There has been a recall on ProBar Meal Bars. We haven’t sold any of the effected lot, and we have pulled that lot from the shelves!
If you have any questions shoot us a message through our contact form!
Quick Facts!
Local Peppers
Poblano: Mild Mexican Chili pepper - when dried, it is called ancho chili pepper. The Poblano is great for stuffing and is popular in chiles rellenos poblanos.
Purple Bell: Sweet Bell pepper that is generally sweeter than its green cousin. Great to add color to your dishes
Shishito: Sweet East Asian Variety – one of the absolute best peppers to sauté and eat as a stand-alone dish.
Cayenne: Mildly hot red chili pepper great to add flavor (spicy heat) to any dish.
Kara Brown, General Manager | May 19, 2019
Kale is the go-to vegetable--with good reason--but other members of the brassica family that have similar health benefits often get overlooked. Kohlrabi (German for ‘cabbage turnip’) is a delicious veggie that can be stored all winter long. Nutritionally, it is low in calories, and provides fiber, potassium, vitamin A, folic acid, calcium, and a hefty amount of vitamin C.
Right now, we have kohlrabi from R&R Secret Farm. When harvested fresh, the leaves can be used just the same as kale or collards. Or try blending them with olive oil and garlic to make a pesto. The ‘meat’ of the kohlrabi, though, is under a dense, rough skin. Don’t be intimidated by it--a good knife will easily slice off the exterior. (And that skin is what allows kohlrabi to be stored for long periods.)
When cooked, kohlrabi takes on a lovely, rich taste, similar to the slightly sweet taste of a rutabaga. Putting it in your next saute or root roast is a great way to add variety. When eaten raw, kohlrabi tastes similar to cabbage, but dense and crunchy. It’s a great vegetable stick for dipping and snacking.
My favorite kohlrabi recipe is a slaw. Since kohlrabi stores well all year round, this slaw can by a typical summertime slaw, but it is also a great fresh pick-me-up in winter. Next time you make your favorite slaw recipe, trying using shredded kohlrabi instead of cabbage. I like my slaw a little more substantial, using thinly sliced kohlrabi, and for good measure, adding turmeric and ginger for digestion and immunity benefits. It makes a great side dish, or even just a meal on its own.
Kohlrabi Slaw
Ingredients
1 large kohlrabi, or 2 or 3 smaller ones (about 3 pounds)
one carrotone watermelon radish (not necessary, but if available it adds some great color and flavor)
one medium onion (yellow or red, depending on preference), or 4-5 scallions
1 clove garlic, minced
1 32oz container of yogurt, strained; or about 2 cups Greek yogurt
1 tbsp mustard (choose your favorite; a dijon works nicely)
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp ginger
(if you have fresh ginger and/or turmeric available, use a ½ tsp of each, minced)
2 tbsp nutritional yeast
1/2 tsp chili flakes, or 3 tsp hot sauce of choice
3 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
Directions:
To strain the yogurt, pour the whole container into a sieve lined with a cheesecloth or clean dish towel. Place sieve over bowl, and cover the yogurt with the rest of the cloth. Place a small plate on the covered yogurt, and then put a can on top of the plate and put in fridge to strain. Let strain at least 2 hours, or overnight.
(Instead of yogurt, you could easily use sour cream or mayonnaise, or vegan mayonnaise, but the yogurt is a healthy and tangy option. I actually prefer using this cashew cheese, omitting the agar flakes.)
Peel the kohlrabi, and chop it along with all the other vegetables for a chunky dish, or grate them for a finer slaw. Throw in a large bowl all together, and mix with all the other ingredients. Adjust saltiness and spice according to taste.
Kara Brown, General Manager | May 19, 2019
One of my favorite harbingers of spring is rhubarb. It’s bring pink & green colors are part of the wonderful palette of spring. And it goes perfectly with all the other great seasonal offerings of fruit and berries. Though the season is short, you can freeze it for use year-round.
Two important notes: rhubarb must be cooked before eaten, and humans cannot digest the leaves. When you purchase rhubarb, the leaves are left on to help preserve the vegetable and keep it from drying out too fast; trim off any leaves before preparing.
Though strawberry-rhubarb pie is a perennial favorite, I’ve also discovered a simple, everyday way to enjoy the combination of bitter & sweet that rhubarb offers: rhubarb peanut butter & jelly sandwich.
How To:
Take one stalk of rhubarb, and saute on high heat with sunflower oil or butter, with salt to taste. Stir frequently. Once the rhubarb has dissolved into a paste, set aside.
Now, make your favorite pb&j combo (What type of bread do you like? Prefer jam or honey to jelly?) Before you put those two slices of bread together, put your rhubarb paste in-between and you’re done!
Enjoy!
Written by CAPITAL IMPACT PARTNERS
Co-ops have real power to transform structurally disinvested communities into strong, vibrant places of opportunity. Through Capital Impact Partners’ Co-op Innovation Award, three cooperative organizations have the chance to create systemic change in their communities.
For the 5th Annual Co-op Innovation Award, Capital Impact Partners and The Workers Lab partnered to award grants totaling $50,000 to the Independent Drivers Guild and Centro de Trabajadores Unidos: United Workers’ Center, and to award a $50,000 grant to CLEAN Carwash. These awards recognize organizations leading initiatives that address workers’ rights as well as wealth building and asset creation for immigrant workers.
