Qaddafi Has Lost, But Who Has Won?
(This article by Patrick Cockburn is re-posted from Counter Punch.)
The civil war in Libya went on longer than expected, but the fall of Tripoli came faster than was forecast. As in Kabul in 2001 and Baghdad in 2003, there was no last-ditch stand by the defeated regime, whose supporters appear to have melted away once they saw that defeat was inevitable.
While it is clear Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has lost power, it is not certain who has gained it. The anti-regime militiamen that are now streaming into the capital were united by a common enemy, but not much else. The Transitional National Council (TNC) in Benghazi, already recognized by so many foreign states as the legitimate government of Libya, is of dubious legitimacy and authority.
There is another problem in ending the war. It has never been a straight trial of strength between two groups of Libyans because of the decisive role of NATO air strikes. The insurgents themselves admit that without the air war waged on their behalf – with 7,459 air strikes on pro-Gaddafi targets – they would be dead or in flight. The question, therefore, remains open as to how the rebels can peaceably convert their foreign-assisted victory on the battlefield into a stable peace acceptable to all parties in Libya.
Precedents in Afghanistan and Iraq are not encouraging and serve as a warning. The anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan won military success thanks, as in Libya, to foreign air support. They then used this temporary predominance arrogantly and disastrously to establish a regime weighted against the Pashtun community.
In Iraq, the Americans – over-confident after the easy defeat of Saddam Hussein – dissolved the Iraqi army and excluded former members of the Baath party from jobs and power, giving them little choice but to fight. Most Iraqis were glad to see the end of Saddam Hussein, but the struggle to replace him almost destroyed the country.
Will the same thing happen in Libya? In Tripoli, as in most oil states, the government provides most jobs and many Libyans did well under the old regime. How will they now pay for being on the losing side? The air was thick yesterday with calls from the TNC for their fighters to avoid acts of retaliation. But it was only last month that the TNC’s commander-in-chief was murdered in some obscure and unexplained act of revenge. The rebel cabinet was dissolved, and has not been reconstituted, because of its failure to investigate the killing. The TNC has produced guidelines for ruling the country post-Gaddafi, which is intended to ensure that law and order should be maintained, people fed and public services continued.
It is far too early to know if this is a piece of foreign-inspired wishful thinking or will have some beneficial effect on developments. The Libyan government was a ramshackle organization at the best of times, so any faltering in its effectiveness may not be too noticeable at first. But many of those celebrating in the streets of Tripoli and cheering the advancing rebel columns will expect their lives to get better, and will be disappointed if this does not happen.
Foreign powers will probably push for steps towards forming a constituent assembly of some sort to give the new government legitimacy. It will need to create institutions, which Colonel Gaddafi largely abolished and replaced with supposedly democratic committees that, in effect, policed his quirky one-man rule. This will not be easily done. Long-term opponents of the regime will find it difficult to share the spoils of victory with those who turned their coats at the last minute.
Some groups have been empowered by the war itself, such as the long-marginalized Berbers from the mountains south-west of Tripoli, who put together the most combat-effective militia. They will want their contribution to be recognized in any new distribution of power.
Libya does have several advantages over Afghanistan and Iraq. It is not a country with a large and desperate part of the population destitute and living on the margins of malnutrition. It does not have the same blood-soaked recent history as Afghanistan and Iraq. For all the demonization of Colonel Gaddafi over the last six months, his one-man rule never came near rivaling that of Saddam Hussein for savagery.
In Afghanistan and Iraq, the outside powers reacted to military success by overplaying their hands. They treated their opponents vindictively and assumed they had been defeated never to rise again. They convinced themselves that their local allies were more representative and effective than they really were. It is in the heady moment of victory that the ingredients are created which produce future disasters.
Amash targeted by environmental group
Yesterday MLive reported on a campaign by the Environmental Defense Action Fund (EDAF) to target Republican lawmakers who voted against new clean air rules.
The campaign is targeting several GOP Congressmen in Michigan, including 3rd Congressional Representative Justin Amash. The campaign is targeting these lawmakers with both billboard and radio ads.
The MLive article cites part of the radio ad narrative and a Media Release from EDAF, which states that the group is spending $300,000 on this campaign to target 8 Republican Congressmen from six different states.
The article states, “EDAF spokesman Keith Gaby said Amash and the other targeted congressmen were chosen because of previous votes and statements that indicate they may attempt to block the new clean air regulations.” However, the article does not source any of the statements or which votes that Rep. Amash made that they consider detrimental to clean air rules.
