http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/006532.html

  Another Side of Los Angeles: Solar Roofs and Neighborhood Farms

WorldChanging Team
April 21, 2007 10:16 AM

by Worldchanging LA local blogger, Jennifer Murphy:

Los Angeles is the land of smog, sprawl and cosmetic surgery, not known for its ecological or social consciousness. But many people, organizations and ideas are quietly fomenting revolution here. This Earth week, I'll share what these Worldchangers told me about the secretly green side of LA.

Robby Herbst is an artist and editor of the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. He recently co-curated the exhibit Street Signs and Solar Ovens: Socialcraft in Los Angeles at the Craft and Folk Art Museum.

What local Worldchanging organization, project or idea should be better known?

I am intrigued by James Rojas' Latino Urban Forum. It gives us a way to read LA not as a post-urban city but as collection of small Mexican towns. It's not a theory, it's a reality -- one that doesn't conform to anglo notions of public space, nor anglo laws.

What one Worldchanging practice do you most wish to see flourish in Los Angeles?

I heard that in Germany, instead of building new nuclear power plants, people are being PAID for the energy they generate with their rooftop solar energy panels. The energy is being put back into the grid and saving the planet from lethal nuclear waste. This is mind-blowing and heretical here in the States where all of our solutions to crisis will inevitably affirm and enrich corporate power. This solution is decentralized and anti-hierarchical.

If you were king of Los Angeles for a day, what would you do?

First I'd get the developers out of city hall, along with our two-faced mayor. Than I would return the South Central Farm back to the farmers and repeat their model a billion times across this rich agricultural land drenched with smog and poverty.

Describe the LA you'd like to see in 2027

See above - a farm in every neighborhood, solar panels on every roof, love and community on every door step!

[South Central Farm before the bulldozers, courtesy LA Indymedia; solar roofs in Germany, courtesy of Wagner & Co]

Policy Forum of the South Central Farmers Action Fund:

ACTION ALERT ON GENETIC ENGINEERING
- SUPPORT AB 541

-SUPPORT AB 541, THE FOOD AND FARM PROTECTION ACT
SEND A LETTER TO THE ASSEMBLY AGRICULTURE COMMITTEE BY APRIL 9TH

Assemblymember Jared Huffman (6th AD) has introduced AB 541. The bill would establish California's only state laws related to genetic engineering (GE) in agriculture and protect California farmers, consumers, and the food supply. AB 541 already has the support of many agricultural, environmental, health, faith and business organizations.Please register your support for this bill by mailing or faxing a letter to the Assembly Agriculture Committee. A sample letter is provided below.  

AB 541 – The Food and Farm Protection ActAssemblymember Jared HuffmanIN BRIEFAB 541 establishes California’s only state laws related to genetic engineering (GE) in agriculture.  It protects California farmers and the food supply in four ways: (1) Establishes the right of farmers and landowners to compensation for economic losses due to genetic contamination of their crops; (2) Protects farmers from liability if they unknowingly grow contaminated crops; (3) Establishes a GE crop notification process so that farmers can trace contamination to the GE manufacturer; (4) Protects the food supply by prohibiting the open-field cultivation of drug producing food crops. 

THE ISSUES

For Farmers & Landowners — GE and non-GE plants can cross-pollinate and crops can be mixed together during harvest, handling and processing.  Unlike the mixing of conventional crops, this is potentially disastrous because many consumers around the world refuse to eat GE-contaminated foods, and many of  California’s buyers reject it. U.S. export markets have already closed as a result of contamination in soy, corn, and rice.  Farmers and landowners who suffer economic losses due to GE contamination have no established legal recourse, but can be sued by the GE manufacturer for unknowingly growing contaminated crops. The locations of GE crop production are unknown — including the thousands of experimental field trials in California — so farmers and landowners cannot trace GE contamination to the responsible manufacturer.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-toxic12apr12,1,1272751.story?coll=la-headlines-california
State has most minorities near toxic facilities
L.A. tops the nation's major urban areas with 1.1million Latinos, blacks and Asians living within two miles of hazardous waste sites.
By Janet Wilson
Times Staff Writer

April 12, 2007

California has the nation's highest concentration of minorities living near hazardous waste facilities, according to a newly released study. Greater Los Angeles tops the nation with 1.2 million people living less than two miles from 17 such facilities, and 91% of them, or 1.1 million, are minorities. Statewide the figure was 81%.

The study, conducted by researchers at four universities for the United Church of Christ, examined census data for neighborhoods adjacent to 413 facilities nationwide that process or store hazardous chemical waste produced by refineries, metal plating shops, drycleaners and battery recyclers, among others.

Though about one-third of U.S. residents are nonwhite, more than half of the people living near such facilities were Latino, African American or Asian American, according to the report.