“Each year, we strive to work deeper in partnership with communities to help them achieve their goals. This year, it has been wonderful partnering with The Workers Lab to empower innovative cooperatives that are meeting immigrant communities where they are and creating space for economic and social justice,” said Ellis Carr, president and CEO of Capital Impact Partners.
“The Workers Lab is committed to investing in people and projects that show promise when it comes to building power for workers. We are proud to partner with Capital Impact Partners to support innovative models aimed at shifting existing power structures,” said Betsy Edasery, Program Director at The Workers Lab.
The Co-op Innovation Award aims to increase co-op development in low-income communities and/or communities of color. Organizations that focused on local community-driven co-op development initiatives broadening opportunities for quality jobs, wealth creation and asset building were given priority. Some of this year’s winners are also demonstrating new models and standards for their industries that can have a transformative impact on their communities.
The Independent Drivers’ Guild (IDG) has been awarded $25,000 to launch a purchasing cooperative that will reduce expenses for drivers, including fuel, car washes, oil changes, dash cameras, meals-on-the-go, and car repair. Culturally appropriate meals-on-the-go will be provided by the Drivers Cooperative Café, a worker cooperative that IDG is in the process of establishing. Building on this first step toward a purchasing co-op, IDG envisions eventually creating a rideshare app to help its drivers compete in the New York City market. The guild represents more than 85,000 for-hire vehicle drives in New York City, 90 percent of whom are immigrant workers. For these low-wage drivers, these cooperatives are a means of finding more financial stability in a highly competitive industry by providing more take-home pay.
“We are honored to work with Capital Impact Partners and The Workers Lab to pioneer a new union-cooperative strategy to turn the gig economy into a launching pad for the new economy. In the for-hire vehicle industry, workers spend around half of their income on the tools that they need to do their jobs. Developing worker and consumer cooperatives to source these key inputs has the potential to elevate the earnings and transform the lives of thousands of immigrant workers and workers of color in New York City, and eventually around the world,” said Erik Forman, Education Director at Independent Drivers Guild-IAMAW.
Centro de Trabajadores Unidos: United Workers’ Center (Centro) has also been awarded $25,000 to fund a dual-language, culturally appropriate train-the-trainer curriculum for both worker cooperative developers and individuals seeking to start worker cooperatives. Additionally, Centro will start two new cooperatives and advocate for policy change to enable greater worker cooperative development locally and across the state.
The organization is driven to improve workplace standards for immigrant workers. Centro has already supported the start-up of worker cooperatives and has trained partner organizations throughout the Chicago area in cooperative principles. Centro’s goal is to transform the local economy in Chicago by empowering low-wage workers to achieve economic resilience. Through the grant, immigrant workers who often experience workplace discrimination and wealth stripping can instead determine their own wages and work environments, improving their quality of life and opportunities for prosperity.
“We are honored to receive the Co-op Innovation Award funded by Capital Impact Partners and The Workers Lab. We envision our communities—which have been overlooked for years—empowered to stand for their workplace rights as a result of education and training. Through the incubation of worker cooperatives, our communities will have a greater chance to flourish as they build their skillsets, create alternative economies, and become independent,” said Ana Guajardo, executive director of Centro.
The Community Labor Environment Action Network (CLEAN) is being awarded $50,000 to establish CLEAN Carwash, a worker-owned car wash cooperative in Los Angeles that prioritizes worker and environmental rights. In addition, CLEAN will conduct two campaigns focused on improving wages and working conditions for car wash workers, and will advance two policies to address the rights of low-wage immigrant workers.
CLEAN is a grassroots, immigrant, worker-led organization that seeks transformative change to the exploitative car wash industry, reaching 5,000 car wash workers each year with information about their rights. CLEAN seeks to create wealth building and asset creation opportunities for worker-owners and employees while improving industry practices around worker rights and environmental sustainability.
The cooperative with forty years of making loans to co-ops
International Cooperative Alliance launches 2019 Rochdale Pioneers Award
“For years, car wash workers have fought to improve conditions within the car wash industry. This funding from Capital Impact Partners and The Workers Lab provides the opportunity for our organization to establish income mobility and financial stability for our workers and our communities. We are now empowered to lead our industry and workers across the country by example,” said Flor Rodriguez, director of the CLEAN Carwash Worker Center.
Co-ops can provide economic mobility to individuals who have been marginalized and locked out of the mainstream economy. Democratic ownership empowers worker-owners to control their financial destiny and build hard-earned assets. Moreover, employee ownership can also spur greater civic engagement, as well as community self-determination, agency, and resilience. As mission-driven organizations focus more on expanding economic, social, and racial justice across the country, cooperatives and organizations that empower them will continue to be partners in broadening opportunities for all.
“For years, we who work in the co-op development field have heard of the need for culturally appropriate co-op development and technical assistance in our communities. Throughout this year’s Co-op Innovation Award, it has been exciting to see a trend toward community, labor and worker-focused organizations integrating co-op development into their existing services in innovative ways that are tailored to meet the needs of their members and broader communities,” said Alison Powers, manager of Cooperative and Community Initiatives at Capital Impact Partners.
