Community Cafe Update

Our third Community Cafe event, on Friday evening, was a great success! Despite last minute menu changes, and lots of behind-the-scenes stress, we pulled it off. The space at the Wellesley Community  Centre was full of people from all ages and backgrounds. We were entertained by local musicians, and fed by local farmers. Even in the midst of kitchen busyness, I was conscious of the relaxed and friendly vibe throughout the event. Pictures to come soon.
The Community Cafe in St James Town is an emerging project I'm involved in that aims to build inclusive participatory community through healthy food. A food buying club, ethical food sourcing policy, and pay what you can system are all parts of what will make - and are already making - this a unique, dynamic space for people from all backgrounds to be part of a community of change and equity (like Occupy but different). Now that this event is over, our focus returns to fundraising, business development, and seeking a permanent space.

All Party Climate Caucus

Small steps, small changes, new hope. Launched by Liberal MP Kirsty Duncan, and with representatives from all the parties, including Conservative MP Michael Chong, we now have a federal Climate Caucus. Read more here!

Some are guilty, but all are responsible. Be responsible.

I have been preoccupied, as an environmentalist, with the Tar Sands and climate change. I know, however, that climate change, and Canada’s failure to act responsibly on climate change is just part of a bigger picture of a relationship – between people, governments, corporations, and the natural world – that isn’t working, and that needs realigning. There are so many of us keen to realign, and the message is getting out. I truly believe that change is on the way.

Tuesday evening, I ended up going to the Occupy Toronto evening general assembly. I hadn’t been to Occupy TO in a couple of days, and with the rain, I might not have gone if it hadn’t been for meeting that didn’t happen. But I was glad that I went. The rain had pushed the general assembly inside the gazebo where there was a sense of comfort – essential as the participants and facilitators negotiated processes for training and for relating with each other. As an outsider who is inside enough to know that the act of occupying has been a struggle of ideals, personalities, and gender balances, I was impressed with the commitment and patience with which participants worked to build respectful relationships. This is important because I believe that if we want to recover a healthy relationship with the environment and the economy, we need to start with ourselves.

Near the end, from the speakers’ list were a couple of people from Anakbayan Youth, asking for our solidarity in the Occupy movement in the Philippines, especially amid changing laws (“Charter Change”) in the Philippines that further open up land to being sold off to large multinationals. As Canadians, the speakers pointed out, we have a uniquely destructive relationship with the Philippines. Mining companies – mostly Canadian – continue to wreak environmental and political havoc on mostly indigenous lands and communities in the Philippines. Look up the Philippines on Mining Watch for the gory details. At the same time, indigenous and subsistence farmers are at risk of further food insecurity as land continues to be taken under control of mining companies and biofuel growers. Meanwhile, the temporary workers programme takes advantage of Filipina workers, bringing them to Canada to work on temporary visas – taking them away from their families and communities with no hope of permanent Canadian citizenship, and undercutting Filipino-Canadian permanent residents and citizens as job seekers.  

A quote I’ve seen recently and like, is ‘Some are guilty, but all are responsible’. I object to any claims to make me feel personally guilty for historical or far-away tragedies like the colonization of First Nations peoples, or the ongoing destruction of land and life in Canada or in the Philippines or around the world. I am not personally guilty for those events; I, and many other dissenters are as personally powerless as the victims of these crimes. But with the power of cooperation and education, and especially as Canadian citizens and taxpayers, we do have the opportunity – and therefore the responsibility – to stand against the crimes of Canadian mining companies in the Philippines and around the world, to stand against the destruction of the local and global environment perpetrated by the oil companies and the Canadian government in Alberta, and to stand for environmental and social justice. As we restore relationships with each other and with the natural world, we need to restore our sense not of guilt, but of responsible action and voice. Just as so many people are standing up against the megaquarry in Melancthon county around the corner, I hope we can show the same respect and love for people and planet further away.

Small (and inspiring) Planet

When I was growing up, meat played a pretty prominent role in our diet, but occasionally, my mom would go through surges of vegetarianism, in which Lentils Monastery Style, from Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé, played a starring role. And now, while the majority of my parents’ meals, and mine, are vegetarian, Diet for a Small Planet-inspired lentil soup is still my mom’s top go-to recipe.  

One day last week I went into Book City, looking for the perfect book to convince a friend that if he changed his diet he would solve his sinus problems. I didn’t find it, but instead found EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think, to Create the World We Want, by Frances Moore Lappé. I bought the book (a big deal for me - I usually borrow a book from the library before taking the plunge) and took it home, and have since been enraptured by how Moore Lappé turns around so many of my environmentalist assumptions. She presents a more hopeful way of looking at both the problems and the solutions - of not just climate change, but our overall relationship with each other and the natural world.

