Rahm Emanuel: Turn Eyesores Into Urban Farms (food deserts & the food justice community)

Chicago.CBS local ^ | 7/26/11

[Libloather]

Emanuel: Turn Eyesores Into Urban Farms
July 26, 2011 1:55 PM

CHICAGO (CBS) – Green acres could be sprouting up all over the city of Chicago if Mayor Rahm Emanuel has his way.

As WBBM Newsradio 780’s Bernie Tafoya reports, Mayor Emanuel on Tuesday stood in an urban farm, in what was once an abandoned truck depot at 33rd and Iron streets in the Bridgeport neighborhood.

He says he wants city ordinances updated so abandoned land all over the city can generate new jobs, and food for those in and around neighborhoods that are called food deserts.

“Our ordinance will deal with the ability of turning a plot like this, that was an eyesore, into an economic engine in the neighborhood – that’s one creating hundreds of jobs just here in this one site, and there are thousands of sites like this throughout the city,” Emanuel said.

[squarebarb]

Exactly. Excellent points.

and, gardening is not all that simple, it’s complex. And people who can get junk food with their food stamps are not going to bother.

Dependency is a kind of mental foot-binding, and once a person has been raised as a dependant and not asked to become an adult, they can’t recover after about age eighteen or so. They are stuck in that mode and have terrible difficulty getting out of it.

they are sort of non-adults for the rest of their lives and a burden and a trouble to society. the shift back and forth between rages and begging.

they are NOT going to garden.

surely Rahm knows this.

[KSCITYBOY]

Watch EB bust a cap in Oliver’s honky ass fo disrespectin Arnold Ziffel’s porkyass.

[reformedliberal]

The 30-something kids of neighbors of ours now live in a very large city. They are adamant that they will “never haul water or firewood again”. I don’t recall them being too fond of weeding the garden, either, back in the day.

However, they are ardent liberals; one works for a city social services department. I am looking forward to the next series of parental reports!

[allmendream]

I read that in a “Post Harry Potter movie model” the Lord of the Rings would have been made into four movies - with the “Scouring of the Shire” being the fourth movie. As it was they should have ended “Return” with the coronation and wedding - everything after that (in the movie) was just going through the motions and anticlimactic.

[Tatze]

That is rule number one in gardening, test the soil! There is no point in planting a garden in soil that is devoid of nutrients, or in this case, chock full of toxic chemicals.

[RicocheT]

Worth repeating (post 8):

“The only problem with this idea is that farming is hard work. Right there you have ruled out the people in these “blighted” areas.”

[Buckeye McFrog]

there is a “community organization” in a particularly shabby part of Pittsburgh that is conducting something it calls a “vacant lot survey” right now.

The purpose of which I am sure is to identify bits of private property that are being “misused” by their private owners, and which could be put to much greater community benefit by applying a little of the Iron Fist O’ Government.

Their website has a photo of a lot containing billboards for Rent-A-Center and McDonalds. That could be put to much better use as an Organic Community Garden I’m sure.

[EBH]

CUBA From Vacant Lots to City Gardens

Havana's Popular Gardens: Sustainable Urban Agriculture

Gardens Renew Cuba’s Urban Core

Feeding Ourselves: Organic Urban Gardens in Caracas, Venezuela

What do all these stories have in common...real food shortages. Not just Michele's food desert, but very real food shortages. It causes me to ponder if this effort by Michele is actually some what of a warning of things to come. And of course the UN Agenda...

Now I am actually not totally against this kind of thing, but why haven't the people themselves initiated it and why does it need government subsidy to make it happen. The only thing needed was a waiver to use the lot.

[RJS1950]

The new Cultural Revolution begins in Chicago?

[majormaturity]

Benefit to Rahm’s contractor friends: Contracts to import “good” soil, erect 16 foot high fences around the plots to keep the Neanderthals out, security, lighting, transportation of food out to markets, agricultural inspectors, watering systems, etc., etc.
Benefit to Rahm in votes: priceless.

[dagogo redux]

“I can see a new reality show-

“Cabrini Green Acres”
___________________________________________________

Sounds to me like a Star Trek episode, where Kirk, Spock and Bones beam down to some once-advanced civilization, only to find the people devolving into madness, due either to Romulan infiltrators from a war bird cloaked in orbit, or a deadly “Gularian Plague” virus thought eradicated long ago, but now reseeded by Klingon operatives from a bird of prey in a nearby quadrant, far from the Neutral Zone.

Unfortunately, the epsiode features no hot chicks for Kirk or the viewers to revel in - just a bunch of gay bath house boys and a hideous, overweight alien dame who is trying to lead the crazies into forming “food oases” amidst the rubble.

[Carry_Okie]

“Honey, do these turnips taste like oil?”

Greenie lawsuits, outrageous mitigation contracts, and liability for crime hot spots.

Great idea.

[absolootezer0]

but if they did that then the EPA and/or MI dept of enviromental quality would shut these gardens down! it's for the chiiiiiildren..



wait..

[30Moves]

I’m sure that soil in those empty lots are full of asbestos, oil, and lots of other contaminates.

[blackdog]

I farmed 80 acres in Wisconsin for 14 years. I moved to Memphis last fall. I planted tomatoes, zuccini, and peppers in my small back yard, which is mostly swimming pool and concrete slab except for three foot strips of garden on either side of the pool patio.

I have lost several hundred tomatoes and zuccini (what's plural of zuccini?) to mocking birds, rats, mice, and coons. I have trapped and killed over 17 rats, and all that does is let the smaller ones move into the deceased rats digs. I've put out rat poison, which has not worked much even though they eat it all. I've trapped and "relocated" the mocking birds, only to have new ones immediately backfill the territory.

Urban gardening is a nightmare if you want any produce!

[Saltmeat]

Comrade, we are going to have collective farms. You work as little or as much as you want to on the farms, but everyone will get the same amount of the produce. The pilgrims tried this approach at Plymouth Colony and it failed. The Communist tried it in the Soviet Union, North Korea, China and other hell holes and they failed. It will fail in Chicago unless the people who do the work are allowed to reap all the rewards for their efforts.

[upcountryhorseman]

You’ve got that right! But it may be am solution to obesity.
(get them off the couch and into the fields)

[upcountryhorseman]

You’ve got that right! But it may be am solution to obesity.
(get them off the couch and into the fields)

[GonzoGOP]

Not just Michele's food desert, but very real food shortages. It causes me to ponder if this effort by Michele is actually some what of a warning of things to come.

You may be on to something there. One of the best arguments about why the rural population would win in any total SHTF situation was that they had all the food. The Obama supporting urban populations would be starved out in only a few months after the transportation system broke down. And it is easy for rebels to bring down a transport system.

So now suddenly Obama is growing food in his strongholds. He may see a SHTF situation on the way sometime after November 2012.

[samadams2000]

“Honey, the bums and the gangs have taken over the garden again!!!”