“It was the the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month…”
On November 11th, Pittsburgh celebrated Veterans Day. Filmmaker Chris Ivey has created a video with scenes from Pittsburgh’s 2010 Veterans Day Parade and Councilman Bill Peduto’s remarks at the Veterans Day Memorial Service at Shadyside Hospital. It also contains the councilman’s comments on building a WWII Honor Roll memorial in Oakland which currently does not have one.
Urban farming is exactly what it sounds like: growing, processing and distributing food locally within cities and other nonrural areas. Why is there a push to help facilitate this movement? First, you need to know that 50% of the world’s population live in cities. Imagine the effort and cost and energy it takes to import all the food needed to feed a city of people. Now take in the fact that urban dwellers with the lowest income spend 40% to 60% of that income on food each year. And, what food is available for their purchase? Unfortunately, the poorer the neighborhood, the more likely it is to be a “food desert” — a place where it’s nearly impossible to find fresh produce.
This is where urban farming comes in. The benefits are enormous. First, it’s a sustainable practice because energy is not being expended on bringing food from the farm to the city (which also makes it cheaper to purchase). It not only increases the overall amount of food available locally to city dwellers, more importantly, it increases the availability of fresh, healthy, nutritional food. And, the benefits don’t stop there. Urban farming can provide a source of income, it can bring about community involvement, and it can replace urban blight with bountiful harvests. Moreover, most urban farming enterprises are less likely to use pesticides on produce or to utilize “factory farm” practices which have led to food recalls.
There are groups in Pittsburgh right now helping to promote responsible urban farming. These include: Engage Pittsburgh, Grow Pittsburgh, BurghBees and PittsburghPoultry (yes, it’s about more than just planting vegetables and fruit).
Pittsburgh City Council is currently considering a bill which would help to promote urban farming in the city of Pittsburgh. It’s needed because there are zoning issues when it comes to the agricultural use of land in our city. Here is a link to that legislation.
Finally, utilizing urban areas as opportunities for agriculture is happening throughout the world. In September, Councilman Bill Peduto was invited to participate in a small gathering of urban leaders in San Francisco which was hosted by CEOS for Cities. During the conference, representatives from Toronto gave a presentation on what they are doing to promote their city as a global leader in the locally produced food movement. You can view their PowerPoint presentation here.
Searching for Solace, an image of Robert Green, Sr. from Ted Jackson, The Times-Picayune
One year after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, I traveled with my friend Armand St. Martin and his wife Patty to New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward. Armand is a proud tenth generation native and he and Patty represent the very civic nature, culture, pride and warmth that I feel every time I am in the Crescent City. I asked them to take me to the center of the havoc — where the levee broke, where the homes were destroyed, where people died, and where dreams ended. We drove through blocks of empty lots and abandoned properties and we stopped at a lot where a single FEMA trailer sat alone in a sea of destruction. They told me that was the home of Mr. Robert Green. In the front yard was a plastic white table with a message to government officials and then President Bush. Next to it was the American flag. They explained that Mr. Green was the first person back to the Lower 9th and despite being told that he had to leave, he was fighting to rebuild his community.
At the end of October, I traveled back to the Lower 9th — four years after that first visit — five years after the levee broke. All around was new construction. We visited a school which was being led by a New York teacher who left his home to create a program for dropouts to learn about urban agriculture and to sell their product. He has created the largest farm in New Orleans and supplies many of the best restaurants with locally grown, organic produce. We passed dozens of new, energy efficient houses being built through foundations and private and public partnerships. We walked right to the spot where the levee broke – where a barge smashed through in the middle of the night — and we touched the wall and thought what it might have been like to have been there. Then, we traveled down a familiar street — the street the Green family had called home. A man was walking in front of the lot where the FEMA trailer had been parked. It was Robert Green.
Mr. Green’s story has been told by media all around the world. The nightmare of that day when his son returned with his mother and grandchildren because they were afraid they would not make it out of New Orleans — to being turned away from the Superdome because they didn’t have the medical beds needed to treat his mother — to the middle of the night when the barge crashed through the levee at 4:30 in the morning. It is one thing to read about it — it is quite another to sit inside his living room and have him tell you himself. Mr. Green took the time to share the nightmare that is his reality. The story of his brother yelling to get upstairs because the water is rising fast…five minutes later in the attic…five minutes later kicking through the roof with his feet…five minutes later on the roof with his family as his house started to float away. He spoke of watching as his granddaughter and his mother fell into the murky, rapids — never to see his granddaughter again and how later, the next day, he would lose his mother too. He spoke of a fate which could only be described as Hell and he spoke of a future for his neighborhood, all in the same breath.
We stood in Mr. Green’s new home. A home surrounded by the memories of family members he lost that horrible night and reminders from people all over the world who are willing to stand with him to rebuild, renew. His home is a testament to his dream. It was built by the Make it Right organization and he is proud to show the new homes on his street where his neighbors will soon be moving back. Mr. Robert Green is the spirit of New Orleans. He is proof that devastation and loss can be countered by doing good and refusing to accept the fears of others. Mr. Green is a testament to the belief that no one should ever give up on any person or any community. He is the Hero of Hurricane Katrina and someone from whom we can all learn.
The following is an excerpt from Matt Taibbi’s new book, Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That is Breaking America. He explores how in our cash-strapped country, everything is up for sale at rock-bottom prices — including parking meters — including in our very own city:
“I was in a meeting where a bunch of American investment bankers were trying to sell us the Pennsylvania Turnpike,” he said. “They even had a slide show. They were showing these Arabs what a nice highway we had for sale, what the toll booths looked like . . .”
I dropped my fork. “The Pennsylvania Turnpike is for sale?”
He nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “We didn’t do the deal, though. But, you know, there are some other deals that have gotten done. Or didn’t you know about this?”
As it turns out, the Pennsylvania Turnpike deal almost went through, only to be killed by the state legislature, but there were others just like it that did go through, most notably the sale of all the parking meters in Chicago to a consortium that included the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, from the United Arab Emirates.
There were others: A toll highway in Indiana. The Chicago Skyway. A stretch of highway in Florida. Parking meters in Nashville, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and other cities. A port in Virginia. And a whole bevy of Californian public infrastructure projects, all either already leased or set to be leased for fifty or seventy-five years or more in exchange for one-off lump sum payments of a few billion bucks at best, usually just to help patch a hole or two in a single budget year.
The chapter also goes into some detail on the Chicago parking meter deal. You can read more here at Rolling Stone.
Pittsburgh’s interfaith community gathered at two events during the third week of October. The Turkish Cultural Center reminded us that we are more similar than we are different and that peace begins with understanding and dialogue. The Pittsburgh Interfaith Impact Network showed us the struggle facing our local social justice movement and the strength to make things happen when Pittsburgh’s faith communities work together on the important issues.
![[Twitter]](http://www.billpeduto.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/twitter.png)
![[Email]](http://www.billpeduto.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/email.png)
