Rights and Address Poverty, Conflict and Climate Change
Source: The Rights and Resources Initiative
Looking Both Ways
Source: ACRJ
Coal Fact Sheet
Source: MIT Energy Club