Tag: Planting Justice

We are in the midst of a global pandemic, and our communities are deeply and directly affected. We, a coalition of Bay Area organizations and inter-regional allies, are committed to working diligently to ensure that the repercussions and reverberations of COVID-19 do not lead to more harm and violence in our communities, but instead offer an opportunity to reshape our relationship to safety.

All of these acts of violence against Mama Earth and her earth peoples are happening because the hard workers, the migrante indigenous labor that the multi-billion dollar farm industry relies on to pick, tend and distribute its products are being deported across the hate-filled colonizer borders. Borders created, enabled and enacted by the forefathers of the farm industry families themselves. To this violent paradox, I propose an emergency form of Ag-Reparations and Farm Sanctuaries.

The Qilombo Collective reclaimed a plot of land on San Pablo and West Grand that had been neglected for decades and put a community garden on it. Recently, they have been ordered to move the garden, and the people feel like there should be space in the city for people to learn, organize and work free of corporate pressure. So the fight is beginning to take shape, and on May 28, everyone is invited to the Anti-Eviction Block Party at the Afrikatown Garden.

As the corporate domination of our food, land, air and water continues and the resistance heats up to the monster known as Monsanto, it must be said that in the U.S. it’s us po’ folks of all cultures and ages that are getting the worst of it. Some obvious, most not. And no one is really speaking for us. “The poor people’s plate is rooted in capitalist hate for the three job working mamaz caught in the welfare state.”