The EDAF webpage sites a Congressional vote in March that would have potentially cut EPA funding by $3 billion. The final vote in the House was actually on April 7 and the bill was HR 910. The actual legislation is problematic in that it guts some of the regulation on what are considered Greenhouse gases. Amash voted for the bill, which was introduced by Michigan Rep. Fred Upton. Anyone can follow the voting records of members of Congress at the site Vote Smart, including Rep. Amash’s voting record in his first year in DC.
What is disturbing about the MLive story is that it does not investigate any of the claims made by the EDAF ad campaign, nor does the reporter provide information about the actual voting record of Rep. Amash.
The MLive story also does not ask why the Environmental Defense Action Fund campaign only targets Republicans when 19 Democrats also voted for the HR 910. It is not enough to report that there is a campaign targeting Rep. Amash, the public deserves more information on the vote and what the EDAF has with political parties. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the EDAF gave more to Republicans during the 2010 election cycle. This kind of information is what the public needs in order to make an informed decision about the political process, something that MLive rarely does.
On Saturday, August 27, a rally to repeal Governor Snyder’s Public Act 4 will be held, with a canvass effort to follow. Public Act 4 is the augmented Emergency Financial Manager law for Michigan.
Plan on attending the rally, which starts at 10AM at 918 Benjamin Street NE. You can sign a petition there. Afterward, volunteers will head out to canvass for more signatures until 3PM. Michigan Forward is holding this event in partnership with the Amalgamated Transit Union of Michigan. Contact Claudia Hudson at chudson@atu.org for more information.
Participation and your signature are both vital, because few petition events have been held in Grand Rapids, and the EFM battle is heating up.
In EFM-run cities and school systems, the privatization of services is becoming a clear pattern. This dangerous trend takes long-term control out of the citizens’ hands completely and will be hard to reverse.
Detroit Public School employees were recently forced to take extra pay cuts and accept 20 percent of the cost of their health insurance in order to begin work in the new school year. A large number of DPS employees now make approximately $20,000 for a full-time salary, placing them below the poverty line.
Meanwhile, EFM salaries under Snyder go up to about $425,000 per year.
Even more troubling is Snyder’s demand to fast-track a court challenge to Public Act 4’s constitutionality. A citizen group represented by the Sugar Law Center of Detroit filed a lawsuit in June. Last week, Snyder asked that the lower courts be bypassed and that the suit be heard in Michigan’s State Supreme Court—one of the most conservative legal bodies in the United States.
Snyder doesn’t admit he wants the case in the hands of hyper-conservative judges; his issue is “that this lawsuit may take years to reach finality” without the shortcut. What this represents is one more example of Snyder’s total disregard for the democratic process.
It’s unclear whether the man himself can be recalled, but the EFM law is on its way to the ballot. But it needs Grand Rapids to push the signature drive over the top.
Song for Bradley Manning
(This video was re-posted from ZNet.)
Song for Bradley Manning was written and performed by David Rovics. Bradley E. Manning is a United States Army soldier who was arrested in May 2010 in Iraq on suspicion of having passed restricted material to the website WikiLeaks.
For information on the campaign to free Bradley Manning check out http://www.bradleymanning.org/
Is Stabenow really defending farmers?
Yesterday, MLive reported that Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsak and Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow were touring Michigan as part of an effort to reassure farmers that they would not allow “rookie members of Congress” to make significant cuts to farm subsidies.
Stabenow made it a partisan issue by saying that the GOP wants to cut $48 billion from farm programs, but that she will fight to make sure there is funding for bad-weather related crop damage.
Ag Secretary Vilsak said that farmers need migrant workers and that the current immigration system is broken. Unfortunately, Vilsak nor the Press reporter bothered to follow up with this statement on how the former Governor of Iowa would “fix” the current immigration policy.
The rest of the article included comments from two of the farmers in attendance. One was a Suttons Bay grape grower who is also Chairman of the Michigan Agriculture Commission, Donald Coe. The only other voice was an apple farmer from Oceana County, both of which spoke in favor of maintaining subsidies in the upcoming 2012 Farm Bill.
There are farmers and then there are corporate welfare recipients
As we reported in early June, Senator Stabenow held a hearing on the 2012 Farm Bill in Lansing, that was essentially a forum for agri-business representatives to beg for a continuance of millions in subsidies for Michigan.
