Echo Roberson of "Raw Sangha"

Totally pumped about this new organization I found last week. Echo Roberson is either the spokesman for the group or “Raw Sangha” is his website for all these products, recipes and ideas.

He takes all the food, spiritual and organic farming ideas that have been pushing their way West these past 20 to 60 years and presents them in fun, informative, short videos. There’s even a link to Bhakti Fest!

I was drawn in through his presentation about BlackShilajit.com. I don’t know about you, but I’m totally bored with Safeway and the prospects of all the  food-based illnesses that will come out of eating all that processed, GMO crap  sold there.

Visit Raw Sangha and give them a look for yourself!

“What is it in me that put me in this situation to experience this?”

This psychologist calls upon old spiritual concepts to change the data and memories (like Jesus who called upon us to “love our enemies”) in order to change our perceptions of the world and our experience of our self and others.

The Phantom Force of Nothing” is to physics what “Letting go” is to Buddhism. It’s an odd experience to people who are so firmly attached to their suffering that even when drowning, they can’t let go of the stones in their hands and swim free.  Addicts to continually make excuses why recovery programs don’t work … as well as alcoholics who will pound the table and yell out the hair brained reasons 12-Step programs “don’t work.” Angry women who beat all the courage out of their sons and then complain endlessly that there are no men left. Perception and stubbornness … equals … insanity. The cure?

If Hip Hop, Gansta Rap, and Thug Kulture has changed people … so completely … by appealing to the ego … convincing us to exchange “The Divine” for empty Materialism, then we’re eventually left with horrifyingly empty lives of lovelessness, hopelessness, and despair. At is face-to-face with that pit, we encounter addictions, acts of abomination, and demoralizations.

It’s amazing how simple the cure for all this. But first, at some point, we have to let go of the thinking that we’re in control. We have to decide to distance  ourselves from suffering and begin to re-learn trust … trust that we’ll be led to other people who are also working on building inner trust. We have to admit that we don’t know everything. The one word that will help you most? Forgiveness.

Wanna get free? Start here, because where you’re going, you simply can’t carry all that old crappy baggage with you. When all our old pain shows up … remember this. When the trauma you’re punishing yourself for going through … remember … this.

I put a copy on hold at the local public library. This video isn’t “Republican” nor “Democrat”. (As if those labels actually meant something anymore…) Everyone has to eat, and food has changed more in the last 50 years than it has in the last 10,000.  (View the trailer link.)

The documentary provides real information about the world we really live in, rather than the one we’re told we still live in. In short, we no longer live in a democracy. (No news to most of you I guess…)

We live in a Corporate “New World Oder” administered by Masons and other “Secrete Societies” and owned by the “people” like the De Beers, the Rothschilds, and the Rockefellers. (Nasty bunch with an insatiable appetite for evil and greed.)

So, view the film and make your decisions about how you’re going to live the rest of your life. Exercising denial or sticking one’s head in the sand is no longer an option. For instance, 1  out of 3 children born after the year 2000 will develop early onset Type-2 Diabetes. 2 out of 3 of those kids will be children of color. Before they started messing with the food supply, only adults got Type-2 Diabetes.  Educate yourself. Think: “Corn syrup” and then question why so many people are so fat theses days.  Short version: They’re killing us.

Long Version?

1. Plant an organic garden
2. Exercise (your demons too ..)
3. Bring your talents to the world
4. Follow any spiritual path that brings you into cooperation with others

For more info, have a quick glance at, “Slow Food Columbus”

One of the keys to success is to jump on an opportunity BEFORE everyone else seizes it. 
Everyone has to eat. Monsanto (the huge multinational herbicide company that gave us “Agent Orange” and “RoundUp”) are feeding us toxins through major shopping chains like Safeway, Kroger, and Wal-Mart. Perhaps a mixed-blessings because those major stores no longer exist major rust belt cities. Residents  depend on corner grocery stores and gas station convenience stores for their vegetables and proteins.

