the people's republic of portland

Understated

2010-07-28T12:36:00.000-07:00

by rollie aden

I write as a new convert to The People's Republic of Portland and just now read through the several entries in this blog. WOW! Take some time to read for yourself. This blog has extremely insightful, very honest assessments of issues facing our world. Bloggers analyzed standard accepted answers and dispelled the many totally wrong concepts floating in my consciousness. I take my hat off to you and lay down my pen. Keep it coming fellow writers.

I found it very surprising that this blog says next to nothing about The People's Republic of Portland nor its co-founder and present moving force, Jennifer Forti. I found it surprising until I met Jennifer. Now I understand. Jennifer would never write an article about herself or PROP. I think a force greater than myself drew me to PROP just for this reason. Someone needs to say what everyone thinks and everyone knows.

Recently I spoke at a friend's funeral and found myself summing up his life in one word. Since that day I have secretly done this exercise with people that I know and those I want to know. I choose “understated” as Jen's word. She earned a degree in art and design, plays drums, creates with clay, dances with March Fourth Band, maintains a growing business, involves herself in social causes, collaborates with like-minded businesses, designs clothing, and meets with countless creative types akin to me.

Her websites say little about her. She says little about her. Her websites speak only briefly about The People's Republic of Portland. You see why I chose “understated.” I sat across from a very accomplished woman with an disarming smile, a tremendous background, an entrepreneurial spirit, a boundless energy, and an almost unnerving humility. When I asked about her background, she answered but never showcased. On first impression Jen and PROP seemed mysterious even coy. Upon second look I saw a person who let her work and her actions speak for her.

She has the ability to communicate in words; however, the artist in her chooses her medium. I think Jennifer Forti speaks through her work, and she speaks through other people. Riding home from my meeting with her it dawned on me that Jen has chosen in addition to dance, clay, and cloth yet another medium. She has chosen the medium of people. I can't tell if she made a conscious choice or even if she knows, but she definitely has another medium.

The people medium comes out in words like collaborate, promote, celebrate, and recruit. I knew that Jen had much on her plate the day we met. We sat and talked for a couple hours during our first. awkward time together. She never looked at her watch, fidgeted, or even hinted that she had more pressing matters to which to attend. She never made me feel like she had more important people with which to meet.

I met Jennifer originally at the Mississippi street fair and offered my services as a writer to her. When I followed up with an email, she contacted me with a meeting date. I have few delusions about my ability to help her. What skill could I possible have that she might need? The only gift I have; I give right now. I tell the story that she humbly has withheld. I know that if she will allow me to hang out that I will receive much more than I could ever give.

I felt ashamed of myself. I like to shine the light on my meager accomplishments and the exciting things going on my life. She showed interest but probably thought “what a pompous boob.” Her humility slowly but surely shut my mouth. Society tends to think of artists as isolated, tortured souls. Jen seemed neither isolated nor tortured; although, I suspect that she has experienced enough pain to rend her empathetic to those in process.

I found Jen touchingly empathetic toward and amazingly understanding of the creative side of my personality. Artist once they learn to accept the creative person living inside themselves then need to learn how to live with that person. Gosh, that sounds terrible when I write it. Anyway, she understood me without excessive explanation on my part.

If I had to interview someone to fill the role of director and owner of The People's Republics, I can think of no one better than the person presently in the role. Again riding home another thought hit me. I often feel like a conservative in liberal clothing. I wonder if Jen sometimes feels like a liberal in conservative clothing. I'll have to ask her next time we meet. In any case it didn't really seem to matter between us. We had bigger fish to fry to steal a metaphor.

Jen will display at Alberta Street's last Thursday this Thursday. I suggest you meet the lady behind the shirt. You will walk away saying but one word, “understated.”

Death Factories

2010-06-25T11:39:00.000-07:00

On June 23rd, over 400 people attended the Public Utilities Commission hearing in downtown Portland to discuss PGE's plan for the continued operation of the Boardman Coal Plant. The Oregon Beyond Coal Campaign sent a strong message to both PGE and the PUC with the vast majority in attendance supporting the early closure of Boardman and rejecting PGE's 2020 plan. Among the crowd testifying for clean energy and the first to speak in front of the PUC was mayor Sam Adams. Dozens of students came out representing 10 different schools across Oregon that passed resolutions to close Boardman in 2014.

Sierra Club Beyond Coal and Sierra Club Student Coalition together presented nearly 3,000 petitions calling for a 2014 shutdown of the coal plant.

There was some really good press...KGW 8, KOIN 6, KBOO, the Oregonian, and blogger Dennis Newman of Natural Oregon.

All in all is seemed like what could be deemed a successful night for us environmentalists. Now we're just waiting for the verdict.

One of the speakers that night, Lloyd K. Marbet, the Executive Director of the Oregon Conservancy Foundation, knew he wasn't going to be able to cover all his points in the two minute time frame that he had, so he made copies of his testimony. He handed them out to the PUC as well as to anyone in the crowd who wanted one. Within, his testimony was this article written by James Hansen titled Coal-Fired Power Stations Are Death Factories. Close Them.

The Secret Powers Of Time-by Phillip Zimbardo

2010-06-09T09:21:00.000-07:00

Adapted from Professor Philip Zimbardo's talk at the RSA, the latest RSA Animate conveys how our individual perspectives of time affect our work, health and well-being. Check out this amazing animation!

Forget Shorter Showers-Why personal change does not equal political change - by Derrick Jensen

2010-06-08T09:06:00.000-07:00

Some friends and I recently got together to talk about the oil disaster in the gulf and what we can do about creating change and helping rid ourselves of our addiction to oil. In that meeting one of my friends read this article aloud to us about upping the stakes....

WOULD ANY SANE PERSON think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday, or that chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons, or that dancing naked around a fire would have helped put in place the Voting Rights Act of 1957 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal “solutions”?