According to the Environmental Working Group, $4.35 billion in taxpayer subsidies have gone to Michigan farmers in the past 15 years. What is meant by “farmers” has primarily been large agri-business operations that grow mono-crops like soy & corn and big livestock operations. In other words the small farmers who are growing food for local consumption are generally not the recipients of the Farm Bill Subsidies.
The 2012 Farm Bill is being lobbied heavily by agri-business, but what should be happening is a national dialogue on the kind of food system we want. This is exactly what the group Food and Water Watch has been doing, a cross-country tour where they talk with local communities and farmers about what a real food system would look like. Here are the major talking points they have come up with so far:
-Level the playing field for farmers
-Make markets fair for farmers and consumers
-Ensure food security by restoring the grain reserve
-Make healthy food accessible for all people
-Rebuild local infrastructure for regional food systems
-Make smart government food purchases
-Support new sustainable farming programs
-Promote environmental stewardship
-Require full safety reviews and labeling of GE foods
-Stop subsidizing factory farms and dangerous technologies
This is the kind of information the public needs, not surface coverage of politicians telling agribusiness people what they want to hear.
Katrina by the numbers – Six years later
(This article by Bill Quigley and Davida Finger is re-posted from Common Dreams.)
Six years ago, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast. The impact of Katrina and government bungling continue to inflict major pain on the people left behind. It is impossible to understand what happened and what still remains without considering race, gender, and poverty. The following offer some hints of what remains.
$62 million. Amount of money HUD and the State of Louisiana agreed to pay thousands of homeowners because of racial discrimination in Louisiana’s program to disburse federal rebuilding funds following Katrina and Rita. African American homeowners were more likely than whites to have their rebuilding grants based on much lower pre-storm value of their homes rather than the higher estimated cost to rebuild them. Source: Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center.
343,829. The current population of the city of New Orleans, about 110,000 less than when Katrina hit. New Orleans is now whiter, more male and more prosperous. Source: Greater New Orleans Community Data Center.
154,000. FEMA is now reviewing the grants it gave to 154,000 people following hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma. It is now demanding that some return the long ago spent funds! FEMA admits that many of the cases under review stem from mistakes made by its own agency employees. FEMA’s error rate following Katrina was 14.5 per cent. Michael Kunzelman and Ryan Foley, Associated Press.
65,423. In the New Orleans metropolitan area, there are now 65,423 fewer African American women and girls than when Katrina hit. Overall, the number of women and girls decreased since Katrina by 108,116. Source: Institute for Women’s Policy Research.
47,738. Number of vacant houses in New Orleans as of 2010. Source: GNOCDC.
3000. Over three thousand public housing apartments occupied before Katrina plus another thousand under renovation were bulldozed after Katrina. Less than ten percent, 238 families, have made it back into the apartments built on the renovated sites. Only half of the 3000+ families have even made it back to New Orleans at all. All were African American. Source: Katy Reckdahl, Times-Picayune.
75. Nearly seventy five percent of the public schools in New Orleans have become charters since Katrina. Over fifty percent of public school students in New Orleans attend public charter schools. There are now more than thirty different charter school operators in New Orleans alone. The reorganization of the public schools has created a separate but unequal tiered system of schools that steers a minority of students, including virtually all of the city’s white students, into a set of selective, higher-performing schools and most of the city’s students of color into a set of lower-performing schools.
Sources: Andrew Vanacore, Times-Picayune; Valerie Strauss, Washington Post; Institute on Race & Poverty of University of Minnesota Law School.
70. Seventy percent more people are homeless in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina. People living with HIV are estimated to be homeless at 10 times the rate of the general population, a condition amplified after Hurricane Katrina. Source: Unity for the Homeless and Times-Picayune.
59. Less than 60 percent of Louisiana’s public school students graduate from high school with their class. Among public school children with disabilities in New Orleans, the high school graduation rate is 6.8%.
Source: Education Week and Southern Poverty Law Center.
34. Thirty four percent of the children in New Orleans live in poverty; the national average is 20%. Source: Annie Casey Foundation Kids Count 2011.
11. Eleven New Orleans police officers convicted or plead guilty to federal crimes involving shootings of civilians during Hurricane Katrina aftermath. Source: Brendan McCarthy, Times-Picayune.
