"Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces,
I would still plant my apple tree."
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
We build urban food forests. Our urban food forest program produces low-cost, organic, nutritious food in communities that structurally have little access to it. We help empower urban residents to create sustainable, replicable gardens that demonstrate how it is possible to grow a complete nutritional diet safely and profitably in the city.
“We bury our seeds and wait,
Winter blocks the road,
Flowers are taken prisoner underground,
But then green justice tenders a spear”
- Rumi
A vibrant community outreach program, door by door and block by block, can initiate the broad community participation and support we need to have a big impact. Imagine groups of local residents learning and working together to create beautiful and abundant gardens and communty spaces in local parks, medians, empty lots, and backyards...such a thing is only possible
"Plant the tree of friendship and harvest the fruits of love
Uproot the roots of hatred for it brings forth boundless agony"
– Hafez
Planting Justice organizes free community work-parties and low-cost educational workshops at Oakland schools, at San Quentin Prison, on our rooftop garden, and at various homes and housing projects across the Bay Area. These give community residents the chance to participate in each implementation phase of our gardening projects, from harvesting water to planting low maintenance edible gardens. This kind of experiential learning is
“The recovery of the people is tied to the recovery of food,
since food itself is medicine: not only for the body,
but for the soul, for the spiritual connection to history, ancestors, and the land.”
- Winona La Duke
Too often, the "green jobs" conversation is narrowly limited to highly industrial sectors that demand millions and millions of dollars in capital input, inaccessible to a working class person wanting to start a "green" business. The dominant focus is on high-tech “clean energy” sectors, and little attention is paid to the minerals that