An Intern’s perspective:
     

                  Survival is hidden from us in America. If I may, in respect to Diane Moss and the work being done through Project New Village I’d like to say “GET INVOLVED!” If you haven’t heard already, the word is spreading all over Southeast San Diego about the new community garden forming in the Mt. Hope neighborhood. Yesterday, they had the Groundbreaking Ceremony for the garden space. Councilman Tony Young  and a few other big shots  were all there gathered around in a circle talking about what is going to become of this brand new garden space. Many organizations like Groundwork San Diego are looking for the chance to be a part of this opportunity as well. I personally wish to see more people from the community get involved, especially the youth.

There were about 30 to 40 people that came to support the event on behalf of various organizations. It’s very saddening to see that only a hand full of the people who came were from the southeast community. But for those who came and put in all the work it took to make that day possible, like Diane, etc, I applaud and admire your servitude. Words can’t express how fortunate we are to have a garden (within walking distance for some) that we “ as a community “ can call our own. If you took away all the businesses that we depend on so much for our livelihood, what would we do? How would we survive? Where would we start? I think it’s clear that most of us in America would be out of luck. Hopefully it would never have to come to that in order for us to see the value in growing our own food.

There are various concepts that you will continue to see in my writing for as long as it is needed. Our survival depends on what nature gives us.But survival is hidden from us here. There are many people who wish to live a healthy quality of life but are not willing to put in the foot work. Instead they rather depend on somebody else to do the work for them. So now you take your connection with the earth out of the picture and you replace it with the need to depend on others for survival.But when you do that, your survival is no longer in your hands. Now somebody else is in control of your survival. And if someone else is in control of “your” survival then what else don’t they control?  There will be some who may try to deny this obvious fact saying, if you need clothes,food,water,etc., you can go buy it. This may be true but it’s not as easy as it sounds. You need money right? But first you must work for somebody to get that money.But as soon as you receive it, you have to give it right back because you have to buy what you need. Further,when you buy what you need from the store, your choice of food product is subject to the discretion of wherever you get it from. We have many things living in our food like germs,pesticides and everything else .Not to mention, all the other so called food  with no nutritional value, that may appeal to our emotions, but at the expense of bringing harm to the body. With that in mind, if I asked you to exercise your logic for a moment, If you had to chose between eating for pleasure or survival, it should be quite obvious what the answer should be. But unfortunately many of us have a long way to go,because if all of our stores were gone tomorrow, all we’d have left to show for the time and energy we spent in our daily work would be a piece of paper with a president’s face on it. But you can’t eat or wear paper.

This is an opportunity to reclaim many important aspects of the human experience  which most of us have lost along the way and that is culture. Culture is what shapes our paradigm and our values. It is culture that teaches us how to depend on ourselves and each other for what we need. It is in human nature to preserve life and agriculture has played a huge role in that. We all have the ability to become producers instead of consumers, but we have to reconquer our minds and look within ourselves for what we need and not outside ourselves for what we want and desire.The Mt. Hope Community Garden is a huge asset to this community, so it’s time for people to start investing in it. Being able to grow your own food is truly a wealth that transcends from generation to generation. It’s something that you can take with you wherever you go. That is the kind of knowledge we want to pass down to our kids,who are the future. This garden gives us an honest chance to be on the receiving end of our own work for a change. And by doing so, the benefits of working for ourselves will be far greater than any piece of paper could ever be.

GWSD is an organization that has a strong motivation to educate and encourage the youth in making sure that our environment is of good quality to people in our community. So, once again, I encourage everyone, not just from Mt. Hope but from all over Southeastern San Diego, to get involved and take advantage of this opportunity to be a part of something much bigger than ourselves. Groundwork San Diego does not plan on missing out on all the excitement.

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/credentialed/article_de4adca0-eaeb-11e0-b833-001cc4c002e0.html