Lest we taste bitter regret
======
Extreme sour candy packed in a plastic toy waste drum! $3.99
http://www.nukeworker.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=100
1. Experience a long lasting blast of extreme sour flavor from the outside layer.
2. Next, enjoy the sweet great tasting sweet candy middle layer.
3. Then, just when you thought it was over.... ITS NOT! Toxic Waste has the only Double-Action Sour Flavor on the planet. Hidden deep inside each Toxic Waste candy is a top secret super-sour core.
Each drum includes about 15 pieces of wrapped candies in an assortment of 5 flavors: Watermelon, Black Cherry, Blue Raspberry, Lemon, and Apple.
======
http://www.bioshelter.com
http://april29.org
http://www.climatecrisiscoalition.org
http://worldcantwait.org
http://globalcalliraq.org
http://pittsburghendthewar.org
http://www.mirrorimage.com/mi/links/lance.html
http://www.amnesty.org
======
Center for Justice & Accountability
http://www.cja.org
======
Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory (West Mifflin)
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/facility/bettis.htm
http://cryptome.quintessenz.at/mirror/bettis-eyeball.htm
======
http://themeatrix2.com
http://reclaimdemocracy.org
======
Stand for Children
http://stand.org
======
http://antiscam.net
http://ww4report.com
http://smallpoxbiosafety.org
http://www.notowar.com/links.html
======
Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility
http://iccr.org
======
http://railtrails.org
http://noharm.org
http://alleghenylandtrust.org
http://fast4education.org
http://realreformny.org
http://www.ricanstruction.net/connections.html
http://signalfire.org/links.php
http://sexandpoliticsandscreedsandattitude.blogspot.com
======
From:
Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post 9/11 World
by Noam Chomsky
http://americanempireproject.com
page 19
...propaganda became an organized and very self-conscious industry only in the last century.
...this industry was created in the more democratic societies...Ministry of Information...in Britain..."to direct the thought of most of the world."...Britain needed U.S. backing for the war...Wilson administration reacted by setting up the first state propaganda agency here, the Committee on Public Information...
...wartime fervor was created not by military leaders and politicians but by the more responsible, serious members of the community - namely, thoughtful intellectuals...The country was driven into hysteria...
..."manufacture consent"..."engineering of consent"...
...workers were being trained to become robots and every single motion was controlled and regulated...thought-control experts...turning people into robots in every part of their lives by inducing a "philosophy of futility," focusing people on "the superficial things of life, like fashionable consumption." Let the people who are supposed to run the show do so without any interference from the mass of the population, who have no busingess in the public arena...from that idea grew enormous industries, ranging from advertising to universities, all very consciously committed to the belief that you must control attitudes and opinions, because the people are otherwise just too dangerous...
page 24
...Hitler...argued, not without reason, that propaganda won the First World War......United States remains in the forefront because it's the most free and democratic society, so it's much more important to control attitudes and opinions here...
...Republican...domestic agenda...tax cuts - they say for the economy, but they mean for the rich - and other programs that are designed to benefit an extremely small sector of the ultra-wealthy and privileged and that will have the effect of harming the mass of the population
...long-term effort to destroy the institutional basis for social support systems, to eliminate programs such as Social Security that are based on the conception that people have to have some concern for one another. The idea that we should feel sympathy and solidarity, that we should care whether the disabled widow across town is able to eat, has to be driven from our minds. That's a large part of the domestic agenda, quite apart from just shifting wealth and power toward ever narrower sectors...
...way to achieve that...is to make people afraid...gravitate toward the strong leaders...trust...to protect them from enemies and therefor suppress their own concerns and interests...present the president as a powerful wartime leader who is succeeding in overcoming this awesome foe - an enemy chosen precisely because it can be crushed in no time...
page 30
...In the United States people...are afraid of everything. Take the issue of crime. The crime rate in the United States is comparable to that of other industrial countries; it's toward the high end of that scale, but not off the spectrum. Yet fear of crime here is much higher than in other countries. Drug use is about the same here as in other countries, but fear of drugs is off the scale...
