Urban Permaculture/Social Justice in Berkeley/ Oakland a a

Hi Scott, Lawrence and permies worldwide,
I've never formally introduced myself to this list, but I think many of
you would be interested in what I do in my community. And since this is
being so hotly discussed, I feel the need to disclose what I do.
Warning...turned into a long email!

A quick background on my permaculture experience: I was finally able to
take my pdc with Geoff Lawton, Penny Livingston Stark, and Brock Dolman at
the Regenerative Design Institute in Summer 2007...rocked my world, changed
my life. I was privileged to move into RDI as a farm intern a couple months
later where I studied and practiced permaculture daily with my mind, body
and spirit for 7 months...slept in the natural buildings I helped build,
grew my food, managed our animal systems, learned, grew, and taught in
community with other practitioners. I then decided to move back to Oakland,
CA on a mission to help make permaculture, edible landscaping, and other
more "elite"environmental services (rainwater harvesting, greywater, etc..)
affordable and accessible to the low-income people with whom I live with who
structurally do not have access to affordable healthy food, dignified jobs,
nor expensive permaculture courses in the first place.

So my partner and I started an edible landscaping company called the
Backyard Food Project that not only served clients who paid full-cost for
our services, but we also used our skills and backgrounds as community
organizers to fundraise in our community for low-income clients (schools,
community groups, and residents) who could not pay for materials nor our
labor. I designed and implemented nearly 40 urban permaculture gardens this
way in a year and a half, and our services were so highly in demand that we
only needed to put out one craigslist ad to start, with nearly all our
subsequent clients coming from word-of-mouth. All the while, we started
working with low-income schools and youth groups in Oakland, bringing
permaculture techniques and strategies through growing food and transforming
space with these youth. I started a rooftop nursery/garden that supplied
nearly all our annual vegetable/herb starts for our projects, and it served
as a training site for the youth we work with giving them inspiration and a
tangible example of ecological entrepreneurship. My chickens, worms,
shitakes, and rooftop garden give me food and joy everyday.

The Backyard Food Project has since emerged into something much larger than
myself personally, namely, Planting Justice (www.plantingjustice.org). This
is a nonprofit organization I have organized with my partner and 21 other
community members as our board of directors, with a mission to grow healthy
food and healthy jobs simultaneously. We continue to work with low-income
schools and urban residents, as well as inmates at San Quentin State Prison,
where we teach an urban permaculture course with a focus on job training
skills (landscaping, irrigation) and personal empowerment (from the visceral
experience of growing food for themselves and transforming the ugly prison
yard, to gardening as a facilitation for meditation and emotional
processing).

More than practicing and teaching permaculture as it relates to homescale

and community food production, nutrient recycling, energy optimization, etc,
I have also built Planting Justice using permaculture principles and
design. This is something that is an ongoing process, and is a high
expression of permaculture's true power for structural change as it relates
to economics, community organizing, etc. I'm starting to write about this
process now, and I'm happy to share from my experience and near-term vision.
An example includes our focus on many diverse, yet inter-related income
streams that stack functions to support one another, enabling us to fund our
not-for-profit projects ourselves, without an over-reliance on foundation

support to pursue our mission.

I've found a creative and self-sustaining way to practice permaculture over
these past two and a half years, but I give Planting Justice nearly all of
my free time and have not yet applied for the applied permaculture diploma.
I do have plenty of documented experience to get one should the time come!
And in addition to my PDC with Geoff, Brock, and Penny, I've also been
fortunate to take broadscale permaculture/keyline workshops with Darren
Dougherty, greywater workshops with Art Ludwig, coyote mentorship and bird
language with John Young, natural building workshops with Marisha
Farnsworth, regenerative design classes at Merritt College with Nik
Bertulis, and more.

Packing more on top of a full plate, I also now teach a weekly urban
permaculture course at Common Circle Education. These classes are on
Wednesday evenings, and cost $10/class. We do not teach the 72 hour
curriculum or give PDC certificates, but we do cover important, relevant
strategies for renters and home owners to grow food, recycle water,
nutrients, and energy, and regenerate small urban landscapes by building