DMZ Garden 04/08

Today on Earth Day I went by the vacant lot where we three, Dawn, Marna and I, hope to create the DMZ community garden, with the help of the children and parents of Lafollette School across the street from the lot. Dawn had put cardboard and wood chips on part of the land. On this base we will place our homemade soil in mounds. We have been building our compost pile nearby in the backyard of one of Dawn’s Foundation Dwellings houses. In the future we hope to make our soil, compost, on the lot. We all have plants starting inside at our houses and are getting some advice and help from Growing Power and friends. Friday we are meeting with children and teachers at the school. Our hope is that all these pieces — children, compost, seeds, plants and neighbors — will come together as “Together We Are Growing Power.” This experience reminds me of a library, community

Community center in Venezuela

center, and place of music, youth had built on a some vacant land in a barrio in Venezuela. It took a lot of years and a lot of sweat but they did it. The night we visited this community center it was full of teens, young adults, children, music and life. Hopefully something similar can be said in a few years of this vacant lot. But rather than music it will be a place to Grow Renewable Affordable Food (G.R.A.F.) in the central city. And while we are hoping, maybe the other eight vacant lots on this one block and the thousands of vacant lots in this area will be growing healthy organic food for the people and by the people in the community. This is a good Hope for Earth Day.

Earlier in the morning Marna, of Mothers Against Violence, and I had been together at two prayer vigils for homicide victims, one on the north side and one on the south side. Sr. Rose stenciled an angel on the ground at each homicide spot and we prayed for an end to the senseless killing that ravishes our cities. On the same hard earth where we build our soil, blood is spilled. Hopefully some day our prayers of sorrow for those who are killed and their families will end and our prayers will be in gratitude for the harvest of our urban gardens like the DMZ garden.

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