Story by Alison Miller | Photographs by Sean Dunn Posted on The Bitter Southerner
“When I say ‘keepin’ it,’ you say ‘real’!”
Mariah Parker’s voice thunders from the front of the room as some 30 middle-schoolers yell back.
“Keepin’ it!”
“Real!”
“Keepin’ it!”
“Real!”
With that few seconds of opening salvo, Parker — wearing worn canvas sneakers, lilac shorts, and a unicorn T-shirt emblazoned with the words “HB2 Can’t Break My Stride” — focuses the attention of a legion of distracted teenagers.
“Today we’re going to work on hip-hop writing,” she shouts. “Everybody listen up.”
She instructs the kids to gather objects from their pockets and backpacks and splay them on the floor. When a pile of Gen-Z bric-a-brac appears before her, she starts freestyling.
“All right here we are / It’s the beginning of the day / I don’t have any words to say / So I’ll eat some off the plate / And I’m not sure if I know what I thought I knew / But it’s okay because I’m gonna talk to you / About this long shoe sitting over here, further over here along the side / Back to back to the next thing that I spy with my little eye.”
Buoying in rhythm around the pile, she crafts rhymes on the fly for a full three minutes. The kids howl in approval, and then she turns over the proverbial mic. They’ve got 10 minutes to write their own verses. The space once again swells with dissonant sound as pens hit paper and fists pound out beats on tables.
Parker, a 27-year-old rapper and Ph.D. student better known by her stage name, Linqua Franqa, is leading a hip-hop songwriting workshop for students of Camp DIVE, a no-cost summer day camp in Athens, Georgia. The crux of the lesson? Sometimes words alone aren’t loud enough to get your message across. If you want people to hear you, add music.
Wishin’ these idiots in Athens would quit with the classism, but I’m really the shitty activist.
’Cause everyone wanna complain ’bout the state of the system,
Congratulate themselves on Facebook for payin’ attention. And homie, I know you’re right, but if nobody mobilizes the noble fight,
Shit, we stayin’ slaves for a century.
—
“The Con and the Can,” Linqua Franqa, Model Minority
Two weeks later Parker is in another crowded room — this time inside Athens’ Beaux arts City Hall. Sitting behind the rail in a stately chamber, wearing a pressed, button-front shirt, she commands the same attention but with a different gravitas. Here, she’s Commissioner Mariah Parker, the youngest in a group of five new members of the Athens-Clarke County Commission who took office last year.
She leans forward in front of the slim microphone to address then-Mayor Nancy Denson, the commissioners, and the citizens filling the seats below.
“We do have a desperate need for senior housing,” she says. “But we have to encourage senior housing that is accessible to people of varying income levels. And as Dr. Gantt (Athens-Clark County school board member Lakeisha Gantt) pointed out, the proposed development here is not accessible to a lot of people who may be generationally Athenian, and we have to be looking out for those people.”
Her voice is calm and confident, the words served up slowly and clearly. She’s opposing a 55-and-up housing development with an average home price of $300,000 — a proposal rejected in a 7-3 vote that night. Here, Robert’s Rules of Order replace the turntable beat, but Parker’s raison d'être is the same — speaking up for people who are unheard and unseen, and thus un-served.
The photo of her being sworn in on June 5, 2018 — right fist raised high, left hand resting on The Autobiography of Malcolm X — swiftly circulated on the internet. Scathing comments in social media, hate mail, and even death threats followed.
“I had a former police officer suggest to his friend, publicly on Facebook, that brake failure could be made to look like an accident if he were to decide to run me over with his car,” she wrote to me between interviews. “I also had someone say they hoped I'd be ‘raped like they did in the slave days.’”
It stung.
“I started thinking, maybe I really should not be here,” she told me at a Jittery Joe’s Coffee Shop on the east side of town. But the experience was galvanizing.
“I told myself, ‘You can’t think that way. People need you. You promised them you would fix these things. You can’t go anywhere.’”
In Athens, the easiest topics of conversation — Bulldog football and a music scene that has attracted the national spotlight for almost four decades — overshadow a far less illustrious reality: For a city its size, Athens’ poverty rate is the highest in Georgia and the fifth highest in the country. Even with low- and non-wage-earning college students factored out, these inauspicious rankings hold true.
Worse, as Athens wins praise as a “best place to live” or “best place to retire,” people living in poverty — nearly 40 percent of the city’s 124,000 residents — are pushed deeper into the shadows, ever farther away from lifeline amenities like grocery stores and public transportation.
“The system works really well to mask such things,” Parker says. “If you’re just circling the corridors that are monied and centered culturally, you would never know. And that’s purposeful. The people who are really struggling are hidden.”
Indeed, Athens is a study in segregation. Parker represents District 2, which begins just east of downtown and stretches four miles out, past the city’s defunct regional airport and the Athens-Clarke County Jail. The heart of her district falls into Census Tract 302, where 68 percent of the 4,677 residents are black and 71 percent of children live below the federal poverty line. A mile and a half away in Census Tract 20, where it’s 87 percent white, just 10 percent of children live in poverty.
Riding through District 2 one morning, Parker points out the landmarks. A small commercial area called the Triangle comprises convenience stores with payday loan operations, a shuttered seafood restaurant (only recently replaced by a Caribbean eatery), and an income-tax service office. At the crack trade’s height, this area was so rife with drugs and prostitution it earned the name “The Iron Triangle.”
