By now you’ve all noticed that there was no print edition of The Aggie last Friday. Hopefully all those notes on the front page prepared you for the shock. You’ve also probably read our reasoning behind the cuts (if you haven’t you can check them out online at theaggie.org/article/2474). I’m also pretty sure a lot of you are wondering what this means for The Aggie and other college newspapers down the road.

Looking for some outside perspectives, I talked to Bryan Thomas, the editor in chief of UC Berkeley’s Daily Californian.

“I’m of the firm belief that a newspaper will have a home at the college campus for the next several decades at minimum,” he said in an e-mail interview. “Our audience is unique, and our ability to captivate an important market segment is invaluable.“

This belief is probably a safe bet, for the most part. College newspapers have it easy in that, unlike a metropolitan newspaper or community publication, they have relatively large circulations in a very small area. Furthermore, college newspaper readership is generally engaged and interested in the articles appearing in their university‘s publication.

Until the last two or three years when the economy started to nosedive (it varies depending on which part of the country you ask), advertising revenue for college newspapers was relatively stable. Think about it: what advertiser wouldn’t want to buy ad space in a publication read almost exclusively by people within the 18 to 35 year old demographic?

Because of this and the eventual repair of the economy (knock on wood), I am inclined to agree with Bryan. What form the newspaper will be in, however, is something nobody‘s really sure of.

Newspapers will be partially online (as they are now). Newspapers will be completely online. Newspapers as we know them won’t even exist and there will be a series of news gathering blogs (or something) to which people subscribe.

All of these are possibilities and all have their pros and cons. The print edition of a newspaper is certainly nice, as most people find it easier to read books and articles in a paper format rather than an electronic one. Many people will wax nostalgic for hours about reading their Sunday morning papers if you give them the chance (Hi Dad!). That said, the printing costs of a newspaper are incredibly inefficient. Putting articles online allows readers to see today’s news rather than yesterday’s and at absolutely no cost to them.

The downside of publishing online only, at least from a business perspective, is that ad space is much less plentiful. You must also be more careful about your advertisements; online advertising has a much more personal, “in-your-face” quality which, if we’re being honest, is really obnoxious. As for blogs… who knows? Some have been very successful but the majority tend to reinforce the belief that maybe not everyone should be allowed access to a computer.

The fact that this discussion is even taking place represents how far the field has come in such a short time.

“Journalism has become much faster and [more] diverse,” Thomas said. “When I started [at The Daily Californian] four years ago, our one focus was to put out the paper by our midnight press deadline. Now we focus on updating content throughout the day, producing podcasts, slideshows and videos and keeping our blogs current.“

But is that a good thing?

“It’s hard to say whether these changes are entirely negative or positive,” he said. “Certainly the increased demands are more stressful and reduce the time that we can focus on longer-term and investigative reporting. Yet we are also accomplishing our core mission of providing important information to the community in a timely manner much more efficiently.“

The tendency among college newspapers to attempt to turn their websites into multimedia information portals is not unexpected. Ever since the advent of YouTube, the pressure to have online video reporting has increased, primarily because it’s much easier now (ditto for podcasts and audio content). The multitude of information mediums also allows college newspapers to compensate for any reductions to their traditional output.

What this means to you is that in the next few years you should probably expect to get more of your news online, even from your college newspaper. The Aggie, along with other dailies, will obviously print for as many days a week as it can for as long as it can.

But you’d be well advised to check out our website.

RICHARD PROCTER wants to thank Bryan Thomas for chatting with him, all the Aggie hoops fans for showing up to the game against Pacific on Saturday and the NFL for giving us an unofficial national holiday. Ask him why you didn’t make this list at editor@theaggie.org.

Ever since I can remember, it’s been a fact of life that my mother’s father, or Papou as we call him, likes to talk to strangers. And not just a quick “How you doing” to someone he passes in the street. I’m talking the full-on “you don’t know me but I’m about to talk to you like we’re friends” kind of thing. He’ll pause in the middle of a restaurant, walk up to a table where a parent is sitting with two smiling children, and remark how blessed the parent is: “you are a lucky man.”

One time we were at the stop sign at the end of my cul-de-sac, waiting to make a left turn. Suddenly, this teenager in a massive truck made a U-turn right in front of us and parked his car on the street perpendicular to mine. My Papou pulled up right next to him, rolled down my window and said, “That was a very impressive U-turn! I didn’t think you could do it, but that was well done.” Most other people would have yelled, flipped the bird, or simply made the left turn and sped away, but not my Papou.