...a background of fear that is exploited...probably has to with the conquest of the continent, when you had to exterminate the native population, and slavery, when you had to control a population that was regarded as dangerous, because you never knew when the slaves might turn on you. And it may also be a reflection of the enormous security we have here. The security of the United States is unparalleled. The United States controls the hemisphere...both oceans and the opposite sides of both oceans...
...develop an attitude of critical examination toward whatever is presented to you. Of course, the whole educational system and the whole media system have the opposite goal. You're taught to be a passive, obedient follower...
Wars of Agression [2/12/4 Cambridge, MA]
page 70
...the case of the Cuban Five...The United States launched a terrorist war against Cuba in 1959, which picked up rapidly under Kennedy, with Operation Mongoose, and actually came close to triggering a nuclear war. The peak of the atrocities was probably in the late 1970s. The that time, though, the United States was dissociating itself from the terrorist war and, as far as we know, was not carrying out terrorist actions directly. Instead, the United States was harboring terrorists who were carrying out attacks on Cuba - quite serious ones - in violation of U.S. and international laww. The terrorist acts, incidentally, continued at least into the late 1990s. We don't have to debate about wheeter the people involved are terrorists are not. The FBI and the Justice Department describe them as dangerous terrorists, so let's take their word for it. There's Orlando Bosch, for example, whom the FBI accuses of numerous serious terrorist acts, some of them on U.S. soil, and whom the Justice Department described as a threat to the security of the United States who should be deported . Bosch's activities include participation in the destruction of a Cubana airliner, in which seventy-three people were killed, in 1976. George Bush I, at the request of his son Jeb, the Florida governor, gave Bosch a presidential pardon. So he's sitting happily in Miami...
When it became clear that the United States was doing nothing to stop terrorists harbored here from carrying out attacks, Cuba decided to infiltrate the terrorist organizations in Florida with agents of its own...In 1998, Cuba provided...documents and videotapes about the planning of terrorist actions in Florida. And the FBI responded, namely by arresting the infiltrators...the Cuban Five: the infiltrators that gave the FBI in information about terrorists in the U.S. were arrested...three of them have life sentences...
Or take Emmanuel Constant. He is responsible for killing maybe four or five thousand Haitians. He is living happily in Queens, New York...
page 74
...Various lawyer groups in the United States - but mostly in England, Canada, and elsewhere - are seeking to put U.S. officials on trial for the crime of aggression...
page 84
... If you want to worry about weapons of mass destruction...The United States is itself increasing proliferation by rejecting treaties, by barring any effort to stop militarization of space, by developing what they call "mini nukes," which are actually massively destructive nuclear weapons...
...putting platforms in space for highly destructive weapons, including nuclear and laser weapons, which can be launched instantaneously, without warning, anywhere in the world...under photo surveillance, with high-resolution devices which tell if a car is driving across the street in Ankara, or whatever you happen to be interested in, meaning the whole world is under surveillance...
page 92
History and Memory [6/11/4 Cambridge, MA]
...bishop of El Salvador, Oscar Romero...assassinated only a few days after he had written a letter to President Jimmy Carter pleading with him not to send aid to the military junta...which would be used to crush people struggling for their elementary human rights. The aid was sent...Then...Reagan...Maybe seventy thousand people were slaughtered...
...Reagan's regime...probably left two hundred thousand people dead in Latin America, with hundreds of thousands of orphans and widows. But this can't be mentioned here. It didn't happen...
page 103
...declassified government documents...protecting secrets, who are they keeping them from? Mostly the domestic population...the major enemy - namely, the domestic population - is kept in the dark about the actions of the powerful...
[12/3/4 Cambridge, MA]
page 168
...militarization of space means, in effect, placing the entire world at risk of instant annihilation with no warning...
Another World is Possible [2/8/5 Lexington, MA]
...the United States does have a form of universal health care. They're called emergency rooms...
