Wednesday, October 26, 2011

The Path Forward...

Our last action was a great success! Thank you so much to everyone who came out to support the farmworkers and to those you missed it, don't worry there will be plenty more actions to come, because we still have a long way to go. Check out the photos and the awesome video of our fair food ally Rob making up some fair food songs at the action (thanks Rob!). We were able to rally the troops and bring our message to Publix's front door step. We spoke to a number of people, who were completely unaware of the unjust working conditions that Publix knowingly continues to support. And unsurprisingly, Publix didn't have anything new to say, in-fact, they had nothing at all to say. I don't know how much longer Publix can ignore the injustices they support everyday, but I know we can keep going until they finally choose to do the right thing!!!


Fair Food Jacksonville will continue to move forward in supporting fair and sustainable food. We will gear up for another action in early 2012 and I am thinking we should bring our message to Publix in Jacksonville Beach. We will also be working on a new campaign in Northeast Florida, which will allow nonprofits (i.e. Food Not Bombs) the ability to distribute food in public. As it stands now, it is illegal to distribute food in Jacksonville without proper permitting, which is very unattainable for many nonprofits. Currently the city extends an exemption to churches and so there no reason they can extend the same rights to secular nonprofits. More on this coming soon, but if you want to be in the planning process for this campaign, be sure to contact James Taylor at tayj0016@gmail.com.

Lastly, to better organize ourselves we will be having monthly meetings every first Saturday of the month staring in December 2011. We will set a meeting time soon and the first meeting will take place in Riverside, but may change month to month so we can reach different areas of Jacksonville.

Thanks so much everyone,

In solidarity,
james









Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Occupy Jacksonville and Beyond

Greetings my friends!!

I attended the Occupy Jacksonville action at Hemming Plaza on October 8 and I must say, at first I had my doubts about the protest, but it turned out to be a great event! I was blown away by the diverse mixture of people. The power a group of people like that have is astoinishing. Hopefully we can keep this moving and  get the message out that governments are created to protect the rights of people, not corporations.

At the event I passed out lots of flyers for our upcoming action and talked to a variety of people. Many of the people there were very interested in the cause and I believe this will be our best turnout ever! We still have two weeks to go, so every needs to be promoting the event on Facebook and among their friends. If you would like flyers to pass out, please get in touch with me so we can meet up or I can send you a stack through the mail.

Thanks everyone and lets keep this momentum going!

Don't forget to sign up for the October 22 Publix action in Riverside

Photos from Occupy Jacksonville: