Black Lives Matter

Hello! I hope everyone is having a great start to the summer! This post is to draw attention to the Black Lives Matter tab you can find to the right of this post. This page contains links to resources and readings about protests, police, and anti-racism. Please take some time to check it out!

Alliums and Anarchy,

K Gar

Soul Fire Farm's 2020 Black, Indigenous and People of Color Led – How To Videos, Gardening Projects and Online Learning Resources

Soul Fire Farm "is a BIPOC*-centered community farm committed to ending racism and injustice in the food system." 

Founder Leah Penniman is also the author of Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm's Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land. She recently visited UC Santa Cruz for a talk about food justice.

Soul Fire Farm has curated resources that include how-to's, gardening projects, and online learning– all led by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities.

As all of our roots shift with the new ground that has come out of COVID-19, hopefully this can be a resource for folx who are curious about gardening and creating food sovereignty for themselves and their communities. 

Reading Resources

listed below are reading recommendations/resources from ashlyn salao, a member of the co-op, and includes pieces about indigenous wisdom, plant knowledge, organizing and facilitation, food sovereignty and justice, and reimagining new worlds. * next to the title will indicate that the book is available to access through the garden's free library. 

abolition now!: ten years of strategy and struggle against the prison industrial complex, the cr10 publications collective

a collection of essays that “presents bold strategies to create a stronger movement of people committed to PIC abolition and build healthy communities free from surveillance, policing, and imprisonment.” i started with alexis gumbs’ chapter, “freedom seeds: growing abolition in durham, north carolina,” and wow! i’ve read pieces of gumbs’ writing before, and it always feels special to read. 

black food geographies: race, self-reliance, and food access in washington, d.c., dr. ashanté m. reese

"in this book, ashanté m. reese makes clear the structural forces that determine food access in urban areas, highlighting black residents’ navigation of and resistance to unequal food distribution systems. linking these local food issues to the national problem of systemic racism, reese examines the history of the majority-black deanwood neighborhood of washington, d.c. based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, reese not only documents racism and residential segregation in the nation’s capital but also tracks the ways transnational food corporations have shaped food availability. by connecting community members’ stories to the larger issues of racism and gentrification, reese shows there are hundreds of deanwoods across the country.

reese’s geographies of self-reliance offer an alternative to models that depict black residents as lacking agency, demonstrating how an ethnographically grounded study can locate and amplify nuances in how black life unfolds within the context of unequal food access." - university of north carolina press

*braiding sweetgrass: indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants, robin wall kimmerer

this is my bible, and my favorite book ever. that’s a tough thing to say now that i’m looking at a lineup of all of my favorite books, but reading it really was medicine for the soul. i think you should read the first chapter, “sky woman,” using google books’ free preview feature, and then see if this book is what you need at the moment. the first time i read this chapter, my housemate in the coziest home i’ve ever had let me borrow their copy, and i sunk into the couch in our sunlit living room while reading to myself. the second time, a lovely mentor/friend read it aloud to me and a handful of other students while we laid out on a picnic blanket in a green, green field overlooking the ocean with the sun beaming down on us in the middle of winter. both ways are magical, but the second one is especially so. this is one of my favorite books to read aloud to loved ones. 

captive genders: trans embodiment and the prison industrial complex, eric a. stanley and nat smith

“an exciting assemblage of writings -- analyses, manifestos, stories, interviews -- that traverse the complicated entanglements of surveillance, policing, imprisonment, and the production of gender normativity.” angela davis

consensus decision making, seeds for change

contains information about the history and praxis of consensus decision making. you can read more about it in our "about cooperatives" page.

*emergent strategy: shaping change, changing worlds, adrienne maree brown

"inspired by octavia butler's explorations of our human relationship to change, emergent strategy is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live. change is constant. the world is in a continual state of flux. it is a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. rather than steel ourselves against such change, this book invites us to feel, map, assess, and learn from the swirling patterns around us in order to better understand and influence them as they happen. this is a resolutely materialist “spirituality” based equally on science and science fiction, a visionary incantation to transform that which ultimately transforms us." - ak press

evidence, alexis pauline gumbs

this is one of the stories included in octavia’s brood, but i read this separately in a course i was taking before i had known about octavia’s brood. again, a reading that i’ve shared widely with friends and also have read aloud when possible. this story has informed the way i dream, write and imagine. it’s a short story, so i would recommend to anyone. 

*farming while black: soul fire farm's practical guide to liberation on the land,  leah penniman

contains cultural farming practices and recipes. i lost my copy of the book in the middle of reading, so that's all i can say about it for now. 

*medicinal herbs of santa cruz county, levi glatt

can also be purchased from bookshop santa cruz if you want to avoid amazon. a really helpful resource for identifying herbs in the garden or finding new plants. 

parable of the sower, octavia butler

"parable of the sower is the butlerian odyssey of one woman who is twice as feeling in a world that has become doubly dehumanized. the time is 2025. the place is california, where small walled communities must protect themselves from hordes of desperate scavengers and roaming bands of people addicted to a drug that activates an orgasmic desire to burn, rape, and murder. when one small community is overrun, lauren olamina, an eighteen-year-old black woman with the hereditary train of "hyperempathy"—which causes her to feel others’ pain as her own—sets off on foot along the dangerous coastal highways, moving north into the unknown." - ak press

solidarity not charity: mutual aid for mobilization and survival, dean spade

really cumulative article about the history of reform, mutual aid, bottom-up organizing, consensus, collective care, and conflict resolution. 

the overstory, richard powers

a friend recently reached out to me, asking for a book recommendation (hello, laila!). laila mentioned that they loved braiding sweetgrass and was looking for something in that realm. not many other books have touched me the way braiding sweetgrass has, but this one carried so much of the same magic while i was reading that it’s now one of my top favorites as well. on the surface, it’s a story about people, but i’d argue that the ‘understory’ is actually a story about trees. in the beginning, i was slow to be sucked in, not quite understanding where the story was going or what kind of story it was at all. however, everything fell into place so powerfully, and by the time i got through the introductions, it was hard for me to put the book down. my good friend, who is a naturalist that i met in costa rica, recommended this book to me, and when i remember the sweet, sweet landscape of costa rica, i can see all of the reasons why. 

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updated by ashlyn salao (september 2020)