HI All,
Wanted to write you all a note and give you some minutes from the meeting tonight.
First, it was a hit! There were 80-90 or more people present. All the right people from all the right groups were represented. For those of you who are part of Conrcordia Gardens, yo may know that it is in Willie Johnsons County district. He was there and approached me afterward for my contact info stating that he is intrigued by all of this. Alderman Nik Kovac, Tim McCollow from the Office of Sustainability, David Sivier from Dept. of Forestry, Yves Lapier from Dept of City Development, Carries Lewis from Milwaukee Water Works, MMSD, neighborhood associations, kids, adults, social service agencies, and most importantly many, many, community gardeners.
Second, we had a great presentation from Ron Doetch and Alexa Bradley about moving forward with solutions. Ron’s presentation really got the creative juices flowing… in a big ways, for many people. Basic statistics about having good soil (COME ON FOLKS HELP US GET THE MILWAUKEE COMMUNITY COMPOST NETWORK UP AND RUNNING, WE NEED YOU!), how much rain falls, how to utilize the layers of the soil, how to use trenches and berm and much more, gave fuel for everyone.
Jan Christensen did a fantastic job of running the small group break-out sessions. The groups came back energized with many excellent ideas that they are eager to follow-up on.
We put together two workgroups, one to create an urban agriculture policy and one to begin developing strategies for hydrant alternatives. The former consists of solid players in this process, environmental lawyers, policy makers, community members, city representatives all wrapped up in meeting goodness. The latter consists of one representative from each community garden and a city representative, David Sivyer. The groups will reconvene on August 11th to begin the good work.
If you couldnt make it to the meeting, and you’d like to participate in this process, please shoot me an email and Ill hook you up with your group of preference. If you are part of a community garden that wasnt represented tonight, please let me know about this as well. We dont want any gardens being left out and unable to access water
In my opinion, ultimately, I believe that this is an opportunity for community gardens and urban agriculture to get ahead of the curve and become more sustainable, more productive, more successful. However, I dont want to diminish, nor forget, that there are social justice factors at work here, that don’t sit right with me, or with many of the people at the meeting. I can tell you this: 15.9% of the water produced by MWW is unaccounted for, unmetered water. Though there are no statistics on how much of this is used for community gardens, I can assure you that this amount is minute, tiny, small, not much water, at all in fact, and I believe it is not only of poor taste for MWW and the City to make this decision before really looking into it, I do believe that in the end, this is a social justice concern. We cannot let the community gardens that have gardeners who are of little means, go even one season without water. We all know that community gardens make this city a better place. We know that they promote a healthy, resilient city – the cost to anyone is minimal. We are the ones that need to ensure this doesnt happen.
Im still not certain that we have come out in the open with the ‘real’ reason for this decision – frankly, Im convinced this has everything to do with privatization. But, guess what, I dont care what the corporate minded, perpetual growth economic model, says about this situation. I dont even care if MWW did in fact pick the lowest hanging fruit they could find to write community gardening out of the budget and save themselves a few thousand dollars a year as one person suggested to me. Why dont I care? because I have a community of people surrounding me that are going to stop waiting for the government to have all the answers and all the capital. Know what, we’ve got social capital, we’ve got hands, we’ve got skills, we know people, who know people, who know people, who have just the right skill, tools, intelligence, talents, charms, passion, anger, joy, and the wherewithal to create a local resilient food systems. We’ve got all this at our disposal. We just have to use it.
I think it is fair to say this is a momentous occasion for all of us. Im confident that we are going to move forward towards a more sustainable food system.
Check ya later alligator ~g
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