The studio of artist Broderick Flanigan, a 35-year-old painter who grew up here, sits next to the Hull Law Firm, its window emblazoned with the words “divorce, child support, car accidents, wills, expungements.” Across the street is an Athens-Clarke County Police Department substation — usually unstaffed, according to Parker. Ten days after Parker was elected, Timmy Patmon, a 24-year-old African American man, was struck by a patrol car driven by a rookie white police officer during a chase that culminated here. Nellie B, one of the largest subsidized housing projects in the city, comes up on our left.
“There was a murder there my first week in office,” she says from the passenger seat.
During our driving tour — 9 a.m. on a Friday — it’s quiet. But at night, Parker explains, “there are tons of people loitering. Drug deals going on, people out drinking, homeless folks congregating, kids running around because their parents aren’t watching them.” In other words, conditions proven to breed crime since scholars started studying the relationship between concentrated poverty and criminality more than a century ago.
Dudley Park, the site of the railroad trestle depicted on the cover of R.E.M.’s first album from 36 years ago, is part of the Oconee Rivers Greenway trail. The park encompasses 32 acres just one mile from the Triangle. On one side of the park sits Mama’s Boy, a popular brunch spot where a mostly white crowd can be seen snaking out the door on weekends. Around the corner, a remodeled mill house with custom cabinetry and quartz countertops is on the market for $305,000. Parker speculates as parts of District 2 become gentrified, local government signals keep original residents away so new ones feel more welcome. In Dudley Park, she says, “there used to be basketball courts over there, and they took them away. The message was sent: This isn’t for y'all anymore.”
We turn left on Winterville Road, and the landscape turns rural. An African American man and woman holding the hands of two young children walk in the high grass alongside of two-lane road. We take a right into Spring Valley Mobile Home Park and start talking transportation.
“This is an example of a place that’s super poor, isn’t connected to any bus line, and isn’t walkable to anywhere,” Parker says. “If you have a single-parent home where the parent works two jobs, the kids are just trapped at their houses.”
She tells me that a couple years ago, Walmart wanted to build in the district.
“There was a huge fight between progressive white people in town, who were all like, ‘No Walmart!’ And the people who live here, who were like, ‘Yes! I would love to work somewhere that pays $10 an hour and I can buy vegetables!’” she says emphatically. “Now, it’s luxury student apartments, no jobs were created, there’s no affordable housing, and they still live in a food desert.”
District 2 residents weren’t heard because their voices were too soft, and they weren’t well organized, Parker says. “Which is why it’s so important to me to start organizing folks now as a part of my job, because when it comes time and there’s another Walmart battle, people need to be ready.”
We turn around and drive back toward the Triangle. The family is still walking.
I wish simply givin’ a shit would fix it.
I wish givin’ a shit was as simple as whistlin’ Dixie.
The only way I have to fix it is cashin’ my chips in.
So I guess to fix the system first I have to fix me.
—
“The Con and the Can,” Linqua Franqa, Model Minority
Parker is just one of hundreds of young people in the South who entered local politics in the wake of the 2016 election. And it’s easy for the national press, which loves a story that will trend in social media, to play Parker up. She’s the one who got sworn in on a copy of “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.” And she raps!
But it tells us more about the direction of the South to look at how Parker operates on the local level in a college town — and how the movement that brought her and others like her to office plays out on the ground.
In Athens, four other new commissioners — all progressive Democrats and three under the age of 40 — took office in November. A new mayor, 47-year-old Kelly Girtz, replaced 78-year-old Nancy Denson, and the number of African American commissioners increased from one to three. They ran on similar platforms and issues. Fare-free buses, marijuana decriminalization, education, poverty, and inequality were hot topics in the Athens-Clarke County elections of 2018.
“There’s a fervor and a drive — and an unapologetic recognition of the things we need to do,” says Mayor Girtz.
“I think it all goes back to [activist organizations] Athens for Everyone and the Athens Anti-Discrimination Movement,” says Blake Aued, who’s been covering Athens politics for 12 years, first at the Athens Banner-Herald and now at Flagpole, the city’s alt-weekly. “There’s a movement here that has gotten people who weren’t involved in the process before — especially young people and people of color — more involved.”
Parker’s involvement started in February 2017 when she established the People’s Power Happy Hour at the World Famous, a downtown Athens bar and music venue. Armed with a backpack stocked with postcards and stamps, she set up an informal information booth to clue people in on upcoming Georgia House and Senate bills and coach them on writing to their representatives.
Five months later, Tommy Valentine, a local hip-hop artist and activist running for the District 9 commissioner seat, asked her to manage his campaign. Seven months after that, longtime commissioner Harry Sims resigned to enter the mayoral race. Sims represented District 2 — the district Parker lives in. Parker and Valentine talked about the opportunity, and he inspired her to believe she could win.
Two days after performing in a fundraising concert for Girtz’s mayoral campaign, Parker and Girtz took a long walk down the Oconee Rivers Greenway trail. Girtz encouraged her to run. With just 12 weeks to campaign, Parker announced her candidacy. Her opponent, 28-year-old Taylor Pass, had deep roots in District 2 and close ties to Sims. Parker, in contrast, had lived in Athens for only five years. She won by just 13 votes.