The Obama Administration and the Federal Government can’t solve the problems of all the troubled cities and the predominately black, Hispanic and poor whites who remain within those cities.

Two months ago, First Lady Michelle Obama launched the ambitious “Let’s Move” campaign, aiming to eliminate food deserts, especially in urban communities, in the next seven years. The administration has committed $400 million to “Let’s Move.” -Full Time story here.

Food, Education, and Land

Detroit may well turn out to be the city other Rust Belt and decaying cities copy. Remember, corporations and the mega-rich have all but closed shop on American manufacturing. Even though Mayor Bing and the feds are attempting to sell cheap land to large business that resettle in these areas once abandoned buildings and homes are torn down, the thinking is that it’s going to take investing in schools and promoting urban farming to again create stability.

All across the country, small urban farms and garden projects are being setup by people like Ph.D. graduates from UC Berkeley and UC Davis. “Follow the money” is the tried and true thinking. When the media announced there was a shortage of nurses, people began enrolling in nursing programs by the droves. That was 10 years ago. Nursing grads are currently finding it difficult to impossible to obtain work after graduation. So if you want a prosperous, decent life, STOP following that same old carrot. Try a different line to stand in … one with far fewer people ahead of you.

Those people obtaining urban farming and organic gardening certificates will be the winners. Wait, you don’t even need education to put a seed in the ground. But it’s one thing to grow food, and it’s another to sell it. Volunteering or becoming an AmeriCorps worker for one of the many current urban farming projects teaches everything anyone will need. Just Google, “Urban Farming” in your area and find what comes up. (There’s also a host of information on my blogs.) Here are just a couple of links:

City Slicker Farms, Oakland, CA

Full Circle Farms, Sunnyvale, CA

Green Fred Blog

Black Solutions Blog

Economics 101 says that to have a top, you have to have a bottom. A LOT of thought and effort goes into deciding who is going to be at the bottom and what will happen to them. Remember, we live in the greatest capitalistic country on the planet. In short:

• You have to change
• Change is good
• Change is the only constant in the universe
• He or she who waits, shall have change engineered for them. [SEE: Prison Nation.]

Long, LONG term unemployed usually aren’t even counted. In the Black Community where the effects of inflation and recession are doubled, those numbers are almost laughable. So if 40% of those now unemployed have skills that the market place no longer wants … in the black community, that means 40% – to -80% of those people WILL NEVER RETURN TO THOSE TYPES OF JOBS EVER AGAIN.

Forget Detroit ever returning to what it used to be. Forget the glory days of the Rust Belt . READ what even Wikipedia says about America’s greatest manufacturing centers: Rust Belt.

Smell the coffee yet?
This is another reason why I advocate Urban Farming and Small Farming so strongly. Please take a second and view some of the remarkable YouTube videos on this and other related topics posted on:

Greenfred

Black Solutions (and take a moment to view some of the videos on the video bar posted on the left.)

“The best way to fight poverty is to turn the poor people into active producers. Communities can only be developed by involving all the members as productive and valuable contributors.” ~ Songhai Project

Much of Africa is difficult … no, hard to live in. You can literally be eaten by something. Wild animals, disease, or the greediness of the World Trade Organization that has systematically imposed crippling financial restrictions on Africa that has burdened it for decades.

But Fr Nzamujo Godfrey looked at starvation, the restlessness of youth, and poverty and came up with the Songhai Project. By teaching people to grow crops, raise farm animals, and create “Value Added” food-based products, Songhai is able to instil moral values that uplift both the individual and the wider culture as a whole.

The objectives of the Songhai Project is to develop technical skills, moral awareness, and empower people with entrepreneural techniques that lead to socially relevant, environmental consciousness and sustainability so that people can lift themselves out of poverty and become productive members of society.

