Bullets and Beets: Murder at the Farm Stand

No one is under the illusion that growing beets can stop the bullets

by Jason Mark
change.org
September 07, 2010

Jason Mark is a columnist for Change.org’s Sustainable Food cause. He is a co-author of Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots and the editor of Earth Island Journal. When he’s not writing, he co-manages San Francisco’s Alemany Farm, a four-acre organic fruit and vegetable garden in the city.

Excerpts:

The fourth anniversary of her son Travis’ shooting had just passed, so it felt especially hard to Vivian Irving when Ray Twine was killed in front of her apartment two weeks ago. Irving, a resident of the Alemany Public Housing complex in San Francisco, was enjoying a quiet Friday night at home when someone approached Twine from behind as he was walking across the basketball court in the middle of the projects and put five bullets in the back of his head.

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This tragic tableau sits no more than 15 feet from where, every Wednesday, the volunteers of Alemany Farm set up the table for our neighborhood community-supported agriculture (CSA) program. Distributing food in a low-income area is a nice initiative for an urban farm —and nice is about it. The Alemany residents that pick up organic fruits and vegetables at the stand appreciate and value the food; I know this because they’ve told me, and because they keep coming back. Yet our modest accomplishments to boost food security are wholly inadequate to address the crisis of violence that grips a poor community. No one is under the illusion that growing beets can stop the bullets.

Read the complete article here.