Part of the problem is that we’ve been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance. An Inconvenient Truth helped raise consciousness about global warming. But did you notice that all of the solutions presented had to do with personal consumption—changing light bulbs, inflating tires, driving half as much—and had nothing to do with shifting power away from corporations, or stopping the growth economy that is destroying the planet? Even if every person in the United States did everything the movie suggested, U.S. carbon emissions would fall by only 22 percent. Scientific consensus is that emissions must be reduced by at least 75 percent worldwide.

Or let’s talk water. We so often hear that the world is running out of water. People are dying from lack of water. Rivers are dewatered from lack of water. Because of this we need to take shorter showers. See the disconnect? Because I take showers, I’m responsible for drawing down aquifers? Well, no. More than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual living breathing individual humans. Collectively, municipal golf courses use as much water as municipal human beings. People (both human people and fish people) aren’t dying because the world is running out of water. They’re dying because the water is being stolen.

Or let’s talk energy. Kirkpatrick Sale summarized it well: “For the past 15 years the story has been the same every year: individual consumption—residential, by private car, and so on—is never more than about a quarter of all consumption; the vast majority is commercial, industrial, corporate, by agribusiness and government [he forgot military]. So, even if we all took up cycling and wood stoves it would have a negligible impact on energy use, global warming and atmospheric pollution.”

Or let’s talk waste. In 2005, per-capita municipal waste production (basically everything that’s put out at the curb) in the U.S. was about 1,660 pounds. Let’s say you’re a die-hard simple-living activist, and you reduce this to zero. You recycle everything. You bring cloth bags shopping. You fix your toaster. Your toes poke out of old tennis shoes. You’re not done yet, though. Since municipal waste includes not just residential waste, but also waste from government offices and businesses, you march to those offices, waste reduction pamphlets in hand, and convince them to cut down on their waste enough to eliminate your share of it. Uh, I’ve got some bad news. Municipal waste accounts for only 3 percent of total waste production in the United States.

I want to be clear. I’m not saying we shouldn’t live simply. I live reasonably simply myself, but I don’t pretend that not buying much (or not driving much, or not having kids) is a powerful political act, or that it’s deeply revolutionary. It’s not. Personal change doesn’t equal social change.

So how, then, and especially with all the world at stake, have we come to accept these utterly insufficient responses? I think part of it is that we’re in a double bind. A double bind is where you’re given multiple options, but no matter what option you choose, you lose, and withdrawal is not an option. At this point, it should be pretty easy to recognize that every action involving the industrial economy is destructive (and we shouldn’t pretend that solar photovoltaics, for example, exempt us from this: they still require mining and transportation infrastructures at every point in the production processes; the same can be said for every other so-called green technology). So if we choose option one—if we avidly participate in the industrial economy—we may in the short term think we win because we may accumulate wealth, the marker of “success” in this culture. But we lose, because in doing so we give up our empathy, our animal humanity. And we really lose because industrial civilization is killing the planet, which means everyone loses. If we choose the “alternative” option of living more simply, thus causing less harm, but still not stopping the industrial economy from killing the planet, we may in the short term think we win because we get to feel pure, and we didn’t even have to give up all of our empathy (just enough to justify not stopping the horrors), but once again we really lose because industrial civilization is still killing the planet, which means everyone still loses. The third option, acting decisively to stop the industrial economy, is very scary for a number of reasons, including but not restricted to the fact that we’d lose some of the luxuries (like electricity) to which we’ve grown accustomed, and the fact that those in power might try to kill us if we seriously impede their ability to exploit the world—none of which alters the fact that it’s a better option than a dead planet. Any option is a better option than a dead planet.

Besides being ineffective at causing the sorts of changes necessary to stop this culture from killing the planet, there are at least four other problems with perceiving simple living as a political act (as opposed to living simply because that’s what you want to do). The first is that it’s predicated on the flawed notion that humans inevitably harm their landbase. Simple living as a political act consists solely of harm reduction, ignoring the fact that humans can help the Earth as well as harm it. We can rehabilitate streams, we can get rid of noxious invasives, we can remove dams, we can disrupt a political system tilted toward the rich as well as an extractive economic system, we can destroy the industrial economy that is destroying the real, physical world.

The second problem—and this is another big one—is that it incorrectly assigns blame to the individual (and most especially to individuals who are particularly powerless) instead of to those who actually wield power in this system and to the system itself. Kirkpatrick Sale again: “The whole individualist what-you-can-do-to-save-the-earth guilt trip is a myth. We, as individuals, are not creating the crises, and we can’t solve them.”

The third problem is that it accepts capitalism’s redefinition of us from citizens to consumers. By accepting this redefinition, we reduce our potential forms of resistance to consuming and not consuming. Citizens have a much wider range of available resistance tactics, including voting, not voting, running for office, pamphleting, boycotting, organizing, lobbying, protesting, and, when a government becomes destructive of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we have the right to alter or abolish it.

The fourth problem is that the endpoint of the logic behind simple living as a political act is suicide. If every act within an industrial economy is destructive, and if we want to stop this destruction, and if we are unwilling (or unable) to question (much less destroy) the intellectual, moral, economic, and physical infrastructures that cause every act within an industrial economy to be destructive, then we can easily come to believe that we will cause the least destruction possible if we are dead.

The good news is that there are other options. We can follow the examples of brave activists who lived through the difficult times I mentioned—Nazi Germany, Tsarist Russia, antebellum United States—who did far more than manifest a form of moral purity; they actively opposed the injustices that surrounded them. We can follow the example of those who remembered that the role of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much integrity as possible, but rather to confront and take down those systems.

