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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 5, 2011)
4 street roots Aug. 5, 2011 UJL-Ax£ LEADERS, fro m page 3 Blethen. “People want to have access to fresh fruit and veggies and not be reliant on high prices. We provide the resources they need to do it themselves.” Food Works is different from other youth agriculture programs, believes program supervisor Ryan Schoonover, because of its willingness to be messy and make mistakes. “Part of giving youths responsibility is giving big tasks away. Maybe they decide to pick way more potatoes than they can sell. Sometimes they’re going to make mistakes, and sometimes they’re going to come up with really creative solutions,” says Schoonover. “Food Works is about taking our young people seriously,” says Amber Baker, program director for Village Gardens. “We set high expectations for them, and they rise to that challenge again and again.” Food Works gives youths “soft work skills,” says Baker, who still writes recommendations for program alumni now applying for college and jobs. They learn professional communication skills and reliability, she says, but also how to create a resume and fill out an application. Appropriately, Food Works was inspired by youths. After Village Gardens started in 2001, youth pursued their own site, starting with 800 square feet at St. Johns Woods Apartments. Salad mix gqt them the most bang for "We set high the buck, which they expectations started selling at the for them, Portland Farm ers’ and they rise M arket In 2005, they expanded to two to that acres on Sauvie challenge Island, where Food Works is today. The again and summer program, again." brainchild of a youth ■aamfidiAhflsfai Ananouko, was added three years ago. Schoonover likes to say that Food Works grows four things: business, community, farm and self. Youth are responsible for all sales and marketing, they donate almost half of their produce to their communities, they run the farm, and they are supported fry Food Works staff to reach their personal goals and become community leaders. Many Food Works youths become advocates for healthy foods in their New Columbia/Tamarack and S t Johns Woods neighborhoods, says Schoonover. “A lot of youths begin to change the way they think about food and widen the spectrum of food they’re willing to eat. “This year, despite the bad season, they are on pace to shatter previous records. They work so hard out here. They really run the place and have made it their own.” Where to buy from Food Works: News Seasons Market, Portland Farmers Market, S t Johns Farmers Market, Join their C om m unity Supported Agriculture (CSA) project Hatfield speech resonates today BY TERRIS HARNED CONTRIBUTING WRITER crowd of approximately 40 people showed up at Pioneer Square Aug. 2 to listeii to a recitation of a speech delivered by former Oregon senator Mark Hatfield. The delivery of this speech comes 22 years after the original, to the day. And the anniversary comes on the heals of Congress’ contentious budget wrangling over the debt ceiling vote. ' Hatfield, a Republican, served as Secretary of State in Oregon, the 29th Governor, serving for eight years, and finally moved on to the Senate, where he served for 30 years, ■ from 1967 to 1997. His speech was a plea, to then-president George Herbert Walker Bush, to reconsider the nation’s trend in spending money on the defense budget He stated passionately and firmly that each dollar spent on defense was Mark Hatfield a dollar stolen from those in the US who were undereducated, unfed, unhoused and unclothed. ■ The speech, titled “Peace Through “S^reng?lTis*aT:alIacy7r‘waTfrfoi^fiTforfir**fc^ ' during a federal budget consideration, : declaring why Hatfield was voting against the budget proposal, and urging his fellow senators to do the same. It is amazing how impactful this speech is, given the current budget issues. The event was planned and hosted by Project Cone Orange (cpneorange.com). Roscoe Kopple, an avatar of cone orange, gave the opening remarks. The other speakers were Scott Teitsworth, Debra Buchanan, Dave Milholland and Johnny Stallings and Martha Gies. Here is an excerpt from former senator Hatfield’s apeech that still resonates today: A n audience gathers in Pioneer Courthouse Square fo r a reading o f form er Oregon senator M ark H atfield’s 1989 speech. Given the recent budget negotiations over the debt ceiling, the speech is a relevant today as it was more than two decades ago. best trained militaries in the world, despite a nuclear arsenal of unprecedented destructive power, we were — somehow — vulnerable. A spending gap is what they called it, and so we began a massive buildup; billions and billions of dollars to catch up. Nevermind that this spending gap was as phoney as the bomber gap of the 1950s and the missile gap of the 1960s. Democrats and Republicans alike dutifully lined up and marched to the drummer of higher military spending. And so it is that we have gathered here every year since only to play on the margins. Oh; we sound reasonable, and we like to think that we sound responsible. We go to hearings and briefings, we have long debates over this program and that program, this weapon and that weapon, and we cast our votes on . arnendnaentafter.am cndnient...;,., _ M We have played on th e m argins so long, Mr. President, that I am afraid we do not even know what the real issues are anymore. We seem to have lost sight of the fact that many of the programs we have authorized- and are authorizing again here today- are intended for one purpose only; mass destruction. We seem to have lost sight of the fact that every dollar we spend on bombs and bullets means that we are underfunding programs to meet the nation’s desperate human needs: health care, education, our war on drugs, low income housing, prison construction, AIDS research — all of these things are part of our national defense. Sometimes, Mr. President, we even lose r. President, from the Revolutionary War sight of the margins. Several days ago, the Senate considered an amendment earmarking to the Civil War to the Spanish- money for the development of more lethal American War through World War H, through Korea, through Vietnam, and through thecold weapons for our ground troops. More lethal? Even the words have begun to lose their wars in between: At no time did the spending meaning: What is more lethal supposed to for military purposes reduce or diminish after mean when some of our troops already carry ■ those wars. They reached a peak dining a tactical nuclear weapons on their backs? But war, and then remained at that peak following nobody else even raised an eyebrow: the vote the war. No build-down, only a buildup. And was 98-1. no peace dividend, Mr. President None at all. I remember, back in 1981, when 10 And as We entered this decade, the clarion subcommittees of the Senate Appropriations call went out: despite one of the largest and M Committee were forced to make $9.9 billion in cuts from domestic spending so that defense spending could be increased by $7.4 billion. We can no longer afford to fool ourselves, I said in the full committee markup, but oh,1 - how wrong I was. The nation’s defense budget has almost tripled in the past decade with our bipartisan blessing, and spending to meet thè desperate human needs throughout this country has been cut and cut and cut again to pay for it — some 33 percent reduction in the nondefense discretionary programs in the last dècade. Could somebody tell me if there is some secret strategy, some finite figure that we will one day reach and then suddenly be secure? Will we ever have enough? I do not think so. We are, Mr. President, like tfre thirsty ipaq ip dq^çft whft thinks h e s e e s an oasis ahead, but w h en h e m oves closer, ;it moves too. Further and further, or for us higher and higher. And as his thirst finally kills him, our lust for bigger and better weapons of mass destruction is going to destroy us one day too. Peace through strength is a fallacy, Mr. President, for peace is not simply the absence of a nuclear holocaust Peace is not a nation which has seen its teenage suicide rate more than double in the past two decades. Peace is not a nation in which more people die every two years of gunshot wounds than died in the entire Vietnam War. Peace is not the town in’ Pennsylvania which last year was forced to cancel its high school graduation because officials believed that a group of students planned to commit suicide at the ceremony. And peace is not here in Washington, where after leading the nation in murders last year, children are beginning to show the same psychological trauma as children in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Gan we really believe that the decisions we have made — and are making — do not have a direct relationship to the violence which plagues our nation? good, local, food. ALBERTA COOPERATIVE GROCERY 1500 NE Alberta St. Portland, OR 97211 503.287.4333 www.albertagrooery.coop open to everyone 9-10 dally
