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Slow Nature: How the Slow Food movement is related to the effort to protect Knowland Park

By Ruth on March 1, 2012 in Oakland Politics, Opinions & Editorials

Western Blue-eyed grass - photo by Mack Casterman

The Bay Area is a hotspot for the Slow Food movement. Slow Food started in Italy, a movement aimed at countering the influence of Fast Food by encouraging people to take time to cook and eat meals at home, understand where their food comes from, maybe even grow some of it themselves or buy it from local growers. While everyone likes to grab a quick Fast Food bite once in awhile, Slow Food is about getting back something we lost in turning food into a cheap, high-calorie drive-thru commodity: the whole way that food centers communities and families through sharing the bounty of harvest, eating seasonal fruits and vegetables, cooking together, and talking around the table. It’s about really appreciating food, but also about appreciating our place as human beings—in families, communities, as inhabitants of the natural world that provides our food.

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The public will be tapped to pay for zoo expansion

By Jim on February 22, 2012 in Oakland Politics

In the past year, Oakland residents have twice witnessed the spectacle of the city government sounding the alarm of pending massive cuts in the budget. Last spring, then new mayor Jean Quan issued her three budget scenarios (A,B, and C) in which the city would have to choose which vital services to cut. Libraries would be cut, senior services, city and non-profit agency jobs.

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Protecting Knowland Park and the ‘Occupy’ Movement

By Ruth on February 21, 2012 in Nature & Wildlife, Oakland Politics

The movement that began with Occupy Wall Street has been criticized for lack of clarity in its agenda, but despite mainstream media coverage suggesting it is unfocused, that agenda has seemed pretty clear to me and many of those I know who support it: Reduce corporate influence on politicians and government policies, address glaring income inequality, attend to the environmental catastrophe of climate change, and re-engage people as citizens, rather than fatuous, self-absorbed “consumers of stuff.” All that may at first glance appear remote from the struggle to protect Knowland Park, but there is an underlying vision that informs both: the possibility of transforming who we are and how our institutions relate to the social and natural worlds. That vision, I think, includes a shift away from regarding everything around us as a resource for making money– toward considering the worth of nature in its own right.

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Oakland Cheats the Environment Again at Knowland Park

By Laura on February 13, 2012 in Oakland Politics, Opinions & Editorials

Coastal scrub and Alameda whipsnake habitat cut this past week in Knowland Park.

Crews were out this past week cutting trees and shrubs in 15-foot swaths on either side of the fire roads leading into the park, creating habitat loss and the further invasion of weeds like french broom, poison hemlock, and thistles. (The accompanying photo shows native coastal scrub. The remaining yellow-flowering shrub on the left is french broom.) Assistant Fire Marshal Leroy Griffin stated that the work was necessary to maintain emergency access for fire engines.

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There’s Nothing There

By Ruth on February 9, 2012 in Oakland Politics, Opinions & Editorials

A few months ago, in the heat of our appeals to the Planning Commission and the City Council, I received an email from a supporter of the Zoo’s theme park development plans for Knowland Park. “There’s nothing there,” she said, arguing that this was a reason to develop it. This floored me for a moment. I tried to think how I could explain, but wondered if we just lived in worlds too different for words.