...Most states have laws stipulating...they have to take care of you, even if you don't have health insurance...It's not preventive care, figuring out how to avoid getting sick in the first place. It's the most expensive, most inefficient kind of universal health care system you can imagine...
======
http://incite-national.org
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en
http://highlandercenter.org
http://www.fiercenyc.org
http://latinounion.org
======
Los Angeles Indigenous Peoples' Alliance
http://laipa.net
======
http://mediatank.org
http://ms4c.org/issues.htm
http://prisonactivist.org/links/
======
Committee in Solidarity With the People of El Salvador
http://www.cispes.org
======
Coalition of Immokalee Workers
http://ciw-online.org
======
http://colours.mahost.org/links.html
http://criticalresistance.org/
http://electronicintifada.net
http://alp.org
http://www.blackradicalcongress.org
http://eggplant.coop
======
eggplant active media workers' collective
http://collectiveliberation.org
======
http://objector.org
http://blacksociologists.org/links.htm
======
American Indian Movement
http://aimovement.org
======
Anarchist People of Color
http://illegalvoices.org
======
http://www.benetvision.org
======
From
Urban Farming Initiative
http://ufarm.org
From Carole Krick Walsh
Re: First U.S. City Mandates Purchase of Locally Grown Organic Food
Perhaps a thumbnail sketch of wonderful people driving this growing movement will best serve all of us. We can see the energy flow.
Pittsburgh has been acknowledged for the number of community gardens. We are a city of multi-cultural neighborhoods.
We have the most vacant land next to Detroit. We are a city creating a green transformation with the help of our new administration under the leadership of Mayor O'Conner and Gov. Rendell.
We have the most LEEDS buildings in the country due to Green Building Alliance.
There is one 5 ac. farm in Allegheny County, Mildred's Daughters, teaching families how to farm and do natural building.
Garden Dreams is just outside the city limits where Mindy Schwartz grows 3,000 seedlings in her basement that is licensed as a greenhouse. She has a half acre plot in the middle of three houses. These two entities have created Grow Pittsburgh, a non-profit. Distribution happens through e-mail and a working relationship with Construction Junction, a recycling center. Mindy identifies products for organic growing and sells them at the center. She also provides food for a historic site that has an upscale cafe.
Healcrest Farm is growing in Garfield as a community center growing herbs. This is one of our communities experiencing alot of unrest. For three years I have been working to identify and put to work two acres of land close to Healcrest Farm. There is an opportunity to create a working demonstration farming site on this land.
The Urban Farming Initiative has worked over three years in spinning off Green Lots helping people identify in their neighborhood's spaces to be transformed into green areas.
We now have two lots in the East End about to be transformed into growing areas.
The models I am working with is The Food Project in Boston, and the Food Trust in Philadelphia. These two ten year old organizations are mentoring groups around the country by teleconferences and workshops. I would not have as much hope as I do if it were not for the young people in Boston growing close to 250,000 pounds of food last year
through their CSA in Lincoln on Conservation land and two acres in Roxbury with food sold there in their own farmers market. In addition they have purchased a church in Roxbury with a commercial kitchen where the youth learn catering skills and feed the homeless. The youth are paid through their efforts!
There is not a day that goes by that I do not hold these youth in my mind as a beautiful example of work that truely transforms lives in our urban centers.
We have one of the finest examples of a social enterprise in the country with Bidwell Training Center. Growing food in greenhouses is one of the focused trainings available to the community.
Penn State University and the Extension Center are potential resourses for the city. Penn State has created high tunnels for growing year round and Bill Lamont, Horticulture Dept. has held onto a dream of a farm in the city since the early 80's.
My dream for UFI 2 is to have a 5 ac. space that would no doubt be various diverse lots in a given area growing demonstration crops for an existing market that has identified itself through the "Buy Fresh Buy Local" movement spearheaded by PASA(Pennsylvania Association of Sustainable Agriculture) Farmers to Institution movement. I believe this is one of the biggest social movements of our time.
