(photo credit: Subconscious Collective)

On Earth Day 2012, Occupy the Farm: Take Back the Tract launched with an ongoing mass act of moral obedience – farming. People from all walks of life, including families, elders, neighbors and students, occupied the last best agricultural soil in the urbanized East Bay, known as the Gill Tract. Trucks were waiting there with 10,000 seedlings, compost, hay, roto-tillers and tools.

WAYS YOU CAN SUPPORT OCCUPY THE FARM

• Sign the online petition:  Show the UC Berkeley administration that you support the vision of Occupy the Farm – and call on them to stop police action so that the farmers may continue to farm!  Click here for the petition.

• If you are an organization or group that wants to support: Endorse the collective letter of support, being signed by organizations, alliances and groups nation-wide. To sign on, please emailoccupythefarmletter@gmail.com.  

• Show up & work hard: Everyone who believes that the best use of farmland is farming – please join in! Our work is our resistance, and the fruit of our labor creates our collective resilience.
  The Farm is located in Albany, on the corner of San Pablo Ave and Marin Ave.

• Take more land, wherever you live: Wherever community needs are not being fulfilled and traditional avenues of change have failed, take space at the required scale to meet these needs. Occupy. Make Productive. Contest the Title.   

• Stay updated:
  –Twitter: @OccupyFarm
  –Facebook: Occupy the Farm –Sign up for text message alerts if you’re local: Text “gilltractfarm” to 41411.
  –Email list: send a message toGillTractFarm@riseup.net with “listserve” in the subject line to be added to the email list.

• Donate to the Farm: Click here to find a link to their online donations page, as well as a current list of needed materials.

• Learn more: www.OccupyTheFarm.org

Reposted from climate-connections.org – visit Climate Connections for great up-to-date articles and updates on the Gill Tract.

When hundreds of people took up the banner of “Occupy the Farm” on April 22nd and laid claim to a patch of urban farmland owned by UC Berkeley, it was not the first time this 5-acre parcel had become the flashpoint of a struggle between the University and local communities. But it was the first time anyone had done something as brash as simply taking the land without asking.

On that sunny Sunday two weeks ago, an ad-hoc band of UC alumni, urban farming proponents, families, and veteran Occupy activists ended an Earth Day parade by arriving at the site, cutting the lock and pitching in to till and plant 3/4 of an acre of guerilla farm. At least in the short term, the action worked fantastically well. Fears of a police raid the first night went unfulfilled. Rather than sending its well-appointed riot squads to dismantle the trespass, the UC took the tack of firing up its public relations machine (and cutting off water to the site). Media, from Alternet to ABC to Forbes, picked up the story. Occupiers took the high road by engaging in direct dialogue with faculty, students, and administrators. Two weeks later, the land continues to be occupied – and, more importantly, farmed.

Now, with several UC research teams needing to get their crops in the ground by mid-May, and the University unwilling to meet the demands of the Gill Tract Farmers Collective, as the group working the land calls itself, confrontation seems imminent. Whether or not the Farmers manage to stay, the experiment is a bold, largely unprecedented act of reclaiming the Commons in the most immediate sense – taking land out of private speculation and putting it into community use.

The organizers say the UC-owned Gill tract is significant not only because it is the last and best agricultural land in the East Bay, but because the struggle over this land is tied to the struggle to keep the public university serving the public interest. Over the last decade, through investments by Novartis, BP and other corporations, the University of California has become increasingly captured by private interests, which have come to control its research agenda and its land use policy. Now, Occupy the Farm says, the public is taking it back.

In the university’s first published response to the Occupiers, on April 27, Vice-Chancellor and Provost George Breslauer wrote, “We take issue with the protesters’ approach to property rights. By their logic they should be able to seize what they want if, in their minds, they have a better idea of how to use it.”

Blunt as the Vice-Chancellor’s thrust was, he hit on a key point: the occupiers do believe they have a better idea of how to use the land than the UC. And, once concerns about power, money, private property, and other systemic irritations are set aside, their case is perfectly rational. In a revolutionary sense, that is.

