Race, religion, politics. These are subjects we’ve been raised not to bring up in polite company, though we food activists tend to have no problem raging over food politics, decrying it daily in the news and social media and on our blogs while many wax poetic and swoon over a fresh leek, a grass-fed hamburger, good Chinese takeout, or fried chicken on Sundays. It’s time we taboo the taboo of “polite company” and start talking about the vast and interesting intersection of food, farming, religion, and faith, because, let’s face it, polite chit-chat does not transformative change make. Let’s start talking to communicate, to learn, and to be understood. Food justice, economics, environment, health, animal welfare, laws — rich topics like these are woven into religious texts, liturgies, and prayers from religions and spiritual traditions around the world.
What religions, spiritual practices, arts, and ideas make up your beautiful, complicated, collective cultural soup? How can you help support the people who partake of it? Who is invited to the table, who isn’t, and how can you reach out?
Foster among veterans the slow and safe unshackling of emotional and physical bonds. Realize the joy and wonder of a cow parade. Help make punishment bearable and truly rehabilitative. Honor the spirit of religious congregation (see Host Interfaith Discussions about Food and Bring Together Food and Religion). Connect.
Where and when and how do you find your greatest sense of accomplishment? How does this guide you in the work you pursue? Decide what is worth doing and take action from your center, your spirit. To help heal the darknesses, corruptions, and detours of our food systems, like those of my father’s diseased heart, connect.
In a 2012 TEDxManhattan presentation, Vietnam veteran Howard Hinterthuer talked about the many rehabilitative benefits of engaging vets in gardening, focusing on the Organic Therapy Project, a self-help program of the Center for Veterans Issues in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Howard described the project as “organic in the sense that we do organic growing. But it’s also organic in the sense that the program itself comes from people who’ve been through traumatic experiences and have found that gardening is very helpful in recovery.”
Howard tells of great soldiers coming home only to face the challenges of relearning life after the military. He discusses some of the food-related health issues so many vets deal with, like heart disease, obesity, hypertension, and cancer, and emotional difficulties such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and homelessness. He talks about his own experience of finding solace and safety in gardening, the rehabilitative powers of growing food, and the optimism of planting a seed. He explains how gardens are safe places not just for vets but for neighborhoods as well. Howard talks about harvesting green peppers and learning how to eat a more healthful diet. Only in passing does he mention the phrase “peer-to-peer mentoring.” To me, “peer-to-peer” sounds like that spark of magic, miracle, and healing that makes a program like the Organic Therapy Project a success. Vets mentoring vets, to help transition to home, whole in health and spirit. This project, founded by veteran William Sims, is part of the Center for Veterans Issues in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (cvivet.org).
Look for this label, a certification offered by the Farmer Veteran Coalition (farmvetco.org), not only to assure consumers of the safety of the food but also to support veteran farmers. As far as eligibility requirements, any veteran or active-duty member of the U.S. military, regardless of age, who produces agricultural products, may apply to use the Homegrown by Heroes label on those goods (hgbh.org).
The Farmer Veteran Coalition (farmvetco.org) is a California-based nonprofit whose programming includes mentorship matching, job and internship opportunities, farmer veteran events and conferences, and farm equipment donations. If you’re a farmer or a farm equipment dealer, you can donate new or used equipment through the Farmer Veteran Coalition to reach a farmer veteran. Download the Farmer Veteran Coalition’s resource guide, “Veterans Careers in Agriculture,” for information about how you or someone else can use the GI Bill or Post-9/11 GI Bill. Here are their guiding principles:
— Reprinted with permission from the Farmer Veteran Coalition (farmvetco.org)
Rural Solutions is one of many programs under the auspices of Easter Seals Iowa. According to its website (easterseals.com/ia/our-programs/rural-solutions), Rural Solutions provides “agricultural work site and home modification consultations, peer support, services for the family, information and referrals, and medical equipment loan services.” Any individual with a disability or farm member with a disability living in a town with a population of less than 2,500 in Iowa is eligible. To find an Easter Seals affiliate in your state or region, visit the national website (easterseals.com) and do a “Connect Locally” search.
