Thursday, July 2, 2009

spaces

(a potluck at Blackbird Gardens with Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) members and their families, circa spring 2007)


Where do we talk about food? Executive boardrooms, and Congress, and hopefully our dinner table. Where do we talk about social justice? In books, and blogs, and hopefully community potlucks.

But if we're talking about food and justice in general, I think it makes sense to have these conversations in a garden. The idea came to me while weeding the cilantro rows with Elena and Ken. With busy hands and relaxed minds, somehow the setting allowed us to dive deep into topics of gender, race, and sexuality.

One downside of working and talking, in any type of work, is that we soon came to the end of the task and needed to trellis tomatoes. However, because garden space is always in flux, it provides an evolving setting through the season for your conversations.

I often attended events hosted by the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice when I lived in Ann Arbor. They had "dinner and movie" nights for a variety of topics, from nuclear disarmament to the US tax-payer role in massacres in Latin America to food accessibility. What if the movie and semi-facilitated processing conversation at the end was followed by 10 minutes or so of gardening?

Community members could finish their dialogs while doing something productive. Growing food releases feelings of anxiety about the control corporations and the government have on our lives. Why not give it a try the next time you host company? You might get a lot done in your garden.

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