We have an organization called Sustainable Pittsburgh that is doing a great job looking at technology but not food. The core business community has not really taken hold of sustainable agricuture in the city as a viable piece of development. As gas prices continue to climb and food prices do the same there will be no choice. Like Cuba we will all be growing food on all our vacant land and rooftops, as well as parking lots. Our health will improve over time, our communities will become safer, our air cleaner, the visuals will be breathetaking. A new ethic for aesthetics and a return of fruit trees and berry bushes will grace our cities. Wildlife will return.
In order to fill this vacum of the developers not including space to grow in the city, I have contacted Carniege Mellon University, Indira Nair, Vice Provost who will help me sponsor a major speaking/experiental series starting in January of '07, She will be designing a course around the speakers for students to take the information from people like Dave Jacke, Edible Forest Gardening right into community plots and work with families in these areas.
We will learn about Permaculture, Gaia University, The Food Project will bring youth here with their Executive Director.
I would not be thinking along these lines if it were not for people within the food industry itself pushing for the local food system to be in place: Jamie Moore of Eat's Park, for ten years this company has sought out local food for their restaurtant and catering services. Whole Food and Kim Wyneski, Community Development Coodinator will be creating a childrens market in the parking lot this summer. Can we deliver plants, food, products grown with the help of children is the challenge.
There is another entity doing a great job here in Pittsburgh and that is Slow Food Pittsburgh who will be paying a tribute to Bill Fuller of Big Burritos Group that have established the finest restaurtants and lead the pack in purchasing locally grown food. Slow Food keeps their pulse on the Buy Fresh Buy Local movement and is continually introducing local products to the foodies.
I am hoping Slow Food will sponsor Alice Waters coming to Pittsburgh as she begins a first food festival in San Francisco in '07 with the hope of moving it across the country.
UFI's mission is to use horticulture for economic development and education starting in early development and working our way through the high school systems providing materials and opportunities to do hands on work in the earth. Connecting our communities to the soil with hands on technology.
Last but not least is Darrell Frey of Three Sisters Permaculture Farm in Sandy Lake, Pa.
Darrell built his own Bio-dynamic Greenhouse ten years ago and provides salad greens and herbs to the finest restaurants in Pittsburgh. A grandfather who gives to the city and to his local community in endless ways, just received his BA degree and will be teaching farming to youth in a whole educational system built around an orphange, adding a permaculture design to over 300 acres they own. It is Darrell's greenhouse I am waiting to see built in the center of the Lincoln Larimor area as an educational site connecting the vacant demonstration sites.
Follow the energy and identify the people with the same passion you feel. We will be looking to you for our inspiration.
Peace in the garden
Carole Walsh
Urban Farming Initiative 2
412-362-5501
406 So. Fairmount St.
Pittsburgh, Pa. 15232
======
Pesticide Action Network North America
http://panna.org
======
http://www.cleanairgardening.com
http://www.pittsburghgasprices.com/Forum_Topics.aspx?category=1172
======
Toronto Food Policy Council
http://www.toronto.ca/health/tfpc_index.htm
======
http://www.farmland.org
http://eartheducation.org
http://oceantrust.org
http://bioneers.org
http://greenmap.org
======
Forest Stewardship Council
http://fscus.org
======
Occidental Arts & Ecology Center
http://oaec.org
======
http://thegreenlife.org
======
Renewable Energy Concepts
http://recsolar.com
======
http://idealist.org
http://www.solarcatalyst.com
http://energyharvester.com
http://www.habitat.org
http://coopamerica.org
http://ecostewardsalliance.org
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Bioreg
http://culturechange.org
http://postcarbon.org
======
Center for Biofilm Engineering
http://www.erc.montana.edu
======
hydrobikes.com
adifferentapproach.com
fairtradeaction.org
davidafairtrade.org
fairtradefederation.org
sweatshops.org
eartheducation.org
conservefish.org
treesftf.org
earthshare.org
worldwildlife.org
thesca.org
habitat.org
servenet.org
solarcooking.org
solarcatalyst.org
greenbuildingpages.com
shelburnefarms.org
======
Extreme sour candy packed in a plastic toy waste drum! $3.99
http://www.nukeworker.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=100
1. Experience a long lasting blast of extreme sour flavor from the outside layer.
2. Next, enjoy the sweet great tasting sweet candy middle layer.
3. Then, just when you thought it was over.... ITS NOT! Toxic Waste has the only Double-Action Sour Flavor on the planet. Hidden deep inside each Toxic Waste candy is a top secret super-sour core.
