Occupy Eugene Media Group » EUGENE AVANT GARDENERS

EUGENE AVANT GARDENERS

Avant-Gardeners is a platform for developing a food gift economy via garden work parties and other mutual aid. Several Occupiers are part of Eugene’s Avant-Gardeners efforts, helping to set up work parties in gardens. They try to empower everyone as organizers of the work parties, and to encourage a more collective society in general. Eugene Avant Gardeners invite communities to have work parties for installing gates in the fences that currently stand between yards…(is anyone ready for that?)

Avant-Gardeners first helped facilitate a work party on December 25, 2013 at CALC in the Whiteaker neighborhood. Since then it has helped facilitate dozens of work parties in Eugene and Portland, mostly in people’s yards. Yards are great locations for building trust and friendship. Work party hosts can choose to invite everyone by sharing their addresses publicly, or they can choose to have people RSVP by phone or personal message before receiving the address.

The platform in Eugene includes the Facebook group, “Eugene Avant-Gardeners,” and group email, eugeneavantgardeners@gmail.com. There is no hierarchy or formal membership – organizers give the tools to anyone who wishes to become an organizer.

Photos by Jasun Plaedo Wellman
Photos by Karen Moore
Photos by Jennefer