Prisoners Growing Sagebrush by Jeff Clark, Bureau of Land Management of Oregon and Washington is licensed under a CC BY 2.0 license.
"I look at the community I’m working with [prisoners], and I think, 'What’s missing is nature and beauty, the beauty that can be made with our hands.'"
-- Cathrine Sneed
Moving students toward thinking about the benefits of and proactive measures for engaging with agricultural processes counters feelings of helplessness that can result from learning about how powerful agroindustry is.
Solitary Gardens Website: This social practice art project facilitated by lead organizer and visionary jackie sumell "turns solitary confinement cells into garden beds that are the same size and blue-print that many others spend decades in. The contents (plants, flowers and herbs) of the prison-cell-turned-garden-bed are designed by prisoners serving their sentences in isolation through proxies on the outside. Central to this project is a call to end the inhumane conditions of solitary confinement, simultanously inspiring compassion necessary to dismantle systems of punishment and control."
Put yourselves in the shoes of one of these authors. Write an essay to another of these authors with whom you connect on some points. Discuss what the connections are in both articles and what drew you to write to them. How would you feel, given whose shoes you are filling, about what the other author you chose thinks and does or promotes doing?