Each drum includes about 15 pieces of wrapped candies in an assortment of 5 flavors: Watermelon, Black Cherry, Blue Raspberry, Lemon, and Apple.
======
http://www.bioshelter.com
http://april29.org
http://www.climatecrisiscoalition.org
http://worldcantwait.org
http://globalcalliraq.org
http://pittsburghendthewar.org
http://www.mirrorimage.com/mi/links/lance.html
http://www.amnesty.org
======
Center for Justice & Accountability
http://www.cja.org
======
Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory (West Mifflin)
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/facility/bettis.htm
http://cryptome.quintessenz.at/mirror/bettis-eyeball.htm
======
http://themeatrix2.com
http://reclaimdemocracy.org
======
Stand for Children
http://stand.org
======
http://antiscam.net
http://ww4report.com
http://smallpoxbiosafety.org
http://www.notowar.com/links.html
======
Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility
http://iccr.org
======
http://railtrails.org
http://noharm.org
http://alleghenylandtrust.org
http://fast4education.org
http://realreformny.org
http://www.ricanstruction.net/connections.html
http://signalfire.org/links.php
http://sexandpoliticsandscreedsandattitude.blogspot.com
======
From:
Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post 9/11 World
by Noam Chomsky
http://americanempireproject.com
page 19
...propaganda became an organized and very self-conscious industry only in the last century.
...this industry was created in the more democratic societies...Ministry of Information...in Britain..."to direct the thought of most of the world."...Britain needed U.S. backing for the war...Wilson administration reacted by setting up the first state propaganda agency here, the Committee on Public Information...
...wartime fervor was created not by military leaders and politicians but by the more responsible, serious members of the community - namely, thoughtful intellectuals...The country was driven into hysteria...
..."manufacture consent"..."engineering of consent"...
...workers were being trained to become robots and every single motion was controlled and regulated...thought-control experts...turning people into robots in every part of their lives by inducing a "philosophy of futility," focusing people on "the superficial things of life, like fashionable consumption." Let the people who are supposed to run the show do so without any interference from the mass of the population, who have no busingess in the public arena...from that idea grew enormous industries, ranging from advertising to universities, all very consciously committed to the belief that you must control attitudes and opinions, because the people are otherwise just too dangerous...
page 24
...Hitler...argued, not without reason, that propaganda won the First World War......United States remains in the forefront because it's the most free and democratic society, so it's much more important to control attitudes and opinions here...
...Republican...domestic agenda...tax cuts - they say for the economy, but they mean for the rich - and other programs that are designed to benefit an extremely small sector of the ultra-wealthy and privileged and that will have the effect of harming the mass of the population
...long-term effort to destroy the institutional basis for social support systems, to eliminate programs such as Social Security that are based on the conception that people have to have some concern for one another. The idea that we should feel sympathy and solidarity, that we should care whether the disabled widow across town is able to eat, has to be driven from our minds. That's a large part of the domestic agenda, quite apart from just shifting wealth and power toward ever narrower sectors...
...way to achieve that...is to make people afraid...gravitate toward the strong leaders...trust...to protect them from enemies and therefor suppress their own concerns and interests...present the president as a powerful wartime leader who is succeeding in overcoming this awesome foe - an enemy chosen precisely because it can be crushed in no time...
page 30
...In the United States people...are afraid of everything. Take the issue of crime. The crime rate in the United States is comparable to that of other industrial countries; it's toward the high end of that scale, but not off the spectrum. Yet fear of crime here is much higher than in other countries. Drug use is about the same here as in other countries, but fear of drugs is off the scale...
