Street Roots Article: Kellogg Community Garden

SE Neighborhood Communities vs. Portland Public Schools
The Innovation and Proposition of a Community Garden in the abandoned Kellogg Middle School campus.


The food industry, “big food”, “big tobacco”, the dairy industry, the meat industry, industrial production versus the organic crusade—these are common terms today. Leave it to Portland to represent as one of the top organic and sustainable cities in the United States. We should be so proud; we are doing a great job, aren’t we? From the looks of a quick google search, Portland gives the glimpse of a green utopia, hand-in-hand with a new generation of driven hipsters ready to save the world and hold one another around a campfire made of recycled wood materials.

We also come up as number one on the vegetarian websites. We are even saving the animals, how perfect. My cynical approach is not to be mistaken for a lack of appreciation for my sharing and caring metropolitan. On the contrary, I’m sitting around that very campfire, with my pink fedora, used 501’s, and hemp chap stick that I purchased at my local food cooperative. I’m more than onboard with that whole program. I celebrate the entire collection of old-fashioned community values, and respect for locality and reduction of carbon footprints.

How is it though, that a city with such props and award winning reputations continues to struggle in the contribution and support of our low-income, and homeless populations? We are making efforts to take care of one another, as long as that “other” has a matching Subaru and exotic vegetable garden in their front yard.

We so smoothly disregard this group of Portlandians because of their obvious difference in lifestyle and values. Somehow we associate the homeless as one population, one race, one personality, one history, one story, internationally contingent. They don’t make the cut for our environmental rehabilitation priorities.

First and foremost, we have placed organic foods as the gateway to saving the world, and given it credit for helping to diminish our climbing obesity statistics. Enter Whole Foods stage left, please stock your shelves so obnoxiously with fancy produce and alien floral arrangements shipped from the other side of the world; now we’re really getting somewhere. Charge fourteen dollars per lemon to cover the price of that transportation, just tell people they are saving the rainforests by purchasing the lemon, it will all smooth over… at least in Forest Heights.

Directly after dropping a few benjamin’s on enough food for the first half of the work week, go ahead and walk straight out the door, past the Street Roots Vendor, and deny him your dollar for a piece of material actually worth your time, actually contributing directly to the well-being of a community member.

I’ve been that Whole Foods patron, many a time, it’s so easy to get sucked in to the “organic” and “local” jab. It’s better than hitting up your local McDeaths, but, there’s something else here worth acknowledging, something that we’re forgetting as a friendly and natural congregation of north westerners. We forgot about our own.

We’ve got family trying to get ahead right here in our city, next door, and we have misplaced the compassion for helping one another with a new pride jacket, an ignorant coat of assumptions leads us right past those working, working to get in to a home and consistent income situation, and takes us right in to our new favorite happy-hour of choice destination.

Hear me out, I’m still directly speaking as a hypocrite, just ask my new banana yellow skull and cross-bones water bottle I got for my road bike, it only set me back nineteen bucks. But let’s break this up a bit. We can’t diminish the whole industrial facility, or even get it out of Portland for that matter, there would be a stream of angry, and extremely tan females driving ridiculously large SUVs even more recklessly from the West Hills straight towards Northeast Portland on last Thursday, determined to take revenge upon those damn hippies.

But what we can do is uncover alternative options. We can incorporate the homeless and struggling populations in to our save the world adventures. It’s called a community garden. We have a lot of them in Portland. I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept.

Wouldn’t a community garden be essentially a pretty textbook fit for someone living without shelter, needing access to food, water… and drum roll please… work? Do these people even want to help in a community agriculture atmosphere you ask? If they do, I’m sure they’ll show up, maybe they just need an open invitation, and some slack from our ever so efficient city officials.


Operation Kellogg Community Garden: Phase 1

Here she is, the maiden voyage, kind of. There are and have been other community gardens in Portland, even garden’s built in to school campuses. However, this has a slightly new twist. This garden is open to everyone. Yes Sir?.. What about liability, security, trust factors? Sit down and take five to listen. We’re going to make this work. How hard is to fathom a place where everyone is welcome? If you do not feel safe with your neighbors unless they are receiving a steady paycheck, then you are more than welcome to hold my hand through the harvesting and growth of our little Kellogg plot. Or you could introduce yourself, and get to know why it is that they don’t have that paycheck.

Yes there will be obstacles, yes. It will be a labyrinth of agreements and liabilities around the regulations of the garden. I can’t really find anything in there that’s a good enough reason not to see it come to fruition. Everyone in the Northwest loves a challenge, that is why we live here (that and the huckleberries). I think that all of the American Gladiator episodes should be a Colorado native up against someone from the Northwest. And throw in someone from California as a wildcard.

So here is where we get our hands dirty. If you have come thus far, I will direct you to the homepage for the Kellogg Middle School Community Garden Project. We are in the works, we are open to suggestions, we want your input. Have a different campus/location in mind? Perhaps one of the eleven Portland Public Schools that was closed in the last year from budget loss—that is just sitting there, beautiful, empty, and bare, just like much of the new Pearl District residents and Wieden Kennedy employees?

Then come and dig in. We’re waiting.
http://commgardens.meetup.com/63/





THE FOLLOWING WAS TAKEN FROM WIKIPEDIA.COM...

Kellogg MS, Arleta, Atkinson, Creston, Woodstock
Superintendent Phillips is proposing to close Kellogg Middle School after one more school year due to declining enrollment and the potential of improving student achievement through K-8 schools in the neighborhood area.
Arleta and Creston elementary schools would transition to become a K-8 school, adding one grade level a year, starting with sixth grade in fall 2006.
Kellogg Middle School would serve only seventh- and eighth-grade students in 2006-07. In 2007-08, the remaining eighth-grade students would be assigned to Hosford Middle School, at 2303 SE 28th Place. The Kellogg building would close in fall 2007.
Atkinson Elementary students now are split between Mt. Tabor and Kellogg middle schools. Under this proposal, all neighborhood program students would be assigned to Mt. Tabor for sixth grade, starting in fall 2006. (Language immersion program students continue to Hosford.) Woodstock Elementary neighborhood program students, now assigned to Kellogg, would be assigned to attend Hosford (Woodstock language immersion students already feed into Hosford). Sellwood Middle School, Duniway, Grout, Lewis, Llewellyn elementary schools and Winterhaven K-8
Superintendent Phillips is asking the community to develop a proposal around schools located in and around the Sellwood-Moreland neighborhoods, including four elementary schools, Sellwood Middle School and Winterhaven, a focus option K-8 school.
The Superintendent wants to spur a community discussion of how to create strong schools in the area, each with enough students and teachers to support a strong curriculum. Another goal is for the community to develop a plan to consolidate programs into five of the six currently operating buildings (several of the current school buildings would require significant and expensive upgrades to keep operating into the future).
Options could include maintaining the current K-5 and middle school configuration but redrawing boundaries to move from four elementary schools to three. The community may also explore the option of transitioning some schools to a K-8 model. The school district’s area director and school principals will work with the school communities (including the school Site Councils and PTAs) and a community-based facilitator to develop a proposal to the Superintendent in the fall of 2006. Superintendent Phillips will then forward her recommendations to the School Board for a vote, with implementation of the plan to start in fall 2007.

From wikipedia.com