By Derrick Jensen

BP Slick THE SOURCE

2010-06-07T11:51:00.001-07:00

This really hurts to watch, but we have to face this. We have to learn from our mistakes. The government has to learn. Will they? Will we one day be independent of oil? Will we one day not be at war?

Art in the rain

2010-06-06T18:32:00.000-07:00

Davinci arts middle school is an art oasis in near ne Portland.
Just recently I was visiting the school to check on the Water Garden when i saw a group of students beneath a large blue tarp. The rain was steady but no one complained. They were too busy firing their latest ceramic creation using the oxygen reduction method of raku .
If you would like to see this action click on this to my blog on Sustainable water gardens.
http://davinciwatergarden.blogspot.com/2010/06/raku-movies.html

Mike Breaks It Down...

2010-06-06T09:25:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen this clip on you tube, take a few minutes and see what Big Mike has to say about the connection between the oil disaster in the gulf and wet t-shirt contests.

This came in from MoveOn.org...

What's the connection between oil company executives, wet t-shirt contests, the Department of Interior and the disaster in the gulf? Scary thing is, there is one. Watch Big Mike break it down and connect the dots. Hey, if you're going to stand in front of a blackboard, you might as well use it to actually explain something!

There's been a lot of finger pointing and a lot of confusion about how we came to face the greatest oil spill in US history. This video lays it out. This problem started in Washington and can end in Washington, but only if President Obama and other elected leaders get real about closing the revolving door between corporate lobbyists and our government.

Lobbyists make up 2% of Washington DC, yet they've been able to run roughshod over our democracy, rigging the rules and fixing the system so that 98% of the country gets little or no say.

If you think it's time to take our democracy back, we think this is a video you and your friends will want to see.

We need radical transparency now!

PROP wants to know what you think!

2010-05-21T13:36:00.000-07:00

Please take a moment to fill out this survey about Portland.
We are gathering opinions for a research project.
Thank you!

The Blind Leading The Blind - By Steven L. Hopp

2010-05-06T08:58:00.001-07:00

Critics of local food suggest that it's naive or elitist, whereas industrial agriculture is for everybody: it's what's for dinner, all about feeding the world. "Genetically modified, industrially produced monocultural corn," wrote Steven Shapin in the New Yorker, "is what feeds the victims of an African famine, not the gorgeous organic technicolor Swiss chard from your local farmers' market."
The big guys have so completely taken over the rules of the game, it's hard to see how food systems really work, but this criticism hits the nail right on the pointy end: it's perfectly backward. One of industrial agriculture's latest feed-the-hungry schemes offers a good example of why that's so. Exhibit A: "golden rice." It's a genetically modified variety of rice that contains beta-carotene in the kernel. (All other parts of the rice plant already contain it, but not the grain after it is milled.) The developers of this biotechnology say they will donate the seeds-with some strings attached-to Third World farmers. It's an important public relations point because the human body converts beta-carotene to vitamin A; a deficiency of that vitamin affects millions of children, especially in Asia, causing half a million of them every year to go blind. GM rice is the food industry's proposed solution.
But most of the wold's malnourished children live in countries that already produce surplus food. We have no reason to believe they would have better access to this special new grain. Golden rice is one more attempt at a monoculture solution to nutritional problems that have been caused by monocultures and disappearing diversity. In India alone, farmers have traditionally grown over 200 types of greens, and gathered many more wild ones from the countryside. Every single one is a good source of beta-carotene. So are fruits and vegetables. Further, vitamin A delivered in a rice kernel may not even help a malnourished child, because it can't be absorbed well in isolation from other nutrients. Throwing more rice at the problem of disappearing dietary diversity is a blind approach to the problem of blindness. "Naive" might describe a person who believes agribusinesses develop their heavily patented commodity crops in order to feed the poor. (Golden rice, alone, has seventy patents on it.) Technicolor chard and its relatives growing in village gardens-that's a solution for realists.

Stephen L Hopp
http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/

Legislating Local - by Steven L. Hopp

2010-05-03T16:17:00.000-07:00

The epidemic of childhood obesity in the United States has incited parents, communities, and even legislators to improve kids' nutrition in one place they invariably eat: schools. Junk foods have been legally banned from many lunchrooms and school vending machines. But what will our nation's youth eat instead-fresh local produce? As if!
Dude, it's going down. In 2004, in a National School Lunch Act amendment, Congress authorized a seed grant for the Farm to Cafeteria Program, promoting school garden projects and acquisition of local foods from small farms. The Local Produce Business Unit of the Department of Defense actually procures produce. Benefits of these programs, above and beyond the food, include agricultural education through gardening, farm visits, presentations by local farmers, and modest economic gains for the community. More than one-third of our states now have active farm-to-school programs; farm-to-college alliances are also growing.
The USDA Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) has a Farmer' Market Nutrition Program for purchasing local food. It provides coupons good for fresh produce purchased from farms, farmers' markets, and roadside stands. In 2006, some $20 million in government funds provided these benefits to more than 2.5 million people.
In a strong legislative move, Woodbury County, Iowa, mandated in 2006 that the county (subject to availability) "shall purchase...locally produced organic food when a department of Woodbury County serves food in the usual course of business." Even the prisons are serving local food, in a county that truly recognizes the value of community support.
For more information visit www.foodsecurity.org and www.farmtoschool.org.