...a background of fear that is exploited...probably has to with the conquest of the continent, when you had to exterminate the native population, and slavery, when you had to control a population that was regarded as dangerous, because you never knew when the slaves might turn on you. And it may also be a reflection of the enormous security we have here. The security of the United States is unparalleled. The United States controls the hemisphere...both oceans and the opposite sides of both oceans...
...develop an attitude of critical examination toward whatever is presented to you. Of course, the whole educational system and the whole media system have the opposite goal. You're taught to be a passive, obedient follower...
Wars of Agression [2/12/4 Cambridge, MA]
page 70
...the case of the Cuban Five...The United States launched a terrorist war against Cuba in 1959, which picked up rapidly under Kennedy, with Operation Mongoose, and actually came close to triggering a nuclear war. The peak of the atrocities was probably in the late 1970s. The that time, though, the United States was dissociating itself from the terrorist war and, as far as we know, was not carrying out terrorist actions directly. Instead, the United States was harboring terrorists who were carrying out attacks on Cuba - quite serious ones - in violation of U.S. and international laww. The terrorist acts, incidentally, continued at least into the late 1990s. We don't have to debate about wheeter the people involved are terrorists are not. The FBI and the Justice Department describe them as dangerous terrorists, so let's take their word for it. There's Orlando Bosch, for example, whom the FBI accuses of numerous serious terrorist acts, some of them on U.S. soil, and whom the Justice Department described as a threat to the security of the United States who should be deported . Bosch's activities include participation in the destruction of a Cubana airliner, in which seventy-three people were killed, in 1976. George Bush I, at the request of his son Jeb, the Florida governor, gave Bosch a presidential pardon. So he's sitting happily in Miami...
When it became clear that the United States was doing nothing to stop terrorists harbored here from carrying out attacks, Cuba decided to infiltrate the terrorist organizations in Florida with agents of its own...In 1998, Cuba provided...documents and videotapes about the planning of terrorist actions in Florida. And the FBI responded, namely by arresting the infiltrators...the Cuban Five: the infiltrators that gave the FBI in information about terrorists in the U.S. were arrested...three of them have life sentences...
Or take Emmanuel Constant. He is responsible for killing maybe four or five thousand Haitians. He is living happily in Queens, New York...
page 74
...Various lawyer groups in the United States - but mostly in England, Canada, and elsewhere - are seeking to put U.S. officials on trial for the crime of aggression...
page 84
... If you want to worry about weapons of mass destruction...The United States is itself increasing proliferation by rejecting treaties, by barring any effort to stop militarization of space, by developing what they call "mini nukes," which are actually massively destructive nuclear weapons...
...putting platforms in space for highly destructive weapons, including nuclear and laser weapons, which can be launched instantaneously, without warning, anywhere in the world...under photo surveillance, with high-resolution devices which tell if a car is driving across the street in Ankara, or whatever you happen to be interested in, meaning the whole world is under surveillance...
page 92
History and Memory [6/11/4 Cambridge, MA]
...bishop of El Salvador, Oscar Romero...assassinated only a few days after he had written a letter to President Jimmy Carter pleading with him not to send aid to the military junta...which would be used to crush people struggling for their elementary human rights. The aid was sent...Then...Reagan...Maybe seventy thousand people were slaughtered...
...Reagan's regime...probably left two hundred thousand people dead in Latin America, with hundreds of thousands of orphans and widows. But this can't be mentioned here. It didn't happen...
page 103
...declassified government documents...protecting secrets, who are they keeping them from? Mostly the domestic population...the major enemy - namely, the domestic population - is kept in the dark about the actions of the powerful...
[12/3/4 Cambridge, MA]
page 168
...militarization of space means, in effect, placing the entire world at risk of instant annihilation with no warning...
Another World is Possible [2/8/5 Lexington, MA]
...the United States does have a form of universal health care. They're called emergency rooms...
