One small step at a time
As we’ve mentioned more than a few times before here, and also on our sister blog At the grassroots, our work at the community fruit and vegetable plot in our local park is us putting our money where our mouths are when it comes to practical action that makes a difference. Prefigurative action is becoming an ever more important part of what makes us tick and keeps us going, when it would be all too easy to give up in despair.
Prefigurative politics are the modes of organization and social relationships that strive to reflect the future society being sought by the group. According to Carl Boggs, who coined the term, the desire is to embody “within the ongoing political practice of a movement […] those forms of social relations, decision-making, culture, and human experience that are the ultimate goal”.[1] Prefigurativism is the attempt to enact prefigurative politics.
We can critique the world as much as we like but, if we haven’t some kind of ideal to build and work towards, then what is the point? All we would be doing is contributing towards the already high levels of despair and anger that people are feeling. That’s why yesterday, instead of going into Bristol to report upon the anti-refugee protest and, from all accounts, the considerably bigger counter protest that greeted it, we chose to have an extra work session on the community vegetable plot. This was the report from that work session that was first published on the Keynsham Community Veg Plot in the Park Facebook page:
It was a busy and productive 'extra' work session at the Plot In The Park today. Thanks are due to the new helper who turned up - her input really did make a positive difference:)
Just a reminder - the session had been called in a bid to help us keep on top of things. It would seem that come the summer, there's a necessity for at least some of the helpers to be at the plot at least once a week. Obviously during the dry spell, visits to the plot for the purpose of watering have been a lot more frequent than that!
As you can see from the image of the produce, there was a fair bit of cropping undertaken. What is shown was only a part of it - we were handing out produce to grateful passers by, explaining to them what we're trying to achieve with the plot. One of the reasons why we picked a Saturday for this extra work session was that there would be a lot more in the way of passers by, offering plenty of opportunities for engagement.
A decent amount of weeding was also undertaken, particularly around the leeks which are starting to bed in quite nicely after a bit of a shaky start.
Work was started on clearing the very far end of the plot which was getting choked up with brambles. The brambles had ended up choking the Japanese Wineberries and it was decided that as they were no longer viable, they should be removed. The aim is to clear this section, dig out the roots of the brambles and the wineberries and hopefully, end up with another bed for cultivation next year. This clearing and preparation will take a fair bit of time so, it will be well into the autumn before everything is properly cleared and dug over.
Then, there was the inevitable watering. Even though we had a spell of rain at the start of the week, looking at the condition of the soil, you wouldn't have known it! With the way the weather is looking for this coming week, we'll be back at the plot on Monday and either Wednesday or Thursday for watering.
The next scheduled work session is on Wednesday 20.8, starting at 2pm. Any helpers will be more than welcome:)
So there you have it – a typical summer afternoon at the community fruit and vegetable plot. Nothing glamorous at all. In fact, it was pretty hard, gruelling work, particularly the bramble clearance that I was getting involved with! Yes, even the small steps towards building a better world involve putting in a fair bit of hard graft. Yesterday was worth it though because, as mentioned in the report above, there were plenty of opportunities to engage passers by and, share our produce. It’s a community plot so, the produce is there to be shared. In a society where everything has a price, people are genuinely surprised to be offered free produce while taking a stroll through the park:) That’s how we engage with people and start to have the conversations about what we’re trying to achieve with the plot.
This is admittedly just one small step. However, when a growing number of people start to get together in their neighbourhoods to take small steps towards making where they live a better place, they start to add up to something bigger than the sum of their parts. With the community fruit and vegetable plot we’re involved with, we’ve made it pretty clear that in an ideal world, there would be plots like this in every neighbourhood, as we have written many times before: Digging in at the plot – 2.8.25.
When we walk around Keynsham, we make a point of identifying spare plots of land that aren’t doing anything much, and which if the will is there, could be turned into productive fruit and vegetable plots.
All it takes is the will... That’s very easy to say but, as we’re finding, it’s incredibly hard to generate. What we want to do is get these plots going before a crisis hits rather than as a reaction to one, when it would be far too late to have any meaningful impact. Not only that, there’s a political angle to this as well. Namely that whoever controls the food supply, controls the population.
With this and the community litter picking we’re also involved with, when it comes to practical action that makes a difference, given the constraints on our time and that fact that age is now dictating what we’re physically capable of, we’re hopefully doing our bit. What is heartening is knowing that we’re not alone in doing this. Where we live in Keynsham, there are plenty of people involved in a range of projects that aim to make life in our town a little bit better: Thoughts on volunteering and building a better world 25.3.25.
People volunteer because they want their communities to be better places to live. Working co-operatively with like minded people, they get a heck of a lot done. In the process they generate community solidarity and cohesion – something that’s vital in these increasingly troubled times. It’s human nature to want to work co-operatively to make things better. Volunteering in the community is a clear indication of that constructive, co-operative spirit. What all of this goes to show is that the building blocks for a better world are already in place where we live.
To conclude, while the bastards that presume to rule over us want us atomised, fearful and utterly dependent upon them, there are still many people who will give up their time to work with others in their community to make things better and bring about change. It’s an essential part of the human spirit that they will never crush. Which is why, despite all of the doom and gloom that’s around, I’ve still got a degree of optimism about our future.