Little cute, little stupid. Little brash and erratic.
Little bit of a nuisance, like bats in the attic.
Speakin’ of which, if I’m the shit then I’d have to be batshit.
Feel my screws getting’ looser till I’m strapped in a jacket.
Got a case of the basket and scar tissue to prove it
and just because I’m honest ’bout it, it’s startin’ a movement.
—
“The Con and the Can,” Linqua Franqa, Model Minority
Parker grew up in suburban Louisville, Kentucky, the daughter of a UPS pilot father and a mother whose career as a traveling gospel and R&B singer was cut short because of lupus. Her parents divorced when she was 9, and she lived with her mother in an apartment complex in La Grange, an outer suburb of Louisville where many kids lived in homes with minimal or nonexistent parental involvement.
“Some had been abandoned by their families and were selling drugs to feed themselves,” she says. “Others were the children of truckers who were gone all the time, so they basically lived alone.”
Depression and anxiety-riddled during her early adolescence, Parker first experimented with drugs as a middle-schooler. Panic attacks came in high school, but she never sought treatment. As an undergraduate at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina, Parker became addicted to prescription amphetamines and succumbed to self-destructive levels of drinking. She moved to Athens in 2013 with her then-boyfriend. After they broke up, she experienced what she calls “a deep dip.” Music, she says, lifted her out.
The term lingua franca means common language — a universal way for people to communicate. For Parker, that language is hip-hop. Between studies for her master’s degree in linguistics and shifts at Bel-Jean Copy & Print Center, she got to work writing the songs on her debut album, Model Minority.
Arguably, Parker got her first training as a community organizer by trying to get Athens rappers the notice they deserve. She started freestyling at a hip-hop night held at Nowhere Bar, a dive bar/pool hall, but her frustration at hip-hop’s minimal presence downtown led her to assemble local artists for the first Hot Corner Hip-Hop show in February 2016. Under that billing, hip-hop artists in Athens have now performed on nearly every downtown stage.
The tracks on her album are political calls to action and portholes to her personal life. Suicidal thoughts and self-harm in “Up Close.” Self-preservation and politics in “The Con and the Can.” A feminist’s complex despair after an abortion in “Eight Weeks.” She’s lived through all that, and she’s not afraid to talk about it — or rap about it on a stage in front of hundreds.
“I don’t take it back,” she says. “These things I’ve gone through, people go through them, and I know about it now. I have empathy. I can understand what they’re going through when I’m making decisions for them, which is what policymakers do.”
The Con & The Can
Linqua Franqa
On stage, Parker is hyperkinetic and unflinching. She masterfully harnesses the crowd, maintaining a powerful connection. It’s a skill she doesn’t leave at the door when she enters City Hall.
“Knowing when to stand my ground and when to flex — as it were, in hip-hop terminology — but also being able to read the room, to gauge the eye contact or lack thereof, and the body language, for what we need to move the conversation forward, a lot of those skills have come with me to the political stage. You have to sense that energy in order to know which lane to take next.”
You see that girl on that gold bike, that gold bike that that girl rides?
That girl writes such cold rhymes that girl might go worldwide.
—
“Gold Bike,” Linqua Franqa, Model Minority
Parker keeps a packed schedule. The week after she declared her candidacy, The New York Times’ veteran music critic Jon Pareles included her in his “17 Acts that Stood out at SXSW (South by Southwest).” Last summer, she performed in Seattle, Alberta, Atlanta, and Birmingham and hosted the Flagpole Music Awards in Athens. She just wrapped up her second year as a Ph.D. student of language and literacy education at the University of Georgia, where she’s working on a thesis about freestyle rap an undervalued form of literacy.
There are meetings with policy researchers, meetings with students, and commission meetings, which sometimes keep her at City Hall until nearly midnight. In January, she traveled to New York for the YEO (Young Elected Officials) Network Women’s Conference, and to her alma mater, Warren Wilson College, to deliver a keynote speech and performance on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In March, she performed again at South by Southwest. Sometime this spring, she’ll release a single that raises money for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America — a springboard, perhaps, for a second full-length album.
Every month, she and a handful of volunteers deliver copies of District 2 News, a newsletter she created and manages, to residents. She knocks on doors, puts the folded paper into the hands of the people who live there, and starts conversations about the stories inside — all of them written by community residents. It’s a “simple partnership offering” Parker believes will strengthen ties.
“Once people gain a sense of the power of their voice through being widely read and heard, they might be more willing to engage. So when it’s time to take critical action on a matter that’s pressing for the community, those people know it’s not just some random person asking them to link arms. It’s us. You remember us.”
Once a week, she spends half a day at Athens’ Cedar Shoals High School, where she recently kicked off a two-year project inspired by another of her favorite books, Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements by Charlene Carruthers.
“She writes about creating many good leaders, and how important that is to any good movement,” Parker says. It’s a concept she plans to effectuate at a local high school whose racial disparities in discipline and student achievement made local headlines last year.
“Cedar Shoals High School is a place where a lot of people might not see themselves as the next leaders,” Parker says. “A lot of kids have a lot of creativity and don’t like how things are, but don’t really have the civic literacy skills to make their voices matter to people in power.”
