[Disclaimer] This video comes from an alternative source, and I must admit that I winced at the sight of using a video from a group called UFO TV Studios. But I did watch the video before posting, and the information is consistent with other research and reputable information about the growing food crisis. So I'm going to use it for the purposes of discussion. I will be careful about the usage of the word conspiracy, because as Noam Chomsky states in his documentary, I don't think there are a bunch of people sitting around in a board room somewhere plotting world domination. But it is evident that some jerk stumbled upon a loophole to get around anti-trust regulations and is exploiting the heck out of it while the rest of us pay for it.
You'll see why I made the decision to post this vid if you take a look at the Noam Chomsky documentary that I've posted below. The primary reason I've posted this is to illustrate Chomsky's point about control and media coverage to pose the question, why aren't these issues being addressed by the mainstream media? There's almost no mention of it, unless someone like Tina Fey or Jon Stewart slips it into a snippet of their writing and commentary. And issues like food production, peak oil, and the economics of poverty are certainly not made as accessible to the black community. Even for those who read, unless you have some sort of idea of what you should be investigated, most of the issues that African Americans are recruited to participate in are not made accessible to those who would benefit from this information most. Why is that? Take a look at the video below for a bit. It's fairly long, but it raises some very interesting and legitimate perspectives from MIT professor Noam Chomsky.
Noam Chomsky: Manufacturing Consent
This documentary takes a look at Noam Chomsky's theory that the media is used to control the masses and keep them in a state of ignorance and apathy, in order to control those who would be otherwise undermine the system with their dissidence for fear of uprooting the societal norms that keep "the system" functioning. According to Chomsky, the media is used by those who set the agenda on what types of issues are advocated in the news to indoctrinate the 20% of Americans who are privileged and educated enough to get a higher education so that they can be controlled to support issues from which governments and the corporations who run them can continue to make profits. Chomsky also argues that because the remaining 80% of the "ignorant masses" are controlled and kept distracted with mindless propaganda, that those who fail to educate ourselves on what the issues are as guilty of the human rights abuses that happen around the world and in our back yard as those who commit the atrocities themselves. Check out this documentary and let me know what you think.
Is Chomsky right?
Or are there benefits to some of the institutions and industries that Chomsky puts under attack?
In reference to his comment that sports is used as a distraction to keep the workers ignorant and distracted, do you think this is entirely true? Could the fixation in American culture on drug use, relationship problems, fashion, crime, celebrity scandals, reality tv, entertainment vixens and the entertainment industry be included in this assumption?
I once saw in a play on BET where this lady owned a clothing store and one of the characters in her shop argued that the fashion industry marketed baggy pants to black men because they knew that they would buy into the culture and it would help to exclude black men from high level jobs. The idea was that those who don't go to interviews or maintain 'proper dress code' in certain organizations couldn't be trusted to hold higher level positions because they KNEW what was expected of them and yet still CHOSE to disobey the rules. I don't know if this is true or not, but I've definitely been more aware of the pattern. I was looking for more information about the play, but it's been such a long time I saw it, I can't seem to find it. But I did find a blog post written by a woman named Racine, which seemed to accurately sum up some of the questions and stereotypes I've had posed to me regarding black fashion.
I watched the parade on the fourth of July and I could not help but notice the fashion on display by young black men and boys. Nearly all the black boys and young men wore t-shirts that extended nearly to their knees. A smaller percentage wore pants so loose that they had to use one hand to keep their pants from falling to their ankles.
Now I am no expert on fashion, but it is my understanding that this kind of dress has its origins in prison-wear. If so, then the vast majority of young black males in attendance at Racine's parade were identifying with and glorifying ( wittingly or otherwise) prison culture and criminality.
Of course I wonder whether these fashion decisions will have adverse consequences. I can't imagine that they wouldn't.
I own a small business and I have a few employees. Because of the nature of my business, I must place a high level of trust in my employees. As such, it would be foolish of me to hire anyone who chooses to glorify criminals and criminality. Why take the chance when I could choose someone from a culture that does not glorify crime?
The real victims are the young black boys and men who reject prison culture. They would face unfair obstacles because they come from a subculture that glorifies crime and criminality. An employer, lacking information on the potential employee, may well wonder whether the young black man identifies with criminals. My guess is that it would be illegal to ask a prospective employee whether he wears baggy pants and long T-shirts or whether he glorifies criminals, so the question will go unasked and the young black man will not get the job. The blame in this case rests not with a racist employer but with a subculture that glorifies criminality (Racine).