“Only 17 percent of the U.S. population lives in rural areas, but rural residents account for 44 percent of our military. These rural veterans are returning to their farms, ranches, and rural communities with disabilities such as traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder at high rates.”
— White House Rural Council, Jobs and Economic Security for Rural America, 2011
AgrAbility (agrability.org), a national program sponsored by the USDA, came into existence out of the 1990 Farm Bill. Its funding and oversight flows through the National Institute of Food and Agriculture. AgrAbility provides resources for farmers and ranchers who suffer disabilities, whether they’ve occurred on or off the land or the sea. It offers farm safety trainings and webinars, and it is vested in prevention. Its resources include an extensive database of assistive technologies — tools, equipment, modified work practices, and do-it-yourself solutions — to help people work with more ease and safety in the garden or on the farm. According to the AgrAbility website, migrant and seasonal farmworkers, family members, and noncitizens are all eligible for services. Anyone “engaged in agricultural-related occupations, forestry, fishing, and lawn care will find many of the resources available through AgrAbility applicable to their workplaces.”
This story, by Rob Dillard, was the third report in a series called “Being Physically Disabled in Iowa,” from Iowa Public Radio. It aired on December 1, 2011.
Seventy-four-year-old Bill Sandquist has farmed 300 acres southwest of Adel, Iowa, for 54 years. But the last six have been entirely different.
”I used to raise a lot of hogs, used to feed cattle,” Sandquist said. “Then in ’05, when cancer took my arm, I had to give up the hogs. Basically, we’re grain farmers now and partially retired, too.”
Sandquist is among the 20 percent of U.S. farmers who work the land with some type of physical disability, according to estimates by the National AgrAbility Project. That’s compared to the 6 percent of the overall workforce who are disabled.
And for Sandquist, the transition was sudden.
After he harvested his crops six years ago, Sandquist noticed the muscle in his lower right arm was growing larger. He was diagnosed with sarcoma, a form of cancer that strikes bones and the body’s connective tissues. Doctors recommended quick amputation. Bill’s wife, Colleen, said, “They had told us chemo won’t work, radiation won’t work, and it’s either a life or a limb.”
Surgeons removed Bill Sandquist’s right arm to the elbow, and in its place he wears a prosthesis.
“It’s not a bionic arm or hand by any means — it’s all physical with flexing my shoulder,” Sandquist said. “It’s pretty simple and I got on to it pretty quick.”
By shrugging his shoulder, Sandquist can open and close the metal claw that now serves as his right hand. The fact that he’s naturally left-handed has made it slightly easier to adjust to farming with one arm, but he has been forced to adapt pieces of equipment and now operates more things with his feet.
Sandquist’s giant combine has undergone a transformation — many of the controls have moved to the floorboard.
“First couple of years I combined, I didn’t have the foot controls and I did everything with my prosthesis and my left hand,” Sandquist said. “This just made it a lot easier.”
For advice on what modifications to make to his farm machinery, Sandquist turned to the Rural Solutions program offered by Easter Seals of Iowa. Over the last 25 years, Rural Solutions has helped more than 1,700 disabled Iowa farmers remain close to the land.
“Sometimes, due to the severity of a disability, a farmer may not desire, or it may not be safe, to return to the farming operation, so in some instances we may be just helping them to stay in their home,” said Tracy Keninger, the program’s director. “Perhaps a person with a high-level spinal cord injury — that may be their goal.”
Sandquist’s goal was to get back in the field.
“I just like to get up every morning and be part of the farm, part of agriculture, part of my family,” Sandquist said.
Farming is a physically demanding occupation and it places strain on Sandquist’s prosthesis. Even though it was constructed with a durable leather harness and reinforced cables, he has broken three prosthetic limbs since the amputation. Plus, the job is filled with an endless string of routine repairs that require agility.