Without doubt there are very real issues to wrestle with about what the land is currently used for, whose interests are served by it, whose interests should beserved by it, and how such decisions are best arbited. In the best democratic spirit, the bold action of the Occupiers forces these questions to the foreground. In a system dominated by private property, where possession is nine-tenths of the law, these decisions are usually made simple, by Money and Power. But imagine a system where we relax the hold that the Rule of Law has over public property, we unclench the Invisible Hand of the Market that governs private property, and we revive a third option – one with a long and largely invisible tradition: the Collective Stewardship of the Commons.

Farmland is for Farming

The principle motto taken up by the Gill Tract Farmers Collective is “Farmland is for farming.” The slogan echoes the visionary cry for agrarian reform that kicked off the Mexican Revolution – the first agrarian revolution of the Twentieth Century – when Emiliano Zapata set forth the basic Commons principle, “La tierra para quien la trabaja” – the land is for the people who work it.

Indeed, it is this spirit that brought the Gill Tract Occupation support from international peasant farmer movements La Via Campesina and the Movimento Sem Terra (MST) in Brazil. The act reflects what Ricado Jacobs, a South African member of La Via Campesina, told me during the UN Climate Conference in Durban last December: for farmers, food sovereignty depends on land sovereignty – and that means, taking land out of speculation, and putting it into production. Jacobs calls it “redistributive justice.”

“It’s not just about agrarian reform, or about taking land, but about transforming the whole food system,” Jacobs said at the time. “Where are we going to practice agro-ecology if we don’t take land?”

The first day of the occupation, the MST saw such importance in the Gill Tract occupation – an extremely rare occurrence in the US – that they sent a statement of support, in which they say “your land occupation is not an isolated act, but one of dozens of land occupations that are currently occurring across Brazil and the world, challenging the dominance of agribusiness in the countryside and asserting the right for peasants to own and work the land.”

Of course, the Gill Tract Farmers Collective is not made up of peasants. Anya Kamenskaya, one of the Farm’s spokespeople, says, “Obviously on a socio-economic scale our struggles are different than those of peasant farmers. But everyone in the world shares the problem of food access, because corporations control so much of global food production.”

Historically, this piece of land – not so much a farm as an open-air research lab – has been subject to much tussle between corporate-focused research and community-focused farming. As the Occupation has dug in, it has unearthed a long-term split between these divergent tendencies – a split that plays out in the current work going on there.

One set of researchers works with Professor Miguel Altieri, the man who coined the term “agro-ecology,” and whose program is aimed at encouraging “more ecological, biodiverse, sustainable, and socially just forms of agriculture.” Altieri works directly with peasant farmer movements in the global South, and, in keeping with the spirit of his work, has been vocally supportive of the Occupation of the land, while maintaining the position that research must continue there as well.

Another group of researchers is involved in what they call “basic genetic isolation research concerning how all plants develop and how they regulate their genes.” Despite the Gill Tract Collective’s attempts to negotiate with them, and to offer them the space to continue their work, this group of researchers has demanded that the Occupiers clear off the land. As some of the land’s ‘legitimate’ occupants, they have acted to give credence to the university’s position.

The split in attitudes of the two research groups to some extent reflects larger attitudes towards property, both intellectual and material, and has led the occupiers to ask the question, if farmland is for farming, what constitutes farming, and what doesn’t?

Certainly, we need basic research, and in a world facing massive species die-offs, exponential population growth, and the uncalculated effects of Global Warming, the more knowledge we have of our crops, the better. But, in an economic climate dominated by private interests – at a University whose research priorities are determined largely by who pays, whether it is the Federal government or private corporations – who is to say what research may or may not advance corporate control of food systems, to the detriment of the global Commons?

One of the genetics researchers on the land, for example, is the inventor of a US Patent with the typically abstruse title: “Genetic functions required for gene silencing in maize.” The text of the patent states that “The availability of genetic stocks that prevent the establishment or maintenance of transgene silencing would be extremely useful for engineering and breeding new corn lines.”

