We arrived at the community garden this morning to a confusing scene. Someone had been through the herb beds (elsewhere too, but mostly the herbs), dug up tons of plants, and just left them there.
No idea who, no idea why. It looks like they maybe thought they were weeding, as not EVERYTHING was pulled out - but we've lost so many beautiful mature plants. And they just left it all, no effort to clean up. So who knows if it was misguided or truly malicious.
This also means the volunteers spent most of today cleaning up this chaos instead of growing and caring for new things.
It feels bad.
Food, hand
My wife @Anri is a genius. I tried freezing guacamole but had trouble with breaking the flat slabs after they were frozen to get portion sizes out, and also they would get sharp edges and cut their baggie.
But I really wanted to freeze guacamole, because avocados get so dang cheap here when they're in season, but I can't eat them all.
She suggested ice cube trays.
My life is forever changed.
Part of why we say "solidarity not charity" is because the way charity is typically presented gives moral superiority to the givers - and often, moral inferiority to the receivers (or sometimes "takers," if they decide to be particularly transparent about it)
Truisms like "it is better to give than to receive" implicitly contain "it is wrong to receive help." It's wrong to ask for the support you need, to want it, even to accept it when offered. Panhandling, for instance, is often portrayed not just as shameful, but immoral - even greedy
Solidarity, and especially mutual aid, are meant to reject that dichotomy. Everyone at Food Not Bombs eats together, volunteers and otherwise, and talks to each other. Our Free Store puts "it's free because it's yours" all over its reading material - it's not a gift, not a blessing, not charity. And that makes *such* a big difference
actually a lion - they/them - 27
living in Aotearoa - New Zealand