be a part of the process because we believe in working locally and expanding and the interconnectedness of all these issues that are taking up so much of the airwaves and that we're all concerned about we all have ou r pet passionate areas and we have to come together and see the interconnected and of this of it and strategize for better outcomes for us and our children and our planet arko inhabitants with that frame in mind we were also asked to begin to move the conference toward specific action now we don't know what that is i sure as heck don't but i'm here to see if she sees here to support whatever collectively the body chooses to do so that it won't end up being just another great conference but that we have our march marching out  supporters coming out of here and those orders or whatever you we collectively define with that said and in that frame it like to introduce the panelist on less waters less b s let's take action sitting to my immediate left is laurie fine who is the president of the olympic washington state the keepers association and who has been solved in some calls and who i recognize has the big picture and is working very much locally here in olympia correct yeah in olympia washington next to her is catherine kate davies faculty in the center for creative change and the university seattle who prepared some remarks that she's not going to use because the exciting opportunity to talk more about social activism  and a little bit about the book that you just put out ray lay on sitting next to her is an old partner of mine well i'm old he's much younger but from the central valley of california that i've worked with for a couple of decades when he was a kid from huron and really specific he's going to share with you about collaboration coalition building activism in the little town of huron and expanding out through the silent central valley of california which you know you've read about the grapes of wrath and other places and then finally next to him adam scowl is with food and water watch he's the california campaign director just to share that adam did one of the coolest things that i've appreciated in my professional career when he took over in california and came to because he's also from the central valley from fresno i believe he came over to our shop and sat down with me and did a meet and greet and i was like that's a so cool you know if we all did this with one another we would actually know one another instead of just recognizing voices on conference calls so thank you adam for that so with that the sort of the flavor we're going to do is we're going to go big picture global bring it down to local ok and then open it up for questions discussion either inter or intra panel whatever suits you all so laurie would you want to start a new whatever you feel comfortable doing you just have to put that on ok i'm pollinator advocacy is i think a critical component of what every bee keeper needs to keep in the front of their mind bees right now and other pollinators but specifically honeybees are really out of very critical critical juncture colony death has increased dramatically over the last ten years when colony collapse disease came on line multiple years ago everybody looked for the smoking gun and unfortunately we haven't identified a smoking gun to put it in perspective  and other pollinators are responsible for one of every three mouthfuls of food that we eat last year there were not and be available to pollinate the allman crop in california it was the first time it ever happened and typically for large crop pollination and all mines are an interesting case because all men's are exclusively pollinated by honeybees but bees are shipped from across the country into the orchards cetera to provide pollination services it's very alarming and it's an alarming trend and we need to intervene now it will threaten our food supply it will threaten how we exist and how we view the world if you consider that over eighty percent of floral shrubs bushes trees etc are or are the way they are there bloom is attributed to pollinators and to honey bees we could be looking at a very very different world there are some people that have spoke out and said we think it's not very hopeful but i would challenge that i think there is always always hope and there are lots and lots of things that we can do with respect to  local advocacy and the things that we can all do individually i do want to share something that our organization and the state beekeeping association are looking at very closely and are very at excuse me very actively involved  and that right now is requesting the washington state department of agriculture to restrict and limit the use of new unit gets annoyed pesticides for a mentally use and and because this is such a hot issue right now and because we are really in the throes of it in our particular club in the olympia beekeepers association and it is statewide it isn't just local used to be that your average colony lost over the winter because the winter is a challenging time for honeybees they are in their hives it's cold they have to rely on the stores that they've put up all summer in order to survive through the winter but are clogged experience a thirty five percent colony loss and that represented a a a record of frightening proportion it's being repeated all around the country now  noids the reason that our bees are dying probably not but there's a lot of things about them that we don't know what we do know is that they are a nicotine based chemical and so when a being just whether it is through pollen or nectar from a flower it acts on their nervous system essentially they may forget how to forage or find their way home it's really lethal to them it's lethal to the health of the hive these pesticides specifically the new and it gets annoyed they also may be responsible for synergistic effects that we don't even know yet we don't know the degree to which combined with other things and other chemicals what the lasting impacts are so we're very very vocal in in educating people about what they are the other really amazing fact about these chemicals is that in agricultural use there is a set spray rate and these chemicals