In other words, this researcher’s work helps solve problems blocking the further genetic engineering of corn. Put in more ideological terms, what this research does is to work out the kinks in corn for future applied transgenics, thus facilitating corporate control of seeds. The University is actively marketing this research to biotechnology companies through the UCOP technology transfer office.

Another researcher on the plot, under a grant from the USDA, works on precursors to biofuels. Her research helped to demonstrate that introducing a maize gene into switchgrass, one of the favored feedstocks for advanced biofuels, more than doubles the amount of starch in the plant’s cell walls, making it much easier to extract polysaccharides and convert them into fermentable sugars. In other words, her work on transferring genes from corn to switchgrass – a form of genetic modification – improves the switchgrass for more efficient biofuel production.

The researchers may or may not be undertaking these processes on this particular plot of land; they are perfectly friendly and approachable people, undeserving of the demonization that anti-corporate activists best reserve for the sociopathic tendencies of corporations themselves; whether one sees their work as favorable or not depends on one’s position on biofuels, GMO’s, and intellectual property rights. But if a Commons argument is to be made for the use of the land, as it is by the Gill Tract Farmers’ Collective, such research may not measure up to the “Farmland is for Farming” principle.

“If It’s the Right Thing to Do, We Have the Right to Do It”

The second part of the Farmland is for Farming principle is articulated by one of the Farm organizers, Gopal Dayaneni, of Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project: “If the right thing to do with farmland is farming, then we have the right to do it.”

While the point has not been made visible in the press, after spending time with the occupiers, one thing becomes clear: The Gill Tract Farmers’ Collective’s ultimate goal is to divest the University of the land in question. For most of us, with our minds thoroughly embedded in what Provost Breslauer calls “property rights,” such a notion is literally unthinkable. But, from a Commons perspective, it becomes quite reasonable.

Again, the history of the land is key: this is the last and best arable soil in the urban East Bay, and is the last farmable 14 acres of a 104 acre land grant given to the UC in 1928. All but 14 of the original acres have been developed into urban landscape. A few years ago, the university transferred the land from the College of Natural Resources to Capital Projects, its commercial arm that specializes in “development projects.” One of the key points brought to light by Occupy the Farm is that much of the property in question is slated for sale and development as soon as next year. In the Zapatista-inflected words of one organizer, “this is the Ya Basta! to the UC’s selling off this land.”

There have been many prior attempts by community members to work with UC faculty and administration to make good use of the land, with vocal support coming from the likes of Alice Waters, Food First, and the Black Panthers. In 2000, under the name Bay Area Coalition for Urban Agriculture (BACUA), several professors, students, community members, and nonprofit organizations proposed turning the plot into the world’s first university center on sustainable urban agriculture and food systems. The proposal was ignored by the university.

In 2005 a group called “Urban Roots” advanced a proposal to create Village Creek Farm and Gardens, “a farm that would provide Bay Area students from preschool to community college and university with an educational resource par excellence.” Urban Roots argued at the time that the Center for Urban Agriculture at the Gill Tract offered UC Berkeley the opportunity to join other organizations and community members in teaching students and future urban dwellers these skills and the benefits of locally produced food. This proposal, too, was rejected.

As Professor Altieri wrote in an Op-ed in the Daily Cal, “From these facts, it can be concluded that until now, the university has shown little to no interest in requests for community involvement and benefit from the exceptionally high-quality lands at the Gill Tract.”

Michael Beer, a former Albany schoolteacher and one of the forces behind the Urban Roots initiative put it more bluntly: “Our problem was we tried to talk to the university. These people just came in and took the land, and now the university has to deal with them.”

Professor Altieri adds that, “To many people, the actions taken by the farm advocates are consistent with the university’s education and public mission as a land grant institution with a Cooperative Extension function (the latter established in the Smith-Lever Act of 1914) to promote community involvement and initiatives in agriculture.  Their actions are also consistent with California public policy, as set forth in Section 815 of the Civil Code, to preserve and protect open space, particularly agricultural land that has historical significance — such as the Gill Tract.”