She recently secured grant funding to pair graduate-student mentors with high-school students enrolled in a peer leadership class. The goal? To make their voices louder. To validate their life experiences, sharpen their skills, boost their confidence, and give them what they need — be it equipment, contacts, or a platform — so they can convince someone of their views at, say, a county commission meeting.
On a Tuesday in late January, Parker sits at the dining table in her living room, drinking coffee and wearing a new black hoodie. On the front, the words “Better and Better” repeat themselves in a circle surrounding a fist.
We get together
It’s gonna be better
… and better
… and better
… and better.
They are lines from the call-and-response she uses on stage after performing “The Con and the Can.”
“I know. It’s really lame that I’m wearing my own sweatshirt,” she says, shaking it off before turning reflective. “I want people to believe that it’s going to get better and better. The whole song is about starting from within and working your way out, in terms of bettering the world. Start with you. You get better, and then you start tackling the problems in your immediate vicinity, and then those get better, and then, through that, we’re better positioned to make the world better on a state level, national level, and onward. I say it a lot, also to convince myself that it’s true. It’s a theme, I would say, in everything I do.”
By Eric Chase - 1993
Article Originally Published by Industrial Workers of the World
Most people living in the United States know little about the International Workers' Day of May Day. For many others there is an assumption that it is a holiday celebrated in state communist countries like Cuba or the former Soviet Union. Most Americans don't realize that May Day has its origins here in this country and is as "American" as baseball and apple pie, and stemmed from the pre-Christian holiday of Beltane, a celebration of rebirth and fertility.
In the late nineteenth century, the working class was in constant struggle to gain the 8-hour work day. Working conditions were severe and it was quite common to work 10 to 16 hour days in unsafe conditions. Death and injury were commonplace at many work places and inspired such books as Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and Jack London's The Iron Heel. As early as the 1860's, working people agitated to shorten the workday without a cut in pay, but it wasn't until the late 1880's that organized labor was able to garner enough strength to declare the 8-hour workday. This proclamation was without consent of employers, yet demanded by many of the working class.
At this time, socialism was a new and attractive idea to working people, many of whom were drawn to its ideology of working class control over the production and distribution of all goods and services. Workers had seen first-hand that Capitalism benefited only their bosses, trading workers' lives for profit. Thousands of men, women and children were dying needlessly every year in the workplace, with life expectancy as low as their early twenties in some industries, and little hope but death of rising out of their destitution. Socialism offered another option.
A variety of socialist organizations sprung up throughout the later half of the 19th century, ranging from political parties to choir groups. In fact, many socialists were elected into governmental office by their constituency. But again, many of these socialists were ham-strung by the political process which was so evidently controlled by big business and the bi-partisan political machine. Tens of thousands of socialists broke ranks from their parties, rebuffed the entire political process, which was seen as nothing more than protection for the wealthy, and created anarchist groups throughout the country. Literally thousands of working people embraced the ideals of anarchism, which sought to put an end to all hierarchical structures (including government), emphasized worker controlled industry, and valued direct action over the bureaucratic political process. It is inaccurate to say that labor unions were "taken over" by anarchists and socialists, but rather anarchists and socialist made up the labor unions.
At its national convention in Chicago, held in 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (which later became the American Federation of Labor), proclaimed that "eight hours shall constitute a legal day's labor from and after May 1, 1886." The following year, the FOTLU, backed by many Knights of Labor locals, reiterated their proclamation stating that it would be supported by strikes and demonstrations. At first, most radicals and anarchists regarded this demand as too reformist, failing to strike "at the root of the evil." A year before the Haymarket Massacre, Samuel Fielden pointed out in the anarchist newspaper, The Alarm, that "whether a man works eight hours a day or ten hours a day, he is still a slave."
Despite the misgivings of many of the anarchists, an estimated quarter million workers in the Chicago area became directly involved in the crusade to implement the eight hour work day, including the Trades and Labor Assembly, the Socialistic Labor Party and local Knights of Labor. As more and more of the workforce mobilized against the employers, these radicals conceded to fight for the 8-hour day, realizing that "the tide of opinion and determination of most wage-workers was set in this direction." With the involvement of the anarchists, there seemed to be an infusion of greater issues than the 8-hour day. There grew a sense of a greater social revolution beyond the more immediate gains of shortened hours, but a drastic change in the economic structure of capitalism.
In a proclamation printed just before May 1, 1886, one publisher appealed to working people with this plea:
Workingmen to Arms!
War to the Palace, Peace to the Cottage, and Death to LUXURIOUS IDLENESS.
The wage system is the only cause of the World's misery. It is supported by the rich classes, and to destroy it, they must be either made to work or DIE.
One pound of DYNAMITE is better than a bushel of BALLOTS!
MAKE YOUR DEMAND FOR EIGHT HOURS with weapons in your hands to meet the capitalistic bloodhounds, police, and militia in proper manner.
Not surprisingly the entire city was prepared for mass bloodshed, reminiscent of the railroad strike a decade earlier when police and soldiers gunned down hundreds of striking workers. On May 1, 1886, more than 300,000 workers in 13,000 businesses across the United States walked off their jobs in the first May Day celebration in history. In Chicago, the epicenter for the 8-hour day agitators, 40,000 went out on strike with the anarchists in the forefront of the public's eye. With their fiery speeches and revolutionary ideology of direct action, anarchists and anarchism became respected and embraced by the working people and despised by the capitalists.
