You probably know the saying by now: anything a man can do a woman can do better. And usually she does it with less complaining, more style, and let’s be totally honest, a whole lot more grace. Even farming. Yep, the new face of farmers in the U.S. might just pleasantly surprise you.
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Actress Daryl Hannah has been arrested in front of the White House along with other environmental protesters opposing a planned oil pipeline from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast. The sit-in Tuesday, August 30th involved dozens protesting the Keystone XL pipeline. It would go through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas to refineries in Texas.
I imagine that most people are familiar with the phrase, “It takes a village to raise a child”. While this rings true for children and families, I find that this can apply to many things. In fact, the community or village around that child or idea betters almost everything as it tries to grow and plant its roots.
At the moment, I believe this philosophy can be applied to making a change for our environment and helping our environment to continue to grow, as it should. While a lot of positive changes and growth begin in the home, much like with children, you cannot underestimate nor deny the positive influence provided by the village.
There are many ways that you can encourage your community to come together to help the environment. While we don’t exist in the same way as a community or village that we used to, it can still be a great way to educate and spread the word about some of the issues going on in the environment today.
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As my knowledge and passion grows, I see that we, as Americans and world citizens, have a lot of work to do. To combat frustration and despair that grip many of us after we see movies like Food Inc., I have developed a platform for change. Human creativity remains to be one of the last resources that has not been commodified for profit. There are vast untapped stories, images, fears, dreams and damaged lives out there that are waiting to be expressed.
Our Facebook Page, World Food Day KC 2011 Flash Mob has many functions, but at the top of the list is: A place where we can express in different ways our concern, hope and fears around the topic of the future of food. These expressions, in turn, are then made into posters and fliers that are free for world citizens to download in order to make their own parties, potlucks, protests, flash mobs or advertisements. We encourage people who feel that they don’t have a voice to contribute, as their healing becomes our healing. The system in the U.S. and around the world is truly in a crisis of proportions that we are barely conscious of.
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One of the best parts of my work with Women Of Green is I get to hang out with some of the coolest, smartest, electrifying people on the planet. Rha Goddess is at the top of that list. She is a captivating performance artist, activist and social entrepreneur who uses her artistic and motivational talents to heal, transform, and inspire. If you are an entrepreneur (or want to be) whose mission has social change at the heart of your enterprise, listen to this interview. Rha’s shares her hard-earned business savvy with her deep passion to make a difference, and shows us how to “Stay True, Get Paid and Do Good”. That’s music to my ears.
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Pharmacy chain Walgreens plans to offer electric vehicle charging stations at about 800 locations across the country by the end of the year, making it the nation’s largest charging station retail host. Thumbs up? Thumbs down?
Read more at Environmental Leader.
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We all know that Florida is famous for its oranges. But if it’s up to Barry Estabrook, the Florida tomato will soon upstage its sister. His new book, Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit, exposes some juicy facts about how these red rivals are grown and who’s doing the pickin’. According to the book, children as young as 12 do farm work and workers are paid by the number of containers of fruit they pick, a system that often leaves them with less than the minimum wage.
Estabrook writes, “This might explain why the life expectancy of a migrant worker in the United States is only 49 years … migrant workers typically make between $10,000 and $12,000 a year, a figure that is distorted because it includes the higher wages paid to field supervisors.”
To make matters worse, pesticides abound in the sandy soil their grown in, and farm workers are exposed and often unprotected. Give me one of those tomatoes and let me throw it at the culprits here. Shame on you.
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