(via sovereign-designs)
Potato Patch” Pingree stencil in Detroit
A bold new stencil can be seen all over Detroit, one which may remind us that urban agriculture is not such a new thing. Hazen “potato patch” Pingree was Mayor of Detroit from 1890 to 1897, and followed with a stint as State Governor. Originally a shoemaker from Maine, it’s said that Pingree won the election because of his physical resemblance to Prince Edward. What won the admiration of Detroiters, however, was his persistent attempts to create affordable, publicly-owned public transit ~ trolleys, which were later bought and decommissioned by GM and Ford. He’s even more famous for his advocacy of gardens in the city. When over 10 % of workers were unemployed, Pingree’s solution to alleviating hunger was to make unused lots available for gardens. He assisted in raising money for seeds and tools, and hundreds of working-poor families grew their own food.
Now, after more than a century of growth and decline, Detroit is in a strikingly similar position. The unemployment rate is even higher, and there are more vacant lots than ever before. It seems unlikely that current Mayor “I’m going to run the city like a business” Bing will hold fundraisers for lettuce seed. I don’t know for sure, but I’m willing to bet that this new stencil is not an effort to make any particular elected official take charge of the dichotomy between empty lots and empty stomachs. Because Detroit’s urban agriculture scene is already so vibrant, so connected, and so grass-roots, the poster seems to me to be saying, to take a quote from Grace Lee Boggs, “We are the leaders we’ve been looking for.”
LINK TO ORGINAL POST VIA JUSTSEEDS BLOG http://www.justseeds.org/blog/2009/09/potato_patch_pingree_stencil_i.html
ps. anyone know who is responsible for this paste up?
