Steve Hughes, The Breathing Room’s urban farmer
On November 16th, 2018, friends and organizers of the Permaculture Action Network and Rising Appalachia gathered for a second consecutive Permaculture Action Day in the South Side of Chicago following Thursday’s action day at iGrow.
This time we mobilized the concert audience from Wednesday’s show at SPACE in Evanston to The Breathing Room, the healing and organizing hub of the Let Us Breathe Collective on Chicago’s South Side. Dozens of attendees came out for another opportunity to participate in a day of regenerative action in direct solidarity with those creating their own spaces for collective liberation through their own self-determination.
The #LetUsBreathe Collective is an alliance of artists and activists organizing programs and projects through a creative lens to imagine a world without prisons and police.
“We organize artists to love and transform themselves, their families, their communities, and their cities through radical imagination and healing. The Collective produces cultural events and direct actions that disrupt oppressive systems, amplify marginalized voices, and serve people and communities most directly harmed by mass incarceration, police violence, and systemic injustice,”
reads LetUsBreatheCollective.com
“We believe that people and communities are able to govern themselves peacefully when they have access to and sovereignty over quality education, housing, art, healthcare, nutrition, useful and prosperous livelihood, and skills for nonviolently resolving harm and conflict.”
Across the street from The Breathing Room is a plot of land that has been stewarded by Steve Hughes, founder of OTIS Fresh Market and a director at Let Us Breathe Collective. Steve has been tending to this plot, a once empty urban lot, for the past few years, single-handedly for the most part. He turned 100 tons of organic matter into a rich layer of topsoil on which he has dry-farmed organic produce, utilized vermiculture techniques to produce food for restaurants, implemented and sustained a community farm, and, perhaps most impressively, dry-grown watermelon.
Steve harvesting
The morning of the Action Day opened with a group circle that was filled with introductions to community members, projects, project leads, and an introduction to The Breathing Room community agreements led by local organizer and nutrition enthusiast, Cherisse Jackson.
Morning circle at the action day
Projects for the day that took place in the garden plot maintained by Steve included building a street-facing farm stand designed with a rainwater catchment system. This system was primarily built with repurposed lumber from the community centric Chicago Rebuilding Exchange (Rx). The design will allow Steve to sell produce directly from his farmstand and will store rainwater for his farm. The water catchment farm stand was asked for in-part to further actualize the environmental justice and food justice aspects of the Breathing Room collective.
Several cold frame boxes were built with repurposed windows to let the sun shine in, veggies were harvested, pathways cleared, and Steve was presented with the workforce he had been waiting for. “I feel like its my birthday,” he said.
Cold frame build
A celebrated result of Permaculture Action Days are the tangible skills attendees can gain while learning in a community setting. Those who came out to The Breathing Room were able to learn and practice the process of bending conduit. Bent-conduit low-tunnels were implemented and covered with translucent plastic for seasonal extension. This skill can be applied to many trades including those that deal with electrical wiring such as installing and activating a solar panel array.
Inside the Breathing Room, an upstairs room was emptied and repurposed for an indoor food producing space, just down the hall from a music production room for neighborhood youth. Seeding and potting tables with mesh sifts and soil catchment features were constructed. Finally, a large store room was organized and inventoried by an incredibly motivated and detail-oriented attendee. (Thank you! You know who you are.)
Downstairs in the community room, free workshops took place throughout the duration of the day including, “Calling Police During Mental Health Crises” w/ Timmy Châu of Alternatives. “This workshop is a step to build our capacity to act,” said Châu. Participants were versed in the Do’s and Don’ts of how to be an active bystander with steps such as making your presence known, taking cues from victims, and not assuming someone else will take responsibility.
A workshop facilitator presents inside The Breathing Room
As the sunlight began to fade, a drum and dance workshop mobilized from the indoor Community space to the farm in an effort to keep spirits high and playful while building projects came to a close. The workshop was taught by active Breathing Room community member, E’a The Wholistic Artist. She has been drumming for 11 years as one of her many creative and healthful passions.
Drumming keeps the people moving in the cold weather
Special thanks again to Chef Mel and Nori, as well as to Cherisse for providing food as medicine to keep us nourished and energized. Thank you to Carrie Lierl for working with notable effort to acquire copious amounts of produce and dessert donations. Thank you to the Breathing Room Collective for inviting us to your insightful and tremendously creative recurring open mic which doubled as an after party to the day of action.
“The network of staffing and the openness of ALL has been an enlightened experience to say the least. It has been a revelatory experience about how others care,” Steve Hughes said in regard to the Permaculture Action Day.
Working with Steve and the Breathing Room community has been one of the highest honors our team has been graced with. The gratitude, inspiration, comradery, and humility we have felt in this partnership are unquantifiable. We are all better for it, and we thank you.
Written by Hillary Walton and Michael Beck, Permaculture Action Network organizers
Photos taken by Syd Woodward of Guayaki’s Come To Life Media Team
Read the article on the previous day of action at iGrow in Chicago.