The names of many - Albert Parsons, Johann Most, August Spies and Louis Lingg - became household words in Chicago and throughout the country. Parades, bands and tens of thousands of demonstrators in the streets exemplified the workers' strength and unity, yet didn't become violent as the newspapers and authorities predicted.
More and more workers continued to walk off their jobs until the numbers swelled to nearly 100,000, yet peace prevailed. It was not until two days later, May 3, 1886, that violence broke out at the McCormick Reaper Works between police and strikers.
For six months, armed Pinkerton agents and the police harassed and beat locked-out steelworkers as they picketed. Most of these workers belonged to the "anarchist-dominated" Metal Workers' Union. During a speech near the McCormick plant, some two hundred demonstrators joined the steelworkers on the picket line. Beatings with police clubs escalated into rock throwing by the strikers which the police responded to with gunfire. At least two strikers were killed and an unknown number were wounded.
Full of rage, a public meeting was called by some of the anarchists for the following day in Haymarket Square to discuss the police brutality. Due to bad weather and short notice, only about 3000 of the tens of thousands of people showed up from the day before. This affair included families with children and the mayor of Chicago himself. Later, the mayor would testify that the crowd remained calm and orderly and that speaker August Spies made "no suggestion... for immediate use of force or violence toward any person..."
As the speech wound down, two detectives rushed to the main body of police, reporting that a speaker was using inflammatory language, inciting the police to march on the speakers' wagon. As the police began to disperse the already thinning crowd, a bomb was thrown into the police ranks. No one knows who threw the bomb, but speculations varied from blaming any one of the anarchists, to an agent provocateur working for the police.
Enraged, the police fired into the crowd. The exact number of civilians killed or wounded was never determined, but an estimated seven or eight civilians died, and up to forty were wounded. One officer died immediately and another seven died in the following weeks. Later evidence indicated that only one of the police deaths could be attributed to the bomb and that all the other police fatalities had or could have had been due to their own indiscriminate gun fire. Aside from the bomb thrower, who was never identified, it was the police, not the anarchists, who perpetrated the violence.
Eight anarchists - Albert Parsons, August Spies, Samuel Fielden, Oscar Neebe, Michael Schwab, George Engel, Adolph Fischer and Louis Lingg - were arrested and convicted of murder, though only three were even present at Haymarket and those three were in full view of all when the bombing occurred. The jury in their trial was comprised of business leaders in a gross mockery of justice similar to the Sacco-Vanzetti case thirty years later, or the trials of AIM and Black Panther members in the seventies. The entire world watched as these eight organizers were convicted, not for their actions, of which all of were innocent, but for their political and social beliefs. On November 11, 1887, after many failed appeals, Parsons, Spies, Engel and Fisher were hung to death. Louis Lingg, in his final protest of the state's claim of authority and punishment, took his own life the night before with an explosive device in his mouth.
The remaining organizers, Fielden, Neebe and Schwab, were pardoned six years later by Governor Altgeld, who publicly lambasted the judge on a travesty of justice. Immediately after the Haymarket Massacre, big business and government conducted what some say was the very first "Red Scare" in this country. Spun by mainstream media, anarchism became synonymous with bomb throwing and socialism became un-American. The common image of an anarchist became a bearded, eastern European immigrant with a bomb in one hand and a dagger in the other.
Today we see tens of thousands of activists embracing the ideals of the Haymarket Martyrs and those who established May Day as an International Workers' Day. Ironically, May Day is an official holiday in 66 countries and unofficially celebrated in many more, but rarely is it recognized in this country where it began.
Over one hundred years have passed since that first May Day. In the earlier part of the 20th century, the US government tried to curb the celebration and further wipe it from the public's memory by establishing "Law and Order Day" on May 1. We can draw many parallels between the events of 1886 and today. We still have locked out steelworkers struggling for justice. We still have voices of freedom behind bars as in the cases of Mumia Abu Jamal and Leonard Peltier. We still had the ability to mobilize tens of thousands of people in the streets of a major city to proclaim "THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!" at the WTO and FTAA demonstrations.
Words stronger than any I could write are engraved on the Haymarket Monument:
THE DAY WILL COME WHEN OUR SILENCE WILL BE MORE POWERFUL THAN THE VOICES YOU ARE THROTTLING TODAY.
Truly, history has a lot to teach us about the roots of our radicalism. When we remember that people were shot so we could have the 8-hour day; if we acknowledge that homes with families in them were burned to the ground so we could have Saturday as part of the weekend; when we recall 8-year old victims of industrial accidents who marched in the streets protesting working conditions and child labor only to be beat down by the police and company thugs, we understand that our current condition cannot be taken for granted - people fought for the rights and dignities we enjoy today, and there is still a lot more to fight for. The sacrifices of so many people can not be forgotten or we'll end up fighting for those same gains all over again. This is why we celebrate May Day.
Hey there!
We’ve just been informed that the avocados we received on March 19th are part of a voluntary recall due to a possible listeria outbreak. Those avocados are no longer in the store, but if you purchased avocados from us on the 19th, 20th, or 21st they may be contaminated.
We will offer returns for any avocados purchased on those days.
Thanks for your attention - updates will be posted as they are received!
Jackson County High School students are “making magic in the kitchen!”
