My Visit to "Occupy the Farm" at Gill Tract in Albany
I visited the Gill Tract "Family Farm" events on Saturday, April 28. After reading the press about this latest occupation of University of California property, I was expecting to find Occupy anarchists with bandanas covering their faces and planting marijuana. Instead, what I found were hundreds of local residents and UC Berkeley students and alumni planting rows of crops in an event that looked like the Solano Stroll meets the Ardenwood Farm . It was a very laid-back event, with music like Buffalo Springfield's "For What Its Worth" playing the background, while Albany residents and their children learned how to plant corn, beans, tomatoes, and other crops. The 200 people on the Gill Tract when I was there from 1:30pm-3:30pm were enjoying the unusually warm day and attending farming workshops and listening to UC Berkeley Professors Miguel Altieri and Laura Nader during the "teach-out" sessions. UC Berkeley alum and Occupy the Farm organiz...