Planting Justice

With the goal of promoting and securing food sovereignty, economic justice, and community healing, this Oakland-based organization has built 450 edible permaculture gardens around the Bay Area. They employ community members and formerly incarcerated people with benefits and fair wages, and provide education to students, prisoners, and community members around food justice and urban farming.

They have partnered with the Insight Garden Program at San Quentin State Prison to give prisoners permaculture training before they make parole, and then hire them well above minimum wage when they are released. This re-entry program creates well-paying jobs, provides nutritional food, and offers peer support to former prisoners and has a 0% recidivism rate. Read more about this program on their website.

They are also collaborating with with the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, an indigenous women-run organization that seeks to reclaim and redistribute native land in the Bay Area, restoring indigenous land practices and restructure the ways all Bay Area residents live on and interact with Ohlone land. Together they are building an urban farm and nursery and an indigenous cultural sight that will be granted to the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust and passed on to future generations. For more information on this project, check their website.

1. You can support Planting Justice in multiple ways:

   • Donate to the fundraiser that will help them expand their nursery

   • Make a personal online donation to Planting Justice via their website

   • Buy plants from them directly!

   • Purchase merch, herbal tonics and salves, and honey from their online store

   • There are also volunteer opportunities, which vary from site to site. Volunteer guidelines have been altered to protect volunteers and staff from COVID, so check their website if you’re interested. Providing healthy food to the community is essential work!