Focus on Justice: Films on Food, The Garden

WHAT: Focus on Justice: Films on Food
WHEN: Wednesday, May 18th, 6:30-9:00pm
WHERE: 9th St Independent Film Center, 145 9th St at Mission, San Francisco
COST: $5-15 sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds
RSVP: http://www.pursueaction.org/focus-on-justice-films-on-food-the-garden/

Pursue: Action for a Just World, a project of American Jewish World Service and AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps, invites you to fill your heart with stories of actual people experiencing injustices in the food system, as told through film. Let’s deepen the conversation as we prepare to take action around the U.S. Farm Bill in 2012.

This three part series will deepen our awareness of food justice at the local, national, and international level*, and move us to take action on the US Farm Bill in 2012. Learn more about intersecting issues and our responsibility to respond. Each session will feature a documentary film, discussion with Jewish thought sources, delicious eco-kosher refreshments, and time to socialize and network in community. (No prior knowledge of food justice issues and/or Jewish text is required or presumed; all are welcome.)

Our series begins on the local level with the award-winning documentary, The Garden: The fourteen-acre community garden at 41st and Alameda in South Central Los Angeles is the largest of its kind in the United States. Started as a form of healing after the devastating L.A. riots in 1992, the South Central Farmers have since created a miracle in one of the country’s most blighted neighborhoods. Growing their own food. Feeding their families. Creating a community.

But now, bulldozers are poised to level their 14-acre oasis. If everyone told you nothing more could be done, would you give up?

The Garden has the pulse of verité with the narrative pull of fiction, telling the story of the country’s largest urban farm, backroom deals, land developers, green politics, money, poverty, power, and racial discord. The film explores and exposes the fault lines in American society and raises crucial and challenging questions about liberty, equality, and justice for the poorest and most vulnerable among us.

Co-sponsored by: Birthright Israel NEXT, EcoJews of the Bay, Hazon, The Hub at JCCSF, Jewish Community Relations Council, Moishe House East Bay and SF, Progressive Jewish Alliance, & Urban Adamah.