Hello. My name is Jacob and this is my first blog post. I am working in the gardens of OAEC, a non-profit in northern california which also happens to be where I grew up. I am also working for CEJUDHCAN, or el Centro por la Justicia y Derechos Humanos de la Costa Atlantica de Nicaragua.
It was a great week in the garden, and you know if it’s this hot in may, June and July will be Maad. I get assigned different projects away from the other gardeners. Yesterday I prepared a bunch of beds for tomatoes and peppers as well as turned four compost piles. I found myself alone trying to remember all the words to Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman” and Kendrick Lamar’s “The Art of Peer Pressure”. Now that would be a collab I would spend money to hear.
On the other side of the internship, I spoke with Lottie Cunningham, an indigenous lawyer in Nicaragua. Unfortunately, while the Nicaraguan government insists COVID is not happening, it is. So while Ortega and his cronies plan “Love in the time of COVID” rallies, the communities she works with struggle to get any food and have run out of salt. I will be working with her organization to research beef supply chains from Nicaragua to the USA, as so much cattle in Nicaragua is destroying native land and the ultimate hope is to find leverage points to pressure the USA to stop buying beef that is grazing illegally on indigenous land.
Well friends, that’s about all. Ironically, however, I realized that my dad, in the 1980s, worked to stop Reagan’s Contra-Wars in Central America designed to oust “communist” regimes (which were actually democratically elected governments). Ortega was one such democratically elected leader who my father was helping. So here we are fifty or so years later and I, the son, am working against Ortega, who has now turned brutal dictator. I guess what they say in Batman is true “you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain”.
Peace and Love from CA,
Where we kill gophers with our bare hands,
And ate kale before it was cool,
And Don’t trust microwaves,
And always order gluten-free pizza,
God sometimes I just really miss the South,
Yours now and forever (forever?, forever ever? Forever ever ever?)
Jacob