-Steven L. Hopp
http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/

Trading Fair and Square - By Steven L. Hopp

2010-04-28T14:59:00.001-07:00

The local food movement addresses many important, interconnected food issues, including environmental responsibility, agricultural sustainability, and fair wages to those who grow our food. Buying directly from small farmers serves all these purposes, but what about things like our pumpkin pie spices, or our coffee, that don't grow where we live?
We can apply most of the same positive food standards, minus the local connection, to some imported products. Coffee, tea, and spices are grown in environmentally responsible ways by some small-scale growers, mostly in the developing world. We can encourage these good practices by offering a fair wage for their efforts. This approach, termed fair trade, has grown into an impressive international effort to counter the growing exploitation of farmers in these same countries. Consumer support for conscientious small growers helps counter the corporate advantage, and sustains their livelihoods, environments, and communities.
Coffee is an example of how fair trade can work to the advantage of the grower, consumer, and environment. As an understory plant, coffee was traditionally grown under a shaded mixture of fruit, nut, and timber trees. Large-scale modern production turned it into a monoculture, replacing wild forests with single-crop fields, utterly useless as wildlife habitat, doused heavily with fertilizers and pesticides. This approach is highly productive in the short term, but causes soil erosion and kills tropical biodiversity-including the migratory birds that used to return to our backyards in summer. Not to mention residual chemicals in your coffee. In contrast, farmers using traditional growing methods rely on forest diversity to fertilize the crop (from leaf litter) and help control coffee pests (from the pest predators that are maintained). Although their yields are lower, the shade-grown method sustains itself and supports local forest wildlife. Selecting shade-grown and fair-trade coffee allows these small-farm growers a chance to compete with larger monocrop production, and helps maintain wildlife habitat.
Independent certification agencies (similar to those that oversee organic agriculture) ensure that fair trade standards are maintained. As demand grows, the variety of products available has also grown to include chocolate, nuts, oils, dried fruits, and even hand-manufactured goods. For more information see www.transfairusa.org, www.fairtrade.net or www.ifat.org.

Steven L Hopp
http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/

Dig! Dig! Dig! And Your Muscles Will Grow Big - By Steven L. Hopp

2010-04-27T13:39:00.001-07:00

On July 9th, 2006, in Edinburgh, Scotland, the world lost one of its most successful local-foods advocates of all time: John Raeburn. At the beginning of World War II when Germany vowed to starve the U.K. by blocking food imports with U-boats, Raeburn, an agricultural economist, organized the "Dig for Victory" campaign. British citizens rallied, planting crops in backyards, parks, golf courses, vacant lots, schoolyards, and even the moat of the Tower of London. These urban gardens quickly produced twice the tonnage of food previously imported, about 40 percent of the nation's food supply, and inspired the "Victory Garden" campaign in the United States. When duty called, these city farmers produced.
A similar sense of necessity is driving a current worldwide growth of urban-centered food production. In developing countries where numbers of urban poor are growing, spontaneous gardening on available land is providing substantial food: In Shanghai over 600,000 garden acres are tucked into the margins of the city. In Moscow, two-thirds of families grow food. In Havana, Cuba, over 80 percent of produce consumed in the city comes from urban gardens.
In addition to providing fresh local produce, gardens like these serve as air filters, help recycle wastes, absorb rainfall, present pleasing green spaces, alleviate loss of land to development, provide food security, reduce fossil fuel consumption, provide jobs, educate kids, and revitalize communities. Urban areas cover 2 percent of the earth's surface but consume 75 percent of its resources. Urban gardens can help reduce these flat-footed ecological footprints. Now we just need promotional jingles as good as the ones for John Raeburn's campaign: "Dig! Dig! Dig! And your muscles will grow big."
For more information visit www.cityfarmers.org or www.urbangardeninghelp.com

-Steven L. Hopp
http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/

Really, We're Not Mad - by Steven L. Hopp

2010-04-25T10:29:00.000-07:00

Cows must have some friends in high places. If a shipment of ground beef somehow gets contaminated with pathogens, our federal government does not have authority to recall the beef, only to request that the company issue a recall. When the voluntary recall is initiated, the federal government does not release information on where the contaminated beef is being sold, considering that information proprietary. Apparently it is more important to protect the cows than the people eating them. Now I need to be careful where I go next, because (for their own protection) there are laws in thirteen states that make it illegal to say anything bad about cows.
One serious disease related to our friends the cows has emerged in the past twenty years: bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or so-called mad cow disease. Mad cow, and its human variant, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, are invariably fatal for both cows and humans. Unfortunately, tracking mad cow is complicated by the fact that it frequently incubates for years in the victim. The disease became infamous during the 1980s outbreak in England, where more than 150 humans died from eating BSE beef, and thousands of cattle were destroyed. A tiny malformed protein called a prion is the BSE culprit. The prions cause other proteins in the victim to rearrange into their unusual shape, and destroy tissue. Prions confine their activities to the nervous system, where they cause death. How do cows contract prions? Apparently from eating other cows. What? Yes, dead cow meat gets mixed into their feed, imposing cannibalism onto their lifestyle. It's a way to get a little more mileage from the byproducts of the slaughter house.
An appropriate response would be to stop this, which the British did. They also began testing 100 percent of cows over two years old at slaughter for BSE, and removing all "downer" cows (cows unable to walk on their own) from the food supply. As a result, the U.K. virtually eradicated BSE in two years. Reasonably enough, Japan implemented the same policies.
In the United States, the response has been somewhat different. U.S. policies restrict feeding cow tissue directly to other cows, but still allow cows to be fed to other animals (like chickens) and the waste from the chickens to be fed back to the cows. Since prions aren't destroyed by extreme heat or any known drug, they readily survive this food-chain loop-de-loop. Cow blood (yum) may also be dinner for other cows and calves, and restaurant plate wastes can also be served.
After the first detected case of U.S. mad cow disease, fifty-two countries banned U.S. beef. The USDA then required 2 percent of all the downer cows to be tested, and 1 percent of all cows that were slaughtered. After that, the number of downer cows reported in the United States decreased by 20 percent (did I mention it was voluntary reporting?), and only two more cases of BSE were detected. In May 2006, the USDA decided the threat was so low that only one-tenth of one percent of all slaughtered cows needed to be tested. Jean Halloran, the food policy initiatives director at Consumers Union, responded, "It approaches a policy of don't look, don't find."
How can consumers respond to this? Can we seek out beef tested as BSE-free by the meat packers? No. One company tried to test all its beef, but the USDA declared that illegal (possibly to protect any BSE cows from embarrassment). Would I suggest a beef boycott? Heavens, no; cows are our friends (plus, I believe that would be illegal). But it might be worth remembering this: not a single case of BSE, anywhere, has ever turned up in cattle that were raised and finished on pasture grass or organic feed. As for the other 99 percent of beef in the United States, my recommendation would be to consider the words of Gary Weber, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association head of regulatory affairs: "The consumers we've done focus groups with are comfortable that this is a very rare disease."
For more information visit www.organicconsumers.org/m

