“We create our own life conditions, now and for the future.”-Bill Mollison

I believe that a true environmentalist or anyone affected by what is going on globally must have a garden, and must in all activities of the day attempt to reduce the use of energy and resources.  This is a difficult task that demands intention, for our society is deliberately disposable.  The industrial methods we have adopted are extracting too large an amount of resources and returning them poisonous and polluted for the earth to digest.  We have identified that these methods are killing the earth by desecrating her waters and soils.  This culture of consumption is not only killing the earth but it’s separating her people while numbing their souls.  We must reclaim our cultures by returning our skills of survival to individuals and communities.  Our current systems are not conducive to life therefore it becomes our responsibility to design new ones, at least in reference to our own lives.

Permaculture offers us the tools to reclaim our waters and airs.  It teaches us to build our soils and return nourishments to the land.  It helps us in designing dwellings that consume less energy both for the planet and for ourselves.  In essence permaculture returns the abilities of life to the individual and the community.  Looking at the world through the lens of systems thinking and ecological design, permaculture is the action that can begin to bring a world back into balance bringing the responsibility of reliance to the individual and her community.  In a time when the methods of the extraction and distribution of our basic human needs are the cause of both drastic environmental and social harm, it is essential that we invest in learning how to bring the skills of reliance back into the hands of the people.

I began the urbanGREEN project in January of 2006  with much enthusiasm and vision.  I was introduced to Space by a friend of mine who had been and is currently living there.  The New Dharma Meditation Center for urban peace is an urban Buddhist Center located in north Oakland, Ca.  It has been involved with the local community for the past two years serving as a daily meditation center and offering weekly dharma talks and monthly retreats and occasional Dharma intensives.  In search of a thesis project and with a strong desire to better familiarize me with the permaculture principles and techniques this opportunity seemed synchronistic.  From the inside, the Center is well kept and in good taste.  The outside, however, told a much different story.  The space surrounding the center was poorly kept and overrun by grasses.  Nonetheless, the space was beautiful with a wild diversity of plants and herbs.  

After a meeting with Angel Kyodo Williams, the woman who runs the Center and serves as the dharma teacher it was set, I was to convert their lot into an example of urban sustainability.  The intention that I shared with her was to create it in a workshop format, facilitating youth in the process creating a possibility of future work in the sustainability field.  She shared her connection with a San Francisco based organization, Vision Youth that was in need of a project.  She also mentioned funding possibilities that she felt were perfect for this project.  We both left this initial meeting with enthusiasm, it seemed like a perfect match.  

An obvious observation when attending any permaculture course or environmental conference is the lack of diversity that is among the members.  This is ironic cause the fundamental understanding of ecological design is variety.  It shows the effects of the classist and racist system that has brought ecology only into the lives of the privileged classes.  This fact was one of my largest motivations behind the vision of urbanGREEN, it was to bring universal concerns for our environment and the evolution of life to the underserved communities that are most affected by the industrial and colonial mindset of our government and society.  

Also this year I have been involved in the PowerDown project where we have been looking at the drastic changes that are coming due to our dependency on cheap fuel and our need to create more sustainable systems for meeting communities’ needs.  The basic and overall solution is relocalization, to invest and create a local economy that doesn’t invest in the tragedies created by globalization.  I see as the movement grows and cities begin to adopt the concerns (as San Francisco has in creating a Peak Oil resolution) and therefore investing in solutions, a large need will soon arise in people skilled in implementing the efficient home-scale energy conserving designs that urban permaculture offers.    

I was excited and ready to begin the project. I immediately began dreaming the possibilities.  I envisioned calling on the wealth of the local permaculture knowledge that is present in the Bay for individual experts to lead workshops of different designs that we would not only look at in theory while learning permaculture principals but implement as well.  This project I saw serving as an agency that would teach these sustainable life skills to the youth.  The projects seven-month process consisted of two stages.  Stage one: a practical education phase, to introduce sustainable philosophies while looking at the connections between present environmental crisis and the social injustices that are practiced around the world.  We would understand, by viewing history the large influence agriculture and industry had in these separations.  Once these problems where addressed and better understood, stage two was to begin to look at feasible solutions and actions to take today, as well as in the long term.  Viewing the city from a systems thinking perspective and seeing the city whole as an ecosystem, participants of urbanGREEN would better understand the needs and action in creating a more just, sacred and sustainable city.  

I created a budget that would match my vision.  