“You know one thing I can’t do is pound a damn nail,” Sandquist said.
He said his greatest fear is losing grip with the prosthesis while climbing out of the combine and tumbling off.
Keninger said it’s common for disabled farmers to overcompensate for their disability and injure themselves.
“Despite the fact his prosthetic device operates very effectively for him . . . there’s still extra stress and strain on that left hand, the able-body side,” Keninger said. “We often see overuse in one portion of the body to compensate for where there may be a limitation.”
Keninger grew up on a farm near Ackley in north central Iowa. She decided to dedicate her career to farmers with disabilities after watching her father recover from a serious encounter with some rather large livestock.
Only about 20 percent of farmer disabilities are caused by farm accidents, according to estimates by the National AgrAbility Project. Most cases involve people surviving health conditions such as strokes, cerebral palsy, and muscular dystrophy.
Sandquist said he has adapted pretty well and things are looking up on the farm. Thanks to the long, hot summer, they harvested a bumper crop this fall. And during Sandquist’s last semiannual checkup, there was no sign of the cancer that took his arm.
— Excerpted with permission from Iowa Public Radio (iowapublicradio.org)
The cow parade always gets me. I’ve done that walk up Main Street in Brattleboro, Vermont, with my eldest son and his classmates from the Putney School a couple of times. And I gotta say, it makes a momma proud to walk with her child and his cow. The wonder of this rite of passage wasn’t lost on me, this parade of teenagers and their heifers.
But in the 2012 Strolling of the Heifers, it was the cleanup crew that truly impressed me. They were students from the public high school who were costumed like some sort of genetically modified blackflies crossed with super-heroes, and they wielded their wheelbarrows, shavings, shovels, and brooms with purpose. It was their job to clean the cows’ poop along the parade route. They were the ones who buzzed in and around the cow parade that hot June day, making nice and fun of a messy, stinky, somebody’s-got-to job.
And the pretty heifers, they were all gussied up for the parade, like their handlers. Some were crowned with wreaths of wildflowers, and one beauty even had “Our Family Farms” shaved on its side, a kind of bovine mohawk. What inspired a group of teenagers to join the poop patrol at the Strolling of the Heifers? Because, as one of them explained, they wanted to raise awareness about the homeless veterans in their town. “Huh?” I asked, slow to connect. “We learned about homeless vets from Home At Last. [Home at Last, Inc., is a nonprofit in Brattleboro, Vermont.] They came and spoke at the high school. We don’t have cows and aren’t farmers, but we do have a social action group and we wanted to be in the parade. So we thought we’d do this,” she said, gesturing with mucky shovel in hand. It was impressive, all the way around.
What started in 2002 as a funky parade to support local dairy farmers in southern Vermont has morphed into a community-wide festival with such big-name sponsors as the ice cream giant Ben & Jerry’s and the organic and natural meat producer Applegate. Now the Strolling of the Heifers (strollingoftheheifers.com) is a nonprofit organization that hosts days of events, including a Slow Living Summit. It raises money for microloans for farmers and offers small educational grants to local teachers to bring agriculture education into their classrooms. Groups such as regional 4-H dairy clubs, the Putney School, and the nonprofit Farms for City Kids in Reading, Vermont, bring their heifers groomed, prepped, and trained (as much as teenage cows may be trained, that is). But for me, the best part remains the heart and soul of that crazy cow parade up Main Street.
“Have some fun.” That’s Kate Warner’s advice. Kate, an architect and the founder of the Vineyard Energy Project, is a self-described avid alternative energy geek. Her work had been very singularly focused on climate change, a topic that can be hard to get people to wrap their heads around because it’s so damn depressing. As an antidote, and to reach people beyond the usual choir, she pulled together local partners in land conservation and agriculture to create the Living Local Harvest Fest.
