Speaker 1: All right, welcome to it could happen here a podcast
Speaker 1: that is about fifty of the time introduced well and
Speaker 1: about fifty percent of the time us talking about how
Speaker 1: we're bad at introductions, and today it is it is
Speaker 1: just be Christopher, but with me is Hadley and Mike
Speaker 1: from Labilia Commons, who are here to talk about many things,
Speaker 1: one of which is there is the first edition of
Speaker 1: the Earthbound Farmers Almanac. Hey, Hey, how a how are
Speaker 1: you two doing today? I heard I heard there's maybe
Speaker 1: a thunderstorm rolling in. Yeah, we're doing pretty good. UM's
Speaker 1: gonna be glad for the rain, I guess, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it'll be good. We're gonna talk a little bit first
Speaker 1: about Labilia Commons. So how did that project start? I know,
Speaker 1: I know something from the beginning of the pandemic, But
Speaker 1: had you all been working on this kind of stuff before?
Speaker 1: And yeah, I just wanted roasty a little bit of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it kind of started um last year during the pandemic. Basically, UM,
Speaker 1: basically at the beginning of the pandemic, we had UM
Speaker 1: just like a surge of interest in these like kind
Speaker 1: of mutual a groups UM and the largest of which
Speaker 1: that formed in New Orleans specifically, which some of us
Speaker 1: helped form, was called New Orleans Mutual Aid Group, which
Speaker 1: was doing like food distribution. It kind of stemmed out
Speaker 1: of a project that was already um running like a
Speaker 1: food share, basically getting excess produce that was coming into
Speaker 1: the port and distributing it for free in front of
Speaker 1: like one of the gentrifying grocery stores. Um. But within
Speaker 1: like I want to say, like a couple of weeks UM,
Speaker 1: there was such a surge of interest in doing that
Speaker 1: type of like volunteer or whatever where that there was
Speaker 1: like a ton of labor to make it happen, and
Speaker 1: that basically meant buying tons of produce eventually because the
Speaker 1: ports eventually shut down and there wasn't any produce coming
Speaker 1: from anywhere at the beginning of mimic and basically buying
Speaker 1: tons of produce from like Costco, and that labor meant
Speaker 1: like waiting in lines for you know, wrapping around entire
Speaker 1: like massive like multi city block warehouse stores, um. And
Speaker 1: so that was basically doing like food distribution. So we
Speaker 1: took the opportunity to since there was so much labor happening,
Speaker 1: that we could go and start to adjust the question
Speaker 1: of like food production specifically and and try and do
Speaker 1: that in interesting ways. UM. So, we felt like it
Speaker 1: was pretty important to start like experimenting and different forms
Speaker 1: of food production and like like ways of relating to
Speaker 1: food production. UM So, I mean this this first started
Speaker 1: with like a, um, we're basically just starting tons of
Speaker 1: seeds and delivering them all over the city, um, just
Speaker 1: driving around from We had like one centralized nursery that
Speaker 1: was run out of the warehouse, and that was a
Speaker 1: ton of labor as a really time consuming. It was
Speaker 1: super centralized, and so we moved from that into a
Speaker 1: number of other projects. Um. Short shortly thereafter, we put
Speaker 1: together like a like a collaborative mushroom production group where
Speaker 1: we were um getting people who had been growing mushrooms
Speaker 1: and teaching folks and like doing skill shares to produce
Speaker 1: oyster mushrooms out of buckets. We started doing some like
Speaker 1: woodlock production of Chautaukis, which has like since expanded pretty dramatically.
Speaker 1: Um And yeah, just like kind of like things that
Speaker 1: that draw people's interests like that, and and and think
Speaker 1: about like how you can grow food in an urban
Speaker 1: or peri urban scenario fairly interestingly and like with joy um. Also, um.
Speaker 1: You know after this, we we were reached out to
Speaker 1: by folks that were like, well, I want to grow herbs,
Speaker 1: and rather than specifically getting like a lot and covering
Speaker 1: it in different herbal medicines, we reached out had already
Speaker 1: had folks reaching out to us. UM. So if someone
Speaker 1: came up with the idea of well, let's just all
Speaker 1: grow in like our backyard suns of herbs and let's
Speaker 1: find herbs that already grow abundantly around us to kind
Speaker 1: of collectively share the experience of harvesting and um and
Speaker 1: turning those into medicines. Um. And so now there's like
Speaker 1: this Herb Commons group that the labor is distributed. It's
Speaker 1: distributed geographically, um, but there's these like meet ups where
Speaker 1: they're bulk herbs are given up, Yeah, given out just
Speaker 1: like in a canal space and um. Yeah, like there's
Speaker 1: skill shares happening there in and there's kind of some
Speaker 1: community being built around that. Um that that happens in
Speaker 1: a very decentralized manner. Yeah, it's definitely very decentralized. There
Speaker 1: are working groups that are part of Lobelia Commons that
Speaker 1: I'm like not entirely sure what they're doing any given
Speaker 1: day or you know, what's going on. I'm involved in
Speaker 1: like a couple particular projects within it UM, and I
Speaker 1: think that it's really flexible for folks who are trying
Speaker 1: to get involved. They can kind of be involved at
Speaker 1: whatever level they want. Like, um, if somebody doesn't want
Speaker 1: to go to a bunch of garden work days or
Speaker 1: a bunch of meetings or something, which you know have
Speaker 1: been a great way for us to like see each
Speaker 1: other and see our friends during the pandemic and stuff,
Speaker 1: is to get together for these work days outdoors or whatnot.