Naturally, the State of any country doesn’t have to worry about farmers involving themselves in demoralizing crime nor involving themselves in activities that threaten civil society. People who are taught social consciousness along with integral facets that foster living balanced, happy, and productive lives with others are able to free themselves from hopelessness, addiction, and the mental illnesses that come out of self-hatred.

Please watch the video below and view the others posted on YouTube. You’ll quickly see why I–and others, view agriculture as a much needed “emerging field” for people who live in cities and country sides throughout the world.

I got laid off in November. Thank God.
(All diver’s AVOID US Xpress !)

Time to re-group. I saw the country. Assessed where I could live. Small Farming … fantasy or reality. It’s real. Very doable. Very profitable. Controlling one’s destiny.

Now to switch my skill-set to “New Media Marketing” … with a Green twist.

There’s going to be new blogs.
Stay tune Space Travelers.
It’s going to be interesting.

Most Green-Collar jobs are middle-skill level jobs. They require more than a high school education, but less than a four-year degree. Hence, they are well within the reach of lower-skilled and low-income workers. As long as a person has access to effective training programs and appropriate supports … it’s really not that big of a deal to get “job-ready” training in a reasonably short period of time.

Felon? Recovering Addict or Homeless?
Here in the California Bay Area, there are even “Green” programs designed just for you. (SEE Van Jones’ book, “The Green Collar Economy.”

Green-Collar Jobs are GOOD jobs. Like blue-collar jobs that often allow a person to earn a higher wage, quicker than recent grads with Batchelor and sometime Masters Degrees, Green jobs pay “family wages” and provide opportunities for advancement along a career tract of career tract of increasing skills and wages.

It’s time to begin moving away from the model that to live well, one HAS to have a college degree and live in the middle of a crowded city. With the high cost of tuition and other fees continually rising, college for many has already reached a point of diminishing returns.

The bottom line is that we’re going to have to start doing things differently. As the old saying goes, “The only constant is change.”

Click on the link to view your FREE copy of “The Green Jobs Guidebook.“

[Click here to read The Federation of Southern Cooperatives timeline]

The idea of undoing the many years of backroom deals that robbed blacks of their land is not simply a notion of justice. It’s a matter of wholeness. Not just for African Americans… but for whites … and … for all of us.

Each year, singers like Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, and Kenny Chesney perform for white farmers (Farm Aid) who lost or are in danger of losing their land.  How much of that land was formerly held by black farmers is not the question. I mention them because during my trucking through the South I heard from blacks who used to pick cotton in some of those fields.

Apparently, in their opinion, when minimum wage came into law, many white farmers refused to pay blacks “that much money.” So they invested in huge combines, larger tractors and other farm equipment to replace the African Americans who historically worked the fields. Then when they discovered they were over invested couldn’t keep up the payments to the banks loans and subsequently… they either reached across the Mexican border and found even cheaper labor, or were too in dept, and lost the family farm. All those dollars spent on  mega-machinery in the effort to both make a profit and deny blacks from improving their economic lots appears to have created a karma that was inescapable. Then, like small-minded crooks, in efforts to make up for all the lost, each year more small black farmers were targeted for their lands, and huge, mega corporate farms were created … hurting the smaller white farmers even more.

[NOTE: Does volunteering their time and talents to raise money for Farm Aid make the afore mentioned recording artist racist? Not when the lineup also includes artists like Neil Young, and Dave Matthews, and Arlo Guthrie.]

The agenda to correct the wrongs done to black farmers is not a vendetta against white farmers … nor Hispanic nor Asian farmers. It’s more a matter of finally doing the right thing allowing the turning of the page so entire new chapters can be written.

The very idea that President-Elect Obama is considering a black man for the Secretary of Agriculture, is an awesome sign that America is emerging from the dark shadow of “Good ‘Ol Boy-ism” that has plagued its heart, stifled its creativity, and literally, driven the economy into the ground. (Any time the mega American automobile industry is on its back, gasping for what may be its last breath, YOU KNOW creativity and innovation left the room a very long time ago.)

