Ethan Genauer

When I started volunteering this winter as a garden science teacher with Washington Youth Garden, entering one 3rd-grade classroom every week to help instill knowledge and enthusiasm by the children for the wonders of nature, I had no idea that this experience would inspire me to initiate a national call for Universal School Gardens.

Unless and until we mobilize a mass movement to take down and transform the U.S. legal, political and economic systems upholding the fiction that corporations possess the same constitutional rights as individuals, along with other hallmarks of corporate power, it is fruitless to blame green consumers for the failure to spur large-scale meaningful change.

“We need to break up the big banks. We need banks that understand good farming practices, soil stewardship … and look at the long-term picture for the good of the environment and not just short-term profits.”

As evidence accumulates foretelling the imminent shock of “petrocollapse,” one central concern of communities – including organized neighborhoods and small towns – should be the safety and continuity of their food supply.