Speaker 1: But if somebody wants to just like do nothing but
Speaker 1: sprout plants at their own house and then somebody will
Speaker 1: come pick up those seedlings and and you know bring
Speaker 1: them to one of our decentralized nursery spots, that's great. Um.
Speaker 1: That's one of the other kind of projects we have
Speaker 1: we call the decentralized nursery, And that's kind of like
Speaker 1: just something that people already do at a certain time
Speaker 1: of year. You know, gardeners will regularly start more plants
Speaker 1: than they need and then just kind of give them
Speaker 1: away to friends and neighbors and stuff. And we tried
Speaker 1: to just make it a little bit more of an
Speaker 1: intentional thing. Um. And this was also kind of growing
Speaker 1: out of like at the very beginning of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: and we were actually doing seedling deliveries to people, which
Speaker 1: made sense of that time, but it was like very
Speaker 1: labor intensive. Um. So we kind of moved to this
Speaker 1: model of having just like free stands in front of
Speaker 1: houses on street corners in different places. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: there's already like a bunch of free fridges around New
Speaker 1: Orleans and things like that, and so this is kind
Speaker 1: of like the free plant version of that, and it's
Speaker 1: really easy for somebody to just set one up. Um.
Speaker 1: And then that kind of also allows us to like
Speaker 1: work on this other aspect of of decentralizing food production,
Speaker 1: because like that's definitely one of our goals, right is
Speaker 1: to like not have a tiny percentage of population be
Speaker 1: the only ones who know how to grow food and
Speaker 1: doing it under the control of a tiny number of
Speaker 1: corporations that own all the land. And you know, obviously
Speaker 1: we're trying to get away from that food system, and
Speaker 1: so one of the ways we can think about doing
Speaker 1: that is finding ways to really decentralize some of the
Speaker 1: skills that are UM that are necessary. So for example,
Speaker 1: like if somebody's growing avocados for our nurseries, UM, the
Speaker 1: thing about growing an avocado from a pit actually is that, uh,
Speaker 1: that tree probably won't produce fruit. It actually needs to
Speaker 1: be grafted. UM. So we can have people starting pits,
Speaker 1: and then we're also you know, sharing the knowledge of
Speaker 1: how to graph these things, UM because we kind of
Speaker 1: like see a future in which a lot more people
Speaker 1: um will need to be involved in food production. But also,
Speaker 1: like Mike was saying, like, we want this to be
Speaker 1: not like a job that it feels like people have,
Speaker 1: but this joyous kind of thing that's just a part
Speaker 1: of everyday life. Yeah. One of the other things that
Speaker 1: I was I was interested in is you know, so
Speaker 1: so part of part of what I think the beginning
Speaker 1: of the Earth Performers Romanac is about is talking about
Speaker 1: how I guess people people have this tendency to sort
Speaker 1: of focus on climate change is just like the only
Speaker 1: sort of climate thing that's happening. And you know, I
Speaker 1: mean there's obviously the yeah, there's there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: sort of stuff that is climate change, but isn't the
Speaker 1: weather that are sort of you know, things like the
Speaker 1: phosphor cycle, things like the nitrogen cycle that are breaking.
Speaker 1: But simultaneously, I think it's it's also true that you
Speaker 1: know that that that kind of stuff, and this is
Speaker 1: also something that's that's talked about in there is is
Speaker 1: going to have a large impact both on sort of
Speaker 1: like even just what what kind of biomas exist in
Speaker 1: the in a very short term. And you know, another
Speaker 1: product of that is, you know, is that the sort
Speaker 1: of increasing grade of storms. And I was wondering if
Speaker 1: you all could talk a bit about what happened after
Speaker 1: Ida and how both just sort of in the short
Speaker 1: term in the long term, that the sort of the
Speaker 1: increase of just hurricanes. And I hesitate to call natural
Speaker 1: disasters because you know that there's there's a whole thing
Speaker 1: about how these disasters are sort of manufactured in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, but how how that's been affecting how
Speaker 1: y'all think are sort of thinking about and working with
Speaker 1: these kind of mutual aid projects and food production. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think with IDA, it's kind of complicated because, um,
Speaker 1: you can almost look at it, look at it as
Speaker 1: like two different storms. Um, because what happened in New
Speaker 1: Orleans versus what happened and say like home or the
Speaker 1: river parishes. UM, these areas that are you know, generally
Speaker 1: south and west of New Orleans, UM are are are
Speaker 1: kind of like two different animals in some ways, Like well,
Speaker 1: how up in New Orleans specifically relates to infrastructure. So
Speaker 1: like what you're saying, like the kind of quote unquote
Speaker 1: natural disasters thing, that's UM, you know, that's a pretty
Speaker 1: commonplace way of looking. I mean it's not a very
Speaker 1: radical UM conception that like these aren't natural disasters wherever
Speaker 1: the disasters is created. As soon as UM there was
Speaker 1: the attempt to create a colonial New Orleans in the
Speaker 1: first place. UM. So this became honestly part of like
Speaker 1: national discourse as a result of Katrina and most famously
Speaker 1: because of the Army cord engineers failure UM teven five
Speaker 1: and UM. So what happened this year UM was with
Speaker 1: with Hurricane Ida was the one of the main transmission
Speaker 1: towers UM for the the energy Energy Corporation in New
Speaker 1: Worlds is called energy outside of the guilt South are
Speaker 1: familiar with. So the entergy tower fell into the Mississippi River.