John Boyd, isn’t just a black political token available to fill this very important position. Mr. Boyd has been an advocate for the fair treatment of black farmers for over three decades. He is credited with building up the National Black Farmers Association  (NBFA) to a membership of 94,000.

To read more on who he is and how he did all this, click here: (NBFA)

]]> http://blackfarms.wordpress.com/2008/12/23/a-black-agriculture-secretary/feed/ 0 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 journeyman US-POLITICS/OBAMA http://blackfarms.wordpress.com/2008/12/10/vallejo-woman-saves-thousands-in-georgia/ http://blackfarms.wordpress.com/2008/12/10/vallejo-woman-saves-thousands-in-georgia/#comments Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:55:43 +0000 journeyman http://blackfarms.wordpress.com/?p=123 Continue reading →]]> Her father had been ill. She’d bought a house for him to live in here in California. Then the downsizing began. The next purchase was an 800 sq ft 2 bedroom loft in the San Francisco Bay Area. But her desire to lower her over-head so that she could devote precious time to all the projects she dreamed of doing continued.  So eventually she sold every thing, bought 30 acres of RAW land in the deep south (Georgia—between Warner-Robbins and Macon) and in a few months ago, moved into an idea she calls an ecologically centered Convertible Community.

The World Help Training Center is currently working on residential housing and agricultural planning in advance of the 2009 spring planting season,” writes LaRahana Huges on the Intentional Community that already has 30 lots slotted for the next Katrina-like disaster. She and 9 other equity partners (each of them purchased $2500 of equity input) now live on the land, and are TOGETHER, pioneering a black Intentional Community that frees them from all the constraints modern urban living straps us with.

So now, she has “downsized” to the point of freedom. She has paid for the land she’s on. With the money added by the other equity partners, her ongoing living cost is about $100 a month. Did you get that? All she has to earn … is ONE HUNDRED (“100”) DOLLARS a month, plus food cost (until the land is producing this summer) and fuel to live. If you were LaRahana, and you’re a writer, artist, farmer … you would now have time and energy to work on the main dreams and pursuits you have in life.

But basic ongoing costs (for the land) $100….ONE HUNDREN DOLLARS. That alone is freeing. The equity contribution ensures we can install the complete infrastructure, wells, septic, power and provide food and living expense stipends for 6 months. After that…$100 is what i need to spend time earning. I have no water bill. I have no electric bill….My life changes when I can decide how to use all of my time for things that are vitally important to me, rather than chasing dollars for someone else to maintain an illusion that will never be satisfying. I don’t mean to get on a rant, but that to me is HUGE.

Freeing up my life so that I own it ALL, every hour of the day is like early retirement! And that is life changing. Being able to live doing the things I want to do, which happen to be growing stuff and planning stuff and writing stuff…..is the reality of my new adventurous life.

But the move is not without “pain.” She speaks about the pain of letting go of the old so that she can fully enjoy the new involves “pushing through the fear and the pain … which is really is a good thing! It’s critical to learn how to keep moving long until the clearing occurs. Being able to look back to tell others that to venture out and get on this road is a awesomely beautiful gift…to be able to tell them that there IS a clearing ahead is vital. It really does feel like pioneering, except its not uncharted land, but it is a new society emerging!”

So … there it is. LaRahana Huges, former Vallejo resident, is saving thousands in Southern Georgia. Thousands of dollars … and one day … thousands of people. Good on ya LaRahana Huges. Proud of that girl. Check out her Mission Statement. Who knows … you might even want to join them.

LaRahna’s Links

The Open Toolbox
http://theopentoolbox.com

The Mad Houser’s Group
http://www.madhousers.org/

Food Not Bombs
http://www.foodnotbombs.net/

Other Links:
Hetep Land Project
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Heteplandproject/

Happier Abroad
http://www.happierabroad.com/

The Blue Goose Community
http://members.bluegoosenews.com/