By Judi McLeod ——Bio and Archives--May 22, 2019
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There’s a troll running loose in this year’s gardens. Not the tacky pink flamingoes or those evil little garden gnomes suddenly come to life, but Sen. Bernie Sanders’ stupido protégé Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , the ever loquacious (AOC)
Ever since making the brilliant discovery that green shoots sprout up even in Bronx communal gardens, AOC has been telling green thumbs what to grow—and what to ban. “The New York Democrat, who introduced the proposal to tackle climate change by radically transforming the economy, posted a series of Instagram videos filmed in her home state talking about community gardens as a “core component” of her proposal. (Fox News)Some of us thought “community gardens” went out with hippie communes, until, that is, a casting call of 10,000 delivered New York District 14 Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to the House. The one-time bartender, who now ladles out gardening advice like boarding house soup, wants no reminders of “colonialism” in the backyard gardens of anybody else.
“What I love too is growing plants that are culturally familiar to the community. It’s so important,” she said as she filmed a community garden in the Bronx. (New York) “So that’s really how you do it right. That is such a core component of the Green New Deal is having all of these projects make sense in a cultural context, and it’s an area that we get the most pushback on because people say, ‘Why do you need to do that? That’s too hard.’”
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“She went on to add that growing cauliflower in such gardens is a “colonial approach” and the reason communities of color oppose environmentalist movements. “But when you really think about it -- when someone says that it’s ‘too hard’ to do a green space that grows Yucca instead of, I don’t know, cauliflower or something -- what you’re doing is you’re taking a colonial approach to environmentalism,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “That is why a lot of communities of color get resistant to certain environmentalist movements because they come with the colonial lens on them.” “Ocasio-Cortez has emerged as the key Democratic voice on how to tackle climate change, going as far as to slam leading presidential candidate Joe Biden over reports that he’s exploring a “middle-ground” approach to tackling the issue."In bygone eras children were told by their parents to “eat your veggies or no dessert”. Will the kids of AOC’s backward era now be told, “Don’t eat cauliflower or you will grow up to be a no-good “colonialist”?
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