Check out this story from Donovan Harris to hear more about how the students are developing plant-based food options that may become part of the permanent menu. Daily even makes an appearance to help discuss the difference between plant-based foods and foods that are plants!
by Kara Brown, GM
Since opening as a cooperative in 1992, Daily Groceries has been part of a vibrant tradition of co-ops being partly or mostly run by member-workers, who received discounts or other incentives based on their work. In the past couple of decades, co-ops across the country have experienced huge growth in member and non-member customers. As a result, many have grown their full-time paid staff to ensure fully functional operations.
In the past few years, Federal Labor Laws have tightened, leading most co-ops (including Daily) to move away from in-store member-workers, so as to avoid any potential legal liability. Check out CDS Consulting’s article going over the challenges of member labor for more info.
Despite these changes, Daily’s heart and soul is still found in member engagement. So, rather than having owner-members stock shelves and work bulk, we’re now beginning to focus on outreach opportunities and creating a strong member presence in the community!
With that goal in mind, Daily is in the early stages of developing a member-volunteer program. This program will place our members at the forefront of our community presence through their participation in pre-planned outreach events. In gratitude for this volunteer time, Daily will offer members a one-time use coupon.
Please keep your eye on this website and Daily’s newsletter for upcoming volunteer opportunities.
Thank you for being a part of the Daily community!
by Jen Oliver-Provost
Collective Harvest is a collaboration of local family farms that includes Diamond Hill Farm, Front Field Farm, Full Moon Farm, Hickory Hill Farm, Fry Farm, Lazy Willow Farm, Sundance Farm, and Cedar Grove Farm. I get a wide variety of my produce from Collective Harvest and this month that includes greens, lettuce, radishes, turnips, potatoes, and cabbage. These farms use sustainable and organic practices and all are either Certified Naturally Grown or certified USDA Organic
You will find fresh (and delicious) turmeric and ginger that comes from Flyinghorse Farm. They are located in Newborn, GA and use sustainable agriculture practices and grow everything organically at their farm.
The Foster Brady Farm land has been in operation since 1860 and has Certified Naturally Grown produce. You can find their produce on our shelf in the form of bok choy and greens.
If you saw our seasonal wreaths and succulent plants in the store then you know about R&R Secret farm. They are a small family owned farm in the heart of Athens and we also love their flowers during the summer. Flowers and plants aren’t the only thing they do though, check back in other seasons for their produce.
We love having local mushrooms and right now we have shiitake and lion’s mane that comes from Sparta Mushrooms. Follow the link above to find out more about them.
Back in Time is new to our produce department (we already buy chickens from them) and you can find them in the form of kale. We hope to build this relationship and get more from them soon.
Thanks for checking it out! Check back for other produce blogs and more in-depth looks at these farmers and products.
Written by Bloodroot Collective
Our goal is to cycle nutrients as best as possible on our property. We aren’t perfect but we work very hard to cycle nutrients better through our system. Originally we called our eggs Daily Up-cycled Eggs because we were getting all the chop from the local Co-op called Daily Grocery and we were primarily feeding the birds this chop and allowing them to forage in the woods. Now our flock has grown and we have increased the number of businesses we collect chop from to continue to support the healthy diet for our birds. We also supplement with GMO free/hormone free chicken feed, fermented scratch grains and apple cider vinegar in their water.
We feed the chop to the chickens in what we call the compost run where they devour what they want and leave the rest to compost in a deep bed of wood shavings we get from a local furniture builder. We also keep a black soldier fly larvae bin during the warm months and feed them everything the chickens don’t want, or shouldn’t have too much of, like breads and citrus and onions. These larvae devour EVERYTHING and turn it into small protein packets in the form of themselves: larvae, which we then scoop out and feed to the chickens! It is truly a wriggly delight for the gals.
We put the scratching tendencies of the chickens to good use and they do a lot of the heavy lifting in the compost run. Their natural need to scratch is an effective way to turn the deep bedding and bury the chop they chose not to eat. We do, however, periodically turn the compost run to keep it aerated and move fresh material deeper into the wood chips to further decompose. This process greatly reduces smell, as it better combines the hot litter and fresh leftover chop with the wood chips, and through the process of decomposition, makes really beautiful compost. Our compost is not an exact science presently so we are trialing it on our gardens but maybe in the future we will be able to share it with customers.
We also wild forage chanterelle, oyster, lions main and hen of the woods mushrooms. We plan to add more mushroom cultivation to our business soon. We also make the most of other wild edible flushes as the season allows.
The Chicken Barn was recently completed and now the gals have a larger, safe space to sleep, eat and get out of the rain, as well as a safe outdoor enclosure (the compost run) where they can spread out, eat, scratch and sun themselves. We allow the gals to rotate through runs in the woods and we use their insatiable apatite for green plants, to help keep the muscadine and tree stump sprouts at bay. This fall they will be helping to keep the future veggie garden from growing up in muscadine, black cherry, oak and sweetgum as well as taking care of the brier, dog fennel and other opportunistic weeds that we don’t welcome in the garden proper.
Future goals - stay tuned
Rainwater harvesting from the chicken barn to water the veggies and perennials down hill
Development of perennial food gardens for market and direct sale to businesses
Milking goats...? for continued forest understory maintenance and goat cheese!