Kitchen Kwento

The Hands That Harvest

This week, on Thanksgiving week, I want to pause in gratitude to hands and especially the hands of the farmer. There is no turkey dinner, no cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie, without someone's hands touching our food at each point in its nearly invisible journey - from the fields, the factory, the shipping truck, to the market, to the table. There is no Thanksgiving without acknowledging, too, how this federal holiday is steeped in the painful history of stolen lands and broken promises. So in giving thanks, there is also space to mourn and remember the true meaning of today. 

Corn and calendula

The hands that harvest are brown hands. They are black hands. They are hands in earthen hues from sand to silt. They are calloused hands. Grandfather's hands. Lola's hands. Old hands that know wet clay. Young hands that grow rougher with each season. 

These hands are Pilipino to Pomo. Chinese to Mexican. Korean to Puerto Rican. Hawaiian to Afro-diasporic. Japanese to Sikh. Irish to Guatemalan. These hands are cutting asparagus, pulling silver fish from the sea, praying into seeds. 

The hands that harvest are broken, bleeding, and torn. These hands are misunderstood and denied a share in the harvest many farmers cannot take to their own tables. The hands that harvest are nourishing, beautiful, and strong. They are life-giving hands. They are the ones that feed the world. I am grateful to those hands.

Amaranth and vaca beans

My hands are still soft and barely calloused urban hands. When I look into the palms, though, I see something else much older than myself. I see the lines that connect me to my parents, my grandparents, and ancestors that came before us. I see hands that tell the stories of their lives, their soil, their struggles and celebrations. I am grateful to harvest the richness of their history in my hands. 

 Sunflowers and sweet honey

More:
Brown Girl Farming on "A Woman's Hands" 
Tribute to a Lola's Hands, "Q if for Queen of Hearts" 
KPFA's coverage of Indigenous People's Sunrise Ceremony on Alcatraz and the original occupation

The Other Kind of Barrel Man

Back to barrel basics. BarrelManApps and Movement Generation.

If you haven't yet seen the barrel man in real life, don't let me spoil it. Let me just say that both the iconic wooden figurine and its hidden "surprise," and the concept of saving rainwater in barrels, are familiar to many Filipinos.

But being a Filipina raised in the States means there are things I've had to relearn that would have been second nature to my grandparents. I enrolled in Tagalog 101 as a 20-year-old and struggled to wrap my tongue around conjugations. I worked my way through Filipino cookbooks with the help of a dog-eared English-Tagalog dictionary. I tried my feet at sipa and made my mom look like a World Cup champion of our native hackeysack. Last weekend was another experience of getting back to the basics, this time with water. I went to learn rainwater harvesting 101 through a workshop organized by Movement Generation.

Walking in, I wondered what other 20-something Filipino/Americans would think of this workshop. While my parents raised my sister and I to be resource-conscious as a practical matter, saving rain to wash clothes or irrigate plants was not a part of our daily lives in the US. It was only when I first visited the Philippines that I saw ordinary folks catch rain on an everyday basis. It was not unusual to experience brownouts, those times when the water was cut off and the tap ran dry. In preparation for days like these my uncles and aunties stored many heavy, colorful barrels of water in backrooms. 

I adored taking cold tabo showers and how my skin felt to bathe in rainwater. But while it seemed like a novelty to my American-born self, it was normal survival mode for those who understood water would not always come from a faucet. 

Barrel women. Ellen of MG and Laura of Greywater Action

The workshop was full of educators, community, and gardeners intent on applying these skills to their daily work and lives. We started from the beginning, refreshing on the water cycle and our place in the watershed. Brock Dolman, one of the facilitators, framed the water crisis as something even more immediate than food security. If we or our crops are thirsty and we cannot access clean water, how can we survive?

Participants took part in the hands-on work to install a system to channel water from the roof into a series of interconnected barrels. We drilled holes, hoisted barrels into place, and installed a gutter. I was struck not just by how accessible it all was, but just how absurd that a most fundamental right to water has been privatized, polluted, and taken out of reach for so many. It's that crazy. As we closed the workshop it felt right on time when a light rain began to sprinkle and the first sheen of water slicked the roof. 

In leaving the workshop I felt not only more skilled to adapt water saving skills in my urban environment, but even more fired up to steward the water we all depend on...becoming another kind of barrel (wo)man. 

At the California Hotel, art blooms, plants flourish, and rainwater is saved.

More:

Movement Generation's earth skills trainings

Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, one of the trainers

Greywater Action, another trainer

A Single Drop for Safe Water, a Pinay-founded organization for clean water stewardship

Where We Occupy

where we occupy
after june jordan
by Aimee Suzara

projectile canister fracture crack
baton bullet teargas attack
rise remote display destroy
disturb the peace
on native soil
return release unsettle sleep
unrest the dead upset unseat
veils oya elegba watch
bathala christ diwata cross
baree baree tabi po tabi po
remember those whose
names
I do
not know. 

My first night back in Oakland from the farm was the night of the raid on Occupy's encampment. I had grown used to hooting owls and coyotes, and the distant yell of college kids to break the silence. But this night was helicopters overhead and an unrest creeping beyond downtown. Morning headlines flashed stunning images of tear gas and police in riot gear targeted on peaceful demonstrators. Although I was feeling far from the soil, I realized here, the unrest was its own force of nature, a water that coursed through streets like stony rivers, buildings like sentinel trees. And like any force of nature, things moved quickly.

Within days a general strike was announced for November 2. The march was a vibrant and growing flood as thousands swelled into the street. Families, librarians, scientists, faith leaders, mothers of color, nurses, a children's brigade, musicians, immigrant rights groups, elders, environmental justice folk walked out in full force. Oakland was a different picture from images of mostly white-dominated Occupy actions around the country. Brown and black faces moved the crowd, lifted banners, pushed strollers, and rocked the mic.


"We got to hella hella occupy!"
"We are the 99%!"
"What do we got? People power!" 

I felt proud to raise my voice with the thousands as energy swirled around us. It felt strong to walk with Filipinos calling out for the recognition of justice, with food advocates protesting corporate food systems that fail to feed, as an ordinary person in a river of voices. Hearing "people power" called out in the chants by this river, a term coined by the Philippine's peaceful People Power Movement in 1986, lifted my heart. This was organized, this was peaceful, this was beautiful, this was powerful.

And yet...some corner my heart was unsettled. I don't want to be a naysayer as Occupy is sparking across the country, has a national and global impact, and puts a spotlight to many social issues. But I had to work through the emotions that "occupy" surfaced, linked to a long history of stolen lands.

I first heard the word "occupy" when living in Hawai'i, and witnessing Kanaka Maoli-led struggles for sovereignty on their ancestral soil. As a daughter of Philippine immigrants, the language of occupation meant that takeover of ancestral lands - and the fight for accountability - could transcend geographical borders. At Occupy Oakland and elsewhere, Native communities reminded folks of the ongoing occupation on this very piece of earth, from false borders to lack of federal recognition. 

As writer Robert Desjarlait posed, "How can decolonization be a part of the process if the occupiers are occupying occupied land?" I believe in Oakland as one of the places leading that much-needed conversation. As this all unfolds, I hope, like many do, that this leads towards true transformation. And that will take the continual self-reflection on the roots of a 500+ year old history wherever folks Occupy.