Speaker 1: You had that happening at the same time times that
Speaker 1: thousands of power lines fell down. The power lines are
Speaker 1: are are on poles and very prone to getting knocked
Speaker 1: down even just during the during any day of the week, UM,
Speaker 1: And so there wasn't actually really much flooding UM that
Speaker 1: was happening. It was it was primarily wind damage, so
Speaker 1: that the tower falls into the river, power lines down.
Speaker 1: You had something like I believe fifty five barges in
Speaker 1: the Port of South Louisiana falling into their falling off
Speaker 1: their moorings and floating around just crashing into things, just crash,
Speaker 1: and like there's like several ferries that connect the east
Speaker 1: and west banks of the city. Um, those fell off
Speaker 1: their moorings. So so like the physical infrastructure of the
Speaker 1: place and and how that relates to beyond New Orleans
Speaker 1: is New Orleans is located at the very um southern
Speaker 1: reach of the Mississippi Rivers Port of South Southern Louisiana,
Speaker 1: which is like a fifty five mile port I believe
Speaker 1: a fifty two um that processes like sixty percent of
Speaker 1: all U S grain going to exports. So it's like
Speaker 1: a massive, really really important piece of American capitalist infrastructure.
Speaker 1: So that's when when those boats follow their mornings, it's
Speaker 1: not like oh this like whatever point like by you problem.
Speaker 1: It's a very serious imperial problem. UM. But so for
Speaker 1: for the average person living in New Orleans, UM, this
Speaker 1: looked like I think I think it ended up being
Speaker 1: for most people around a week and a half without power,
Speaker 1: which if anyone's lived even with air conditioning in New
Speaker 1: Orleans for a summer, um, it's it's extremely difficult to
Speaker 1: live uh here during the summer. UM. It's that it's
Speaker 1: obviously not impossible when we have modern amenities, but when
Speaker 1: you're when you're without those, when you without the refrigerator,
Speaker 1: when throughout without the freezer, air conditioning, it's it's really
Speaker 1: really really hot, um, you know. Uh. So that's what
Speaker 1: was happening in New Orleans. There was some some damage
Speaker 1: to people's roots, there was some you know, fairly fairly
Speaker 1: substantial damage to the structures. But what happened to the west,
Speaker 1: in cities like Laplace, UM, which is about thirty miles
Speaker 1: west of New Orleans, UM, that's where you started to
Speaker 1: see like very severe flooding, very severe um damage to structures,
Speaker 1: places like Homer Lafitte UM. Porchean, all these places that
Speaker 1: are closer to the coast, that's where you saw the
Speaker 1: real heavy destruction. So a lot of people have been
Speaker 1: framing what's happened down the Bayou and in the river
Speaker 1: parishes as we would say, um as like those places Katrina,
Speaker 1: because it's the destruction was was so total in that way. Um,
Speaker 1: so the way that you relate to um that type
Speaker 1: of again quote unquote disaster is much is much different,
Speaker 1: whereas what happened in war lens Um is more of
Speaker 1: a continuation of what could be called like a series
Speaker 1: of apocalypses that have been happening since colonization. I think
Speaker 1: that's a that's an interesting point also that that that
Speaker 1: I want to talk about a little bit about US
Speaker 1: grain exports because I think that that's another part of
Speaker 1: this whole food system question that is important on a
Speaker 1: scale that I don't think people understands, Like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just for fodent background for listeners. So when when
Speaker 1: all of the sort of giant like free trade agreements
Speaker 1: went into effect, um, you know, so so the free
Speaker 1: tradermn are like okay, you're you're not supposed to be
Speaker 1: able to like have government subsidies of of agricultural products.
Speaker 1: And there's there's a couple of carve outs that were
Speaker 1: put into this now almost all of them. There are exceptions,
Speaker 1: for there's a couple of like weird manufacturing stuff in
Speaker 1: like Italy and Germany that have carve belts. And the
Speaker 1: other big one is that the US government is allowed
Speaker 1: to just do enormous levels of agricultural subsidies that no
Speaker 1: one else, like really in the world is allowed to
Speaker 1: like matched. I mean do like you know, you know
Speaker 1: if if if you try to have grand subsidies, right,
Speaker 1: it's like you know, the I M F will come
Speaker 1: after you, like you know, you're not allowed to do it.