Professor Altieri cites the historical mission of the land grant university to preserve agricultural land, and it is important to cite such legal precedent. (An important recent report from Food & Water Watch has much to say on the topic.) But, with the Commons framework in mind, it’s worth considering that it’s one thing to pressure the University to develop an urban farming program with a component that engages and educates local communities, as the institution’s mandate suggests; it’s another entirely to judge the University incompetent to steward the land, to declare the property a conservation easement, to put it in a land trust, and to restore it the Commons. Ultimately, in conversations on hay bales and under impromptu tarps fluttering in the Bay breeze, this is what the Gill Tract Farming Collective is proposing.

To Plant, You Have to Supplant; To Reclaim the Commons, You Have to Break the Law

The university administration has expressed alarm at Occupy the Farm’s tactics — ignoring property rights and establishing an illegal encampment for starters — and charges that the young farmers are trying to bulldoze their demands through without consideration for other community interests, such as the ballfields, the Whole Foods and the Senior Home that are awaiting construction on the Gill Tract. The fact that the University has done much the same is negligible, because it stands on the right side of the law.

As Dayaneni says, “Occupy the Farm is an act of ongoing civil disobedience, and the action is farming.” The point being, in a system that has no ground rules for governing land within a Commons framework, the old rules will need to be cast aside. Civil disobedience spelled the other way around is moral obedience – standing for a higher principle. Doing it is messy, especially with so many divergent interests at stake. It takes courage, it takes commitment – and, in many cases, it requires breaking the law.

The Occupy Movement writ large has not been shy about any of these questions – from Zucotti Park to Oscar Grant plaza, to public squares everywhere, the movement has pushed the boundaries of the law. In return, it has received grim treatment that bears frequent recall: Scott Olsen, the Iraq War veteran who received a traumatic head injury from an Oakland Police Department projectile; the pepper-spraying and beatings of students at UC campuses; police abuse in New York City, and countless arrests are testament to the lengths the authorities will go, daily, to protect and serve private property and big financial interests. From abolition to civil rights to the anti-war movements, we know this is how the state responds when the Commons are reclaimed, whether the Commons in question are political spaces or physical territory.

That said, until the day the police arrive in their militarized gear, being on the Occupied Gill Tract feels nothing like breaking the law. The plot today is a flat piece of green and tilled pasture edged by palm and Russian olive trees and surrounded by high chain link fence, bordered by major urban thoroughfares, a mile from the highway and in plain view of the Albany Police Department and several gas stations. A mixed and scrubby bunch of people – occupiers, UC faculty, permaculturists, neighbors, children – sit on straw bales or under tent canopies talking, or walk with jugs of water down the 40 or so rows of crops that were tilled and planted over the past two weeks. Drugs and alcohol are prohibited, and dogs must be leashed – after all, farmland is for farming.

During the family farm days they’ve held for two weekends in a row, children dig and plant, musicians take the stage to strum or simply stroll through the fallow stretches of the land, folks sit in circles learning about the joys of composting or the complexities of the global food system. The first Sunday after the land was taken, several of us held a welcome home ceremony for the descendents of seeds that had been moved off the tract twelve years ago – during one of the moments when the university prioritized genetic research over agro-ecology – and been saved year after year at the Bay Area Seed Library down the road. In less than an hour, a dozen people planted a permaculture plot to continue growing the seedstock that had been in diaspora for over a decade. My four-year old daughter helped out, and everyday since, she has asked to go back.

Despite the growing attention given to food, farming, and open land in the urban East Bay, there is no place I know that feels like this.

Certainly the joy of being on this little parcel of farmland is first and foremost that of getting a breath of fresh air in an urban environment. But could it be that part of the pleasure of setting foot here is that it’s against the law? That it’s neither a public park nor a private farm, but a brief and utopian step outside of the rules that surround and enclose us everywhere we go? That we are not supposed to be here?