adcow.html/

Steven L Hopp

Sustaining The Unsustainable - by Steven L Hopp

2010-04-22T09:52:00.000-07:00

Doesn't the Federal Farm Bill help out all these poor farmers?
No. It used to, but ever since its inception just after the Depression, the Federal Farm Bill has slowly been altered by agribusiness lobbyists. It is now largely corporate welfare. The formula for subsidies is based on crop type and volume: from 1995 to 2003, three-quarters of all disbursements went to the top-grossing 10 percent of growers. In 1999, over 70 percent of subsidies went for just two commodity crops: corn and soybeans. These supports promote industrial-scale production, not small diversified farms, and in fact create an environment of competition in which subsidized commodity producers get help crowding the little guys out of business. It is this, rather than any improved efficiency or productiveness, that has allowed corporations to take over farming in the United States, leaving fewer than a third of our farms still run by families.
But those family-owned farms are the ones more likely to use sustainable techniques, protect the surrounding environment, maintain green spaces, use crop rotations and management for pest and weed controls, and apply fewer chemicals. In other words, they're doing exactly what 80 percent of U.S. consumers say we would prefer to support, while our tax dollars do the opposite.
Because of significant protest about this lack of support, Congress included a tiny allotment for local foods in the most recent (2002) Farm Bill: some support for farmers' markets, community food projects, and local foods in schools. But the total of all these programs combined is less than one-half of one percent of the Farm Bill budget, and none of it is for food itself, only the advertising and administration of these programs. Consumers who care about food, health, and the supply of cheap calories drowning our school lunch programs, for example, might want to let their representatives know we're looking for a dramatically restructured Farm Bill. Until then, support for local and sustainable agriculture will have to come directly from motivated customers.
For more information visit www.farmaid.org.

Steven L. Hopp

The plan for 2010 - a letter from Bill McKibben and the 350.org team

2010-04-19T21:17:00.000-07:00

Dear friends,

Well, no one said it was going to be easy.

Last year, thanks to many of you, we built up enormous momentum for climate solutions. The global day of rallies you pulled off on October turned out to "the most widespread day of political action in the planet's history," according to CNN, with 5200 actions in 181 countries.

And in Copenhagen that translated into 117 countries--most of the world's nations—supporting a tough 350 target.

But it didn't translate into political victory. The biggest polluters wouldn't go along. So we still have work to do.

In fact, our slogan for 2010 is "Get To Work." Get to work to start changing our communities, and get to work to make our leaders realize that they actually need to lead. We've sifted through thousands of your emails from all over the world, and come up with an action plan for this year that we think may break the logjam and get us moving. But only, of course, if we act together to make it happen.

The first date to mark on your calendar: October 10. Working with our friends at the 10:10 campaign, we're going to make the tenth day of the tenth month of the millennium's tenth year a real starting point for concrete action. We're calling it the 10/10 Global Work Party, and in every corner of the world we hope communities will put up solar panels, insulate homes, erect windmills, plant trees, paint bikepaths, launch or harvest local gardens. We'll make sure the world sees this huge day of effort—and we'll use it to send a simple message to our leaders: "We're working—what about you? If we can cover the roof of the school with solar panels, surely you can pass the legislation or sign the treaty that will spread our work everywhere, and confront the climate crisis in time." 10/10/10 will take a snapshot of a clean energy future -- the world of 350 ppm -- and show people why it's worth fighting for. It's not too early to sign up here: www.350.org/oct10

Every nation is not created equal in this climate crisis, of course. If we can't get the biggest polluters and the biggest economies to change, then we'll never win. So we're going to focus some particular attention on China, America, and India with a Great Power Race — campuses will compete to see who can come up with the most, and the most creative, climate solutions projects. We hope friendly competition will help governments see that they have a lot to gain by diving into clean energy—and a lot to lose by missing this opportunity.

And we'll keep figuring out ways to put political pressure on where it counts—in the U.S. Senate, say, where we're joining a group of our best allies in backing the proposed Cap-and-Dividend approach that would stop letting big polluters pour carbon into the sky for free. In other parts of the world, we'll hold more of the climate leadership workshops that produced so many great leaders last year.

And as the next UN conference approaches in Mexico in December, we'll stage the largest piece of public art in the planet's history—a reminder that we have to bring passion to bear along with science and economics if we're going to move this process.

We know, from the calls and emails we've been getting, that people all over the world are ready to go to work. We think this plan can increase the odds of real action. We know that we have no choice. When, years down the road, the next generation asks what we did to save the planet, we want to be able to say: "We rolled up our sleeves and got to work." There's no guarantee we can beat the rich and powerful interests that we're up against—but thanks to you we've got enough momentum to have a real chance. Let's use it now.