Speaker 1: But then you know something that you have the US
Speaker 1: producing all of this like this. I mean it it's
Speaker 1: it's not it's not really cheap, right, but it's it's
Speaker 1: you know, this enormously subsidized grain that nobody can actually
Speaker 1: really compete with. And I think that's that's like an
Speaker 1: interesting I was wondering what, like how how how do
Speaker 1: you guys think about that in terms of you know,
Speaker 1: try trying to do decentralized I guess O your culture
Speaker 1: in a place that's to a large extent this sort
Speaker 1: of like conduit of grain to the rest of the world,
Speaker 1: but in a way that like also inhibits those places
Speaker 1: from actually you know, having their own kind of like
Speaker 1: essentialist agriculture. UM. I mean I can speak a little
Speaker 1: bit about like what that kind of does to our
Speaker 1: context of like making it, Like especially when I see
Speaker 1: people in the kind of organic gardening farming world trying
Speaker 1: to go on this model of like, well, we're gonna
Speaker 1: make you know, regenerative agriculture profitable, and we're gonna make
Speaker 1: it somehow compete with conventional agriculture. UM. And I guess
Speaker 1: I just don't really think that that is feasible in
Speaker 1: that in that terrain. Like you know, if if we're
Speaker 1: trying to compete on that same terrain and we're competing
Speaker 1: with these absurd subsidies, it definitely just the same problem
Speaker 1: that you see around the world where people aren't able
Speaker 1: to afford to grow their own thing because there's no
Speaker 1: way they can they can sell it as cheaply as
Speaker 1: as us grain. UM. So I think it's more important
Speaker 1: to sort of like look at like there's there's a
Speaker 1: piece in the almanac actually that sort of gets into
Speaker 1: this this issue of like, well, are we really growing
Speaker 1: enough food in in this regenerative way, Like you know,
Speaker 1: we we don't even hardly grow that many grains or
Speaker 1: that many high calorie things. A lot of things are
Speaker 1: just focused on vegetables and things like that. And like,
Speaker 1: I think that's a really important critique. And also I
Speaker 1: think that the way out of it isn't just gonna
Speaker 1: be us trying harder or something or um. Like the
Speaker 1: future I nvision for us, like really changing the food
Speaker 1: system kind of involves like really large scale expropriation of
Speaker 1: that land where the grain is being produced and of
Speaker 1: those huge machineries, those huge like satellite power or satellite
Speaker 1: directed you know, plows and tractors and whatnot that are
Speaker 1: that are doing this stuff. Um. And so like when
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think about like the impact that a
Speaker 1: food project is having or like a food this project,
Speaker 1: I don't try to think like we're trying to replace
Speaker 1: uh agro business on its own terms. I think like
Speaker 1: we're trying to be an ally or an aid to
Speaker 1: any kind of antagonistic sort of social movement that actually
Speaker 1: is going to create the conditions where like we can
Speaker 1: all get together and start to actually address these problems,
Speaker 1: UM without being hindered by you know, things like private property.
Speaker 1: So I guess that that that that's a good point
Speaker 1: to to jump into the Almanac from. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: do do you want to just introduce the project a
Speaker 1: little bit and then we can talk about some of
Speaker 1: the stuff in it that I thought was really interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the Almanac kind of came out of like a
Speaker 1: little bit of a like partially is like a joke.
Speaker 1: You know, we're like everyone gets the UM the almanac
Speaker 1: and kind of you know, it doesn't really relate too
Speaker 1: much to UM like most of us what we would
Speaker 1: be growing UM. So it posited something like different, you know,
Speaker 1: something that that does kind of grapple with some of
Speaker 1: the questions of you know, growing food and kind of
Speaker 1: the conditions we live in. Maybe you can speak kind
Speaker 1: of yeah, I can even just I'll actually just read
Speaker 1: the back of it because I think it speaks to
Speaker 1: it pretty well. This is a farmer's almanac for the
Speaker 1: end of the world. Growing food used to be a
Speaker 1: lot more straightforward when you plant your okra at the
Speaker 1: same time every year like your grandpa did. Now we've
Speaker 1: got to be ready for anything. Late spring freezes, freak
Speaker 1: heat waves that bring plants out of dormancy to early
Speaker 1: fire season longer every year, the polar vortex. And if
Speaker 1: that wasn't enough, we've also got to contend with the
Speaker 1: fallout from breakages in the global supply chain. When millions
Speaker 1: of gallons of milk get poured down the drain and
Speaker 1: mountains of potatoes are left to rock. It's a world
Speaker 1: that calls for a new kind of farmers almanac. Today's
Speaker 1: crisis has roots in the earliest moments of land theft
Speaker 1: against Native people's, a process that has continued alongside hundreds
Speaker 1: of years of slavery and colonization. The way forward out
Speaker 1: of this mess will mean grappling with the crimes of
Speaker 1: the past, as well as charting a new course guided
Speaker 1: by Black and Indigenous knowledge, creative experimentation and food production,
Speaker 1: and paying attention across generational and species devides. So I mean,
Speaker 1: what one like very concrete example of like how this
Speaker 1: farmer's on the neck is different than what you might
Speaker 1: see just from the standard almanac. Is um, you know,
Speaker 1: we we don't have like oh it's it's May, it's
Speaker 1: time to plant corn or whatever, because I mean, first
Speaker 1: of all, that that was never that useful as for
Speaker 1: a publication that's meant to be used across this vast continent.
Speaker 1: You know, it's going to be different everywhere, um, where
Speaker 1: you're going to plant things at which time um. But
Speaker 1: also like those standard resources that we would go to
Speaker 1: like for here, for the Southeast for example, or wherever.