10. At least ten people were killed by police under questionable circumstances during days after Katrina. Source: Times-Picayune
3. A three-fold increase in heart attacks was documented in the two years after Katrina. Source: Tulane University Health Study.
Number unknown. The true impact of the BP oil spill in terms of adverse health effects is vast but unknown. Delays by the federal government in studying the spill’s physical and mental health effects hinder any ability to understand these issues with accuracy. A year after the spill, more people are reporting medical and mental health problems. Source: Campell Robertson, New York Times and National Geographic.
Obama and the Free Trade Lobby
(This article is re-posted from OpenSecrets.)
In his weekly address to the nation on Saturday, President Barack Obama said, “Let’s pass trade deals to level the playing field for our businesses. We have Americans driving Hyundais and Kias. Well, I want to see folks in Korea driving Fords, Chevys and Chryslers. I want more products sold around the globe stamped with three words: Made in America.”
There’s a pending trade deal behind Obama’s words. It’s called the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement.
Earlier this year, Republicans in both the House and Senate introduced resolutions urging the compact’s approval. And since then, hundreds of companies, unions and trade associations have set their sites on the proposal.
The Congressional resolutions are S. Res. 20, sponsored by Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.), and H. Res. 86, sponsored by Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.).
According to research by the Center for Responsive Politics, only a handful of organizations have specifically mentioned these resolutions in their lobbying reports so far this year.
Hewlett-Packard, the National Council of Textile Organizations and the American Jewish Committee are the only three groups that have specifically mentioned H. Res. 86 in their lobbying reports, according to the Center’s research.
Meanwhile, the National Council of Textile Organizations, American Jewish Committee, American Apparel & Footwear Association, Fashion Accessories Shippers Association and Travel Goods Association have all specifically mentioned S. Res. 20, the Center’s research shows.
But hundreds of groups have lobbied on the trade agreement without specifically mentioning either of these resolutions. In fact, about 500 companies, unions, trade associations and other groups.
Among the organizations that expressly mentioned “free trade agreement” in their lobbying reports are the American Farm Bureau, the Business Roundtable, Chevron, Pfizer, the AFL-CIO, Wal-Mart, General Motors, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and PhRMA.
Needless to say, these groups are listening closely to what Obama and congressional leaders will say next.
Libyan Deaths, Media Silence
(This article is re-posted from Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting.)
Allegations of Libyan civilian deaths as a result of NATO bombing have often been covered in the corporate media as an opportunity to scoff at the Gadhafi regime’s unconvincing propaganda (FAIR Blog, 6/9/11).
But dramatic new allegations that dozens of civilians were killed in Majer after NATO airstrikes on August 8 have been met with near-total media silence.
According to Libyan officials, 85 civilians were killed in Majer– a town south of Zliten, a site of frequent clashes and NATO airstrikes. There is no reason journalists should take this claim at face value. But reports from the scene suggest that something significant happened. According to Agence France Presse (8/9/11), “Reporters attended the funerals of victims and saw 28 bodies buried at the local cemetery…. In the hospital morgue, 30 bodies — including two children and one woman — were shown along with other bodies which had been torn apart.”
The AFP report included NATO denials, with a spokesman claiming that the target “was a military facility clearly.”
A Reuters correspondent (8/9/11) “counted 20 body bags in one room, some of them stacked one on top of the other…. In total, reporters saw about 30 bodies at the Zlitan hospital.” The New York Times (8/10/11) ran a 170-word version of a Reuters dispatch which noted: “There was no evidence of weapons at the farmhouses, but there were no bodies there, either. Nor was there blood.”
Amnesty International has called for an investigation, which led to this mention from CNN anchor John King (8/11/11):
Amnesty International is demanding that NATO investigate whether a Monday strike on Moammar Gadhafi”s forces killed 85 Libyan civilians including 33 children. NATO says it has no evidence of civilian casualties at this point.
A Nexis database search yields very little coverage in U.S. outlets beyond that brief comment. But that is not because no reporters were present. CNN correspondent Ivan Watson covered a mass funeral after the strikes. But his report aired only on CNN International (8/10/11). Watson reported a visit to “three or four houses that had been demolished by some kind of missiles from the sky.”
He added:
We were also shown a morgue where there were the bodies of at least 25 people. Many of them appeared to be men. There were some women and children included among those corpses.
Watson noted that it was “impossible for us, from this perspective, to confirm whether or not 85 people were in fact killed, but it does appear that at least some women and were among those hurt in this deadly strike.” (You can watch Watson’s report here).
