City Slicker Farms

At the West Oakland Grown Harvest Festival this past weekend, we celebrated harvest time and the Rebuild of the Community Market Farm at Union Plaza Park with a community art workshop led by Attitudinal Healing Connection, an West Oakland-based organization that is breaking cycles of violence by providing platforms for creative expression and communication for children, youth, adults and families.

The goal of the workshop was to create art with our friends and neighbors that will have a permanent place at the farm at Union. We chose concepts for the art panels that represent the values of City Slicker Farms and what we strive to embody at our farms: Growth, Community and Sharing. 

After the August vandalism incident at Union, many asked me if we should install additional security or cameras at our farm site. I think it is natural to respond to a crisis like this with fear and trepidation that it might happen again – I know I did.

But as that fear subsided, and our resolve increased, we knew that our response must be to build community, not take punitive action. So we asked Attitudinal Healing Connection to help us in a first step of creating permanent art for the space that communicates what the Community Market Farm is all about.

The Community Market Farm at Union Plaza Park provides public open space, urban agriculture programming for all ages, and organically grown fruits and vegetables for West Oakland, prioritizing low-income community members. This is a community-based, intergenerational project in partnership with City of Oakland Department of Parks and Recreation.

The essential nature of urban farming is that it is visible and central in a city. There is no way to have a truly secured urban farm, so instead we must do what we can to build a secure community. Security cameras send a message that only some are welcome in our gardens. Instead, our goal is be as inclusive and welcoming as we possibly can be. We seek the ideal put forth in Oakland’s Open Space Conservation and Recreation policy: urban gardens that “foster an appreciation of local ecology, instill a sense of stewardship and community, and provide a multi-ethnic, multi-generational activity open to all."

Art created by our neighbors, facilitated by our allies, in the spirit of togetherness and abundance – now that’s community security.

The art that was created at Harvest Festival will be installed in the coming weeks. We’ll post in our newsletter and on Facebook and Instagram when you can come see it for yourself. 

Interested in the work of Attitudinal Healing Connection? You can show some love at their anniversary event, “25 years of Loving Our Community”, which celebrates Attitudinal Healing Connection's quarter century of eliminating violence by offering creative and educational programs that transform the human spirit and build peaceful loving communities for all humanity. Learn more: http://ahc-oakland.org/events/25-years-of-loving-our-community-gala/