...Most states have laws stipulating...they have to take care of you, even if you don't have health insurance...It's not preventive care, figuring out how to avoid getting sick in the first place. It's the most expensive, most inefficient kind of universal health care system you can imagine...
======
http://incite-national.org
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en
http://highlandercenter.org
http://www.fiercenyc.org
http://latinounion.org
======
Los Angeles Indigenous Peoples' Alliance
http://laipa.net
======
http://mediatank.org
http://ms4c.org/issues.htm
http://prisonactivist.org/links/
======
Committee in Solidarity With the People of El Salvador
http://www.cispes.org
======
Coalition of Immokalee Workers
http://ciw-online.org
======
http://colours.mahost.org/links.html
http://criticalresistance.org/
http://electronicintifada.net
http://alp.org
http://www.blackradicalcongress.org
http://eggplant.coop
======
eggplant active media workers' collective
http://collectiveliberation.org
======
http://objector.org
http://blacksociologists.org/links.htm
======
American Indian Movement
http://aimovement.org
======
Anarchist People of Color
http://illegalvoices.org
======
http://www.benetvision.org
======
From
Urban Farming Initiative
http://ufarm.org
From Carole Krick Walsh
Re: First U.S. City Mandates Purchase of Locally Grown Organic Food
Perhaps a thumbnail sketch of wonderful people driving this growing movement will best serve all of us. We can see the energy flow.
Pittsburgh has been acknowledged for the number of community gardens. We are a city of multi-cultural neighborhoods.
We have the most vacant land next to Detroit. We are a city creating a green transformation with the help of our new administration under the leadership of Mayor O'Conner and Gov. Rendell.
We have the most LEEDS buildings in the country due to Green Building Alliance.
There is one 5 ac. farm in Allegheny County, Mildred's Daughters, teaching families how to farm and do natural building.
Garden Dreams is just outside the city limits where Mindy Schwartz grows 3,000 seedlings in her basement that is licensed as a greenhouse. She has a half acre plot in the middle of three houses. These two entities have created Grow Pittsburgh, a non-profit. Distribution happens through e-mail and a working relationship with Construction Junction, a recycling center. Mindy identifies products for organic growing and sells them at the center. She also provides food for a historic site that has an upscale cafe.
Healcrest Farm is growing in Garfield as a community center growing herbs. This is one of our communities experiencing alot of unrest. For three years I have been working to identify and put to work two acres of land close to Healcrest Farm. There is an opportunity to create a working demonstration farming site on this land.
The Urban Farming Initiative has worked over three years in spinning off Green Lots helping people identify in their neighborhood's spaces to be transformed into green areas.
We now have two lots in the East End about to be transformed into growing areas.
The models I am working with is The Food Project in Boston, and the Food Trust in Philadelphia. These two ten year old organizations are mentoring groups around the country by teleconferences and workshops. I would not have as much hope as I do if it were not for the young people in Boston growing close to 250,000 pounds of food last year
through their CSA in Lincoln on Conservation land and two acres in Roxbury with food sold there in their own farmers market. In addition they have purchased a church in Roxbury with a commercial kitchen where the youth learn catering skills and feed the homeless. The youth are paid through their efforts!
There is not a day that goes by that I do not hold these youth in my mind as a beautiful example of work that truely transforms lives in our urban centers.
We have one of the finest examples of a social enterprise in the country with Bidwell Training Center. Growing food in greenhouses is one of the focused trainings available to the community.
Penn State University and the Extension Center are potential resourses for the city. Penn State has created high tunnels for growing year round and Bill Lamont, Horticulture Dept. has held onto a dream of a farm in the city since the early 80's.
My dream for UFI 2 is to have a 5 ac. space that would no doubt be various diverse lots in a given area growing demonstration crops for an existing market that has identified itself through the "Buy Fresh Buy Local" movement spearheaded by PASA(Pennsylvania Association of Sustainable Agriculture) Farmers to Institution movement. I believe this is one of the biggest social movements of our time.