As the struggle of Occupy the Farm continues, it takes shape as a battle for public sympathy. Certainly the genetics researchers and university administrators and the UC Police and a fair number of law-abiding neighbors would like to see the farm put back into private hands. One of the researchers – the one with intellectual property rights to the technique that allows corn to be more efficiently modified – said about the occupiers, “They’re not bad people – they’re just good people on my land.” His statement points to one of the underlying issues: where one’s sympathies lie is determined, in large part, by whether or not one believes in the Commons.

Lesley Haddock, one of the Farmers, wrote yesterday in the Daily Cal, “The Occupy movement began with the idea that we could no longer depend on the powers that be to provide for us. Occupy the Farm takes this message one step further, demonstrating that we can create our own alternatives. If this farm stays, and if farms like this one continue to spring up in urban centers around the world, we won’t need to rely on the massive industrial structures that feed us genetically contaminated and nutrient-poor foods. We can create our own sustainable models and grow food the way we know it should be grown.”

That’s a big “if.” But it’s the if that holds open the door onto the Commons.

[press release from takebackthetract.com]

(Albany, Calif.), April 22, 2012 – Occupy the Farm, a coalition of local residents, farmers, students, researchers, and activists are planting over 15,000 seedlings at the Gill Tract, the last remaining 10 acres of Class I agricultural soil in the urbanized East Bay area. The Gill Tract is public land administered by the University of California, which plans to sell it to private developers.

For decades the UC has thwarted attempts by community members to transform the site for urban sustainable agriculture and hands-on education. With deliberate disregard for public interest, the University administrators plan to pave over this prime agricultural soil for commercial retail space, a Whole Foods, and a parking lot.

“For ten years people in Albany have tried to turn the Gill Tract into an Urban Farm and a more open space for the community. The people in the Bay Area deserve to use this treasure of land for an urban farm to help secure the future of our children,” explains Jackie Hermes-Fletcher, an Albany resident and public school teacher for 38 years.

Occupy the Farm seeks to address structural problems with health and inequalities in the Bay Area that stem from communities’ lack of access to food and land. Today’s action reclaims the Gill Tract to demonstrate and exercise the peoples’ right to use public space for the public good. This farm will serve as a hub for urban agriculture, a healthy and affordable food source for Bay Area residents and an educational center.

“Every piece of uncontaminated urban land needs to be farmed if we are to reclaim control over how food is grown, where it comes from, and who it goes to,” says Anya Kamenskaya, UC Berkeley alum and educator of urban agriculture. “We can farm underutilized spaces such as these to create alternatives to the corporate control of our food system.”

UC Berkeley has decided to privatize this unique public asset for commercial retail space, and, ironically, a high-end grocery store. This is only the latest in a string of privatization schemes. Over the last several decades, the university has increasingly shifted use of the Gill Tract away from sustainable agriculture and towards biotechnology with funding from corporations such as Novartis and BP.

Frustrated that traditional dialogue has fallen on deaf ears, many of these same local residents, students, and professors have united as Occupy the Farm to Take Back the Gill Tract. This group is working to empower communities to control their own resilient food systems for a stable and just future – a concept and practice known as food sovereignty.

Occupy the Farm is in solidarity with Via Campesina and the Movimiento Sin Tierra (Landless Workers Movement).

MORE INFO: www.takebackthetract.com !

Gopal Dayaneni and Carla Perez of Movement Generation speaking at the action on Sunday. (photo credit: Dave Id/indybay.org)

Media Contacts:

Lesley – (707) 293-3253

Gopal – (510) 847-3592

Anya – (415) 892-4793

And check out the full Earth Skills 2012 calendar HERE.

