Last year’s March Against Monsanto was a big deal, and the afterparty in Tiguex Park was a blast. This year the organizers split the party off from the march, moved it to Tractor Brewing’s Wells Park taproom, and word got around. Bees & Seeds 2016 was overwhelmingly well attended.
The format was essentially the same: beloved, local vendors; opportunities to learn about this year’s CSA, or record your seed story, or listen to great music; and beer. So much beer.
Bees & Seeds 2016 was produced to promote everyday activism.
As the specter of global climate change looms, I think most of us feel disempowered. Likewise, the threat of bee extinction. The organizers of this festival, Chris Perkins and Margo Serna, believe in both global and local responses to these problems. Of course it’s critical that we gather to tell our politicians that we won’t accept a half-dead world for our children. But anyone who’s ever been to a large-scale protest knows exactly how deflating it can be. To pour so much energy into a public action, which may not be large enough to tip the scales—or large enough, but the scales are barely moved—is exhausting. It’s important to have some inspiration at home. Like a garden.
So Bees & Seeds makes it easy to start, or build, that garden. Working with Red Tractor Farm, they distribute hundreds of seedlings, and thousands of seed packets, so you can do the important, local work, and feel good about something. They make it easy to do the activism that matters most, because it changes us.
Personally, I believe our homes are the center of change. When we garden for our own food, we begin to see our relationship with those plants as circular. We both take back our power (from agra-business) and reposition ourselves directly into the circle of life. It’s powerful stuff. And according to the brewery, 1800 people last weekend thought so, too.
Yes. Just yes.