Friday 09.26.03 -- dinner -- Lunchtimesummit -- organic / biodynamic and the question

Contents:

1. Where, when and what – practicalities of the dinner 09-26-03

2.1 How to recognize organic food?
2.2 What should we buy?
2.3 If not organic which term is to be used?
2.4 What is to be done?

3.0 about the lunchtimesummit --- a link to all lunches
3.1 The very basic idea
3.2 Arrivals/Departures

____________________________________________________
1. Where, when and what – practicalities of the dinner

(we did not send individual invites, so please come to the dinner if you feel like it)

Where:
241 Bedford Avenue, Buzzer#1, Jacob Robinette.
That is the L-train to Bedford Avenue, and then walk South on Bedford before you reach metropolitan. Just before the huge Bagel store on Bedford. Jacobs phone 718 963 30 70

When:
Friday, September 26th 2003 at 8:00 PM

What
Jacob will provide a good organic salad and another active member will provide quinoa or some grains

Please bring drinks, preferably wine or an organic* dish.

It is helpful if you reply so we have an idea of how many will attend.
And do not fear to come if you did not respond.
RSVP to Ayreen
Jobeuys@16beavergroup.org

____________________________________________________
2.1 How to recognize organic food?
Certified by whom? Since the state entered the certification process, things changed. It is not the small farmers who are committed to a certain way of farming because they believe in it. The corporation might have found a good market in the organic farming. The driving force behind the corporation is the profit as usual. A simple way to describe one of dilemmas of the name organic today.

____________________________________________________
2.2 What should we buy?
We have now answers, the dinner is more like a practical way to deal with the questions. The other problem is that organic is always more expensive. But does it have to be?. There are also some cooperatives where the organic food is not as expensive. We need to ask Jacob who is thinking about the space in between the artists who do not take care of themselves and the organic people who are on the other end of the spectrum. Is there such a thing as an organic artist?

____________________________________________________
2.3 If not organic which term is to be used?
Biodynamic is another term. If you pass by union square market Wednesday or Saturday, you can ask the farmers of the Hawthorne Valley Farm. " a Biodynamic farm is the antithesis of this industrialized model. Based on the insights of Swiss Born Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), Biodynamics seeks to bring back into balance the delicate relationship between human, plant and animal life, which (even in Steiner’s time) was becoming increasingly strained. His famous "agriculture course" (eight lectures and discussions pertaining to soil fertility and plant and animal health) forms the basis of Biodynamics, a sustainable and ecological model for agriculture that involves activating and balancing forces in the soil and in the surrounding nature."

____________________________________________________
2.4 What is to be done?
" The question arises, what should nutritional education consist in?
We must go organic / biodynamic among all classes of the population’ as theoreticians, as propagandists, as agitators, and as organizers. It is not enough to explain to the workers that they are politically oppressed through the bad nutrition that the upper class wants them to eat. Agitation must be conducted with regard to every concrete example of this oppression. Inasmuch as this oppression affects the most diverse classes of society, inasmuch as it manifests itself in the most varied spheres of life and activity – occupational, civic, personal, family, religious, scientific, etc, etc. –
(...)
In order to carry on agitation round concrete instances of oppression, surely these instances must be exposed."*

Organic/ biodynamic food not only for rich people! all classes of society should be able to enjoy it.

Call with 16 beaver! Bio dynamic for all!!!

*Quote by Vladimir Volnovik in "What is to be done?"

____________________________________________________
3. about the lunchtimesummit

http://www.16beavergroup.org/lunchtimesummit.htm

____________________________________________________
3.1 The very basic idea

- we all meet and eat in various cities, at different times on the same day (September 26th, 2003)
- we share an interest in socially engaged work, cultural production, art, politics, and the conviction that something(s) need to be done
- we use the month following our first summit to produce a book (16pages/city) which is to document the day and serve as a springboard for future actions, exchanges, and collaborations. the book will be published in early 2004, while videos, photos, texts, and other materials may be used to organize screenings, near future events, web-pages, which are coordinated in the various cities.

____________________________________________________
3.2 Arrivals/Departures

Lunchtime -- the time, around the middle of the day, when lunch is usually eaten

Summit -- a meeting between heads of government or other high ranking officials to discuss a matter of great importance

Lunchtime Summit - A meeting or encounter between people, around the middle of the day, in which matters of great importance are presented or discussed in the midst of eating.

Departure:
Lenin's description of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism now seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. After the collapse of the Soviet bloc the total spread of unregulated global capitalism is seen as inevitable. With this spread, a third of the world1s population lives on less than $2 a day and the poorest countries in the world owe a $422 billion debt that can never be paid. Yet, events in Seattle, Genoa, Cancun, and elsewhere show that global capitalism can be resisted.

The world as we know it today will change and must, but how? If change is necessary and inevitable, what questions and in their turn what solutions will prompt these changes? How can we provoke significant change and can any real shift happen under our present system? How can we prevent social change from turning into a situation where the same structures of power are re-established with different players at the top?

Arrival:
Summits have existed historically to bring people together to discuss and map out possible courses and solutions to great pressing issues, great problems. But often in these summits, the great problems are in advance, as the subject at hand. Consequently, they run the risk of assuming certainties, shared ground without taking into account that the very questions may differ for the participating parties. Another problem found with summits is that they propose and sometimes agree to solutions, resolutions, peace plans, road maps that are unrealistic or beyond the reach of the parties involved. Moreover, summits often leave the carrying out of action or possible solutions to others, it is often top-down.

Rather than overstate our summit as a radical act of revolutionary politics, or propose solutions which overreach our own capabilities. We propose instead to embark on a new type of summit, possibly a summit of the everyday. Instead of a summit comprised of high-ranking officials, or even heads of states, we can consider this a sort of poor man‚s summit. A summit that does not take place at a resort in Helsinki or Camp David, but in the very spaces we use, work in, visit, live in. These spaces could be public or private, living rooms, lunch rooms, cafeterias, university halls, cafes, museums, parks, airplanes, elevators. In addition, our summit gives space for actions as well as thought. Why privelege the talking part of the lunch over the eating part? What and how and if we eat or work with food, with "lunch", "breakfast", "dinner" may re-direct our attention to the revolutionary potential in food itself.

For this summit, we draw on the power of food and 3the lunch2, not only in its ability to bring people together, but also for the great possibilities and links it offers to the great social questions of our time (hunger, food insecurity, malnourishment, unfair or exploitive labor practices, pollution, waste management, environmental questions. Moreover, working with food allows one to also re-think hospitality, one of those original institutions of politics.

As a final note of arrival here, we suggest that as much as we are interested in the questions, solutions, and actions participants of this summit consider/propose/write/execute, we hope that there is care also taken to consider how? How this Lunchtime Summit might in a modest way mix our revolutionary ambitions with our everyday needs for collectivity, for thought, for fun, for food?