I'm always surprised to discover the number of people who are aware of the history, and like the food they eat continue to participate in the aspects of the culture that appear to have the most destructive consequences. As African Americans, do we continue to engage in these behaviors because of some higher conviction that we have simply failed to communicate to the other "ignorant masses" or we simply playing to the systematic suppression of our true worth by communicating the projections that we are ignorant, are easily controlled and just don't care to rise above our circumstances? I think one of the primary things that concerned me, as one of the only [actually I think I am the only] sustainability minor in the Sustainability and Environmental Studies program, was why there wasn't more participation in communities of people of color and the answer that I received was that African Americans simply weren't interested in being participants.Alternatively, UrbanHarvest.org defines permaculture as:
As ignorant as people are of how beneficial learning how to sustainably provide for one's own needs, it seems that people who didn't want to struggle anymore would be lining up to learn more about what actions they can take, on a community level and in their personal lives to eliminate some of the external factors that have been holding them back for so many years. The system tells frequently tells us what we must and cannot do. But for those who are constantly torn between having to choose between assimilation into American identity and preserving the aspects of mainstream urban culture that are considered to be fun, but puts the African American community under scrutiny, I wonder if the illusion we uphold that makes us think that we must choose between the two ends of the spectrum is, in itself, a form of indoctrination. But it seems as if this form of mental anguish and confusion is not something that we can entirely blame the media for perpetuating. Some of the greatest criticisms that I have heard in my own life, regarding choosing a path of ethics and identity separate from both the idealized perception of what it means to be a good African American has come from other African Americans.
I once went to a beauty salon where the shop keeper was working on a woman who was absolutely disgusted that she had spent money on her son's college tuition at a school where he started off in the pre-law program and ended up graduating in Agro-forestry. Her complaint was, "I didn't send him all the way to school to go $40,000 into debt so that he could become a darn farmer. What the heck has he been doing up there?" --[of course the expletives have been edited for academic purposes].
At the time I was 14. I had no clue what agro-forestry was. I wish I had. I just assumed he'd probably been up at school learning how to grow weed in his parents basement or something. Turns out, he had entered a field that is becoming crucial in the development of alternative food production and the development of perma-culture techniques. John Nzira a permaculturist from Zimbabwe wrote an easy to follow Permaculture Training Manual "for individuals and communities wanting to ensure sustainable food security and better health."John Nzira is an African permaculture pioneer and is well-known and awarded internationally for his work. He inspires us all to take responsibility for developing sustainable livelihoods and increased self-sufficiency. (As food prices rise, it makes sense to invest time in gardens that will save money and make us healthier!)
FROM THE BOOK: “Permaculture encourages us to think more holistically by considering all the participants and resources in an environment and the way they relate to each other and learning to spend time imagining the consequences of our actions on the future of a particular environment or community. Permaculture does all this without the use of too many external resources. Instead, it tries to use affordable technology and seed, organic fertilizers and natural pesticides. It also promotes food consumption close to the source to cut on energy costs associated with storage and long distance transport and the loss of nutritional quality.”
FROM THE CONTENTS PAGE: Permaculture principles and designing. Planning your garden, and planning for dietary needs. Trees and shrubs, vegetables and crops, herbs and medicinal plants, small livestock. Soil in your garden and steps for improvement. Mixing growing plants. Water sources, irrigation and conservation. Increasing plants for your garden. Manage pests, diseases and weeds.Harvesting crops. Seeds collection and storage.Recipes and food preparation (Ukuvuna.org).
ISBN 978-0-9802550-6-5 To Find out more about Nzira's book, click here.
There have been other movements, such as the sustainability and permaculture movements, that have been made to try and revolutionize how we think of ourselves as members of American Society as well as the contributions that we make to our community. They are run by those that we scrutinize for not being members of our community and yet; these are the very groups of people that we tend to isolate and alienate from teaching us the skills that we can use to develop our own autonomy and sense of freedom because we allow ourselves to be intimidated by the history of events we have not learned to fully investigate and understand.
