Food Fight! All Lives Matter!
Ben Sharda, ED Kansas City Community Gardens
http://kccg.org/
&
Karin Page, After the Harvest
http://aftertheharvestkc.org/
• 4-5pm
CT, Saturday, 25 October 2014
• KKFI, 90.1
FM, kkfi.org, Kansas City, MO
• On-air
call-in number 816 931 5534
A call to Greater KC and beyond citizens,
to organize ourselves from the bottom-up to build our collective strength to
transform our power relationships with our global, big corporate,
industrialized food, agriculture and socio-economic systems, in order to build
truly healthy, just, fair and sustainable systems which provide livelihoods
with dignity for farm and food workers, and small and family farmers. .
"Poor
diets kill more brothers than pistols.
We're
fighting for our lives like Michael Vic's pit bulls.
Dog eat dog,
America eats the young,
We die from
beef, but more from meat than the gun.
Bullets for
breakfast and mass murder meals.
Enemy of the
state, and your plate is the battlefield
in this FOOD
FIGHT!"
About Ben Sharda & Kansas City Community Gardens
The mission of Kansas City Community
Gardens is to assist low-income households and community groups in the Kansas
City metropolitan area to produce vegetables and fruit from garden plots
located in backyards, vacant lots, and at community sites. KCCG supports Kansas
City’s gardeners as they work to transform the food system, along with their
nutritional habits, in backyard and community garden spaces throughout the
metropolitan area.
For over thirty years, KCCG staff
have assisted community and backyard gardeners throughout the Kansas City
metropolitan area to improve nutrition, reduce food costs, combat obesity,
increase physical activity, encourage neighborhood leadership, and promote
locally grown and sustainable food. KCCG began in 1979 as the
Metropolitan Lutheran Ministry’s “Community Garden Project,” an initiative
started to help low-income families save money on grocery bills. In 1985, the
organization became incorporated as an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit
organization.
In 2003 KCCG moved from its original
location at the former Old Ballpark Community Garden located at 22nd
and Brooklyn to their current location in Swope Park.
The Swope
Park location allowed for larger administrative offices and the building of our
Beanstalk Children’s Garden.
KCCG provides free gardening
workshops, technical assistance, garden supplies, and other resources to
individuals, families, neighborhood organizations, nonprofit agencies, and
other groups throughout the metropolitan Kansas City area through the Self-Help
Gardening and Community Partner Gardens programs. In addition, KCCG’s
Schoolyard Gardens program staff help schools to create and grow gardens to
improve students’ knowledge about nutrition and the importance of fresh fruits
and vegetables to a healthy diet. KCCG’s Beanstalk Children’s Garden
complements the efforts of Schoolyard Gardens staff by allowing school and
community groups, families, and other visitors to learn about plant science,
food production, nutrition, and insects during summer tours of this unique garden.
The Beanstalk includes fruit, vegetable, and herb gardens; a seed and grain
garden; the Curiosity Garden, filled with strange and unusual plants; and water
garden featuring water lilies and floating hyacinths, fish, and frogs.
About Karin Page & After the Harvest
Karin Page is the founding program
director of After the Harvest, where she leads the Gleaning Network and Produce
Procurement Program. Prior to joining the staff of After the Harvest, Karin
worked as program coordinator for SoSA West for two and one-half years. During
that time, she led the Gleaning Network, recruiting, organizing and training
volunteers who gleaned fields and orchards to get produce that had been missed
by mechanical pickers or passed over by field hands because of physical flaws
or imperfections. She also recruited and worked with farmers who donated their
fields for gleaning, and those who donated produce that had already been picked
but was excess or unmarketable. Karin has degrees in biology and microbiology, which
serve her well in her efforts to connect with farmers and understand the
challenges and nuances of planting, raising and picking crops. SEND
KARIN AN EMAIL
We work
with farmers in Missouri and Kansas to glean their fields and orchards after
the harvest, to gather up produce left behind by mechanical equipment and
pickers. This fresh, locally grown food is delivered to food pantries and
feeding agencies in close proximity to the farm where it is gleaned.
Already
Picked and Packed
We also
work with excess, graded out, or rejected produce that cannot be sold for
market reasons. This food may come from commercial farms, produce packing
companies, grocery stores, farmers’ markets and more. We work in Missouri and Kansas, and can
locate nearby food banks that will take larger quantities, and food pantries
and agencies that will take smaller quantities.
ABOUT FOOD FIGHT! ALL LIVES MATTER!
With KKFI KCMO Community Radio Urban Connections host and
long-time Kansas City community activist Donna Morrow Wolfe, www.kkfi.org/program/urban-connections,
and co-host, Maria Whitaker, Program Director, Local to Global Advocates for
Justice, and KC Food Justice, fssg.blogspot.com,
foodhealthenvironmentaljustice.com.
Donna Morrow Wolfe
Maria Whittaker with Deyvon(6) and Sherrie(4) ( and their
little cousin)
If you would like to be a guest on the show or have
suggestions or comments, we welcome you to email Maria Whittaker at foodsovereignty@yahoo.com
with Food Fight! in the heading. We particularly envision lifting-up the work
of youth and those communities the most negatively and directly impacted by our
food, agriculture and socioeconomic systems.
Objectives
Raise consciousness of the impact of our global, big
corporate, industrialized, food system on our health, wealth, justice and
sustainability, and to
2. Act as a vehicle for us to:
2.1. Organize
ourselves inclusively, from the bottom-up, to build our collective strength
to transform our relationships with our
global, big corporate food and agriculture systems in order to build truly
healthy, just, fair and sustainable food and agriculture systems which create
livelihoods with dignity for farm and food workers and small and family farmers;
2.2. Take immediate actions now to actualize our basic human
right to sufficient amounts of healthy, nutritious and culturally appropriate
food and improve community health and wealth by connecting people to programs
already in existence, but not yet reaching them, such as: doubling their food stamps, organic
gardening, mobile food pantries, healthy free food pantries, organic farmer
training programs and healthy lifestyle support programs, including diabetes
and hypertension management, and to:
2.3. Take grassroots advocacy on food policies such as food
stamps and farm subsidies to immediately actualize our basic human right to
healthy, nutritious and culturally appropriate food.
KC Food Justice List Serve
The easiest way to join our list serve,
kcfoodjustice@lists.riseup.net, where we share news of upcoming events,
information and analyses of the nexus of modernization, capitalism, food,
health, equality and justice is to send an email to:
kcfoodjustice-subscribe@lists.riseup.net.
You will be automatically be added. We send out anywhere
from 1 to 9 messages a month.
In Conclusion
If you would like Maria to talk to your group about food and
health justice, climate justice or related topics, please email her at foodsovereignty@yahoo.com.
She will be available for speaking engagements in the Kansas City area
beginning Monday June 16, 2014.
Also check out our facebook pages, Local to Global Advocates
for Justice and Food, Health and Environmental Justice Coalition. For more
information about our work check out our facebook groups, Food and Health
Justice KC, Sustainable Agriculture in Cuba: Growing Food without Oil; and
African Food Sovereignty.
No comments:
Post a Comment