Speaker 1: Like if you're looking at something that was made a
Speaker 1: few decades, know, it's not going to actually be accurate
Speaker 1: or it's going to give you undo certainty about where
Speaker 1: the seasons line up and things like that. So you know,
Speaker 1: instead of telling people exactly when to plant their seeds,
Speaker 1: we have a chart that has the actual German Nation
Speaker 1: temperatures of like all the major annual vegetables that people
Speaker 1: would want to grow. Um. And then we also have
Speaker 1: like the monthly notes from this local farm in New Orleans,
Speaker 1: so you know, located in this area, you can you
Speaker 1: can also get a really precise view of like, oh,
Speaker 1: they were planning this, then they were harvesting this. Then. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that we hope to make something that was
Speaker 1: you know, our our original focus was something that was
Speaker 1: specific to New Orleans in the region, um, you know,
Speaker 1: in the Gulf South and the Southeast generally, because we
Speaker 1: are so aware of the you know, the differences or
Speaker 1: what have you between growing through here and growing food
Speaker 1: in Ohio or something or whatever. And we all get
Speaker 1: these sames seats you know, out of Walmart or Lows
Speaker 1: or whatever, and try and grow the exact same plants
Speaker 1: all over the place to trying to um hone in
Speaker 1: on some of that local perspective. UM with me withally
Speaker 1: in terms of like getting some like folk tradition, getting
Speaker 1: some um, you know, anecdotal evidence about you know, things
Speaker 1: that worked with things that people are trying. UM. And
Speaker 1: but I think that that was that was fairly successful. UM.
Speaker 1: I think I think aside that we weren't really expecting
Speaker 1: as much was just the amount of national and even
Speaker 1: international UM kind of grasp that it had. UM. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people like could could use something
Speaker 1: like this in their area. UM. And it's fostered some
Speaker 1: really interesting connections for people that are experimenting in New York,
Speaker 1: for people that are are growing things or thinking about
Speaker 1: maybe UM food systems and how they relate to prisons
Speaker 1: in California or UM even you know as far away
Speaker 1: as Brazil. UM. It's kind of began to foster a
Speaker 1: connection between Labelia Commons and a group called the Bogus,
Speaker 1: which translates roughly to like the web of People's UM
Speaker 1: in Brazil, so called Brazil UM, where it's kind of
Speaker 1: like experimental agroecology project that's very specific UM specifically focused
Speaker 1: on UM, you know, sovereignty, land stewardship, kind of following
Speaker 1: a little bit in the tradition of the Landless Workers movement.
Speaker 1: If anyone's familiar with mst UM, it's kind of following
Speaker 1: in that tradition a bit UM, but is heavily stewarded
Speaker 1: by Black and Indigenous knowledges. Yeah, so I was something
Speaker 1: I think of a like a kind of pleasant surprise
Speaker 1: out of it. Yeah, I thought that was that was
Speaker 1: really interesting way of looking at it, because I feel
Speaker 1: like there's this tendency in the US, you know when
Speaker 1: when when when we talk about sort of our relationship
Speaker 1: to the land, which which is something that comes up
Speaker 1: a lot in in the sort of essays that are
Speaker 1: are in the all NEC is about you know, like
Speaker 1: there there there's there's a piece that I related to
Speaker 1: a lot, which is about someone from Guam trying to
Speaker 1: sort of deal with like I mean particularly like legacies
Speaker 1: or Japanese imperialism and being driven from their home and
Speaker 1: it was like, oh, hey, look like this this is yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, is this is this is someone who experienced
Speaker 1: which when Japan went west, and I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: my family had this basically very similar thing when they
Speaker 1: went east. And you know, but but there's there's I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think it's very smartly you get you get
Speaker 1: to a point very quickly where you're trying to grapple
Speaker 1: with you know, how do how do you build connections
Speaker 1: to land? But then also how how does that work
Speaker 1: in a context in you know, in a context that's
Speaker 1: basically defined by southern colonialism and defined by by this
Speaker 1: by this occupation. And I think looking at the MSc,
Speaker 1: looking at a lot of stuff happened in Latin America,
Speaker 1: I mean there there's very similar to what you guys
Speaker 1: were talking about. In Brazil. There there was a huge
Speaker 1: movement like this that was indigenous land recormation sort of
Speaker 1: agrocology in in Columbia for example too in the nineties,
Speaker 1: and they they run into this problem of you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's a civil war going on in Columbia and
Speaker 1: they a lot of them getting murdered by sort of
Speaker 1: state paramilitary is in the army. But I I think
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a really interesting way of of
Speaker 1: looking at what what does what does Lambak actually look like?
Speaker 1: And how how you deal with interacting with Latin And also, yeah,
Speaker 1: the lance workers in particular, they use a lot of methods,
Speaker 1: but you know they actually do just take a like
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of land like back from the state
Speaker 1: and sort of back from corporate things. So I'm interested
Speaker 1: in how you all started talking to a lot of
Speaker 1: these a lot of the Brazilian groups and how that
Speaker 1: sort of like that that perspective is shaped the way
Speaker 1: that like this, this this whole sort of project turned out. Um.
Speaker 1: So we were specifically to the dis Pobos um some
Speaker 1: previous connections that some of us had in Brazil had
Speaker 1: when talking about what we were doing and just kind
Speaker 1: of keeping up an exchange of um you know, just
Speaker 1: like kind of updates from from the Gulf. When they
Speaker 1: would exchange send updates from things going on down there.