Onwards,

Bill McKibben and the 350.org Team

Home Grown - by Steven L Hopp

2010-04-19T09:10:00.000-07:00

O sure, Barbara Kingsolver has forty acres and a mule (a donkey, actually). But how can someone like me participate in the spirit of growing things, when my apartment overlooks the freeway and other people's windows? Shall I raise a hog in my spare bedroom?
How big is that spare bedroom? Just kidding. But even for people who live in urban areas (more than half our population), directly contributing to local food economies isn't out of the question. Container gardening on porches, balconies, back steps, or even a sunny window can yield a surprising amount of sprouts, herbs, and even produce. Just a few tomato plants in big flowerpots can be surprisingly productive.
If you have any yard at all, part of it can become a garden. You can spade up the sunniest part of it for seasonal vegetables, or go for the more understated option of using perennial edibles in your landscaping. Fruit, nut, citrus, or berry plants come in many attractive forms, with appropriate choices for every region of the country.
If you're not a landowner, you can still find in most urban areas some opportunity to garden. Many community-supported agriculture (CSA) operations allow or even require subscribers to participate on their farms; they might even offer a work-for-food arrangement. Most urban areas also host community gardens, using various organizational protocols-a widespread practice in European cities that has taken root here. Some rent garden spaces to the first comers; others provide free space for neighborhood residents. Some are organized and run by volunteers for some specific goal, such as supplying food to a local school, while others accommodate special needs of disabled participants or at-risk youth. Information and locations can be found at the American Community Garden Association site: www.communitygarden.org

Steven L. Hopp

Losing The Bug Arms Race - by Steven L Hopp

2010-04-17T13:36:00.000-07:00

What could be simpler: spray chemicals to kill insects or weeds, increase yields, reap more produce and profits. Grow the bottom line by spraying the current crop. From a single-year perspective, it may work. But in the long term we have a problem. The pests are launching a counterattack of their own.
Within one field, an application of pesticides will immediately reduce insect populations but not eliminate them. Depending on the spray density and angle, wind, proximity to the edge of the field, and so forth, bugs get different doses of the poison. Those receiving a lethal dose are instant casualties.
Which bugs stay around? Obviously, those lucky enough to duck and cover. Also a few of those who did get a full, normally lethal dosage, but who have a natural resistance to the chemicals. If their resistance is genetic, that resistance will come back stronger in the next generation. Over time, with continued spraying, the portion of the population with genetic resistance will increase. Eventually the whole population will resist the chemicals.
This is a real-world example of evolution, and whether or not it's showing up in textbooks, it is going strong in our conventional agriculture. More than 500 species of insects and mites now resist our chemical controls, along with over 150 viruses and other plant pathogens. More than 270 of our recently developed herbicides have now become ineffective for controlling some weeds. Some 300 weed species resist all herbicides. Uh-ho, now what?
The standard approach has been to pump up the dosage of chemicals. In 1965, U.S. farmers used 335 million pounds of pesticides. In 1989 they used 806 million pounds. Less than ten years after that, it was 985 million. That's three and a half pounds of chemicals for every person in the country, at a cost of $8 billion. Twenty percent of these approved-for-use pesticides are listed by the EPA as carcinogenic in humans.
So, how are the bugs holding out? Just fine. In 1948, when pesticides were first introduced, farmers used roughly 50 million pounds of them and suffered about a 7 percent loss of all their field crops. By comparison, in 2000 they used nearly a billion pounds of pesticides. Crop losses? Thirteen percent.
Biologists point out that conventional agriculture is engaged in an evolutionary arms race, and losing it. How can we salvage this conflict? Organic agriculture, which allows insect predator populations to retain a healthy presence in our fields, breaks the cycle.

Steven L. Hopp

Speaking Up - By Steven L Hopp

2010-04-16T11:12:00.001-07:00

The increased availability of local food in any area is a direct function of the demand from local consumers. Most of us are not accustomed to asking about food origins, but it's easy enough to do.
First: In grocery stores, when the cashier asks if you found everything you were looking for, you could say, "Not really, I was looking for local produce." The smaller the store, the more open a grocer may be to your request. Food co-ops should be especially receptive. Restaurants may also be flexible about food purchasing, and your exchanges with the waitstaff or owner can easily include questions about which entrees or wines are from local sources. Restaurateurs do understand that local food is the freshest available, and they're powerful participants in the growing demand for local food. You can do a little homework in advance about what's likely to be available in your region.
Local and regional policymakers need to hear our wishes. Many forums are appropriate for promoting local food: town and city hall meetings, school board meetings, even state commissioner meetings. it makes sense to speak up about any venue where food is served, or where leaders have some control over food acquisition, including churches, social clubs, and day-care centers. Federal legislators also need to hear about local food issues. Most state governments consider farming-related legislation almost weekly. You can learn online about what issues are being considered, to register your support for laws that help local farms. In different parts of the country the specifics change, but the motives don't. As more people ask, our options will grow.

-Steven L. Hopp

eh hem..boy oh boy..where to start?

2010-04-15T22:05:00.000-07:00

Well you jokers finally got me on here! Don't really know where to start...much love to my new friends Jen and Kev..as my homeboy Phil (owner escape from new york) said the other day: "Look at that guy..that guy who started the 'keep portland wierd' slogan..look at what happened!" So it fortifies in me mind the value in PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF PORTLAND as making it reeel BIG! On a whole different level!!

I joined forces with PEOPLES REPUBLIC..because well.. I LOVE PORTLAND. My grandmother moved here as a single mother with two kids in the 60s by herself with no husband. BraVO! (can you imagine what P Town was like for a single black lady and two black kids from Texas in the 60s?) I've been living here since 1979..so I know Portland. Portland Wrestling...Dick Bogle..Bud Clark..Town Hall..KGON..The Bhawagn and Ma Anand Sheila..knock out ladies in stirrup pants with new wave hair styles and sexy spindly legs (yum!)..Billy Ray Bates..Cadillacs with big yellow parking lights parked on the grassy hill at Irving Park on warm summer days..OMSI freeze dried ice cream..Lloyd Center open top mall..the first black Rose Festival Queen..Kaluu Davis mashing the Rose City Cab..big beards camels colored suit jackets with the elbow patches..Russ and John Plew..Dj Skeeter..meeting DJ Wicked the first time..buying Cool Nutz tape DIS NIGGAZ NUTZ at 15th Ave Market..I LOVE BEING LOCAL.