Some may say that makes him eccentric, some might say he’s a deck of cards with an extra joker, but most would agree his behavior is out of the ordinary.

Earlier this week, I accidentally waved to a complete stranger who simply looked like someone I knew, the confusion on that person’s face, left me feeling a little sad that we are so intent on maintaining our personal comfort zones, that being kind, or even (gasp) jolly to strangers is so outside the norm.

So I decided to go for it. I began to wave, or smile at random people walking by. I complimented strangers on outfits or other things, and then made mental notes of the responses. There were looks of confusion, a few looked backward to see if maybe I was waving, or talking to someone behind them, and of course some people ignored me completely. But I came to realize that their response wasn’t what was important. I had gone out of my comfort zone, risked embarrassment, and I felt pretty good about it.

We live in an uncertain time. We are bombarded with news broadcast that tell us the economy is collapsing, and none of us will ever find jobs, we are told to be afraid of climate change, terrorism, even peanut butter can kill you these days. Maybe we could all do with a little kindness from strangers. Sometimes I think we’re all so afraid of the unknown, the unfamiliar, or simply so focused on our own realities we barely notice what is happening all around us.

Think about it: we Aggies get into bike accidents all the time. Sure, sometimes they’re the result of trying to ride with coffee in one hand and a cell phone in the other, and sometimes accidents just happen. But other times they’re because we aren’t paying attention to the world around us. Maybe if we all lifted our heads, we might see that person about to run into us.

Perhaps the same is true of kindness to, and interaction, with strangers. If we take the time to notice them, who knows what we might find. When people sign yearbooks, they often write “don’t be a stranger.” Why? Because being a stranger just isn’t as fun to have in one’s life. Maybe that can change.

When I have a bad day, all it takes is a text from a friend to make me look up, smile and keep putting one foot in front of the other. After all the waving to strangers, I wonder if the post-text smiles are just because someone took the time to send them and say hello. Everyone has bad days, and good days, and it is hard to know just by walking by someone which kind of day it has been. Either way, a smile can go a long way and I intend to try and make sure that I spread as many smiles and nods as possible. I’ll never know if they were warmly welcomed or simply ignored, but if I smile then maybe that person will smile too and their world might get just a little bit brighter.

EMILY KAPLAN thinks graduation registration has begun and a John Mayer style “quarter life crisis” isn’t out of the question. Any seniors wishing to commiserate and pretend the calendar doesn’t exist should e-mail her at eckaplan@ucdavis.edu.