Watson’s CNN.com report (8/10/11) included an interview with a Libyan who claimed that nine members of his family were killed in the attack, including his two-year old daughter. Watson also interviewed a man who was burying his daughter.
It is curious that Watson’s reporting was shared with CNN‘s international audience, but not broadcast to its domestic audience.
But Watson did appear on CNN a few days earlier from the scene of another NATO strike in Zliten. The point of that report (8/5/11) was to suggest that official claims of civilian deaths were suspicious. In that segment, Watson noted that on a visit to a law school that had been attacked by NATO forces, he found what “appear to be uniforms over here, these olive green pants. And then we have got boxes here that look an awful lot like they could have been holding ammunition.”
Reporting that undermines Libyan claims of civilian casualties has been a staple of the war so far– as evidenced by headlines like “Libya Government Fails to Prove Claims of NATO Casualties” (Washington Post, 6/6/11) and “Libya Stokes Its Machine Generating Propaganda” (New York Times, 6/7/11).
Is Majer being ignored by the media because it is just more clumsy Libyan propaganda? Or is it because the story might conflict with the media’s overriding message that Libyan civilians aren’t dying in NATO’s airstrikes? In any event, corporate media outlets that have so diligently sought to debunk Libyan claims of civilian deaths should investigate what happened in Majer. On the BBC website, reporter Matthew Price published one such effort (8/11/11), headlined “What really happened in Libya’s Zlitan?” There should be more like it.
This Day in Resistance History: Happy Birthday, Ogden Nash
Why include a light-hearted versifier like Ogden Nash in our resistance history review? There was a deeper side to a man whose poems were considered throw-away verse during their time. Those who can quote Nash’s witty short poems such as “Candy is dandy/But liquor is quicker” and his ode to the common cold often don’t realize that during his life, Nash openly pronounced the two-party political system as a fraud. He was also scathing in his assessment of the elite, corporations, and the corrupting influence of advertising.
Born on August 19, 1902, to a family originally from the South (Nashville was named after one of his ancestors), Nash was born in New York. He spent the better part of his adult life sneaking groundbreaking political thinking into his popular light verse. Some academic studies have compared him to political satirist Jonathan Swift. As one critic commented, “It would be a mistake to think of Ogden Nash merely as a funnyman…he has a Democritean streak which entitles him the respect due to a philosopher.”
Look at this take on the two-party system, excepted from Nash’s poem “The Politician”:
Behold the politician.
Self-preservation is his ambition.
He thrives in the D. of C.
Where he was sent by you and me.
He has many profitable hobbies
Not the least of which is lobbies.
He would not sell his grandmother for a quarter…
If he suspected the presence of a reporter.
He gains votes ever and anew
By taking money from everybody and giving it to a few
While explaining that every penny
Was extracted from the few to be given to the many.
Some politicians are Republican, some Democratic,
And their feud is dramatic,
But except for the name
They are identically the same.
In a poem titled “Bankers Are Just Like Everybody Else, Only Richer,” Nash exposes the cold heart of the banking system: to cooperate with the wealthy and exclude the poor from its services. He comments that in a bank’s “marble halls” it is impossible for someone to take out a loan for $50 to pay a hospital bill or back rent because “you must never lend any money to anybody unless they don’t need it.” But the scenario changes when a rich person enters the bank:
But suppose people come in and they have a million
And they want another million to pile on top of it.
Why, you brim with the milk of human kindness
And you urge them to accept every drop of it.
And you lend them the million so then they have two million
And this gives them the idea that they would be better off with four.
So, they already have two million as security so
You have no hesitation in lending them two more.
And all the vice presidents nod their heads in rhythm,
And the only question asked is do the borrowers want the money sent or do they
want to take it with them.
Nash’s poem “Lines Indicted with All the Depravity of Poverty” admits to some envy of those who have unlimited funds but takes a razor-sharp swipe at the indifference of the elite as they “spend money like water”:
If you are rich you don’t have to think twice about buying a judge or a horse,
Or a lower instead of an upper, or a new suit, or a divorce,
And you never have to say “when”
And you can sleep every morning until nine or ten.
He was keenly aware of the other side of the coin: the inequity dealt to the working class in their jobs. When asked to sum up working life by one interviewer, Nash said, “People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up.” His focus on the unfair advantages of white-collar work is also found in this pithy two-line poem:
Professional men, they have no cares.
