RE: Boonville

K* T* J*

Regarding the Boonville Prison Garden: I've heard from a few people in the
Justice Department in Missouri that the Boonville project is a fine addition
to the community, the system, and the living conditions for the "volunteer"
growers. We've worked with restorative justice inmates the past two years on
community gardens - I liked every aspect of working with them. People who
are incarcerated, as best and accurately as I can tell, really want to do
something good for the community/victims/themselves - if they buy into this
approach. Pessimism, self-loathing, depression are not strictly inmate
qualities, and gardening has a miraculous way of transforming the spirit. 

I'd like to thank you Emma for posting the link, I've wanted to tour the
Boonville facility for a while now, and I've made some inquiries as to where
the inmates who leave Boonville, bound for KC, spend their halfway house
time. I think getting former inmates with gardening experience into our
community gardens in KC is a prime example of determining whether there's
truth to the arguement folks like us make - that gardening can rehabilitate
people and give community members and at-risk people a chance to change
their lives. It's worth a try. 

Regarding the Peace Corp subject, I believe that some Peace Corp programs
are problematically aligned with the spread of free markets, for better or
worse. I have also heard that AID also has similar CIA alignment. However, I
recently had the opportunity to meet some Latin American specialists
involved in environmental issues through AID, and considered them great
people, with very non-conventional (especially non-CIA) approaches to
programming in their countries.

The prisoner gardeners as neo-slaves and Peace Corps as CIA puppets are both
examples of our general willingness to think like the most basic and
debiliatating stereotypes allow. 

Tom 

       ------------------------ 
Tom Kerr 
Food Circles Networking Project - Kansas City 
University of Missouri Outreach and Extension 
2700 E. 18th Street, Suite 240 
Kansas City, MO 64127 
tel: (816) 482-5888 
fax: (816) 482-5880 
www.foodcircles.missouri.edu 

-----Original Message-----
From: Emma Eyre [e*@hms.harvard.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, July 11, 2000 1:14 PM
To: community_garden@mallorn.com
Subject: [cg] Re: community_garden digest, Vol 1 #390 - 1 msg

Dear Adam, 

I do remember the discussion on prison gardens on this list a few months ago
- I understand that prisoners forced to work for little or no compensation
in agriculture is slavery, rather than a peachy program for prisoner reform
and stocking food banks. 

Understand that I posted the article because the topic was brought up on the
list earlier, not because I advocate forcing people to work for nothing. 

When posting the article, I did not make a disowning remark because the
article so stressed the volunteer role of the prisoner gardeners. 

I did not make a sympathetic comment on the program illustrated in the
article because I know (through this list) of exploitative prison
agriculture programs, and furthermore, take most of what I read on CNN with
a grain of salt. 

My point was to bring it to the list's attention and hope that someone would
know something about this specific prison garden project. It sounded so
positive - I wanted to hear "yes, this is a great program," or "hell no,
they got it all wrong, this Boonville prison program mirrors that of Angola,
Louisiana." 

I was surprised to have gotten lectured on the article posting rather than
joining the Peace Corps - I was expecting something more like "well shoot,
while she's at it, why doesn't she just join the CIA so she can really
promote U.S. imperialism and exploitation in developing countries?" -- along
the lines of what I hear most often. 

Alright. Back to work with me. 

Emma 

>--__--__-- 

> 

>Message: 1 

>From: "Honigman, Adam" <Adam.Honigman@Bowne.com> 

>To: "'Emma Eyre'" <emma_eyre@hms.harvard.edu>, community_garden@mallorn.com

>Subject: RE: [cg] Prison garden in Missouri 

>Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 12:07:09 -0400 

> 

>Emma, 

> 

>Prison farms are an old story in the USA. The restorative justice spin is 

>window dressing for the use of unpaid prison agricultural labor in what has

>come to be known as "The Prison Industrial Complex" . That the food banks 

>get fresh food is a splendid end. The means is appalling. This end would be

>better met by free, independant farmers paid a living wage by the 

>government. That the unpaid agricultural labor of prison inmates is 

>construed by the program directors as a great gift is similar to the 

>"Arbeit Macht Zu Frei" ( work makes you free) cast iron signs on the gates 

>to Nazi concentration and forced labor camps. Orwell lives. 

> 

> The largest and oldest self-sustaining organic prison farm is Louisana's 

>Angola Prison (which was designed on the ante-bellum slave plantation 

>model.) Angola prison, whose inmates are predominantly African-American, 

>and whose sentences are often life imprisonment, can hardly be considered a

>progressive institution. Forced agricultural labor in a chain gang is not 

>the model of renewable agriculture that we should foster. 

> 

>Adam 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Emma Eyre 

Curriculum Coordinator 

Division of Medical Sciences 

Harvard Medical School 

260 Longwood Avenue 

Boston, MA 02115 

(617) 432-0605 

_______________________________________________
community_garden maillist  -  community_garden@mallorn.com
https://secure.mallorn.com/mailman/listinfo/community_garden