FARMERS MARCH

A few hundred interested and concerned citizens gathered on the Lower East Side yesterday to show their support for major change in the food system. I went down with a few CSA friends to the Farmers March site--the amazing La Plaza Cultural community garden, which has been around since the mid-'70s and which shows what can be accomplished when people work together on the local level. The folks on the LES sure know how to do community gardens! We listened to farmers and community organizers speak on major farm and food issues, and while that might sound like more of the same, each speaker brought something new to the usual topics of land availability for new farmers; the costs of running a farm; the need for more (or less) legislation and oversight; the dangers of processed food, GMOs, and fracking; the importance of greenmarkets, CSAs and community gardens. What came through for me was the strong commitment of each speaker, their individual personalities, and the truths that they brought to us from their very varied experiences. A common thread was the need for rural and urban to work together because we have the same things at stake.

There was some anger, some sense of urgency, but also much positivity along with a simple do-it-yourself practicality. "Plant everywhere and anywhere," one farmer said; another advised that when we buy food we should have three criteria: buy local; buy organic; and buy family farm scale. Yet another reminded us that while we vote with our ballots on election day, we can vote every day with our dollars, and we need to make good choices and spend our money where it will make good.
After the speeches, we marched through the Lower East Side and down to Zuccotti Park, the OWS site. Along the way people on the stoops of buildings and in the doorways of businesses watched and took pictures of us and our signs. I overheard one father saying to his son "big farms...small farms" and I was glad to hear that. It was a long walk across Houston Street and down past City Hall, the line stretched several blocks (with police escort), and when we reached Zuccotti it was dark. The talks there were in a smaller, more intimate setting, and we joined in on the OWS mic check style of speaker-audience repetition, which was new to me but OK. It ended with a seed sharing, where beet, barley and wheat seeds (non-GMO) were give away for anyone to plant in the space of our own choice.


Today's Times carries this report and see this 50-minute video from Zuccotti Park.