A movement is unfurling...
Fresh food for family, friends and neighbors. A verdant garden in a city blighted by foreclosure. Neighborhood kids picking sun-ripened tomatoes. A prison sentence.
Sing it with me: one of these things is not like the other one, which one could it be?
For one mom, gardening in her front yard has landed her a jury trial, and possible 93-day stint in jail! The city planning department staff of Oak Park, Michigan are the geniuses behind this epic failure of common sense.
The best part? It’s the city that ripped up her lawn in the first place! Mom of 6 Julie Bass decided to replace her lawn with vegetables only AFTER the city did some sewer line work, tearing up her grass and leaving it up to her to replace it. The raised-bed garden has been producing tomatoes, squash, beans, and melons – and has been a big hit with neighborhood kids, who stop by to snack and help tend the plants.
So what’s up with Oak Park, Michigan? For starters, it’s not some gated Agrestic-style place with tons of manicured emerald-green lawns on display. It’s a town in the grips of economic trouble, with foreclosures and shortened workdays all around. It’s the kind of place where home-based food production can make the difference between eating well or not eating at all. It’s the kind of place where community health workers spend whole lifetimes trying to get kids to eat their veggies. The cognitive dissonance here boggles the mind.
Which brings me to my next question — what exactly is going on in Michigan? This story, the violent closure of Catherine Ferguson Academy, a farm-based school for pregnant teens in Detroit (fortunately with a recent happy ending), and also the gross violation of one parent’s right to choose to NOT give her 13 year old antipsychotic (and dangerous) drugs.
All of these incidents, taken together, paint the picture of a society that is both poised for dramatic cultural change (farm-based schools! front yard gardens! holistic medicine!) and is fighting an old guard violently opposed (arrest! detain! charge! kidnap!) to social transformation. I keep coming back to Paul Hawken’s book, Blessed Unrest. It’s like watching his words unfold. Hawken writes: “The movement can’t be divided because it is so atomized – a collection of small pieces, loosely joined. It forms, dissipates, and then regathers quickly, without central leadership, command, or control. Rather than seeking dominance, this unnamed movement strives to disperse concentrations of power. It has been capable of bringing down governments, companies, and leaders through witnessing, informing, and massing… Its clout resides in its ideas, not in force.”
It’s that clout of thought, of urgent and widespread cultural change, that is riding to a crest in Michigan. I only hope that it can reform, regroup, and ultimately – survive.
A quick note to the (rightly) incensed masses: please take a look at Julie Bass’ plea that all the support remain calm, collected, and NOT personal. It would be a shame to have any Oak Park official feel unsafe – when what we really want these folks to feel is transformed.
Regardless of one’s position on these matters, I think it essential to remember at all times that taking the high road doesn’t change the fact that WE are the ones being threatened. This is not, “Stop, or I’ll say stop again”, to quote the old Robin Williams routine. We are being told to do this, or to not do that, and implicit or explicit in the command is the fact that if we do not obey, we will be kidnapped, and if we resist such kidnapping, we will be killed. And we will be the ones painted as the villain on every front page and boob tube from here to Cape Cucamunga — and infinitely more so if we dare the slightest resistance to our captors and murderers. The only danger of them not feeling “safe” is the increased likelihood that they may resort to violence.
“So what’s up with Oak Park, Michigan?”
Over at my blog, Crazy Eddie’s Motie News (link in my user name), I wrote the following to answer your question.
“When it comes to enforcing Business-as-usual norms of middle-class respectability as a way of maintaining property values, Oak Park does not play. Oak Park is so afraid of catching what they think Detroit has, which is blight, that they restrict what property owners can do more than neighboring cities and enforce their will with a vengeance. Put your trash cans out too early or leave them out too long and the police will ticket you. Let your grass grow too high and the city will mow your lawn for you and then bill you. You can only hold two yard sales per year and you have to inform the city in advance. If you want to drink wine while dining in the city, you’re out of luck; there are no restaurants with liquor licenses. The list goes on and on.
Of course, the people who live there and like it make a point of saying that the police will arrive before you hang up your call to 911, but all the above is the flip side of what the locals praise as “great city services.” I hope their property values and middle-class sensibilities are worth it.”
The above is just an example of something I had written earlier.
“If you’re interested in sustainability on the local and personal levels, your biggest obstacles will be homeowners associations, zoning boards, and city councils. Those people will be wedded to business as usual (BAU) long after it becomes apparent to early adopters that BAU just isn’t working any more. Watch those local governing entities hang onto the past like adherents of a cargo cult.”
And, yes, you have read what is going on in Michigan exactly right. Detroit is Ground Zero of the Post-Industrial Future and the solutions to our problems we devise here problems, both good and bad, will be exported to the rest of the continent. It’s an exciting time to live here, and I wouldn’t miss it for the world!