admin's blog

Dear friends of the Urban Roots film:

I am excited to announce the creation of a Volunteer Action Campaign for Urban Roots the movie and a Summer 2010 Screening in Detroit.

We have been overwhelmed by your support over the last several months. The Volunteer Action Campaign is off to a running start, and Urban Roots the movie is in its final stages of production. The Urban Roots team is finalizing the details of a summer 2010 Detroit Grand Screening followed by a nationwide release.

We’d like to sincerely thank all of you who have joined us in supporting the farmers of Detroit. And we’d like to invite anyone not already involved to lend their support to these visionary farmers who are transforming Detroit from a rust belt worst case scenario into a model case study for urban farming in America. They are the vanguard in the pursuit of Food Justice––promoting the belief that all Americans deserve access to healthy, locally-and sustainably -grown foods.

Be Part Of The Message, or Be Part Of The Movement!

You can become part of this movement by joining the Volunteer Action Campaign, spreading the word about the Urban Roots movie to your friends and family, or simply by becoming part of the urban farming transformation of America in your community.

For more information, go to www.urbanrootsamerica.com

Best,

Mark MacInnis, Director

Growing up in Detroit, every kid I knew had a mom or a dad who worked for the auto industry. For twenty years, my mom worked at a warehouse that distributed wiring harnesses to Ford Motor Company. That job put braces on my and my brother’s teeth, paid for our skateboards and our weekend trips up north.

My mother was tough, the Michigan stiff upper lip hardened by wage labor and cold winters. I had never seen my mother cry until I was a teenager––on the day I picked her up from her last day of work. She’d already survived three waves of layoffs, but finally got her pink slip with a gold clock and a low-ball severance check.

All my life, I watched the decline of the city, and suffering with it were all of us who’d hitched our hopes to the great American industrial dream of making cars for the greatest country on earth. I never got to see Detroit in its true heyday. But I knew enough to know what it meant to lose that.

My mother may have lost her job, but she never lost that stiff upper lip. And so it was with Detroit—the city that lost its engine but never lost its drive. And now, where nature has reclaimed vast stretches of the abandoned rust belt, Detroiters are reclaiming their spirits. Wherever there is grass, there is a chance to put food on the table. And where there is a chance to put food on the table, there’s a chance for a new start. Now, all around the city of Detroit, a growing movement of urban farmers is changing the way people think about food—and life in the “D”. It took men like Henry Ford, William Durant, and Lee Iococca to build this city, but it’s taken a bunch of strong willed self-taught urban farmers to save it.

On December 6th there will be synchronised demonstrations around the world  to call on world leaders to take urgent action on climate change.

Read more about the international 'Call to Action' for these demonstrations and related events!

New Zealand has banned the construction of all new coal fired and fossil fuel energy plants for 10 years. The argument is that alternative energy supplies are more than sufficient.

"New coal and gas-fuelled power stations have effectively been banned for 10 years, leaving plans for a $500 million project near Auckland destined for the scrapheap.

State-owned Genesis Energy's gas turbine plant at Rodney, which has been on the drawing board for two years, appears to be the main casualty of the Government's new long-term energy strategy."

Read full article here.