Started in 2007 on Martha’s Vineyard, this October festival is one part ag fair, one part re-skilling, and one part local food fair. Local experts hold demonstrations about such things as how to make sauerkraut, press apples, and fillet a fish and freeze it. Presentations and panels discuss the potential of slaughterhouses, community composting programs, food hubs, and solar power. Thanks to business sponsors, the event remains free and open to the public. And that’s the point. Everyone is invited. Though the biggest attraction? Morning Glory Farm’s pumpkin-tossing trebuchet. There’s something spectacularly medieval about watching a 30-pound pumpkin fly through the air over a field the length of a football field. And then learning how to make a pie out of it.
“There is a sense that there is a richness in this world that’s enormous fun if you can find it. And it’s the kind of fun that you can have while actually making the world a better place for other people, too.”
— Sherwin Nuland
The initiative Community Cinema (communitycinema.org) promotes free screenings of PBS Independent Lens films. Recent titles include The Island President (a documentary on how the Maldives islands are sinking due to climate change) and Facing the Storm: Story of the American Bison (a historical documentary that also looks at the current situation of the bison on the Great Plains). Films like these address issues of cultural identity, food, and climate change. Educators and students will find downloadable lesson plans for film modules under Community Cinema’s “Community Classroom.”
In the film Soul Food Junkies, filmmaker Byron Hurt weaves strong visual imagery of American food deserts (urban or rural areas in which people, especially those without access to cars, have highly limited access to fresh, affordable, nutritious food), commentaries, and personal stories about the cultural history and health impacts of soul foods, processed foods, healthy foods, and education. These are tough and challenging topics to untangle because of racism, shame, blame, shifting responsibilities, diets that harm, diets that help, cultural identity, generational gaps, marketing, and historical myths. Discussion guides like the one excerpted here, written specifically for Soul Food Junkies, help guide all of us through these issues with care, integrity, safety, and respect.
For tips on holding a film screening, see here.
— Excerpted with permission from the Community Cinema discussion guide for Soul Food Junkies (available at itvs.org/films/soul-food-junkies/engagement-resources)
My father, Paul C. Gartzke, always had Wisconsin State Historical Society journals lying on the coffee table when he worked from home, comfortably seated on the living room couch. The journals never sported color photos, so I wasn’t much interested as a kid. But he loved them. He circled passages he liked or disagreed with, and he dog-eared pages to lecture us from when we gathered together at the dinner table at 6:00 p.m. sharp. He loved learning and teaching, though he could be pedantic about it all.
But for me, living in a community shifted the study of history from academic to real life, from pages to people. In my quest to learn more about food and farming, I discovered the Agricultural History Society (aghistorysociety.org). Founded in 1919 in Washington, D.C., the society started publishing its journal in 1927. Included in the journal are articles and research from all periods of history. A recent call for papers included the topical and timely subject “illicit agriculture,” as in the farming of illicit substances, criminal farming sites, and/or illegal or subaltern agriculture activities.
So, you guerrilla gardeners out there who plant food in public spaces, sounds like this is for you or your next panel discussion! A presentation subject right up your alleys, vacant lots, and parkways . . . There’s an article, blog, or paper ripe and ready to publish, along the lines of “Green Zebra Tomatoes, Silver Cloud Cannellini Beans, and Duborskian–South River Rice: The New Illicit Crops, and the Gateway Crops to Good Healthy Food for All.”
“A people without a knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots.”
— Marcus Garvey, What’s Going On
There’s always more than one meaning to any one word. Consider “the farm,” which can also be slang for jail or prison. In our country, a prison’s actual farm connotes exploitive hard labor and dangerous work, sometimes called “rehabilitative,” though most likely not. But these are new times or at least a chance at them, one hopes. And this slang usage of “the farm,” this duality of meaning, poses a conundrum, a disconnect, for the entire current vernacular and dialogue around the local food movement. Or, maybe a chance to connect?