MUCH WORK TO BE DONE LOCALLY though. Young people getting older. Older people getting older. Changes all around BUT you must vanquish fear and panic from your mind. Got this from my good friend and brother Corporal James at the gun counter at Sportsman Warehouse. (Go by and ask for him. Spend some time talking to him. Insightful and funny guy. Then go get Hog Wild BBQ from DaWayne in the parking lot. Be careful..sauce is so dern good you find yourself chewing your fingers zombie style :o)

Am I mixing correct sentences with Pirate speak? Maybe so! After all if you look at me profile you will see AC/DC is one of my fa vor rite (think old school paper frozen food blocks from Safeways) bands..and as Ive said to various pool partners at countless pool halls across this great city..yelling with a Miller in me hand: "IF THE PIRATES GOT TOGETHER AND MADE A BAND IT WOULD BE AC/DC!!"

Long live PROP!

"told you I did..reckless is he..now matters are worse.." -Yoda from Empire Strikes Back

Paying The Price Of Low Prices...by Steven L. Hopp

2010-04-13T22:40:00.000-07:00

A common complaint about organic and local foods is that they're more expensive than "conventional" (industrially grown) foods. Most consumers don't realize how much we're already paying for the conventional foods, before we even get to the supermarket. Our tax dollars subsidize the petroleum used in growing, processing, and shipping these products. We also pay direct subsidies to the large-scale, chemical-dependent brand of farming. And we're being forced to pay more each year for the environmental and health costs of that method of food production.
Here's an exercise: add up the portion of agricultural fuel use that is paid for with our taxes ($22 billion), direct Farm Bill subsidies for corn and wheat ($3 billion), treatment of food-related illnesses ($10 billion), agricultural chemical cleanup costs ($17 billion), collateral costs of pesticide use ($8 billion), and costs of nutrients lost to erosion ($20 billion). At minimum, that's a national subsidy of at least $80 billion, about $725 per household each year. That plus the sticker price buys our "inexpensive" conventional food.
Organic practices build rather than deplete the soil, using manure and cover crops. They eliminate pesticides and herbicides, instead using biological pest controls and some old-fashioned weeding with a hoe. They maintain and apply knowledge of many crops. All this requires extra time and labor. Smaller farms also bear relatively higher costs for packaging, marketing, and distribution. But the main difference is that organic growers aren't forcing us to pay expenses they've shifted into other domains, such as environmental and health damage. As they're allowed to play a larger role in the U.S. agricultural economy, our subsidy costs to industrial agriculture will decrease. For a few dollars up front, it's a blue-chip investment.

-Steven L Hopp

The Price Of Life - by Steven L Hopp

2010-04-11T14:26:00.000-07:00

Industrial animal food production has one goal: to convert creatures into meat. These intensively managed factory farms are called concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). The animals are chosen for rapid growth, ability to withstand confinement (some literally don't have room to turn around), and resistance to the pathogens that grow in these conditions. Advocates say it's an efficient way to produce cheap, good-quality meat for consumers.
Opponents raise three basic complaints: first, the treatment of animals. CAFOs house them as tightly as possible where they never see grass or sunlight. If you can envision one thousand chickens in your bathroom, in cages stacked to the ceiling, you're honestly getting the picture. (Actually, a six-foot-by-eight-foot room could house 1,152.)
A second complaint is pollution. So many animals in a small space put huge volumes of excrement into that small space, creating obvious waste storage and water quality problems. CAFO animals in the United States produce about six times the volume of fecal matter of all humans on our planet. Animals on pasture, by contrast, enrich the soul.
A third issue is heath. Confined animals are physically stressed, and are routinely given antibiotics in their feed to ward off disease. Nearly three-quarters of all antibiotics in the United States are used in CAFO's. Even so, the Consumers Union reported that over 70 percent of supermarket chickens harbored campylobacter and/or salmonella bacteria. The antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria that grow in these conditions are a significant new threat to humans.
Currently, 98 percent of chickens in the United States are produced by large corporations. If you have an opportunity to buy some of that other 2 percent, a truly free-range chicken from a local farmer, it will cost a little more. So what's the going price these days for compassion, clean water, and the public health?
- Steven L. Hopp

Is Bigger Really Better? - by Seven L Hopp

2010-04-09T07:48:00.000-07:00

Which are more economically productive, small family farms or big industrial farms? Most people assume they know the answer, and make a corollary assumption: that small farmers are basically asking to go bankrupt, they're inefficient even though their operations are probably more environmentally responsible, sustainable, diverse, and better connected to their communities than the big farms are. But isn't it really just about the profits?
If so, small farms win on that score too, hands down. According to USDA records from the 1990's, farms less than four acres in size had an average net income of $1,400 per acre. The per-acre profit declines steadily as farm size grows, to less than $40 an acre for farms above a thousand acres. Smaller farms maximize productivity in three ways: by using each square foot of land more intensively, by growing a more diverse selection of products suitable to local food preferences, and by selling more directly to consumers, reaping more of the net earnings. Small-farm profits are more likely to be sustained over time, too, since these farmers tend to be better stewards of the land, using fewer chemical inputs, causing less soil erosion, maintaining more wildlife habitat.
If smaller is economically better, why are the little guys going out of business? Aside from their being more labor-intensive, marketing is the main problem. Supermarkets prefer not to bother with boxes of vegetables if they can buy truckloads. Small operators have to be both grower and marketer, selling their products one bushel at a time. They're doing everything right, they just need customers.
Food preference surveys show that a majority of food shoppers are willing to pay more for food grown locally on small family farms. The next step, following up that preference with real buying habits, could make or break the American tradition of farming. For more information, visit www.nffc.net.