I believe I wasn’t able to effectively express my visions to her.  She mocked my budget and energetically shifted her perspective on the project.  Since then the initial vision disintegrated.  I also realized that a project in the scale that I had envisioned would require far more time then I had and asked for more attention then my effort alone could provide.  Just around that time however things at Hoover Elementary, where I had been volunteering a few hours weekly facilitating gardening, began to shift as well.  The after-school program that we where working for offered to pay us and double our time working with the kids.  

While the original vision shifted quite drastically, I continued with my commitment to the Center in converting its site into a functioning space to be used by its residence and community in growing food and capturing some of it’s own water.  I was still grateful for the chance to better familiarize myself with design and to implement some of these techniques.  In this process I also came to the realization that I am in a place of a student and while I am grateful for my envisioning and inspirations I must first walk the path in stability before leading others down this road.  I feel currently much more prepared for such a task then I did seven months ago.

Like I mentioned before things at Hoover Elementary began to gain momentum. The work at the Hoover garden flowed in a grace that wasn’t felt at the Center.  I began dedicating more of my efforts to the work there.  As time passed and I developed my communication and teaching methods with the kids I realized that they were the youth that I had envisioned working with.  While the children were much younger than the teens I had imagined I saw how important the work that Jsun and I were doing.  These lively, impulsive, funny, and intelligent children had no notion that food grew from the earth let alone the magic potential of a seed.  I will never forget the reactions I got when I ate a piece of kale straight from the plant, “gross, you can eat that?!?”  In a neighborhood that has one grocery store and 40 liquor stores, these young kids are rarely exposed to the balanced elements that constitute a proper diet.  It is uncommon that what they eat not be processed and come from a plastic wrapper.  Another evidence of disconnection was when I was working alone in the garden after the program had ended, I was talking to a  neighborhood kid and offered him a piece of mint.  Not knowing who I was he looked at me as if to question if he should trust me.  He hesitated then slowly put the herb in his mouth and began to crew, a few seconds later his eyes widened and he said with surprise, “this tastes like bubble gum!”  These youths are curious and open to the world around them yet they have been dealt a difficult hand.  Even so, they live life with dignity and style that made it a pleasure to spend time with.   

In the months at Hoover we learned that worms eat our scraps and in turn create fertile soil for new growth.  We experimented with making recycled paper, and dying eggs with natural garden dyes.  We witnessed the growth of a seed into a fruit-bearing plant and we became more aware of the wonders of the world we inhabit.  The work at Hoover I feel is still just beginning, the year ended with much still needing to be covered, nonetheless, I am proud of the work we did and grateful for the opportunity. 

The importance of working with children goes without say.  For they are ones inheriting these soils and the stories that have come with them.  Unfortunate but true is that we are giving them a difficult world to inhabit and not preparing them adequately with the tools that are needed to mend the centuries of social, economic and environmental abuse.  If nothing more I wish to invite curiosity and above all a respect for the lands and the waters that sustain us even in urban environments.    

I feel that by backing from the center and focusing more at Hoover was practicing a principal of permaculture.  I witnessed where the energies were flowing and put my efforts where I saw a more balanced relationship.  Mean while however I continued weekly workdays and took them as they were, an opportunity for me to experience the conversion of an over run lot into the possibility of a productive garden.  I did during these months hold three Saturday work-parties, the last being the most successful.   Last month in June I was able to complete two of my first intentions of the Centers land.  UrbanGreen facilitated an herbal spiral and roof-water catchment workshop on the same day.  I was able to get donations from two local restaurants, Arizmendi and Rudy’s can’t fail café.  I posted the workshop on the Ecology Center calendar and posted some flyers around town.  Although we had a humble size, about 12 in all, it was a successful work-party where much got accomplished and most importantly people had a good time.  

I learned from UrbanGREEN that it is uncomfortable and impossible to move a project forward alone.  I also own that I am have not been in a strong place of co-ordination.  This year has been a beautiful year in which I experienced much transition and growth in my person.  I am still in the mystery of who I am and finding balance on the path that I walk on.  I have to honor that I am still a student and intend to be so for the rest of my life.  

I feel that this year and this project offered me the knowledge and skills to better articulate where some of my motivations and actions are driven from as well as some of the needed skills to move projects forward.  I have also identified that where my gifts and passions lay are in practical hands-on activities and not so much in the organizational aspect of things.  I realize however that these are some of the essential skills I will need to better familiarize myself with and I am willing to put the hours in.

Thesis Project UrbanGREEN PAGE 7

Greene July 2006