I thank my friend, esteemed colleague, and kindred soul Alice Randall for bringing this aspect of food activism’s language to my white-privileged attention. Consider how the following phrases, on which this book is based, read: farm to school, farm to table, farm to institution, farm to prison. And even the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s own “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” initiative potentially tumbles deep in this tumult. Language matters. So here we are, learning how we speak to one another in order to be understood whether and wherever it is: on the farm, in the garden, in prisons and jails. In this case, I truly do mean connecting farms to farm food, to people who live in jails and prisons.
Work to support good food and good food education in jails, prisons, and halfway houses in your area. Build a food garden. The healing and health and rehabilitative benefits of gardening are proven. Or if you’re a farmer, sell your whole, fresh food to the cafeterias (for tips on selling, see here and here).
Petition your state’s department of agriculture to partner with your state’s department of corrections. In January 2014, Washington State announced the launching of its Farm to Prison pilot program, to supply local food to correctional facilities. You can support this process by encouraging the adaptation of established farm-to-institution benefits and guidelines. There is a vast amount of widely available information, advice, and help to be tailored from farm to school and farm to hospital programs.
Get a gleaning program connected to the confined citizens and their cafeterias. Develop skilled labor: some inmates in California and Colorado are learning food and farming skills and working in small goat or cow dairies and fisheries.
Or start a culinary arts program. At the Fife and Drum Restaurant inside the Northeastern Correctional Center, a minimum-security prison near Concord, Massachusetts, lunch is made from scratch and served by inmates. It’s a good deal, too, at around $3.21.
Inmates at the Sandusky County Jail tend a 1.5-acre plot and get to eat the benefits, which include their locally raised broilers. Garden overages? Yes: 375 pounds of food was donated to food pantries and soup kitchens in 2010.
All food harvested from the prison garden at San Quentin, which was featured on ABC World News, is given to the community. Go to the Insight Garden Program’s website (insightgardenprogram.org) for resources and news about prison farm programs nationwide.
This essay is by Kathleen Yetman, a FoodCorps fellow (see here for more on FoodCorps). She interviews Gilbert Ivins, a FoodCorps service member.
Cibecue, Arizona, is a community of 1,700 White Mountain Apache tribal members situated among stunning red rock hills, scrub juniper, and sprawling grasslands. It is located on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in eastern Arizona at the foot of the White Mountains. Cibecue is off the beaten path — an hour’s drive from any other town or city — and due to its isolation, food options are limited. There are three convenience stores in Cibecue. Last year, while serving as a FoodCorps service member, I perused the shelves of the largest of the three. There was one cooler in the back of the store sparsely stocked with packaged cucumbers and half-ripe tomatoes, and a couple of heads of iceberg lettuce. These were the only vegetables for sale in the community. In one of the other stores, with a growling stomach, I searched for the healthiest item, and after settling on a 16-ounce block of cheddar cheese, discovered that it cost $7. In that same store, one can buy 308 ounces of soda for the same price.
Most Cibecue families make a weekly trip 48 miles to Walmart, where food is cheaper and there is a greater variety. You can imagine what families are left to purchase if they can’t make that weekly trek. So it’s not all that surprising that kids growing up there may have never seen a real carrot. In 2010, FoodCorps partnered with the Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health (JHCAIH) and beginning last year placed two FoodCorps service members on the reservation to teach gardening and nutrition to kids at Dischii’bikoh (Cibecue) Community School. Through the Edible School Garden program, third, fourth, and fifth graders learn about the plant life cycle, tools to help them choose healthier foods, and about the wild foods their ancestors used to eat.
This year, we are fortunate to have Gilbert Ivins as our service member in Cibecue. Gilbert is a member of the White Mountain Apache Tribe and has lived in Cibecue his whole life. Prior to FoodCorps, he worked as an emergency medical technician and firefighter in his community. Last week I sat down with Gilbert to hear about his service.