-Steven L Hopp

We've got new colors!!!

2010-04-08T08:43:00.000-07:00

Spring is springing and so is the people's republic of portland's color wheel. We thought after three years of black and green it was time for a little pick-me-up. Right now only 3 monkeys, Radish Underground, and Presents of Mind carry the colors so stop by there or contact me at info@thepeoplesrepublics.com if you'd like to get your color on!

The Global Equation...by Steven L. Hopp

2010-04-07T09:39:00.001-07:00

By purchasing local vegetables instead of South American ones, for example, aren't we hurting farmers in developing countries? If you're picturing Farmer Juan and his family gratefully wiping sweat from their brows when you buy that Ecuadoran banana, picture this instead: the CEO of Dole Inc. in his air conditioned office in Westlake Village, California. He's worth $1.4 billion; Juan gets about $6 a day. Much money is made in the global reshuffling of food, but the main beneficiaries are processors, brokers, shippers, supermarkets, and oil companies.
Developed nations promote domestic overproduction of commodity crops that are sold on the international market at well below market price, undermining the fragile economies of developing countries. Often this has the effect of driving small farmers into urban areas for jobs, decreasing the agricultural output of a country, and forcing the population to purchase those same commodities from abroad. Those who do stay in farm work are likely to end up not as farm owners, but as labor on plantations owned by multinationals. They may find themselves working in direct conflict with local subsistence. Thus, when Americans buy soy products from Brazil, for example, we're likely supporting an international company that has burned countless acres of Amazon rain forest to grow soy for export, destroying indigenous populations. Global trade deals negotiated by the World Trade Organization and World Bank allow corporations to shop for food from countries with the poorest environmental, safety, and labor conditions. While passing bargains on to consumers, this pits farmers in one country against those in another, in a downward wage spiral. Product quality is somewhat irrelevant.
Most people no longer believe that buying sneakers made in Asian sweatshops is a kindness to those child laborers. Farming is similar. In every country on earth, the most humane scenario for farmers is likely to be feeding those who live nearby-if international markets would allow them to do it. Food transport has become a bizarre and profitable economic equation that's no longer really about feeding anyone: in our own nation we export 1.1 million tons of potatoes, while we also import 1.4 million tons. If you care about farmers, let the potatoes stay home.
For more information visit: http://www.viacampesina.org
-Steven L. Hopp

The Strange Case of Percy Schmeiser...by Steven L. Hopp

2010-04-06T08:59:00.000-07:00

In 1999, a quiet middle-aged farmer from Bruno, Saskatchewan, was sued by the largest biotech seed producer in the world. Monsanto Inc. claimed that Percy Schmeiser had damaged them, to the tune of $145.000, by having their patented gene in some of the canola plants on his 1,030 acres. The assertion was not that Percy had actually planted the seed, or even that he obtained the seed illegally. Rather, the argument was that the plants on Percy's land contained genes that belonged to Monsanto. The gene, patented in Canada in the early 1990's, gives genetically modified (GM) canola plants the fortitude to withstand spraying by glyphosate herbicides such as Roundup, sold by Monsanto.
Canola, a cultivated variety of rapeseed, is one of over three thousand species in the mustard family. Pollen from mustards is transferred either by insects, or by wind, up to one-third of a mile. Does the patented gene travel in the pollen? Yes. Are the seeds viable? Yes, and can remain dormant up to ten years. If seeds remain in the soil from previous years, it's illegal to harvest them. Further, if any of the seeds from a field contain the patented genes, it is illegal to save them for use. Percy had been saving his canola seeds for fifty years. Monsanto was suing for possession of intellectual property that had drifted onto his plants. The laws protect possession of the gene itself, irrespective of its conveyance. Because of pollen drift and seed contamination, the Monsanto genes are ubiquitous in Canadian canola.
Percy lost his court battles: he was found guilty in the Federal Court of Canada, the conviction upheld in the court of appeals. The Canadian Supreme Court narrowly upheld the decision (5-4), but with no compensation to Monsanto. This stunning case has drawn substantial attention to the problems associated with letting GM genies out of their bottle. Organic canola farmers in Saskatchewan have now sued Monsanto and another company, Aventis, for making it impossible for Canadian farmers to grow organic canola. The National Farmers Union of Canada has called for a moratorium on all GM foods. The issue has spilled over the borders as well. Fifteen countries have banned import of GM canola, and Australia has banned all Canadian canola due to the unavoidable contamination made obvious by Monsanto's lawsuit. Farmers are concerned about liability, and consumers are concerned about choice. Twenty-four U.S. states have proposed or passed various legislation to block or limit particular GM products, attach responsibility for GM drift to seed producers, defend a farmer's right to save seeds, and require seed and food product labels to indicate GM ingredients (or allow "GM-free" labeling).
The U.S. federal government (corporate-friendly as ever) has stepped in to circumvent these proconsumer measures. In 2006 the House of Representatives passed the National Uniformity for Food Act, which would eliminate more than two hundred state-initiated food safety and labeling laws that differ from federal ones. Thus, the weakest consumer protections would prevail (but they're uniformly weak!). Here's a clue about who really benefits from this bill: it's endorsed by the American Frozen Food Institute, ConAgra, Cargill, Dean Foods, Hormel, and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. It's opposed by the Consumer's Union, the Sierra Club, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Center for Food Safety, and thirty-nine state attorney generals. Keeping GM's "intellectual" paws out of our bodies, and our fields, is up to consumers who demand full disclosure on what's in our food.
For more information, visit www.biotech-info.net or www.organicconsumers.org

-Steven L Hopp