A few days ago, I posted that it might be productive to encourage business owners/developers to set aside a percentage of their property for sustainable plantings (Victory Gardens, community gardens, etc.). I emphasized the economic value of large-scale green spaces (parks, hike and bike trails, etc.) in attracting and retaining young professionals, adding that there must be some transferability of those larger notions to smaller bits of green. Basically, I tried to connect the dots, in an admittedly lazy fashion, to show that gardens are good...for the environment...for business...for the economy. At the end of the post, I promised to come back to talk about the essentialness of preparing and mobilizing the right messengers for the movement.
I do want to pick up with that topic (the messengers), but I also want to fine-tune the Percent for Victory notion and add the bare-bones outline of a grassroots action plan. (Gentle reader, do forgive me in advance for having multiple strands running in this post because it's mid-afternoon, it's very, very hot and I should really be napping to keep up with my toddler later this evening.)
To begin, let's revisit the Percent for Victory notion. Upon further, deeper reflection (much of it undertaken on the highway, headed to Target), I think that the Percent for Victory notion should have at least three primary facets: home, business and community. Wouldn't it be great to see folks actually "formally" and openly set aside a portion of their land for fruits and veggies? Or allocate a percentage of their pay to sustainability-oriented charities? What if churches, city halls, public parks and businesses set aside a portion of their lands for gardens to benefit the community? Yes, yes, yes...many people and organizations are doing those things...and many more people would do so if there were some language, some branding developed around it all to make it easy to digest.
That's what the original War/Victory Garden movements did, of course...they branded a type of gardening through posters, news papers and other media...put a big ol' red, white and blue ribbon on all of it to show that patriotic intention was wrapped up inside...and it was irresistible. And timely. And contagious, memorable and, oh, heck...just plain sticky, to borrow a marvelous term from Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point; How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.
It's not terribly easy to make something sticky. As Gladwell astutely observes:
We all want to believe that the key to making an impact on someone lies with the inherent quality of the ideas we present...[and yet] The line between hostility and acceptance, in other words, between an epidemic that tips and one that does not, is sometimes a lot narrower than it seems...there are exceptional people out there capable of starting epidemics. All you have to do is find them. The lesson of stickiness is the same. There is a simple was to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible.
Unfortunately, Gladwell stops short of explaining precisely how to make something sticky. Others have tried to clarify, but I personally happen to think it involves a strange alchemy of tapping the audience's past, present and future concerns/needs/wants.
Thinking about Victory Gardens again...with the rise of interest in local food and both kitchen and community gardens, I believe that we are at...or maybe nearing...one of those remarkably historic moments where we can plug into the Zeitgeist and make real change happen. We've got the groundswell of interest...the nation's ears are perked about peak oil...we've all watched food prices rise along with gas...pondered what might happen if nations fall short in feeding their people. We've also got the media talking to savvy academics (Michael Pollan, Rose Hayden-Smith) and public intellectual-types (Roger Doiron, Sharon Astyk) about these issues in fresh ways, placing some important ideas within eash reach of ordinary folks again.
Now, we just need to package the solutions in a clear way so that it's easier to make them palatable, digestible for the average person--me and you. How do we do that?There's no clearly defined national entity in place to spearhead this effort...not yet anyway. So, I think that means that we--me and you--first have to decide to be the pioneering change agents. How do we do that? First, we have to reflect upon our past/present and determine what we want our future to be. And then we must craft the resulting observations/messages persuasively to fit our individual communities, even our own respective city/suburban blocks and country lanes.
And we can do all of that right now...we can delve into our nation's gardening heritage, tap notions like "patriotism" and "victory"...dust them off a bit..."victory" becomes not so much purely about war--though we are in one, and shouldn't forget that--but also about striving to overcome problematic climate issues, our over-dependence on fossil fuels, a nagging sense of disconnect with our neighbors, food insecurity, and so forth. "Patriotism" becomes less about flag pins and more about "love of country and willingness to sacrifice for it."
Next, we begin to tell the stories...we interview older family members and blog about our family's gardens from both yesteryear and today...we invite our friends (and our friends' children) into our Victory Gardens on the Fourth of July to admire our progress...we create community gardens where we preserve our planet's bio-diversity and connect with like-minded folks in our neighborhood because it gives us fortitude...we get out in our flower and veg beds, our arms slathered with sunscreen, and say "howdy" to neighbors, seeking to (re)connect with them for fellowship and even more fortitude...we forward interesting sustainability articles to folks who might enjoy reading them...we cook and bake using our fresh produce (homegrown and local alike) and share what we've made at work, school, church and even at the beauty shop...we pool food with other growers and host "Victory Garden Suppers" to showcase our wonderful produce and encourage others to join us in raising food at home...we take a handful of fresh peaches to the dry cleaning attendant who never gets to see the Saturday farmer's market because she always has to work when its open...we encourage our civic and organizational leaders to invite people like Hayden-Smith, Doiron and Astyk or any one of the thousands of master gardeners and county extension agents to speak to our peer groups about gardening/sustainability issues...we sign on to FoodShed Planet's Victory Garden Drive 2008...we seek the involvement of our the mainstream media in spreading the word...and we tell anyone that will listen that we've set aside a percentage of our lives, our money, our land, even our apartment patios to make progress, no matter how small.
One percent. One hundred percent. Whatever you can spare. YOUR Personal Percent for Victory. We commit to do...to give...what we can, right now--big or small--where we are (blooming where we've been planted), trusting that it will make a difference.
We simply cannot wait for a national call-to-action. Too much is at stake. We must be...no live...the call-to-action.
Later, if we do our part and make the ideas attractive enough, the other traditional change agents will follow...the politicians...the church leaders newly inspired to take action with regard to climate change...the business leaders...other authors/scholars...even the marketers (beware them a bit--some will not have our collective best interest at heart). And when they come forth and spread the word a little further so that more people will join our ranks, and when our nation once again begins to take responsibility for the quality and quantity of food we produce at the local level and start to discover solutions for what ails us, we'll know it was us--ordinary Americans--that made it all happen.
We will have given our Percent for Victory. And it will have made a difference in our world.
And remember: we've done this before, you know. We can do it again. Si, se puede.
For Further Exploration:
- For an archive of all Victory Garden posts on this blog, click here.
- Because it's useful...let's give Rose Hayden-Smith's Victory Grower another plug.
- Read about the role businesses played in the WWI war garden movement from The War Garden Victorious by Charles Lathrop Pack.
- A Dallas Morning News piece on evangelicals addressing climate change can be found here.
- Two books to recommend (My qualifications for the second one: Food Not Lawns is politically left-leaning and would require an ideal climate for everything proposed to work...the author lives in the Pacific NW (I live in Texas; which is great, but presents some challenges to home food growers)...and basically not everyone who checks out this blog will enjoy this book as much as I did...but I simply have to recommend it because it's quite good.):
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