can be applied via injection spraying on the crops they can  they can be pulled on the ground in any way they're delivered they spell disaster for b but in all of the chemicals that you can buy over the counter in other words you go into the hardware store or home depot or wherever you do your shopping the substances on the shelves first of all are not really clearly labeled in terms of the degree to which the harmful effects can be for pollinators and also the application that's recommended is one hundred twenty times greater than what's applied for agricultural use and consider the average consumer probably doesn't read the label very closely anyway so god only knows what's being sprayed on people's rosebushes and on their other plants and by the same token in garden centers i mean many garden centers use chemicals to keep the plants that they're selling to the public healthy and insect free so what can we do i could talk forever about this topic but obviously i won't ask questions i mean we we are so connected to what happens to the honeybee these chemicals can get in the water supply they have long term effects we don't know how long the effects last the american b conservancy just came out with a report on unica two noids and birds and they have a fabulous researcher put this body of work together for them they found that one single grain of corn thats coated with these pesticide is that is enough to kill the songbird a small songbird and a small grain of wheat is also extremely lethal to these birds so imagine what the effects are to these tiny little insects that literally work themselves to death pollinating and producing honey they're the only insect that makes food for us what can we do a my ok wrap it up so the things that we can do number one ask questions ask questions when you go to a garden center and you go to buy plants ask them do you spray your plants here with anything that's harmful to pollinators ask your local hardware store your home depot anybody that carries pesticides and sprays there's always an alternative always ask them to please not carry these toxic substances there's enough science now that even though it's not as i said before the smoking gun it isn't the single thing that we can point to and saying yes these pesticides are devastating r b s they are producing very lethal effects on them and they did something that we can take action on and remove it and and take that stress that stressor off to be populations talk to people tell them what you know tell them about organic food tell them about non g m o food you don't need to be a beekeeper to help but be aware and talk to other people about it if they're critical they're part of the web of life and what happens to them ultimately really is what happens to us so thank you ok thank you for having me thank you for everybody who's working to make this happen i am with an organization called food and water watch i am here somewhat to substitute for my executive director when i know how to are sure the book called food awfully that was published this year she's been on a tour and she sadly couldn't make it today she's been on touring over one hundred fifty cities across the country trying to help spur this growing food movement into political activity which has come straight here to washington with your i five to two campaign so i will transmit some of her thoughts and some of  consumer advocacy group we're headquarters in d c we have got about fifteen field offices around the country closest one here is one in portland and i'm out of our bay area office my state campaign direct food and water watch is heavily invested and believes in organizing in with community groups and building coalitions in the field to make change the policy change we are trained as community organizers to build change from the outside on the field pushing on the inside not from lobbying within because that's pretty much i think as we've all figured out the only way to make change the kind of change that we want to see in the food system and in other areas nobody's going to take care of the the food system which of course we are very familiar with with monsanto in the seed system and she chronicles this to the retail system worth wal mart now where wal mart is the largest food retailer in the country one out of every three of our food dollars is now being spent at wal mart and it is growing for grocery retail companies control about fifty percent of all food retail sales in the country and this consolidation has forced a consolidation in the farming system where it is harder and harder for smaller and mid size farmers to make a living and as a result we've lost a lot of them so you look at the dairy industry just according to the national family farm coalition we had about two hundred thousand berries in this country and that's now down to fifty five thousand varies across the country and my home area and we're rays from we have seen the rise of mega dairies areas that have over environmental problems and there's almost always every time a water link and that isn't and of course as we all know the pesticides the massive fertilizer use is also running off into our waterways it's going out into the ocean creating solidification and killing off a lot of the ecosystem and this is a big problem in our california waterways going right out into the san francisco bay delta where our last wild salmon run yeah we still have one in california is barely hanging on and is connected up if you're going to the washington coast so this is a big fight along with the big threats to water from the consolidation of food system we're seeing that in the consolidation of the energy system food and water watch is spending a lot of time fighting fracking hydraulic fracturing one thing you probably know about fracking is that it uses a lot of water way more water than conventional drilling it's estimated that half a million gallons to three million gallons of water are used and abused for each frac a job and i know fracking is happening a lot for natural gas up in the  northwest it's going to be coming for oil for california and what we're quickly learning and in oregon where there's proposals to build export terminals