Part 1: Carla Perez, Movement Generation
Introduction; independence from industrial medicine and the ecological crisis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAT5EeqKcCc

Part 2: Shanelle Matthews, Forward Together & Black Women Birthing Justice Collective
The politicization of birth work and reproductive justice

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8TKxVCa_E8

Part 3: Atava Garcia Swiecicki,  Ancestral Apothecary Healing Services & ReCLAIM member
Practicing traditional, plant-based healing and challenging industrial medicine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0v0_tOrddRI

Part 4: Sara Flores, Registered Nurse & Founder of ReCLAIM
ReCLAIM, midwifery, and dismantling the colonial legacy of biomedicine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gjFx7Qogdo

Part 5: Deshaye Faughtner, Muse of Healing Acupuncture & Wellness Center & ReCLAIM member
Acupuncture, access to healthcare services, reconnecting with our bodies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Esb3eq27Tgo

From the SF Chronicle:

Plans to merge labs for biofuel research criticized

“A plan by Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory to merge its energy labs into a major new research facility in Richmond where scientists would work to develop biofuels through genetic engineering came under fire Wednesday by activists who fear that dangerous new microbes would be created there.

And even if the venture succeeds in transforming plants into biofuels by altering the genes of microbes, the activists argued, the Richmond lab could become an unregulated front for corporate interests and turn millions of acres of croplands used to grow food in underdeveloped countries into huge plantations for energy production.”

Read the whole article HERE.

From the Contra Costa Times:

Critics raise safety concerns with biotech labs at Berkeley forum

“No one disputes that the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory campus that’s coming to Richmond will generate jobs and tax revenues.

But concerns persist about the work that will be done there, especially in synthetic biology, and the risks posed to the surrounding community.

That was among the topics at a news conference and public forum in Berkeley on Wednesday, touted as the first gathering in the area of local, national and international speakers to address concerns about synthetic biology, an emerging science that implants genetic material into cells to produce fuels and other industrial products.

Titled “Bay Area Biotech Labs Bring Unforeseen Risks,” the panel presentation at the Center for Genetics and Society featured five prominent critics of synthetic biology.”

Read the whole article HERE.

Join local, national, and international organizations for an afternoon of learning and discussion about the new Syn-Bio-Lab-by-the-Bay and the far-reaching implications of the Bay Area’s controversial and rapidly growing synthetic biology industry.

A Risky Development
The University of California, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and the US Department of Energy have unveiled plans to build a high profile biotech laboratory in the East Bay. The lab and associated commercial activity will focus on developing biofuels and other products using synthetic biology: an extreme form of genetic engineering that creates artificial life.

Ground Zero for Syn Bio
Already a multi-billion dollar field, synthetic biology is fast becoming the next ‘biotech bubble’ with the Bay Area as ground zero for this new industry . The San Francisco Bay Area is already home to over a dozen synthetic biology companies backed by some of the world’s largest energy, pharmaceutical, chemical and agribusiness players as well as “garage biotech” hackers. The next generation biofuels under development are a false solution to our environmental crises. The risks synthetic biology poses to worker safety, public health, social justice, and the environment are poorly understood and are as yet effectively unregulated.

Speakers include:
Gopal Dayaneni – Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project
Nnimmo Bassey (Nigeria) – Chair of Friends of the Earth International /Right Livelihood Award Winner.
Maria Jose Guazzelli (Brazil) – Executive Director of Centro Ecologico
Becky McClain – Ex-Pfizer injured biotech scientist and whistleblower
Ignacio Chapela – UC Berkeley ecologist and microbiologist
Jeremy Gruber – Executive Director, Council for Responsible Genetics
Anne Petermann – Executive Director, Global Justice and Ecology Project
Jim Thomas – ETC Group – Leading critic of Synthetic Biology
Eric Hoffman – Friends of the Earth USA
Jaydee Hanson – International Centre for Technology Assessment

More info at synbiowatch.org.

Blue Planet, an international civil society movement begun by the Council of Canadians, has published a report outlining Israeli violations of the human right to water and nonviolent resistance to these violations, recommending the boycott of Israel.