Whatever happens, they get theirs.
Media and advertising were other targets for Nash’s scorn. He hated the pervasiveness and influence of advertising. He once noted that in our modern life, nothing had value except products. He quipped that, as a poet, he was therefore valueless:
Poets aren’t very useful
Because they aren’t consumeful or produceful.
Here’s Nash’s dry commentary on the wasted money that is poured into promoting products:
Good wine needs no bush
And perhaps products that people really want
need no hard-sell or soft-sell TV push.
Why not?
Look at pot.
He complained about the ubiquitous highway billboards of the 1930s in his short parody of Joyce Kilmer’s poem:
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Indeed, unless the billboards fall
I’ll never see a tree at all.
Found among Nash’s many verses on social life, marriage, children, and health problems are a surprising number of poems about political life, social justice issues, and the grip capitalism has in deciding the fate of the many for the benefit of the few. He honed his views through observation rather than current events; Nash hated reading newspapers. One of his most famous non-verse comments, in fact, is one that still resonates with perfect clarity today:
“I do not like to get the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong people.”
More than 30 people joined Our Kitchen Table (OKT) for the 4th Annual Eastown Food Garden Tour the evening of Tuesday August 16. After OKT’s Lisa Oliver King introduced OKT’s Food Diversity Program and community partner, Dr. Clinton Boyd, spoke to resolving lead and arsenic contamination in urban soil, the group began the one and one-half mile trek with stops planned at 14 Eastown neighborhood food gardens.
Many on the tour were amazed to discover the abundance of foods growing in the small front, side and back yards of neighbor’s homes. Bountiful garden plots, raised beds and recycled containers yield everything from the common tomatoes, herbs, beans and peppers to hops for homebrewed beers, exotics, like figs and kiwi, and berries—strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and even huckleberries.
Many of the gardeners on tour were beginners—though you wouldn’t know it from looking at their gardens. And, many of the gardens showed off plants received as seedlings raised from seed by OKT staff and volunteers.
However, the point of this garden tour was not to showcase local gardeners’ green thumbs. OKT is supporting their efforts as food, i.e. food security and access to healthy foods, is a justice issue. OKT believes access to nutritious whole, organic and fresh foods is every person’s right—not a privilege for those who can afford to shop in upscale grocery stores or eat at trendy restaurants.
Specifically, OKT’s Food Diversity Program targets Grand Rapids neighborhoods hardest hit by asthma and lead poisoning, both of which can be ameliorated by eating fresh, organic fruits and vegetables. Too much of the affordable food widely available in these neighborhoods is over-processed, high in fat, high in sugar and low in nutrients. OKT believes people in need should have more than a full belly—they should have regular access to the whole foods that prevent expensive illnesses like diabetes and heart disease.
The gardens on the tour prove that people can easily and inexpensively grow their own nutritious foods in the urban environment—a fact that the food industry obfuscates with media messages that make growing, canning and preparing food from scratch seem like difficult, time consuming and insurmountable tasks.
In addition to touring gardens at private residences, the tour also made stops at the Eastown Neighborhood Association community garden and the Barefoot Victory Garden Barefoot Victory Garden. At the latter, any neighborhood resident can pitch in according to ability and take home abundant produce according to need. Instead of personal plots, like those found at traditional community gardens, each raised bed is dedicated to a specific “crop.”
The Barefoot Victory Garden boasts organic, heirloom plant varieties. Heirloom plants are fertile, that is, you can collect seeds from them at the end of the growing season for the next year’s sowing. Most food plants and seeds sold at commercial retail nurseries are “terminator” varieties that are sterile and cannot produce seed (but can increase the seed companies’ profits).
As another part of its justice piece, OKT encourages growers within its program to save their own seeds—a practice deemed illegal by the World Trade Organization (WTO).
As part of its Food Diversity Program, OKT also manages both locations of the Southeast Area Farmers’ Market. The market at the Gerald R. Ford Middle School is open Fridays 2 to 7 p.m.; the market at Garfield Park, Saturdays 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. These smaller markets feature mainly backyard chemical-free growers as vendors and provide ample opportunity for socializing with neighbors.
OKT is sponsoring an Urban Foraging Workshop with The Bloom Collective on September 10 as well as a fall bicycle tour of urban nut trees and October workshops on building hoop houses to extend the growing season. For information, email okt1@gmail.com.