    Sex education in public schools has been a contentious topic in America for decades. The debate generally comes down to whether or not students should be told about ways of maintaining their sexual health besides completely abstaining from sexual activity until marriage. This column is an attempt to take the basic arguments of the abstinence only machine and put them in a much less controversial setting, one which removes the stigma associated with sexual activity and puts them a much more banal context. Hopefully, by doing so I will expose just how ridiculous the line of reasoning proponents of abstinence-only sex education use truly is. So, without further prefacing, I give you the argument for drivers’ education.
    As President Obama makes himself at home in the White House and begins to address the myriad problems facing the country in this dark hour, I sincerely hope that he takes a moment to reflect on the plight of our nation’s children and their safety. Young people today are faced with an increasingly dangerous world where threats to their health come from all directions at all times. Drugs, violence, disease and terrorism know no age boundaries. Obama must therefore make a vital stand to ensure the safety of America’s youth: He must end the mixed messages our children receive from their high school instructors. On the one hand, they’re told to wait. On the other, they’re told ways to improve safety. I’m talking, of course, about driving.
    Drivers’ education, or “drivers’ ed” as it is commonly called, is a serious problem in this country’s education system, and the current curriculum of so-called “comprehensive” drivers’ education classes is not acceptable on any grounds. Comprehensive drivers’ education classes do nothing more than entice students into driving. By giving teens the idea that limiting the risks of driving is even possible, these classes unwittingly cause teens to believe they are immune to the risks entirely. I hope to point out some of the most blatant errors in the classes, but more importantly, debase the entire rationale for comprehensive drivers’ education in public schools while making the case for its removal and replacement.
    Now, I’m not opposed to the act of driving; only to underage driving and the programs that endorse it. When done by the right people in the proper context, driving is very useful and can even be therapeutic. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve found myself stressed, indoors and restless and known that all I needed was a good drive to get my spirits up and clear my head. So although I will provide some rather disturbing statistics, which may seem to implicate driving itself as unacceptably dangerous, do not walk away with that impression. My goal is to explain why the current trend in drivers’ education is threatening America, not why driving itself is.
    The details of comprehensive drivers’ education deserve some attention. Comprehensive drivers’ education is anything but; it is a complete misnomer, as there is nothing comprehensive about it. Students are briefly told that refraining from driving is the only 100 percent effective way to avoid accidents, and are then explicitly instructed on the nature and use of various supposed safety measures. The average comprehensive drivers’ education curriculum uses only 4 percent of its material to advise students not to drive, whereas 28 percent is devoted to the use of various methods of accident prevention. This dichotomy is notorious for producing confusion in the minds of our nation’s youth.
    At the tender ages of 15, 16 and 17, children are not capable of understanding complex messages from adults about such a multifaceted issue. To compensate, instructors often oversimplify. For example, I attended a drivers’ education class in Northern California where the instructor attempted to reduce the issue down to these three sentences: “Driving carries inherent, serious and potentially deadly risks that can only be avoided entirely by refraining from driving. However, driving also has important emotional, physical and social benefits, and the risks involved can be mitigated if addressed properly. Should you decide to begin driving, it is important that you understand the ways you can protect yourself before, during and after the fact.” After such a negligent overview she went on in detail about numerous accident prevention methods. Again, this is not an acceptable message to send our children. First they’re told that driving is potentially deadly, and that the only way to avoid this risk is to refrain from it. But then they’re told that it’s possible to lower the risk involved, as though that makes the inherent risks acceptable. What are our children supposed to think? That driving is dangerous or safe? That it’s only deadly under specific circumstances or that it is possible to avoid the risks altogether? These questions remain unanswered in the minds of our teens.
    Children are, after all, just children, and they need adults to make sense of the world for them. And, when it comes to driving, this means that they need “directive education.” As Dr. James Datsun from Focus On the Family Van states in his drivers’ education “Myth and Truth” FAQ, “Children need education that points them to a specific outcome. If drivers’ education is taught in a seat belt-plus-forbearance format, the message is mixed and nondirective. Students are left confused as to the best choice.” Unless children are given a clear message, they walk away with nothing.
    Or do they? What if they walk away with something far more sinister than nothing? What if they walk away with lies, with misinformation, with a dangerous disregard for the perilous world around them? Unfortunately, this scenario is all too common, and brings me to the central tool of comprehensive drivers’ education programs: The seat belt.
    Seat belt, safety belt, buckle buddy, lap wrap … call it what you will, but seat belts have been hailed as the saving grace of safe driving since their widespread distribution in the 1960s. Seat belts are not something you can just slap on and expect a consequence-free driving experience from. There are still very real risks to be dealt with, but seat belts blur those risks and give a false sense of security. And seat belts make driving more dangerous precisely because of this false sense of security. Numerous studies have been published which demonstrate the correlation between seat belt use and accident frequency. For example, economist Sam Peltzman found in a 1975 study that seat belts produce both more accidents and an increase in the number of deaths per accident. Accidents involving seat belts are likely to be more severe because drivers pay less attention, drive faster and are more likely to be negligent than they otherwise would. In other words, drivers adjust their behavior when seat belts are involved.
    Adjusting behavior due to changes in perceived risk is known as risk compensation. Risk compensation is something we all do naturally. If something appears more dangerous to us, we approach it more cautiously. If something seems safer, we’re more likely to take risks. So when someone who has been told that seat belts make driving safer buckles up, he or she is more likely to be reckless. This recklessness becomes even more dangerous when you consider the lies being fed to our children regarding seat belts.
    Students are led to believe that seat belts are 100 percent effective. However, the bolts that hold seat belts in place are only strength tested to 224 kilonewtons. The force of two 3,100-pound vehicles (such as two Toyota Camrys) colliding head on at 65 mph is 3,150 kilonewtons. That’s 12 times more forceful than the test threshold. Does this constitute safety? I would think not. Furthermore, there are a number of criminal law suits across the nation against seat belt makers alleging faulty seat belts and seat belt parts.
    But that’s not all. Seat belts also lose effectiveness when exposed to heat and UV radiation from the sun. They can slip off or even break under the kinds of pressures associated with normal driving. What’s worse, inexperienced drivers often have no idea that their seat belts have malfunctioned and continue revving away until it’s too late. Given all this, can we really trust seat belts to protect our children from themselves?