The report is written by local experts and grassroots activists who are a part of the Palestinian LifeSource collective. The authors make a compelling case for boycott, divestment and sanctions as a nonviolent means to pressure Israel to comply with international law and respect Palestinians human right to water and sanitation. This report marks an important landmark in the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions of Israel.

CLICK HERE
to view and download the report!

Blue Planet is active with local organizations and activists working on grassroots struggles to protect democratic, community control of water, and building a movement to secure an international treaty on the Right to Water.

LifeSource is a Palestinian collective working at the grassroots level, both locally and internationally, to grow a popular movement for Palestinian water rights by raising public awareness of water rights violations, promoting successful strategies of non-violent resistance, and connecting popular movements locally and globally in support of Palestinian water rights.

For more information visit www.lifesource.ps.

Earth Skills Training #1 – Restoring Health, Childbirth & Independence from Industrial Medicine
Saturday March 24 | 10am-5pm |  Location TBA

In order for our communities to be truly resilient, self-sufficient and able to weather the impact of scare resources (money, services, etc.), being able to access ‘health care’ in the basic & broad sense and not depend on the medical industrial complex is crucial.
In this training we will highlight the importance of natural healing. We will talk specifically about restoring the role of Women in facilitating health, and look at the invaluable work of Midwifery and birth as a clear example of one of the most fundamental human experiences that has been co-opted and highly industrialized as part of the capitalist/dominant-culture way of life.

We are proud to bring you Sara Flores – Certified Nurse Midwife, Nurse Practitioner in Woman’s and Queer Health, Registered Nurse and founder of the ReCLAIM Collective of healers (Resisting Colonial Legacy & Its Impact on Medicine), Atava Garcia-Swiecicki – founder of Ancestral Apothecary, herbalist, flower essence, acupressure, massage and dream-work practitioner, as well as other amazing midwives and healers!

Participants will learn practical healing techniques from first-aid to making plant- medicine.

Earth Skills Training #2 – Bee Keeping
June (date TBA) | 10am-4pm  | Tassafaronga Community Garden: 975 – 85^th Ave, Oakland 94621

Collecting honey from wild bee colonies is one of the most ancient human activities and is still practiced all over the world today. Bee Keeping is the practice and art of maintaining bee colonies in hives in order to collect honey and other valuable materials produced by bees that have been used for health and healing for many centuries.

In this training we will consider the importance of bees and other pollinators at a time when biological diversity is collapsing at the fastest pace humans have ever experienced. We will learn about what it takes to maintain a bee colony, how to harvest honey and other products of the hive, as well as how this practice can strengthen our local community of pollinators.

This training will be hosted by Acta Non Verba: Youth Urban Farm Project at the Tassaforanga Recreation Center in East Oakland.

Earth Skills Training #3 – Gleaning in the City
August (date TBA) | 10am-4pm | Location TBA

Gleaning is the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers’ fields after they have been commercially harvested or on fields where it is not economically profitable to harvest. Recently gleaning has become part of an overall urban sustainability strategy, with overgrown fruit trees in residential neighborhoods being a major source.

In this workshop we’ll come to understand just how to establish a gleaning operation, that can not only meet community nutrition and economic needs, but also fosters building neighborhood relationships and networks that provide security and support.

Earth Skills Training #4 – Rainwater Harvesting: Installing Rainwater Catchment Systems
November (date TBA) | 10am-4pm | Location TBA

Given the critical nature of securing water in a future of water scarcity, we are excited to offer this training in 2012, after a hugely successful Rainwater Harvesting training this past fall at the People’s Grocery Garden & Greenhouse in West Oakland.

“Water is Life” is a globally used slogan that captures the critical necessity all living things have for this precious element. And yet, it has been turned into a profit-making commodity that prevents numerous communities from accessing clean water for their health and survival.

In this training we will learn about one step we can take towards becoming stewards of our own water supply again.  We will install a simple and effective system to capture & store rainwater that falls on our roofs. This system is low-cost, low-tech and easy to duplicate in many urban settings!

Sign up for Movement Generation’s email newsletter, for up-to-date announcements as we develop details for each training.