6 responses to “Occupy Comes Down to Earth”

  1. [...] upon my previous post, I recently wrote a new piece on Occupy the Farm, published on the website of the California Student Sustainability Coalition. I’m indebted to [...]

  2. Awesome article, I can’t wait to hear who wins the fight for this land. It sounds like a dream come come true for the community.

  3. You can reach me at [email protected]

  4. Hi Damon,

    I’m glad you commented, and it’s certainly not futile to argue with me, where facts are concerned. You and I may not get anywhere debating about whether we agree the action is “right” or “wrong,” but I am certainly open to correcting any factual errors I’ve made.

    In response to your concerns: the activists I quoted weren’t random, and they weren’t from a website-they were the organizers of the occupation, and I talked to them in person on the farm. The rest of my information I gathered from a binder at the farm site, which contained years of documents on the Gill Tract, including official UC planning documents, city council meeting minutes, community-crafted urban farm plans, and more. I also looked at UC Master Plan documents online. If you would like, I can send you the UC documents I consulted.

    I am aware of the sustainable agriculture research that is also taking place-Miguel Altieri, the researcher, has been in direct dialogue with the protesters. As for the rest of the research, it’s true that I trusted the assesments made by the organizers. I admit this is not fair to the researchers, and thank you for pointing it out. I would be happy to balance my assesment of the research by including the researchers’ perspective. Are you one of them? I would be delighted to hear your perspective and to take into account what you have to say, possibly including it as an addendum to the article.

    Thanks again and I hope to hear from you.

  5. I’m not sure why I’m bothering, since I’ve found that arguing against this particular action with people that support it is futile, but I can’t sleep, so I might as well. The land is used for research in sustainable agriculture as well as basic research into plant biology using maize as a model organism. That research is all publicly funded, and most of it is of little interest to industry. Some of it may well be, however, which wouldn’t be surprising, since one of the goals of science is to produce knowledge that will be useful. The rest is pretty typical basic research, which involves trying to understand fundamental questions concerning the nature of biological processes. This particular occupation involves disrupting that work, so that the people that would have been starting their experiments in a couple of weeks now can’t. Since maize researchers depend on their yearly cross pollenations for all of their other experiments, they are kind of screwed if the occupiers don’t leave. But who cares, right? You think we are just cogs in some great industrial machine, and if our work is disrupted for the greater good, so much the better. The only problem is that this is all based on distortions and half-truths. We are not the people you make us out to be. In this particular case, it would be so refreshing if well meaning people in your movement would speak out against wrong action even if it’s for a good cause. Please, Andrew. Take some time, do some digging (and not just finding some random activists on a sympathetic web site) and decide for yourself whether this particular action, as photogenic as it is, might have been a mistake. What is being done is wrong, and dressing it up with fancy idealism, or pretending that the ends justifies the means is just as wrong.

    1. Damon-

      Just to add on to what Andrew said: As an environmental engineering student, I understand your concern about research. At a general meeting at the Gill Tract which I attended, the primary researcher on the field, Dr. Miguel Altieri, showed up to voice his concerns. The attendants at that meeting were very receptive and wanted to help ensure his research is not obstructed while also maintaining the work they are currently doing. The following Saturday, Dr. Altieri spoke at the community event on the Gill Tract, which I did not attend, but here is part of the description that was circulated:

      “From 10 AM to sundown on Saturday and Sunday, April 28th and 29th, Occupy the Farm will host a weekend of workshops, farming and family fun! Events will including a special teach-in by Dr. Miguel Altieri, who has been conducting agroecological research at the Gill Tract since 1981. The workshop will begin at 12pm on Saturday, and Dr. Altieri will field questions from the media at 1pm.”

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