    Now, the seat belt is obviously the cornerstone of the comprehensive drivers’ education program, but there are a number of other “safety” devices children learn about in the classroom. Perhaps the most taken for granted and most primitive of all is the emergency brake. Activating the e-brake, or “pulling up,” is the simplest and least effective form of accident prevention, yet students are told about it nonetheless. And while we’re on the topic of brakes, anti-lock brakes are now standard on almost all vehicles. Anti-lock brakes shorten stopping distance, thus encouraging the driver to follow more closely. Often too closely. These kinds of brakes are notorious for causing risk compensation, as are ubiquitous and seemingly helpful items such as windshield wipers, horns, brights and tire chains. These devices are supposed to make the driver safer in adverse conditions, but all they do is encourage the driver to thrust themselves into those conditions in the first place. Combined with the tendency of teenagers to feel invincible, these safety measures produce a deadly cocktail of cold steel and youthful bravado.    The aforementioned safety devices are all meant to prevent accidents, but what if an accident occurs anyway? (And as we have seen, this is actually more likely.) Well, there are two especially important post-accident safety instruments that children learn about. The first of these reactive measures is the air bag. Air bags are becoming a more and more prevalent form of protection, and younger and younger children are being exposed to them. In fact, if children are too young, air bags can be dangerous to them and even kill them. It is for this reason that air bags now come with menacing yellow and black warning labels and disclaimers. Does this sound like something meant for safety?
    Air bags are interesting in that they only help prevent bodily harm as a result of a serious accident, but they do not protect against accidents at all. This fact is not made clear to some students, and they walk away believing that air bags offer complete protection against all kinds of accidents.
    The second post accident safety measure is perhaps the most alarming example of all. Students are taught that if a serious accident occurs and all else fails, they could be saved by a monstrous procedure involving the “Jaws of Life.” Aside from causing massive emotional trauma that results in elevated rates of depression and suicide, the procedure is nothing more than an enabling mechanism that prevents young people from fully appreciating the consequences of their actions.
    Ultimately, comprehensive drivers’ education, by being confusing and contradictory and by presenting false and misleading information to our young ones, is both wrong-headed and terribly destructive. But what alternative is there? How else are we supposed to introduce our young ones to the topic of driving in a manner conducive to safety and social harmony? The answer, my friends, is directive drivers’ education.
    Directive drivers’ education focuses on the fact that refraining from driving is the only 100 percent effective way to prevent accidents. But before I can make the argument for directive drivers’ education, I need to explain more about accidents themselves. There are of course many kinds of accidents, and there are two ways to view an accident: the circumstances of the accident, and the outcome of the accident. The outcome-based view describes three kinds of accidents: those that cause property damage, those that cause injury, and those that cause death. There are many circumstances under which those outcomes can occur, and some of them will be addressed here.
    The most common kind of accidents are fender benders, and can usually be fixed up by a trip to the mechanic. These visits can burn the pocket book a bit, which is why they are usually considered to be property damage accidents. However, refurbished vehicles never work the same as they did before an accident, no matter how small, and we all know how difficult it is to sell a salvage title. After all, who wants damaged goods?
    The second most common type of accidents are rear-enders. These have many consequences, but are generally classified as injury accidents due to the fact that they commonly cause back pain for the person being rear-ended. This class of accidents are almost always the fault of the driver who does the rear-ending, and often result in chronic damages that never go away; though the impact of the damages may be intermittent and not always manifest.
    But the most dangerous kind of accidents are pileups. What makes these so menacing is the sheer number of drivers involved; often, a teen is unable to know even the names (let alone the driving history) of all those mired in the tangled mass of rear-enders, head-ons and T-bones. Tragically, this scenario often results in death. That said, all types of accidents are hazardous and pose myriad consequences. And teens, despite their feelings of impunity, can be involved in every single kind. Indeed, they are often the cause.
    Young people are implicated specifically as the most dangerous drivers in the U.S. by safety advocacy groups from across the country, and the outcry is not unwarranted. Young drivers are the least experienced, yet they are also the most recent graduates of drivers’ education programs. If these programs are so good, why are teens so much more dangerous? The fact is that our children carry the lies and falsehoods fed to them in comprehensive drivers’ education classes directly onto the road, where they become the most dangerous drivers in the country. Need proof? How about this: According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 16 percent, or just under one million, of the accidents in 2006 were caused by 16- to 20-year-olds. This age group constitutes only 6.3 percent of the driving population. Think about that. This means that a teen is three times more likely to have an accident than older drivers. Furthermore, teens are four times more likely to cause an accident than any other age group per mile driven. Finally, if we consider the demographics of this country, we see something even more startling. On the basis of current population trends, there will be 23 percent more 16- to 20-year-olds in 2010 than there were in 2006.
    Nationally, 5.9 million accidents occurred across all age groups in 2006. As a result of those 6 million accidents, even with all the supposed safety measures young drivers use, there are 2.6 million driving injuries every year. In 2006, drivers aged 16 to 20 caused 231,000 injury accidents, which resulted in over 13.3 percent of the total number of injuries. Of course, not all accidents are mere fender benders; some result in death. Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for people ages two to 34. A fatal accident occurs on average every 12 minutes and an injury accident every 12 seconds. That means by the time you’ve finished reading this sentence at least two people will have been injured, and at the end of this letter another two will be dead. In 2006, 117 people died each day in fatal accidents, totaling 42,708 people killed.
    Not surprisingly, a disproportionate amount of this death toll is due to young drivers. The NHTSA reported that people between the ages of 16 and 20 caused 7,286 fatal accidents in 2006. Again, that age group represents only 6.3 percent of active drivers. This means that only 6.3 percent of the people on the road are responsible for 17 percent of all roadway deaths. Talk about red asphalt.
    But what of the seat belt you might ask? Shouldn’t our old friend the lap wrap be preventing all this carnage? In a word, no. Of the 42,708 deaths resulting from an accident in 2006, a full 45 percent of those killed were wearing a seat belt.
    Have you had enough or shall I continue?
    The fact is that driving is the most dangerous activity our children will engage in on any given day, and the only way to prevent them from taking that risk is to instruct them on the value of refraining from driving altogether until they are old enough, mature enough and can take responsibility for their actions.
    Drivers’ education of any kind is useful only in its capacity to prevent our children from hurting themselves. Given that driving is so dangerous, it is clear that the best way to prevent our children from being harmed is to teach them not to drive. It is for this reason that I do not advocate the removal of all drivers’ education classes. Indeed, the existence of a properly structured directive drivers’ education program is perhaps the most important safety measure we as a society can put in place. That said, the new classes must be dramatically changed from their current form. Programs such as STRANS (Safety in Transportation between Regional And National Sites) have defined the kind of directive drivers’ education curriculum that we should adopt as having the following eight points; the curriculum:

1.    Has as its exclusive purpose, teaching the social, psychological and physical gains to be realized by refraining from driving activity;

2.    Teaches total restraint from driving activity as the expected standard for all school-age children;

3.     Teaches that the complete rejection of driving activity is the only certain way to avoid the associated material loss, bodily harm and other damage;

4.    Teaches that a mutually consensual transportation arrangement between driver and passenger is the expected standard of adult driving activity;

5.    Teaches that driving activity outside of adulthood is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects;

6.    Teaches that driving is likely to have harmful consequences for passengers, the passenger’s parents and society;

7.    Teaches young people how to reject offers to drive and how alcohol and drug use increases vulnerability to such offers; and

8.    Teaches the importance of attaining self-sufficiency before engaging in driving activity.

    These eight points would be the building blocks of any new curricula. Many companies have already published direction-based education programs predicated upon these eight points. Some examples include “Choosing the Best Road,” a product of Choosing the Best, “Me, My World, My Car” by Teen-Aid, and “Why kNOw” by Why kNOw Education. The future of drivers’ education, nay, the nation itself, depends on the adoption of these new curricula.
    Directive drivers’ education emphasizes that driving in and of itself is not a bad thing. As I stated earlier, though dangerous to young people and those who do not respect it, driving is part of our everyday lives and can be a highly valuable activity. Indeed, America is defined worldwide by our driving. But the serious threat that underage driving poses should cause us to reconsider our approach. Underage driving not only endangers the lives of those who engage in it, but also those who share the road with them. It is my hope that the needless loss of life and endangerment of innocents is put to an end, and I see directive drivers’ education as the means to that end.
    My dear readers, I have laid before you the case for the replacement of current drivers’ education programs and for the implementation of a new standard. I have done this because our nation’s future is at stake, and because those who have come before us have done the same. Indeed, we are not the first generation to come face to face with a horrible threat to the future of our youth. The last threat of this magnitude came not in the form of steering wheels and high octane, but as pills, joints and needles. The task was indeed daunting. But the historic triumph of President Reagan’s campaign to end teenage substance abuse in the 1980s demonstrates that a “Just Say No” approach to underage driving would be equally successful.
    President Obama’s recent decision to allow mechanics which utilize the Jaws of Life to receive federal aid is regrettable, and emblematic of the powers we are up against. However, the removal of federal subsidies for faulty seat belts and reactionary air bags from the stimulus package is equally emblematic of our promise. So with any luck, and with a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead, we will succeed in this endeavor. Our nation’s youth, indeed, the whole of the country, depends on our success.