Permaculture:
an ecological, holistic and sustainable design system and philosophy for human living spaces. It is a viable method for finding sustainable solutions to modern problems. It has been successfully used around the world to maximize food production, regenerate springs, cool homes without air conditioning, revive deserts, transform lives, reorganize towns and neighborhoods, reduce pollution, and much else. The essence of permaculture is summed up by 3 ethical principles:
Care of the Earth
Care of the People
Share the Surplus
Permaculture designers are often asked what permaculture is about and why it is important. Since our design curriculum to achieve basic understanding is 90 hours long, this is by no means an easy subject to explain in a few words. The term permaculture was coined by Australian Bill Mollison to refer to a nature-inspired design philosophy for creating permanent cultures by assuring their prerequisite— permanent, that is sustainable, agriculture. Mollison was concerned decades ago about the unsustainable nature of our fossil fuel economy. An as a forester, he was impressed with the stability and productivity of mature forests. He believed that humans could profitably copy many of the ideas we get from observing nature and applying them in gardens, towns, and structures we create.
But an etymology—permanent culture--is by no means a definition. Broadly, permaculture is an effort to reduce labor needed and energy consumed in all aspects of human endeavor so that scarce resources are used to their max and waste is absolutely minimized. One concomitant of the effort to reduce waste and energy use is the effort to produce as much food as possible as close to where one lives as is practical. But wherever people directly or indirectly use a lot of energy, you will find useful insights from permaculture.
The perma-cultural method borrows heavily from a very accurate understanding of ecology, the efficiencies nature creates, and an effort to understand all technologies ancient and modern that might help (Urban).
To read more about the origins of permaculture click here.
Many of these people are members of small local communities who invest their identity upon their ability to bring a sense of worth and added value to what they can collectively provide to meet the community's needs. By teaching concepts such as community resilience, cooperative learning and vocational re-skilling they are able to teach those within their communities the resources they need to educate those within the community who do not have access to uncontaminated food, a marketable set of vocational skills, community business ethics, etc. how to provide for the basic needs of the community through actions that can be made on a household scale.
This article written by Chris Carlsson from the website: Shareable Cities, which shares many methods of community building that African Americans may not be aware of, discusses the dynamics of what a shared community actually DOES look like, in contrast to the way that many urban spaces have currently been cultivated to create isolation and seperation from one another... something we should be familiar with --projected through the African Diaspora.
Can you tell me what's missing from this picture?Source: Shareable Cities
But more importantly, can you tell me why?
Cities are shared spaces. That’s why we gather, in part, to share basic infrastructure, to socialize, to satisfy our human instinct to congregate, to make culture together. The call for a Shareable City simultaneously inspires us to imagine a transformed urban culture but also to notice the invisible ways we already share life all the time. Perhaps you’ve “borrowed” that proverbial “cup of sugar” from your neighbor? Helped an elder cross a street? Stopped to help a lost traveler get their bearings?
In fact, we cooperate automatically all day long, and a great deal of that invisible mutual aid takes the form of sharing information. Our social connections are often solidified through the sharing of food and drink. Sharing just comes naturally.
To pose the question, “What is a Shareable City?” implies that something’s been lost along the way. As cities and the lives within them have modernized, we’ve become more atomized and individualized. Concomitantly the remaining social wealth held in common—schools, libraries, parks— are unrelentingly pressured towards privatization. We’ve lived through a sustained period of history in which the pendulum has swung away from sharing and towards selling. Service providers have replaced extended families, fast food joints the dining room table.
And yet the Shareable City is resilient because sharers abound, and every act of sharing is an affirmative act of transformation. Instead of looking at the world in terms of what it owes her, the city sharer is excited to provide, to nurture, to enrich city life in general. Friends who share kitchen appliances, or teach each other to fix a sewing machine, or a bicycle, or even a car, are expanding a web of practical and pleasurable connections. These acts build familiarity and trust, two crucial ingredients for the deeper changes to come.
I live in San Francisco. Back in January several dozen neighbors along a 4-block stretch of Harrison Street—near where I live on Folsom—banded together under the name Mission Roots to dig up sidewalks and plant drought-tolerant plants. Taken individually, plants on a sidewalk don’t seem terribly significant. But when so many people did it together, they not only were able to garner resources from the City and local businesses, but they also held what seemed like a modern-day barn-raising, with folks helping each other, getting to know neighbors, and starting to erode that strange anonymity that characterizes urban life.
While their weekend-long de-paving will leave a lasting legacy for generations to come, their name could only be read ironically, in light of the fact that nearly all of the participants were relatively recent arrivals, mostly white or Asian, and mostly homeowners.
