Why the “Cooperative Gardens Commission”
by Nate Kleinman
Co-Director - Experimental Farm Network
The seed for the Cooperative Gardens Commission was planted with a post on the Experimental Farm Network instagram page on March 18th, 2020, days after COVID-19 shutdowns began. The first line blared “Corona Victory Gardens!” beneath photos of old propaganda posters from both world wars, followed by a brief polemic calling for people to grow more food this year — to create “victory gardens” to feed people during our coming fight against the virus — and an invitation to a conference call two days later to initiate an organized “Corona Victory Gardens” effort. I thought it was a good idea, but I did not anticipate the outpouring of support and excitement that followed.
Some 130 people called in to our first organizing call. Participants included leaders of important seed companies, non-profits, and community organizations, along with concerned individuals from across the US. A few voices spoke out against the name “Corona Victory Gardens,” mainly due to its militaristic connotations. I left the call convinced we needed to have a longer discussion on the topic, but I still thought it was a good name. I believed that it would capture imaginations by tapping into nostalgia for the “victory gardens” of World War II, which are widely remembered as a positive expression of resilience and patriotism. But immediately after the call I opened an email from Leah Penniman and Larisa Jacobson of Soul Fire Farm. I had reached out to them asking them to join our effort, and they responded in part by explaining to me some of the untold history of “victory gardens.” I was quickly convinced that — while the nostalgia and enthusiasm for “victory gardens” was real and potentially useful for us — the name had to go.
Manzanar War Relocation Center in California, photo CCBY Ansel Adams 1943
I didn’t know about the deep historical connection between the “victory gardens” movement of World War II and one of the darkest chapters in our country’s history: what is euphemistically called the “Japanese internment”, characterized by forced removal, brutal mistreatment, and theft of land and other property — collective punishment and harsh imprisonment on a horrifying scale. When President Roosevelt decreed the removal of all Japanese-American people from the entire West Coast in early 1942, it swiftly led to widespread food shortages. Japanese-American farmers produced some 40% of fresh vegetables in California at the time. It was those food shortages which actually kickstarted the iconic WWII “victory gardens” movement. Perhaps not coincidentally, by some estimates “victory gardens” ultimately ended up producing around 40% of all vegetables consumed in the US during the latter years of the war. Our task, it seemed to me, was to find a way to duplicate the success of the “victory gardens” moment, but to do it in the right way.
Contributed by Sarah Medina
On our second conference call, three days after the first one, some 160 people turned up. After I shared the concerns about alienating Japanese-Americans with the name — also noting the rise in anti-Asian bigotry and violence at the time — we spent a good portion of the call debating what to call ourselves. Some other proposals included Solidarity Gardens, Prosperity Gardens, Sovereignty Gardens, and Food Security Gardens. Ultimately we settled on Cooperative Gardens Commission. “Cooperative” draws a contrast with “victory,” because it’s not about defeating anyone, but working together. “Co-op Gardens” is a quick and easy shorthand (and coopgardens.com was available). “Cooperative” is not a highly politicized word, and it evokes good feelings among many farmers — whom we knew we needed to join our effort — both because of the Cooperative Extension System, and because farming cooperatives have such a rich history. I liked the acronym “CGC” (“CDC does medicine. CGC does food.”), and that “Cooperative Garden Commission” sounds very official, almost like it could be a government agency. (This was part of the successful strategy of the National War Garden Commission during World War I — which sounded even more official, but was actually a non-governmental organization as well.)
Some on that second call thought we were overreacting, but most of us quickly came to understand that “Corona Victory Gardens” was a deeply inappropriate name for our cause. The connection between Victory Gardens and the oppressive treatment of Japanese Americans may not be widely known among most Americans, but it is part of the collective memory of many Asian Americans. The last thing we wanted to do was alienate a broad segment of the population. As a collective, we understood that without the participation and leadership of BIPOC people (Black, Indigenous, & People of Color) in this nascent movement, we would surely fail to achieve our goals. In retrospect, I’m glad the name change became a part of the story of this movement. I view it as an opportunity: Not only does it give us a chance to teach people about our country’s real history, and to demonstrate what it looks like for a majority-white organization to really listen to the concerns of BIPOC allies, but it also gives us an opportunity to draw a parallel to today’s migrant workers — especially in California — who are responsible for so much of the fruit and vegetables we eat, as Japanese-American farmers were in 1942. People of Latin American descent make up 18% of the US population, but they make up 83% of all field laborers (and only own 3% of all farms), with the vast majority of them being born outside the US.
Migrant workers were already living in fear before the pandemic — threatened by enforcement crackdowns, mass deportation, and child separation. Now they labor on despite the additional fear of the virus, and with far too many working in unsafe conditions. The same is true for workers in other parts of the food supply chain, including factories, slaughterhouses, and meat-packing plants. As the pandemic brought food shortages and even rationing to US supermarkets for the first time in recent memory, the news media began coming to us to tell the story of CGC and our efforts to help more people grow their own food. We were able to use that media interest (no doubt piqued by the phrase “victory gardens”) to talk about the real history of our country and highlight the structural injustices that still exist in our society today. If we hadn’t changed our name, we would never have been in the position to help get those critical truths into the public consciousness.
1943, Ansel Adams photos of the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California and the Japanese-Americans interned there during World War II.
“When offering the collection to the Library in 1965, Adams said in a letter, "The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and dispair [sic] by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment....”