We have an organization called Sustainable Pittsburgh that is doing a great job looking at technology but not food. The core business community has not really taken hold of sustainable agricuture in the city as a viable piece of development. As gas prices continue to climb and food prices do the same there will be no choice. Like Cuba we will all be growing food on all our vacant land and rooftops, as well as parking lots. Our health will improve over time, our communities will become safer, our air cleaner, the visuals will be breathetaking. A new ethic for aesthetics and a return of fruit trees and berry bushes will grace our cities. Wildlife will return.
In order to fill this vacum of the developers not including space to grow in the city, I have contacted Carniege Mellon University, Indira Nair, Vice Provost who will help me sponsor a major speaking/experiental series starting in January of '07, She will be designing a course around the speakers for students to take the information from people like Dave Jacke, Edible Forest Gardening right into community plots and work with families in these areas.
We will learn about Permaculture, Gaia University, The Food Project will bring youth here with their Executive Director.
I would not be thinking along these lines if it were not for people within the food industry itself pushing for the local food system to be in place: Jamie Moore of Eat's Park, for ten years this company has sought out local food for their restaurtant and catering services. Whole Food and Kim Wyneski, Community Development Coodinator will be creating a childrens market in the parking lot this summer. Can we deliver plants, food, products grown with the help of children is the challenge.
There is another entity doing a great job here in Pittsburgh and that is Slow Food Pittsburgh who will be paying a tribute to Bill Fuller of Big Burritos Group that have established the finest restaurtants and lead the pack in purchasing locally grown food. Slow Food keeps their pulse on the Buy Fresh Buy Local movement and is continually introducing local products to the foodies.
I am hoping Slow Food will sponsor Alice Waters coming to Pittsburgh as she begins a first food festival in San Francisco in '07 with the hope of moving it across the country.
UFI's mission is to use horticulture for economic development and education starting in early development and working our way through the high school systems providing materials and opportunities to do hands on work in the earth. Connecting our communities to the soil with hands on technology.
Last but not least is Darrell Frey of Three Sisters Permaculture Farm in Sandy Lake, Pa.
Darrell built his own Bio-dynamic Greenhouse ten years ago and provides salad greens and herbs to the finest restaurants in Pittsburgh. A grandfather who gives to the city and to his local community in endless ways, just received his BA degree and will be teaching farming to youth in a whole educational system built around an orphange, adding a permaculture design to over 300 acres they own. It is Darrell's greenhouse I am waiting to see built in the center of the Lincoln Larimor area as an educational site connecting the vacant demonstration sites.
Follow the energy and identify the people with the same passion you feel. We will be looking to you for our inspiration.
Peace in the garden
Carole Walsh
Urban Farming Initiative 2
412-362-5501
406 So. Fairmount St.
Pittsburgh, Pa. 15232
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Pesticide Action Network North America
http://panna.org
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http://www.cleanairgardening.com
http://www.pittsburghgasprices.com/Forum_Topics.aspx?category=1172
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Toronto Food Policy Council
http://www.toronto.ca/health/tfpc_index.htm
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http://www.farmland.org
http://eartheducation.org
http://oceantrust.org
http://bioneers.org
http://greenmap.org
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Forest Stewardship Council
http://fscus.org
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Occidental Arts & Ecology Center
http://oaec.org
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http://thegreenlife.org
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Renewable Energy Concepts
http://recsolar.com
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http://idealist.org
http://www.solarcatalyst.com
http://energyharvester.com
http://www.habitat.org
http://coopamerica.org
http://ecostewardsalliance.org
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Bioreg
http://culturechange.org
http://postcarbon.org
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Center for Biofilm Engineering
http://www.erc.montana.edu
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hydrobikes.com
adifferentapproach.com
fairtradeaction.org
davidafairtrade.org
fairtradefederation.org
sweatshops.org
eartheducation.org
conservefish.org
treesftf.org
earthshare.org
worldwildlife.org
thesca.org
habitat.org
servenet.org
solarcooking.org
solarcatalyst.org
greenbuildingpages.com
shelburnefarms.org
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posted by St. Jim the Composter at 5:10 PM
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