As I left the book store that day, my mom phoned me. I mentioned to her Occupy Toronto’s need for cooked food, soup, and other things. And an hour later, she called to say that Frances Moore Lappé’s classic lentil soup was simmering on the stove, and ask where to deliver it. Now, a weekly Occupy hot food donation seems to be in the works.

And this, engaging people in the capacity that works for them, and inspiring their own spirit of resistance, is what the Occupy movement is about to me. Even more, as I and others at Occupy TO talked about last week as we worked on a food sourcing policy, it has the potential to do what Moore Lappé (and others like Rob Hopkins of the Transition Handbook and Transition movement) say we need: on the ground actions that represent real change.

That’s why it is so important that the Occupy movement be its own change – that it fully supports local, sustainable, healthy food systems; and a sustainable economy generally (e.g., no more handing out dollar-store umbrellas); that it facilitates healthy, equitable relationships among all participants. And that it supports real growth in the things that matter.

While I have been using the language of the end of growth, and I still think this is valuable, as I read Moore Lappé’s thoughtful discussion of growth, I just shifted my image of growth a few degrees - for Moore Lappé questions whether what we’ve been experiencing in the past fifty years or so has been growth at all, or rather an economy of waste and inequity – what if, as the Occupy movement calls for, we can restore genuine growth in quality of life for the 99%? What if?   

More on Frances Moore Lappé’s EcoMind coming soon – if there’s one book you read, I hope it will be this one.  

Occupy Movement

This first week of the Occupy movement, I've gone back and forth from inspiration to frustration, like many of the occupyers.

The time lag between idea and action scares me - even as I find hope in it. The visible dynamic of gender difference (so many white men at the front) both worries and confuses me - why is this happening? is it a reflection of natural style differences, or a harbinger of greater inequality? what should we do about it? Yesterday, watching the General Assembly after the big march to Nathan Phillips Square (2000+ people!), I couldn't help recall fictionalized accounts of the Russian Revolution - and not so much in a good way.

But talk about being the movement - solar panels, local purchasing policies, supporting local farmers, and teach-ins on climate and economy - inspire me.
Planning a climate conversation cafe, I felt excitement and passion, and relief in knowing that there are so many others who also believe that our relationships with each other and with the natural world need to be at the centre of this movement.
Helping to develop a food sourcing policy, I felt the hope of knowing there are so many others who also believe in the importance of living our values at every level of this movement.
Seeing the shifts in the movement over the past week, as more and more women, men, white, brown, First Nations, and people of various ethnic shades and political and economic stripes work together, I have felt my uncertainty give way, again and again to reassurance and hope.
Reading, writing, talking with others who believe that the Occupy movement is not one thing but a dynamic and active space for real change excites me!
A few pictures:

Occupy, Day 4

From Rabble, Michael Kaufman expresses beautifully what is my dream for the Occupy movement. Read Occupy the Future: Eight Steps to Being the 99%.

What do Canadians have to protest? We don't have it that bad.

This question seemed to be a recurring theme on websites about the Occupy Toronto movement. And to me the answer is, We are that bad, and we can be a lot better. In Canada, as around the world, we support an economic system that is unsustainable and ultimately self-destructive. The effects of this economic system are felt on the planet and on the world's poorest people.

As I logged onto the Occupy website, I encountered a fundraising ad for the starving children of Somalia. What better juxtaposition, for Canadians do feel for the people of Somalia. Yes the famine is related to decades of severe political instability, but - like many crises in the developing world now - it's also related to unjust food and trade policies, and to desertification related to climate change.

In this country, we have a terrible track record on climate change. Our politicians often stand up to impede agreements that would help to lower emissions. It is most likely that we will not make our (drastically inadequate) Kyoto commitments. White Water, Black Gold is one recent film that shows the impacts of climate change in our country (unreliable waterways, melting glaciers, unpredictable weather). In Africa, the South Pacific, parts of the Indian subcontinent, China, and Australia, the effects are already much more dramatic - flooding, drought, and heat waves, and costing uncountable lives. Yet the federal government continues to invest $1.5 billion of our tax money every year in the Alberta tar sands. Do you really want your tax dollars going to the tar sands?!

While some scientists fear that it is too late to preserve the climate we depend on, it is only going to get later. The Occupy movement is the opportunity to act now.

I am hopeful that Canadians will call for change, and will keep calling until we are heard. I am hopeful that we will care enough not only for our own children and grandchildren, but for our neighbours around the world, and for the planet we depend on. I am hopeful that we can change from a growth economy to an enough economy - based on justice, life and wellbeing for all, for the 100%.