Going back at least half a century, the Mission neighborhood has been a predominantly Latino, working-class district (even earlier it was mostly Irish and Italian with some Germans, but very much an industrial working class neighborhood). In this neighborhood, the people with the deepest roots are the gangsters on the corners selling drugs, who are often third- or fourth-generation San Franciscans. One of the great challenges to the Shareable City is how we begin to connect across the class, age, and race barriers that divide us. We live in a neighborhood with multiple overlapping populations who often don’t speak to one another, and quite often don’t even see one another.
The problem goes deeper, having to do with issues of private property, displacement, and gentrification. The gentrification process—the more-wealthy buying up homes and displacing the less-wealthy—has had a devastating effect on the social and cultural fabric of San Francisco, especially in the Mission.
Gentrification pits people against each other in a game of domination: homeowners confront renters, ethnic groups and social classes scramble for advantage, families face different pressures than single people. It’s a process that played out in cities across the United States as housing markets overheated, and inner city neighborhoods suddenly became chic once again.
With the ugly twins of foreclosures and unemployment both on the rise, displacement is more than ever a social issue, a force that breaks the ties that hold us together. Everyone needs a place to live, and I'm disinclined to blame individuals who have recently moved in for a system where we're all in it basically for ourselves. Now that we're here, and the neighborhood (and our city) is in flux, isn't it incumbent on all of us to reach out, to find a way to overcome a paradigm of scarcity and replace it with the kind of barn-raising, garden-planting sociability I saw in January?
This is where Shareable City comes in, an affirmative and assertive cultural effort to expand the realm of sharing, cooperation, mutual aid, and solidarity. This starts with such simple acts as sharing tomatoes from our gardens, or taking the time to help a friend fix a bicycle’s flat tire.
But it’s a deeper concept that implies a more profound social agenda too. Our efforts are directed towards repairing a social fabric that has been torn by decades of dog-eat-dog-ism, by the endless mantra that everything has to “pay for itself.” The small acts of everyday generosity, whether sharing food with the men waiting for work on a corner, or even just striking up a friendly conversation with people you don’t normally talk to, are the starting point for a new convivial urban life.
The Shareable City describes an emergent social movement in addition to describing common activities familiar to anyone and that have long made up the complex web of urban life. A Shareable City is a rebuke to a madly speeded-up world full of stupid work done badly. It is a repudiation of an isolated, stingy, fearful life. It is a generous embrace of abundance and trust, seeing the glass as endlessly refilling instead of ceaselessly draining.
A Shareable City is a project that expands before us. We have much to build on, to be sure. But as a concept it is like revolution, both a process and a direction, but never an end state. It’s something we do, and can do much better. And it’s not something we can do alone. Take an inventory of the many ways you’re sharing already and then imagine extending and expanding those activities. How much better can life be in a Shareable City? The sky’s the limit (Carlsson)!
Will Allen is one of the people helping to lead not a mere ‘food movement,’ but something much larger: an agrarian reformation. the way. He is in the company of thousands of other Millennial Agrarians, a class of citizens on the rise (McFadden).
Below I've posted a youtube video about a marketing plan for the Milwaukee organization, Growing Power, which was started by former basketball player Will Allen. Allen was able to make a significant impact in the urban community of Milwaukee by setting up a space to teach urban farming and permaculture techniques in order to bring back safe and affordable food to those who could not previously access it.
While Allen was no Magic Johnson or Lebron James; he doesn't have his own line of sneakers. Allen seems to have found a way to leave a very lasting and valuable impact upon increasing the social and economic resilience of his local community. Through his urban gardening and educational program Growing Power, Allen has been able to transform his local community by sharing his easily acquired knowledge and a small three acre plot of land to help boost the economic development and resilience of his local community. For his efforts, Allen is widely respected by educators, progressives and activists who hope to learn how to transform their own communities, and the lessons that he teaches have been used to build and improve local food production facilities across the nation --and increase food security efforts around the world. And my guess is, most of you have probably never even heard of him even though he is the one African American probably most deserving of receiving an Image Award. You can learn more about Will Allen's efforts through other videos posted on youtube as well as checking out his documentary called Fresh which is not available in movie theaters.
Are you using your gifts well? What kind of efforts and skills could develop to help you make your own lifestyle more sustainable or increase the economic resilience of YOUR community? Don't know the answer to that question?
Check out this report on Building Sustainable Communities online (PDF format). Don't have the computer capabilities to read in PDF, a text version is also available for you to read.
You can also check out the Community Sustainability Assessment Scorecard [@ NO COST] to see if there is more that you could be doing to better provide for your community's needs.
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