Willie Knows How It Is Grown

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/willie-nelson/occupy-food_b_1299401.html

Yet again Willie Nelson has not let us down when it comes to our food, but he may have tapped the organic whiskey river that will push him to the forefront of our minds for good.  And who better to marry the Farm Aid crowd to the OWS movement? As his fans can attest, he as long been on the outside of the establishment and a member of the 99% before it was the cool to be a member.

Nelson's reaching out is genius in an organizing sense because it puts two group together that compliment each other, plus it brings some creditability to the OWS movement that has been lacking.  Farm Aid and the organic trend are well established in the organising community and have a good base of operation.  They have celebrity that the OWS movement does not.  It has the administration in place that other movements would kill for, plus it has years of experience.  OWS can benefit from this in being able to latch on and ride the wave.  The Organic movement benefits with new blood.

Willie Knows How It Is Grown

The real genius is in bringing the real 99% to the 99% table.  The OWS was predominately a urban movement that was almost solely based on urban needs and problems.  Even in today's world urban 99%ers do not face near the problems of non-urban 99%ers (I cannot pronounce rural well even when I am typing so I will use non-urban)  in severity and scope.  Non-urban poverty, joblessness, or any other problem the OWS highlighted is almost wholesale worse than the same problem faced by urbanites.  This joining of the bottom of the 99% while provide an even louder collective voice to the table.

Finally, does it not just make simple sense to job the two movements together?  It is almost like joining long lost siblings.  Before the urban 99%ers lost their jobs or became marginalized, did they not go out of the way to by organic everything?  If you go to a Whole Food Market or Eathfare it will mostly be full of those that make up the core of the OWS movement.  Now, with a heighten awareness of the Occupy Your Food Movement the reality of growing organic foods even closer to the urban 99%ers.  Having some experience being around the predominately urban, it is pretty obvious that while they go out of their way to buy organic, free range, fair trade goods, they have little clue to the growing/raising/trading process that goes into the products they are buying. That is after all the goal of any movement right? Make the connections between those doing to fighting and those they are fighting for.