Climate, Water & Food Fixes From the Ground Up
Our masks are coming off just as spring flowers are in full bloom! May you get a chance to smell them.
I say this because so many of us now spend our most alert hours facing a screen emitting blue light, not sunshine. COVID increased our reliance on Zoom and shopping online. We’ve learned to track a virtual world’s geography without rhythm of seasons or sunsets. Its topography is changed constantly by tectonic plates called updates or upgrades to convince us all’s good.
Yet how many times must I change my password, and must I for every “account?” Yes, it’s for security, I’m told, and am I really who I claimed I was? Can you authenticate that via phone or text or email? Oops, either your username or your password is wrong and sorry, no telling which one, and oh boy, now you’re locked out, aren’t you — for your own security.
That’s when it’s time to re-enter a world you were born into, by a mother who held you by means of muscle and gravity. Go outdoors then, whatever the weather, and remember what dirt is, how rain has a fragrance. Human hubris — our jabbering at each other in a virtual world, our branding ourselves like cans on a shelf — mustn’t distract us.
What is security? On whose account? Our species faces a climate crisis, a water and food crisis and a delusion that we’re in control. T-Rex probably believed that too. Then the weather got really bad.
It’s weird, but let’s get real by going online!
An Economy of Our Own is hosting some of the smartest and earthiest women we know to talk about ways to create healthy weather, water, and food. Our next webinar, From the Ground Up, will give you a place to stand and will help you make sense of what’s needed to make real economic change.
It’s simple, really: Healthy Soil=Healthy Climate+Water+Food.
Register to participate, ask questions, and receive an AEOO aid for further learning. It’s free, but if you’re able, donate what you can to support women sharing and learning real world economics with a feminist vision.
This woman-to-woman conversation will be moderated by Didi Pershouse , an AEOO board member, and founder of the Land and Leadership Initiative , an online school. She is the author of: The Ecology of Care ; and Understanding Soil Health and Watershed Function . She’ll be joined by Dr. Sabine O’Hara , widely known for her insights into sustainable economic development as dean of the College of Agriculture, Urban Sustainability and Environmental Sciences of the University of the District of Columbia .
Monique Verdin leads the Indigenous Food Sovereignty Program , part of WECAN (Women’s Earth Climate Action Network). Author of Return to Yakni Chitto: Houma Migrations , she’s a storyteller recording the relationship between environment, culture, and climate in southeast Louisiana. And finally, Gwendolyn Hallsmith , also an AEOO board member and author of The Key to Sustainable Cities will share her work organizing a Regeneration Revolution whose earth-friendly, anti-racist principles are linked here.
Tope Fajinbesi of Dodo Farms in Maryland’s Agricultural Reserve will join us virtually because, get real, this is planting season! She’s an accountant, teaching at the Institute for Applied Agriculture and sits on the board of Future Harvest , another great organization working to sustain life from the ground up.
While we’re on the subject of Mother Earth, who is 70 percent water, here is my latest column at Ms. Magazine, Water, Water, Everywhere and Not A Drop to Drink. The title is dire, but this celebrates the water-protector work of Erin Brockovitch, Shana Swan, Theodora Colburn, Sarah Ganim, and the women of WILPF. Don’t know who they are, except for Erin, of Hollywood movie fame? Exactly! Spread the word.
More of women’s hidden work and real security can be found at the podcast series called Hidden Truths , the work of AEOO ally Jhumpa Bhattacharya ’s organization, The Insight Center for Community Economic Development.
It’s most recent of 32 episodes is Bringing Black Women to the Policy Table, with Cassandra Welchin and Shannon Williams with the Mississippi Women’s Economic Security Initiative and the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable.
About time.
And if you’re curious about Universal Basic Income, Gwendolyn Hallsmith’s Global Initiative has a new YouTube video about UBI, and is planning a second on May 17, which will also be recorded. You’ll see activists from around the world, and again, hopeful solutions.
Finally, thanks again for all those of you who have contributed in many ways in many amounts, all of which count! AEOO recently got a surprise donation that said something we had to repeat, it so moved us:
Now, please, let’s get outdoors and smell those flowers!