K.C. CODY would like to thank The Aggie for relieving him of his word limit and any readers who made it this far. If you’d rather his word limit be re-imposed, let him know at kccody@ucdavis.edu.

In a formerly unused lot in East Sacramento, seeds of a food revolution are beginning to take root. Tilled rows of soil cover about a quarter-acre of land in an open field between homes, a Universal Unitary Church and a public school. It’s what’s called an urban farm.

“What you see here is going to develop into Freedom City,” explained program coordinator Neal Liggins as we sat in folding chairs on the farm’s scrubby turf. “It’ll combine the urban farming installation that’s already underway with a community center for events and seminars.”

We’re discussing one branch of Freedom Developments, a nonprofit organization founded in 2004 to cultivate and distribute healthy organic foods to low-income Sacramento families. The organization is headed by a board of advisors and managed by coordinators like Liggins but the real energy behind the project comes from volunteers.

Located only 13 miles from Davis, Freedom Developments is a local expression of agrarian activism that you can get involved in right away. It’s a free and welcoming atmosphere and there are no demands on any volunteers.

“Just being here makes a hell of a difference,” Liggins said. “Even if you just spend 30 minutes cracking jokes, you’ve added something. And you’ll be tempted to come back, whatever your learning curve is.“

Trust me, it’s worth getting involved. Cooperatives like Freedom Developments are part of a greater movement to break away from the instabilities of the American economic system that creates shortage in times of crisis.

“Oppression is about dependence, so the nature of activism is all about not being dependent,” Liggins said. “Don’t cry about something you’re not getting from someone else.”

For the avatars of avarice at the top of society’s pyramid, crashing is business as usual. If greed mongers like Citigroup ever feel a chill, they can burn taxpayer bailout money to buy a new $30 million private jet. “What we’ve got going on at the wealthy end of society, in the upper layers, is socialism,” Liggins said.

But where will everyone else turn? For the working classes that will be the hardest hit, this economic downturn represents a hardship. 2.6 million jobs have disappeared and every day homes are worth less and food costs are higher. When safety nets fail, as they often do when they’re invisible, people will have to turn elsewhere than their government to get the necessities of life. So we turn to each other. Social capital is becoming more and more important during an economic cataclysm that threatens to steal bread right off of our tables.

Urban farming is a social mechanism that works to keep all of us happy and healthy through the power of cooperation. You can be in the vanguard to ensure the welfare your fellow Americans. Get involved, here or elsewhere.

“We’re looking for interest and student involvement. All help is welcome,” Liggins said.

More funding for programs like Freedom Developments will hopefully be seen under the relatively wiser leadership of the Obama administration. Freedom Developments Project Manager Corey Cliff stressed that social capital is more reliable, “Sure, there’ll be more things available, but they’ll be more people fighting for crumbs.… We don’t want to see competition, we want to see cooperation.“

Freedom Developments encompasses Freedom City, as mentioned above, and also plans to include a variety of other services. Freedom Farmers would send volunteers to set up vegetable planter boxes in client’s homes, then tend to the plants, harvest them when they’re mature and then buy them from the client. Plans for Freedom Energy and Freedom Transportation are also in the works. Each one of these programs follows what’s called in FD parlance the ‘CHEF system,‘ which sets their goals: clothe, house, educate and feed.

At present, Freedom Developments is in a nascent stage. According to their business plan, Freedom City has evolved from purely functional to an active one. It’s not yet sustainable, which means its formula isn’t yet fit for duplication onto other sites. “Active“ means the first harvests are coming in, so $5 bags of homegrown greens are available from Freedom City, profits all going to directly help the project along.

If this article has tempted you to get involved, I’m reachable at cheya.cary@gmail.com for more information, or you can contact Freedom Developments directly through Corey Cliff at freedomfarmsfood@gmail.com. Mention I sent you.