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