I was just researching community gardens because I wanted to see what other people were sharing of their experiences regarding plants, best practices, etc. Mostly, I wanted to see what people with similar plot sizes to the one I just got were growing.
But fear not, because even in something as simple and supposedly ideology free as gardening edible plants, racism and White supremacy can creep in! It seems (and this is something I am not familiar with, considering I live in Europe), that in certain areas of the US, there are projects that involve refugee families engaged in community gardens. I say “apparently” also because I run across several sites describing such projects. However, this post at Clash of Cultures in Community gardens: is there really a need for refugee/immigrant gardens in Fort Wayne? « Refugee Resettlement Watch describes a “phenomenon” I thought was more suitable for right wing sites than discussions pertaining the growth of peppers and tomatoes.
And of course, the writer had to regale us with gems like this:
Back to my observations of these 3 community gardens. I have observed the lack of volunteers, lack of funds, lack of interest by the refugee community. The refugees will, and do harvest select plants growing in the garden sites not planted as a crop, considered as ‘weeds’ by most, Purslane, Amaranth(pig weed) to name a few.These plants should definitely be grown as crops, if just for the refugees, it is what they prefer as a food source. As we harvest the rest of the produce this month I have observed African refugee/immigrant garden plots, and the lack of attention to their crops. They are not harvesting, other than again, the plants considered ‘weeds’, they are letting tomatoes, squash, cantaloupe rot on the vine, corn to go to seed on the stalks. This group of refugees/immigrants has been told to harvest the fruits of our/their labor, to no avail.
This begs me to ask the questions, are the refugees/immigrants receiving enough governmental handouts in money/food that they don’t really need the community gardens? Why are city officials starting up a new program, ‘Fort Wayne Urban Gardening Project’,with an agenda to gain control over existing community gardens, and/or create new community gardens to involve refugees with one of the pretexts that the refugees/immigrants need these gardens, if not for food, then for income? And who do they think is going to do all of the intensive, backbreaking work to sustain these gardens if the majority of refugee/immigrants, and others refuse to do so?
Heh, with people like her running the project, why would anyone be shocked that the immigrants would not want to participate? Also, I am endlessly amused by the fact that she calls amaranth a “weed”. People like her one day discovered quinoa (which had been eaten in the Andes for thousands of years) and turned it into a “gourmet food” driving the crop prices through the roof, to the point that the cultures who were eating the grains for sustenance can no longer afford it. There is more at the link; however, it is the same litany of “they are lazy and don’t eat normal food” nonsense.
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