The Film, Occupy The Farm - 01.06.15

Tuesday January 6, 3pm EST: On today’s show, Mitchell features the film Occupy The Farm, with Round Table guestsTodd Darling, the film’s director/producer, Effie Rawlings, andGopal Dayanenian, the film’s spokesperson and one of the protesters named in the civil suit,

They will be discussing the film, Occupy The Farm, a Documentary by Todd, which tells the story of a community’s fight to save UC Berkeley’s public land for urban farming.

When 200 farmers march to the gates of the last farmland in California’s urban EastBay, they didn’t carry signs protesting University of California’s plans to build a shopping mall. Instead, they carried tents, tools and 15,000 seedlings. They clipped the padlock off the gate and marched onto the fields. What happens next will change the fate of the land and introduce a new strategy for activism. From tilling soil to police raids, from lawsuits to overflowing harvests, as well as cooperation between the “1% and the 99%”.

The action of Occupy The Farm was Effie’s idea, Ashoka was the farm planner, and Gopal was in charge of the messaging of the action. All three of them attended or graduated from UC Berkeley, the public institution that owned the land.

The film plays the next night – Jan 7 in Seattle at the Seattle International Film Festival Center, and late January Santa Barbara, Davis, and Monterey. The film will be in theaters until at least the early Spring.

Watch the trailer:

Todd Darling lives in Venice, CA. He directed and produced “Occupy The Farm”, 2014; “Black Rock Horse” (30 minute short) 2012 about a monumental art project at Burning Man; “A Snow Mobile for George” (2009) a cross country trip with a smoky, used snowmobile encounters stories of how people are effected by environmental deregulation.

For television he has also directed shows for: MTV, Seasons,1,2 and 3 of “Laguna Beach: The Real OC”; Fox “Murder in Small Town X”; and USA “Farmclub” a weekly music show.

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Gopal, MG Staff Collective Member & MG Planning Committee Member, has been involved in fighting for social, economic, environmental and racial justice through organizing & campaigning, teaching, writing, speaking and direct action since the late 1980’s. Gopal is an active trainer with and serves on the boards of The Ruckus Society and the Center for Story-based Strategy (formerly smartMeme).

 

He also serves on the advisory boards of the International Accountability Project, and Catalyst Project. Gopal works at the intersection of ecology, economy and empire.Gopal has been a campaigner for Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition on human rights and environmental justice in the high-tech industry and the Oil Campaigner for Project Underground, a human rights and environmental rights organization which supported communities resisting oil and mining exploitation around the world. Gopal has been active in many people powered direct action movements, including the Global Justice/Anti-Globalization Movement, Direct Action to Stop the War, Mobilization for Climate Justice, Take Back the Land, and Occupy.Gopal is the father of two young direct action junkies, Ila Sophia and Kavi Samaka Orion, and lives in an intentional community with 9 adults, 8 kids and a bunch of chickens.

 

Effie is a community organizer & urban farmer in San Francisco and the East Bay. Effie engages in the struggle for food and seed sovereignty through direct action and popular education. She graduated UC Berkeley and parents and grandparents owned and operated a corn-seed farm in Illinois. It was in her family until the early/mid 90s.

She currently organizes with Occupy the Farm, Hormigas Organicas, the US Food Sovereignty Alliance, the Friends of the MST (Landless Worker’s Movement of Brazil), and Movement Generation’s Political Home.