Gilbert: Being a FoodCorps service member is really cool because I get to be the stepping-stone for many young Native American youth making a positive change toward their health and nutrition. So far this year with the kids from Cibecue Elementary, I have seen that my presence there has made a big difference. I’ve seen kids try all the vegetables and fruits we brought them. . . . One student told me he wished he could never grow old so he could stay in Edible School Garden and Native Vision forever and that Edible School Garden would continue throughout his time in school all the way up until he graduates. FoodCorps has touched the hearts and souls of the Apache youth in Cibecue.
Kathleen: What are some of the challenges you see facing kids in your community?
Gilbert: The gangs and the influences they have on the kids — drugs, alcohol, and violence. Obesity is another issue that comes into play because the parents don’t discipline their kids enough to choose healthier products and instead feed them all the nonhealthy food that is easily available at any given moment.
Kathleen: How do you see your service addressing all of these challenges?
Gilbert: By teaching and showing these kids healthy from nonhealthy items. I hope that kids take home and share with their parents the information they get from our classes. I hope too that the parents will come to us with questions about healthy eating lifestyles.
— Excerpted with permission from Kathleen Yetman, FoodCorps Fellow, and Gilbert Ivins, FoodCorps service member, January 29, 2013
Elizabeth Hoover, assistant professor of American studies and ethnic studies at Brown University, is spending her sabbatical going across the country, visiting Native American farming/gardening/food sovereignty projects. Here is something of what she’s seen.
Kanenhi:io Ionkwaienthon:hakie (Mohawk for “We Are Planting Good Seeds”) is a collective of farmers, educators, and entrepreneurs in the Akwesasne Mohawk community, located on the borders of New York, Ontario, and Quebec.
Kanenhi:io collaborates with the Akwesasne Freedom School (AFS), a Mohawk immersion school founded in 1979 by parents who were concerned with the lack of culture and language in the public school systems. The school conducts full-day language immersion classes for students in pre-K to grade 8, with a curriculum based on the Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen (Thanksgiving Address). The AFS owns the 10.5-acre site where Kanenhi:io has developed the community garden, greenhouse, and cannery. In addition, school staff and parents are partnering with Kanenhi:io group members to involve students in the production of food.
The greenhouse was constructed in 2008, and has provided community members with a place to start seedlings for the community garden and home gardens, as well as to grow warm-weather crops like tomatoes and amaranth. The community cannery was developed between 2011 and 2014, and has provided a place for community members to dehydrate, can, and freeze produce, as well as to press apples into cider. One of Kanenhi:io’s goals in the coming year is to expand the offering of food preservation and gardening classes offered at the cannery, as well as expand the video and book library.
In addition to planting market crops in the community garden, Kanenhi:io has been working with seed savers across Haudenosaunee territory to bring back more heritage seed varieties — both to preserve these crops planted by ancestors on this land, and in an effort to work traditional foods back into people’s diets.
In addition to the Freedom School students, Kanenhi:io also works with the Ohero:kon rites of passage program, begun by bear clan mother Louise McDonald as a way of educating adolescents about their traditional roles and obligations as they become Mohawk adults. Because horticulture is such an important aspect of Mohawk culture and health, members of Kanenhi:io are working to involve the Ohero:kon adolescents in farming and gardening projects. Part of the Mohawk creation story includes the first garden, which sprang forth from Sky Woman’s daughter. As part of the rites of passage ceremony, the youth create a woman out of soil, into which they plant corn, beans, squash and tobacco. Through nurturing the land, as well as the social and cultural relationships that are integral to sustainable food production, Kanenhi:io, the Akwesasne Freedom School, and the Ohero:kon rites of passage are working to make Akwesasne a healthier, more food sovereign community.
