[Sustain] Call Mayor To -Demand- Permanent Victory Garden

[Eric Brooks]

Hi all,

Gavin Newsom is about to get the most hypocritical, fake enviro photo op 
of his entire term in office and we must challenge him -hard- on it this 
time.

Please read the Guardian blog below and then call the Mayor's office of 
neighborhood services at 415-544-7111 to express your outrage at this 
sham, and demand that the City Hall local organic Victory Garden be made 
permanent, not ridiculously ripped out two months after it is put in!

Please forward this alert widely!

peace, Eric

http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/politics/2008/07/a_hollow_victory_for_urban_gar.html


      A hollow victory for urban gardening movement


When I first heard about current plans to build a "Victory Garden" in 
Civic Center Plaza -- which will be officially planted tomorrow at 10 
a.m. in a ceremony featuring Mayor Gavin Newsom and Alice Waters, the 
pioneering restaurateur who founded Slow Food Nation 
<http://slowfoodnation.org/> -- I thought it was a really cool idea. 
Here was the city of San Francisco giving some of its most prime and 
high profile real estate over to the urban gardening movement, which 
seeks alternatives to the fossil fuel dependent industrialized food system.
And the Victory Garden concept is great, conjuring up the collective 
commitment to our national interests that inspired patriotic citizens to 
plant gardens during the two world wars. Sure, the logistics of tending 
and securing the garden might be tough, but Newsom seemed to be making a 
commitment to put city resources behind this important symbolic statement.
Then I heard that they're going to rip out the garden in a couple 
months, in my mind reducing the garden to a mere photo op for our jolly 
green would-be governor. Ick. Just what this country needs, another 
hollow gesture toward environmental sustainability rather than the bold 
collective action that we actually need to tackle serious problems like 
climate change, resource depletion, and a wasteful, polluting, and 
ineffective global food system.

"While we would love for the garden to be permanent,it is true that the 
Victory Garden is temporary, and is being used as a demonstration and 
educational centerpiece for Slow Food Nation, taking place over Labor 
Day Weekend," event spokesperson Naomi Starkman wrote to me when I asked 
about the temporary garden (the mayor's press office still hasn't 
responded to my inquiry).
She said the Victory Garden project will seek out about 15 diverse 
households to plant more permanent gardens, something that it will be 
incorporate into the event in August. And she sees value to even having 
a temporary garden in Civic Center Plaza, for which her group is 
covering the roughly $180,000 in costs.
"The goal and mission of the Victory Garden is to spur to action the 
future of urban food production. By having the support of the City, and 
presenting a garden in City Hall's backyard, we intend to inform, 
educate and inspire citizens to learn to grow their own food and to get 
involved with local organizations doing just that. It is a huge civic 
statement that we hope translates into city-wide programs, indeed, into 
a national trend for cities to support this type of agriculture," 
Starkman wrote.
Indeed, if Newsom and other city officials wanted to make a real 
commitment to support this effort, they would pursue a citywide program 
of supporting community gardens (which keep getting ripped up 
<http://www.sfbg.com/printable_entry.php?entry_id=3337> these days) and 
doing a survey of what surplus city properties could be turned into 
gardens that might still be there after the television crews have gone.

By *Steven T. Jones*: July 11, 2008 12:16 PM


      Comments (1)

Eric Brooks:

Right On! We should all contact Alice Waters through Slow Food Nation
http://slowfoodnation.org/contact-us
and ask her to insist that the garden be situated in a permanent location.

This absurd and typically hollow Gavin Greenwash moment should be 
challenged vociferously!



-- 
"I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves." -- Che Guevara

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