Speaker 1: They kind of drew the connection for us and put
Speaker 1: us towards them, And I reached out to day dis
Speaker 1: Pobos and was like, hey, we're you know, we're doing
Speaker 1: this thing, and I, you know, and inspired by what
Speaker 1: you're doing personally, and UM, you know, I I'd be
Speaker 1: curious to see what what, what kind of relationship whatever
Speaker 1: we can foster, And they took it. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: also with with some inspirations, seeing that this very clear
Speaker 1: connection in terms of relationship with land historically, UM, this
Speaker 1: possession historically between the two continents across the Caribbean. UM.
Speaker 1: The implementation on a wide scale of plantation, monoculture UM.
Speaker 1: It that was fueled entirely by slavery and genocide. UM.
Speaker 1: And and I think that having that kind of like
Speaker 1: shared common history, I think gives us a good bedrock to, like,
Speaker 1: UM exchange notes about where we are now, kind of
Speaker 1: multiplied by the fact that the way that UM, yeah,
Speaker 1: so called emancipation happened here versus in Brazil radically different UM.
Speaker 1: The UM like the for instance, the existence of PET
Speaker 1: or the Workers Party in Brazil being such a force
Speaker 1: after the dictatorship, and having that like strong populist movement
Speaker 1: UM that was you know, rooted a very traditional left
Speaker 1: UM that that fueled MST. Well, you don't have anything
Speaker 1: like that here. You know that that happens at the
Speaker 1: same time that here, actually the workers movement in the
Speaker 1: US was was kind of getting defeated, I mean the
Speaker 1: up in the seventies. So with respect to like um
Speaker 1: land back specifically, UM, you know, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you I don't know if you will see it in
Speaker 1: the same forms. I doubt at least obviously would totally
Speaker 1: be there cheering it on, and and I'm happy to
Speaker 1: see it. UM, But I think it looks a lot
Speaker 1: more like during the uprising last year. You saw in Chicago,
Speaker 1: for instance, UM, the when the when, like the trains
Speaker 1: were being expropriated as they were moving, taking goods out
Speaker 1: of these box cars, UM, and just expropriating tons of goods,
Speaker 1: taking you know, taking good that would normally be going
Speaker 1: you know, just commodities normally going to court, just cut
Speaker 1: off in the middle of line, or you know, UM,
Speaker 1: these these these these kind of like more um ah.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say small scale, but UM focus
Speaker 1: more on like infrastructural choke points rather than necessarily UM
Speaker 1: like having thousands of people swarming uh. You know, a
Speaker 1: massive industrial agriculture UM set up in Kansas or something,
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, Yeah, I think it's great to imagine that.
Speaker 1: I think I really love sharing the history of MST
Speaker 1: with people in America who have never heard it before,
Speaker 1: because I think it's a great way to kind of
Speaker 1: expand the imaginary of like what is possible, like what
Speaker 1: kind of actions are actually at our disposal? Like and
Speaker 1: it truly is not, you know, look exactly like that.
Speaker 1: And I think it's also really important for us to
Speaker 1: like not forget a lot of the similar histories here,
Speaker 1: like UM. Part of the inspiration for the Almanac or
Speaker 1: what kind of drove us to to make it was
Speaker 1: some of us were doing a reading group of this
Speaker 1: book called Freedom Farmers that's about kind of like various
Speaker 1: uh um black projects in the South for food autonomy
Speaker 1: after slavery, and a lot of it is about Fannie
Speaker 1: Lew Hammer and um freedom Farms, and you know, we
Speaker 1: we're definitely inspired for some of the little bilia things
Speaker 1: by um Fannie leh Hammer's pig bank, which was a
Speaker 1: really cool thing where they just like started with a
Speaker 1: bunch of pigs and if you were in the community,
Speaker 1: like you get you get your pigs from you get
Speaker 1: a couple of piglets from the pig bank, and then
Speaker 1: the interest on that is a couple of years later
Speaker 1: you got to give them a couple of pigs because
Speaker 1: you're producing your own pigs, and so the pig bank
Speaker 1: is like self sustaining. UM. And another thing from that
Speaker 1: book that was inspiring to us was UM reading about
Speaker 1: George Washington Carver's public education projects out of Tuskegee University
Speaker 1: that were, um, just really inspiring in terms of like
Speaker 1: he was doing all of his own kind of independent
Speaker 1: research about soils and pests and all these different crops
Speaker 1: and everything, and creating these farm bulletins that were then
Speaker 1: being distributed to black farmers throughout the region to kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, share better practices, and a lot of the
Speaker 1: stuff was like agro ecology before people had that word.
Speaker 1: Like he was very far ahead of his time in
Speaker 1: terms of understanding soil dynamics and and passed and things
Speaker 1: like that. UM. So yeah, we we definitely try to
Speaker 1: try to lift up all that history as much as possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess when we were you. The thing I thought
Speaker 1: was very interesting that you alluded to briefly in this was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because there's there's a session of this is talking about
Speaker 1: food in prisons, And I wonder if you could talk
Speaker 1: about that part a little bit more, because that's a
Speaker 1: connection that I that I really don't think it's drawn
Speaker 1: very often. Oh here, let me flip to the piece, right,
Speaker 1: I mean one of the things that it's kind of
Speaker 1: hard to describe. I do love the visual that that
Speaker 1: we have for this piece, but yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: just like the it's a striking image, you know, it's
Speaker 1: got like, um in the center, there's a picture of
Speaker 1: a really high density chicken operation and there's somebody wearing
Speaker 1: sort of like a full tibex suit suit and just
Speaker 1: walking through this like massive herd of chickens. And then
Speaker 1: that's superimposed over this just like really nasty looking close
Speaker 1: up photo of a prison food training and just like
Speaker 1: the canned veggies and the everything, And like, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't I've been to jail a number of times
Speaker 1: and the food is always terrible. It's always one of
Speaker 1: the things that you talk about or you can bond
Speaker 1: over or whatever. It's just how bad the food is.
