If Your Anti-Capitalist Praxis Involves Telling The Working Class About The Moral Superiority of Your Earthy Crunchy Organic FairTrade Lifestyle

hansolosmother:

thepeacockangel:

notaprettymyth:

thepeacockangel:

You are 100% a servant of capitalism.  Your lifestyle is as “unethical” as any other because it is founded on the exploitation of labor, your “fair trade” ain’t that fair, your organic ain’t that green, your urban garden is probably poisoning you, and your pseudo ethical lifestyle isn’t accessible to us anyway, and if you’re telling us that that’s what resisting capitalism looks like, you’re doing capitalism a big damn favor.

this. although i fully support direct trade, sustainable food systems, and urban gardening.

I’m in favor of the abolishment of trade (fuck exchange based economies), scientifically sustainable food systems (what people who are into urban gardening consider sustainable nearly never is) and pragmatic steps to improve the availability of produce and not meaningless gestures which is what  urban gardening ultimately is

I have some issues with this. Mainly that urban gardening is not just a tool of the middle class. In L.A. we have many urban garden collectives, such as the South Central Farm, that are entirely run by working class families. They use these gardens to supplement their diet, which is absolutely necessary to their health. It’s also a common practice for working class families, especially families of color, to have small home gardens and even indoor herb gardens

It really bothers me that sustainability and gardening are often portrayed as something that only the white middle class can perform, when the reality is that many working class poc do it for their survival.

Sorry, what I was trying to express was that A: Practices that are supposedly sustainable often are actually quite bad for the environment and deeply unsustainable.  Like working class people are more likely to use actually sustainable practices because we are forced to be pragmatic, and B: I’m not arguing against gardening, I’m arguing against the idea that it can be scaled up to be a large scale solution due to the way cities work/the fact that economies of scale exist and food yield per acre is important in a densely populated region

Not to mention the risks of soil toxicity in post industrial urban areas, especially working class ones, it’s not something not to do, but it’s not something you can claim is a solution to the large scale problems of food production and distribution.