Dear Friends:
Long before the Obamas put in a vegetable garden at the White House (pretty amazing, right!), city-wide volunteers and members of the Alemany Community were working hard to make the Farm a living example of neighborhood empowerment, food security, and ecological sustainability.
The seeds of that labor are receiving some gratifying recognition this week.
On Saturday, March 28, Alemany Farm will be recognized (along with Tom Ammiano) at the Bernal Heights Neighordhood Center’s 30th Birthday Bash. This should be a really fun event, and we hope you can join us at the Bay View Boat Club beginning at 7 PM. Tickets start at $30. For more info, visit: http://www.bhnc.org/hpEvent/40234612.html or call Mei Le at 415.206.2140 x148.
And in a recent essay in The Nation magazine, SF-based writer Rebecca Solnit, thinking about how progressives can and should respond to the financial crisis, plugs our little operation as part of the solution:
“Organic, urban, community-assisted and guerrilla agriculture are still small parts of the picture, but effective ones–a revolt against what transnational corporate food and capitalism generally produce. This revolt is taking place in the vast open space of Detroit, in the inner-city farms of West Oakland, in the victory gardens and public-housing of Alemany Farm in San Francisco, in Growing Power in Milwaukee and many other places around the country. These are blows against alienation, poor health, hunger and other woes fought with shovels and seeds, not guns. At its best, tending one’s garden leads to tending one’s community and policy, and ultimately becomes a way of entering the public sphere rather than withdrawing from it.”
You can read the whole article at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090323/solnit
… Stay part of that revolution on our upcoming workdays: Sat, March 28; Sun, April 5; Sat, Apr 11; and Sat, Apr 18.
Peace,
The Farm Team