— Excerpted with permission by Elizabeth Hoover, From Garden Warriors to Good Seeds (gardenwarriorsgoodseeds.com)
The Decolonizing Diet Project (DDP), directed by Martin Reinhardt, an Anishinaabe Ojibway and assistant professor of Native American studies at Northern Michigan University, is an ambitious, year-long eating challenge to eat only foods that were in the Great Lakes region before 1602. The aim is to restore the relationship between humans and regional native foods. A few tasty local morsels? Squash, bison, and wild leeks from the region.
The desire to reclaim traditional foods is spreading across the country. Luz Calvo, a professor, gardener, and food activist in Oakland, California, recently began a similar Decolonize Your Diet Project in California, aimed at promoting the “heritage foods of greater Mexico and Central America as a way of improving the physical, emotional, and spiritual health of US Latinos/as.”
Terrie Bad Hand and Pati Martinson of the Taos County Economic Development Corporation know what it means to support farmers, indigenous local culture, and food entrepreneurs. They manage a commercial incubator kitchen, hold food safety workshops for health regulators, and manage a mobile slaughter and processing unit called the Mobile Mantaza, which they built to support area ranchers. Together with the First Nations Development Institute, they formed NAFSA in 2013, with funding provided by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. Responding to the imperative and potency of local, sustained food movements in Indian country, NAFSA, according to its website (nativefoodsystems.org), will “be a vehicle to facilitate change in areas of tribal, regional and national policy on issues affecting Native food production and diet and be a support network for grassroots Native efforts as they work to revive tradition and community based food systems.”
The interfaith discussion guidelines excerpted here were made in collaboration with GreenFaith.org and the movie Fresh. Though their guide was made with this particular movie in mind, their tips apply to getting together to discuss any movie or book, or simply just a potluck.
— Excerpted with permission from Interfaith Discussion Guide, produced by GreenFaith (below) and the makers of the movie Fresh
The interfaith organization GreenFaith (greenfaith.org) offers terrific guides for congregations, houses of worship, households, and individuals to download for free. Their PowerPoint presentation “Food and Faith: Actions within Houses of Worship” asks compelling questions to bring to any congregation, Christian or otherwise. Examples include:
Also download Repairing Eden, a Good Food Toolkit made in conjunction with the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future.
The film Fresh shows the ways in which our current food systems harm people, animals, and the whole earth.
— Excerpted with permission from Greenfaith.org and FRESHthemovie.com.
It is a stark video. It may as well be an instructional piece on blacksmithing. The only sounds are the furnace and the rhythmic clank of hammer to anvil with forge-hot steel in between. Leather-gloved hands grip a vise that secures the red-hot barrel of a gun — the object that is being transformed from a weapon into a garden tool. This is a real-life, modern-day take on the biblical passage Isaiah 2:4:
They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.
The “raw” in RAWtools is “war” spelled backward. This Colorado-based nonprofit is affiliated with Beth-El Mennonite Church in Colorado Springs. Its impetus, though grounded in the Isaiah passage, came from the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. When the founder and executive director, Mike Martin and his wife, learned that some of the recovered metal from the twin towers was repurposed into the construction of U.S. warships, they were determined to effect change in the vicious cycle of hate begets hate, terror begets terror. RAWtools’ mission, as stated on its website (rawtools.org) is “to repurpose weapons into hand tools to be used in the creation of something new, preventing the weapon’s use for violence and creating a cycle of peace.” The organization continues to hold repurposing events in conjunction with places of worship, for Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations, and at justice conferences.
After forging garden tools and sending them out into the world anew, RAWtools encourages the new owners/gardeners to share their stories of how the tools are used, in whose gardens, and how much food they cultivate. The greatest challenge RAWtools faces is not finding homes for the garden tools but, ironically, securing the legal access to the guns they want to repurpose. By partnering with local police departments, places of worship, and nonprofits, the group hopes that the sounds of anvil, hammer, and hot metal will ring on, in community choruses of “grow food, grow peace.”
Look for the YouTube video “Swords to Plows.”
— RAWtools