Do Something

What are you going to do about it? This is what a COPS (Communities Organized for Public Service) organizer asked Virginia Ramirez about what she was going to do about her widowed neighbor dying of a preventable illness due to no heat retention/lack of weatherproofing in her home. Despite paying her bills and taxes on time, the widowed woman’s house was so dilapidated that she constantly got sick, eventually dying of pneumonia.

There are many systems in America that need fixing – the education system, the immigration system, and the heath care system, just to name a few. However, if we look at it as a whole, it is entirely too easy to get bogged down and to just give up. This is most definitely the case for the environmental movement since there are many components that make it a whole, including our ailing industrialized food system. At Rise Up Farms, we strive to be that small change. Our farm is only three acres, and while we provide produce to 60+ families a week, we all know there is a lot more people (particularly the poor) that need to have access to healthy, local foods. However, if you take a look at all of the small farms, co-ops, and farmers markets popping up in the community, then it starts to equate a bigger change.

While I was still intensely studying sustainability at IUSB, Prof. Keen had us read The Necessary Revolution by Peter Senge, Bryan Smith, and Nina Kruschwitz. In it, I remember a section that talked about people and organizations sort of passing the buck of sustainability off to the next person. But this is regarding more than just sustainability, this is about simply not doing your part because most of us think someone else will do it. That person stranded on the side of the road with a flat? No worries, someone else will be a good Samaritan and help. That plastic bottle being thrown into the trash rather than the recycling bin? Oh, some hip dumpster diver will save it, I’m sure, ‘cos that recycling bin is all the way at my house. The point of this blog is to know that while there are big problems, there are also small solutions that everyone can take in their everyday lives that can make big change. In other words….