What does ecology have to do with social justice?
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Growing food and Community -- The Ecology Center 2530 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley, California July 31, 2008
The event was designed to introduce and promote the book Building Commons and Community by the late Karl Linn who passed away in 2005. It was also an homage to Karl who was a major force in creating a better and alternative world for many people. The book documents the creation of a variety of commons, over a span of nearly fifty years. You can learn more about him from his webpage listed below.
Commons: a) Belonging equally to or shared equally; joint: common interests. b) Of or relating to the community as a whole
Karl Linn’s fascinating and very productive life began in East Germany, where he was born in 1923, and lived with his family on a fruit tree farm. His family later escaped the Nazis by going to Palestine where they had to grow their own food to survive. Karl attended the Murray School of Agriculture, became a psychologist and worked with children. Then, as if that weren’t enough, he became an architect. He became frustrated by the lack of social space in most building design, and searched for alternative ways to design people friendly and community inspiring spaces. He realized that combining growing food with building common areas made them both more sustainable and long lasting. Later he moved to Berkeley and created common gardens with an emphasis on getting local officials to give long term use of the land to each group.
“We never know what will happen with the future, and I concluded how important it is for me not to be a pessimist or an optimist, but a “possibilist,” to create possibilities of working with people creating life-supportive, life-affirmative small projects that could be inspiring and enrich people’s lives." Karl Linn
Present was Nicole Milner, Karl’s wife of 14 years. She is active with the group Friends of Westbrae Commons. Nicole exudes an energy of optimism, kindness and grace. She says that Karl was always networking and that making personal connections was important to him. Her advice to those of us carrying on the work is “keep a long term view of things, don’t get down and depressed, and keep connecting.”
Carl Anthony, a friend of Karl Linn and co-founder of Urban Habitat, was the first speaker of the evening. He and Karl Linn had been roommates in Oakland many years ago. They met while Carl was on the board of Earth Island Institute. Carl’s father had organized a very successful food coop during the depression with a farm to grow food for coop members at a fraction of the cost. Linn taught him about the importance of neighborhoods and the connection between sustainable living, social and racial justice and food security. Together they founded Urban Habitat. “Believe it or not, there was a time when most people in the United States grew their own food,” Carl told us. “The notion briefly returned during WWII with Victory Gardens as a patriotic act. People relearned how to grow their food. Now we are becoming aware of how unsustainable food production is. The average tomato travels something like 1300 miles before it gets to a table.”
“There are no weeds, only inconvenient greens.”
Joy Moore of KPFA, also on the board of the Ecology Center and part of their Farm Fresh Choice program, talked about the first time she met Linn. “It was 1999 and I was working at Malcolm X school and up walks this strange fellow and he looks at me with his one good eye and started going on about landscape architecture. He talked to me not like I was a woman or a brown person but like a human being and he didn’t make me feel bad that I didn’t understand what he was saying. Later I learned about it all though and now I understand the essential connection between loving the earth and social justice. Karl elevated the status of farmers for me and made me feel it was possible to do away with the separating, limiting, harmful, social and racial beliefs. He taught me to care about and appreciate the larger environment.” Another thing that Karl Linn taught her was, “there are no weeds. Just inconvenient greens.”
Beebo Turman part of the Ecology Center’s Berkeley Community Garden Collaborative (BCGC) had this to say: “ Karl Linn was always thinking about how to bring people together. He believed that the planning was as important as the finished product. He would get so busy organizing that he would forget to eat and he’d get real skinny.” She recommended the film A Lot In Common for which Karl Linn was the inspiration. Over forty years in cities around the country, he created neighborhood commons like the one featured in the film, peaceful places in which neighbors can gather and build community. His many hours of interviews over the five years of production provided the backbone for the narrative of this documentary. Karl died peacefully at his home in Berkeley, California on February 3, 2005.
Adam David Miller, author of Ticket to Exile- a Memoir , an 86 year old acquaintance of Karl Linn, and his wife of 20 years, Elise Peeples, were also present promoting his new book. It is one of the 3 finalists for the William Saroyan prize for Literature. Mr. Miller told us that, “in 1920 there were 1 million Black owned farms and now there are only 25 thousand thanks to public policy that refused to lend money to Black farmers.”
Some of the groups that were present:
www.myfarmsf.com Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) will convert your yard to a garden, and they deliver weekly boxes of local, yard grown produce.
www.altglobe.com a blog building community for alternative living
www.thriving-in-the-burbs.com a blog about: Back-to-Basics Neighborly Approach to Thriving in Challenging Times and how to steer your neighborhood towards sustainability.
www.foodfirst.org The Institute for Food and Development Policy/Food First shapes how people think by analyzing the root causes of global hunger, poverty, and ecological degradation and developing solutions in partnership with movements working for social change.
www.adpsr-norcal.org educating design professionals and the public about critical social and environmental issues.
www.peoplesgrocery.org - a community-based organization in West Oakland that develops creative solutions to the health problems in our community that stem from a lack of access to and knowledge about healthy, fresh foods. Organizing for "food justice"
www.earthhousecenter.org Oakland, California, whose mission it is to build healthy, just, and sustainable communities through education, training and multi-media communication tools.
www.ecologycenter.org- Founded in 1969 to provide resources for sustainable living.
www.karllinn.org
www.alotincommon.com
www.urbanhabitat.org
www.earthisland.org
www.kpfa.org
www.newvillagepress
www.myspace.com/skinnystrings- These talented musicians, the local, 5 piece, folk band, called “The Skinny” started up the evening with songs about Kettle corn, and caterpillars.
Neighborhood Vegetables: Growing food and community where we live with block associations.
UC Berkeley tree sitters group, North Richmond Community Garden, Bay Local Lives- focusing on local food production., Hazel Garden of Hayward also present