Speaker 1: But I think people who haven't experienced that don't really
Speaker 1: think about just how much systematic like starvation is going
Speaker 1: on and the nutrition is going on where it's like
Speaker 1: the only way you could possibly survive in these places
Speaker 1: is spending a bunch of extra money on commissary to
Speaker 1: get stuff that also isn't healthy, but at least you
Speaker 1: can get more calories and stuff. Um. And like I
Speaker 1: think that that there's like a lot of parallels between
Speaker 1: kind of the structure of prisons and the structure of
Speaker 1: our of our food system. UM. I mean one example
Speaker 1: that I used to talk about this is like the
Speaker 1: banana plantation um where like the you know, we have
Speaker 1: an entire variety of banana that's like basically stanct or
Speaker 1: it's it can't be grown commercially anymore because the banana industry,
Speaker 1: you know, functions by putting like warehousing these banas together
Speaker 1: and these like super tight plantation formations, you know, which
Speaker 1: really only makes sense if you're just trying to maximize
Speaker 1: your profits and get as much out of a a
Speaker 1: small space as possible. But what it does is is
Speaker 1: the exact same thing that happens in prisons during COVID
Speaker 1: or with any kind of uh, you know, pathogen like
Speaker 1: tuberculosis or whatever. Um. You know, it it's like the
Speaker 1: trees are so close together that the fungus spread so rapidly,
Speaker 1: and then they're also like pumping all these things into
Speaker 1: to fight that, and they're actually breeding super funguses all
Speaker 1: the time. And at some point the banana that we
Speaker 1: eat now is going to also stop existing because of this.
Speaker 1: UM And I guess I don't know if I can
Speaker 1: draw anything deeper out of those similarities than the fact
Speaker 1: that there's this like overriding logic of capitalism that is
Speaker 1: just like has no respect for these beings, like whether
Speaker 1: it is a person or a anatory, like it's all
Speaker 1: just commodities and things to be warehouse. UM. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think UM to add on that, I mean this, this
Speaker 1: is the piece in there which is called the Struggle
Speaker 1: for Good Food across Walls. UM. I think it does
Speaker 1: a nice job of talking about how like, um, you know,
Speaker 1: if we're talking about quote unquote food food justice or
Speaker 1: what have you, like, UM Like, how can we talk
Speaker 1: about that on the outside of all forgetting about just
Speaker 1: the most deplorable um food conditions on the entire continent. UM.
Speaker 1: And I think that that it's it's really good at that.
Speaker 1: I think I would really like to see in the
Speaker 1: next year all the ways that UM the imaginaries of
Speaker 1: of inmates kind of go in in like attack that
Speaker 1: UM the like the logic of of prison food being
Speaker 1: completely deplorable. Like you know, you have all these forms
Speaker 1: of creativity of like making tortillas and stuff and like
Speaker 1: doing wild things with like stuff that's in the commissary,
Speaker 1: you know, contraband kind of ways of of making kind
Speaker 1: of life a little bit more livable in there. And
Speaker 1: and if anyone has UM spent time in jail or prison,
Speaker 1: or or kept up a relationship with someone on the
Speaker 1: inside or what have you, UM, everyone has a story
Speaker 1: about a way of UM making making food more UM
Speaker 1: interesting and joyful, and and like there becomes whole cultures
Speaker 1: around them. One of the things that we're starting to
Speaker 1: do in one of the farm spaces we work with
Speaker 1: outside of the city is is um through pre existing
Speaker 1: relationships with inmates in Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana, which,
Speaker 1: for those that don't know, UM was a plantation civil
Speaker 1: War happens two years after the civil War, it becomes
Speaker 1: a Louisiana scap potentiary. It's still a plantation. It's you know,
Speaker 1: uh this many times descendants of the same enslaved folks
Speaker 1: who were on that plantation prior um and you know
Speaker 1: it's a it's a guard on a horseback riding around
Speaker 1: while those um folks pulling cotton, um. And so so,
Speaker 1: through some of these relationships with some of these inmates
Speaker 1: who are like kind of uh clandestine organizers, UM, we're
Speaker 1: starting to come up with ways to like grow food
Speaker 1: collaboratively with folks that are behind walls and and find
Speaker 1: ways to get food to either their family or maybe
Speaker 1: sell and get that into their commissary. Kind of just
Speaker 1: like trying to um spitball ideas about like different ways
Speaker 1: of producing food despite people's in cars ration. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: that seems that seems like a really I guess we're
Speaker 1: you can really says a necessary way for for this
Speaker 1: sort of food politics to go if it's going to
Speaker 1: actually deal with sort of both the land conditions and
Speaker 1: the conditions of just you know the fact that we
Speaker 1: haven't in that there's still just an enormous slave population
Speaker 1: to us. And I think that kind of resistance in creativity,
Speaker 1: I think is how Yeah, y'all, are y'all are on
Speaker 1: the right track with with pushing it that way? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that this is this is sort of a bleik note
Speaker 1: to end on I think, but I don't know. I
Speaker 1: think it's yeah, it's a it's a it's a hopeful
Speaker 1: one too, and where can people find but basically all
Speaker 1: of Youl's work. And then also you talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about trying to get submissions for and everything, So
Speaker 1: can you talk a little bit about how that how
Speaker 1: that's gonna work. Yeah, Um, so we're we're it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of been on hold a little bit because we've
Speaker 1: been like very active after Ida and you know, trying
Speaker 1: to make sure our people are all good and supporting
Speaker 1: UM in various places, UM kind of doing like different
Speaker 1: workshops and stuff. And and because that our focus isn't
Speaker 1: just on food production, it's also like neighborhood survival or whatever.
