The Green ($$) Festival??!...

by Ashley Adams/PNN Community Journalist

The day was clear, fresh, the air smelled sweet and even clean after the bay’s first rain in 5 months. The sun was shining, and the sky was a crystalline blue with puffy white clouds that did not threaten rain, rather a friendly passing by. On a day such as this, I chose to spend it inside at the Green Festival. The festival was located at the Concourse Exhibition Center. When we got to the door I dodged the dude handing out a shopping bag with a free issue of the Chronicle. Although the shopping bag could’ve been handy later on, from collecting pamphlets, fliers, and brochures of useful information or products. The convention center was filled with booths and people and yummy smells and free samples of yerba mate’ , organic chocolate, and much more. There were booths that sold products, from sweatshop free hand made clothing, to hand crafted wood carvings from Africa, to herbal elixirs from extracted from the ocean to solar paneling for your home or business. There was an area designated for people to sit down and talk, or write ideas for discussion, or brainstorm. Also, three areas were created for speakers to be heard through out the day.

The speakers I listened to were Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now which airs 9am on KPFA, 94.1 FM, and Starhawk, a visionary, activist, and author. Both talks were packed with people. Amy spoke on corporate media during wartime and how they are silencing voices of dissent.
She believes strongly that the people need to take control of the media...and support independent media.

Starhawk spoke about several topics with the main theme on changing our systems to support the Earth’s natural ecosystem of which we are a part of. She began her talk with some facts and figures of how imbalanced we are in the present. She said that right now in this country, 13,000 of the world’s richest people have MORE wealth than 20 MILLION of this nations poorest people. It is that bad. So she asks us: "How do we change the story? We change the story by not buying into it’s framework." By the end of Starhawk’s talk my brain was buzzin with thoughts and ideas. I left the platform where she spoke and walked through the festival booths and started asking myself questions: How does poverty fit into this picture? Looking around I saw many cool companies and products that I wanted to support, but the truth is I only had five dollars in my pocket and if it wasn’t for the free pass that I was given, I could not have attended the event. The Green Fest was a fair price, $10 a day, and if you rode your bike, it was $5, but of course I drove to the Green Fest! Once I got on in was wishing I had more money to act upon the "I want..." impulse.

There were so many great ideas circulating under the roof of the convention center, but none that I saw that related to the many, many, people living in poverty and/or without houses. I do not expect any one person or group to have all the answers, we all need each other to build solutions.
We all deserve organic food, filtered water, and chemical free skin products, but overall, it seems like a movement for people with money. I did not visit every single booth, so I may have missed a place with information or ideas relating to my concern for a huge portion of people that were not being represented. As I left the event my concerns expanded...

A middle-aged woman asked if I would wait at the door, as she tried a $40 battery free flashlight outside where it was dark. I let her back in when she was finished... behind her was a man who could be stereotyped as homeless, with tattered clothes, a beard, a beanie, he was standing near the door, watching the festival wind down from the outside looking in. As the woman waked in, he tried to open the door, for him to come in, she pulled the door towards her, to seal it shut, while yelling "NO! NO! NO! YOU CAN’T COME IN HERE." In my mind I was hearing "NO! BAD DOG. BAD DOG." through her condescending and disrespectful voice tone.

The man just stood there, saddened, as did I. He stared at her for a moment, then made eye contact with me. I wanted to do something, but I didn’t know what. I wanted the lady to know "THAT IS A HUMAN BEING YOU’RE TALKING TO." But I watched her walk off instead. When I went to the door to talk to the man, and invite him in, he was gone. I stood around for a moment dazed and teary eyed with some major questions on my mind. How can we take this movement to our sisters and brothers who live with poverty or who do not have houses? How can ‘green’ living be accessible to everyone? How can we make progress in a ‘sustainable’ way if life if we are not thinking about poverty?