Speaker 1: So we've been um working with an old UM neighbor
Speaker 1: of one of ours, who UM you know, she's already
Speaker 1: been kind of doing this mutual aid stuff you know
Speaker 1: by any other name for decades, you know, letting people
Speaker 1: stay in their house, UM, feeding people. UM. She's like
Speaker 1: kind of like a block MoMA and she's really one
Speaker 1: of the last um black homeowners in her neighborhood. So
Speaker 1: we're really trying to like help her achieve some autonomy.
Speaker 1: One way that we've been putting it is UM when
Speaker 1: all the airbnbs like lose their power because they're still
Speaker 1: reliant on the colonial world, Well, miss Elfie I could
Speaker 1: still have her lights on because she's going to be
Speaker 1: totally autonomous from the system. So UM, I think that
Speaker 1: that link is on our Instagram page if you click
Speaker 1: on the like UM the link or whatever, there's a
Speaker 1: go fund me that UM is UH where we've been
Speaker 1: putting a lot of our effort and really working with
Speaker 1: her on UM and then also like growing growing a
Speaker 1: garden like adjacent to her so that their people in
Speaker 1: that community are are food as as food autonomous as
Speaker 1: UM as we can get we can we can put
Speaker 1: it in the show notes. Yeah, and the the handle
Speaker 1: for both Twitter and Instagram is at Lobilia Commons and
Speaker 1: the Almanac. You can find links to the Almanac pdf
Speaker 1: on through either of those UM if you want to
Speaker 1: just read it for free. And then UM there's also
Speaker 1: companies for sale on emergent Goods dot com and for
Speaker 1: UM submissions. I mean, yeah, like I said, we've been
Speaker 1: really behind on this just because of all this stuff.
Speaker 1: But for submissions. We're really um looking for folks um
Speaker 1: to contribute throw us a pit um. I think if
Speaker 1: you've seen the first one or I've listened to this,
Speaker 1: you probably get something of an idea of what we're
Speaker 1: looking for um. And we're happy to like talk to
Speaker 1: people about, like, you know, different ideas and bear with
Speaker 1: us if we're a little slower to respawn because we're
Speaker 1: you know, kind of still waist deep right now. But yes,
Speaker 1: submission for deadlines is the end of October UM and
Speaker 1: you can email ideas or pitches or whatever to Lobelia
Speaker 1: Commons at proton mail dot com. And lastly, the project
Speaker 1: that I'm most focused on is the front Yard Orchard Initiative,
Speaker 1: where basically we just propagate as many fruit trees as
Speaker 1: cheaply as possible, things that are really easy for us
Speaker 1: to grow from cuttings like figs, s, mulberries, things they're
Speaker 1: easy to grow from seed, like papaya, maringa, pecan um.
Speaker 1: And we basically just have some nice flaw yars that
Speaker 1: we put up and we advertise a bit on social
Speaker 1: media and also just kind of go door to door
Speaker 1: in neighborhoods where we already have gardens or connections and
Speaker 1: offer to give free fruit trees out to people, and
Speaker 1: we're also happy to plant them for people and then
Speaker 1: kind of offer a consultation on how to take care
Speaker 1: of it or whatever. And also if folks want to
Speaker 1: hear some of the pieces from the Earthbound Farmers Almanac
Speaker 1: read by some of the authors and then some interviews
Speaker 1: with those authors, you can check out this podcast called
Speaker 1: Partisan Gardens that did a really good episode that's kind
Speaker 1: of like an audio exploration of the Almanac. Cool. Yeah, people,
Speaker 1: people definitely definitely go read the Almanac. Is it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a it's a really good it's a really good
Speaker 1: piece of work. Um. Yeah, thank thank you too so
Speaker 1: much for joining us. Yeah, thank you for Robert Evans here.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to ask for your help. There is
Speaker 1: a Portland area woman RUPI to mem She's an Arabic
Speaker 1: interpreter and a Palestinian liberation activist and she is trying
Speaker 1: to save her home at the moment. She's got to
Speaker 1: go fund me. If you go to save Ruba's house,
Speaker 1: are you be a on go fund bank, you'll find
Speaker 1: it Save Ruby's house on go fund Me. You've got
Speaker 1: a few bucks. She could really use it again. Save
Speaker 1: Ruba's house. Are you be a at go fund me? Thanks?
Speaker 1: It Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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