for liquefied natural gas and where in california we're already seeing oil exports rise is that despite the companies and some of their politicians telling that this energy is for us it's actually on a global market and there's a lot more money to be made exporting it to china brazil japan and this is  something you might have heard of called the trans pacific partnership trade agreement then you what they call nafta methamphetamines or and everybody says nafta on steroids and keeps getting worse and this is a big threat to all of our democracy and our ability to write the kind of laws we want to do in the future that we are about to do with g m labeling of g e foods protecting water as a public resource and some places banning fracking which we're trying which we're working on doing with americans against fracking a national coalition that i invite you all the check out just to finish the fracking wrap up as i'm sure many of you are familiar when you use that water you mix it with up to five hundred toxic chemicals so it is  polluted they blasted at pipe bomb like pressure deep underground to break up the rock to extrude release and extract the oil or natural gas you can frack for oil you can frack for gas it's very similar it's not just not one of the other and oil you're also going to get some gas and then it comes back up and you have a waste water problem and in pennsylvania this is lead to contamination of rivers and lakes that are sometimes drinking water sources for the city it's a big problem california  when it's not being dumped into a river or poorly treated it's been injected deep underground where we're now seeing studies that lead to earthquakes there was a five point seven earthquake in oklahoma a couple months ago linked to injection of waste water so what we're seeing with the consolidation of the food system the consolidation of the oil and gas monopoly over a policy is the privatization and commodity cation of water itself where water itself becomes the cash crop and is the most valuable resource and we're seeing that in california mark twain add to this two famous scenes about water in california and is can becoming more and more true for the rest of the country the first one mark twain said he said whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting for in california and what's particularly true now is that water is flowing uphill towards money in california corporate ag oil companies are happy to make deals selling water rights back and forth even though the lot of those water infrastructure systems were built and paid for by taxpayer dollars the water continues to be subsidized and because of the consolidation the food system those water systems initially built to help family farmers make a living are now being abused by some of the biggest corporate farms in the country so this is something to pay attention to as water becomes more scarce these entrants start to look elsewhere southern california interests have long looked at the columbia river as a potential source to grab they have talked about floating down i'm not joking icebergs from alaska taking rivers from northern california oregon and putting them in big plastic baggies and shipping them down the coast the local said if they did it that they shoot holes in them so that's been put on hold but this the kind of world that we are entering in as with the with the problem with water so if i want to wrap it up i got to wrap it up so we're talking about civic activism up obviously it's awesome what's happening with i think not to put any pressure a must win victory on i five to two and i think out washington's going to be the first state to do it so that's going to be awesome star as you know we lost a heartbreaker close to one victory in california a close loss on proposition thirty seven but if it leads to a victory in washington it proves that it was worth it a lot of the citizens in who started prop thirty seven have  pam larry who was one of the initial instigators have made their coalitions multi issue they're now working to fight the tea p p they're setting up members with their members of congress they're now working to fight water privatization they're working on single payer health care they're getting sophisticated because they know they've figured out what we've already figured out you figured out is that the nobody else is taking care of it and so they're stepping up and they're creating in organizing for the future that they want not waiting for somebody else to do it so all the wrap it up with that thank you that respect a responsibility to get the younger generation involved and informed but i think my experiences really have been my lessons and have have provided me the reason why i do the work that i do  and i've been doing air quality policy in the environmental justice system change since two thousand and two and we've had a lot of really strong victories and some of the victories just keep on giving i consider the leadership development being you know the greatest part because it helps to start create that civil society in the region that is known as appalachians of the west report after report where the poorest in the nation are the least educated were then healthiest and it goes on and on american human development report brookings institute with the most concentrated clusters of poverty and they are fresno and other parts of the region and what most frustrating of course policy makers really don't take up the challenge right this is an agricultural region i think it's safe to say that the majority of the produce comes out of this region in the nation and familiar with that but that's just a whole other thing but one issue we continue to face as i mentioned is poverty in the area that has an ag revenue of about twenty five billion if not more nowadays essentially that a quarter of the state avonmouth that's those are the committees that leap has in different parts of fresno and kings county you know to help advance or quality of life for the rest of the community so that's a huge challenge some key values known as the most polluted air base in the nation  it's not something to be proud of i mean there's plenty of work to do and it's really not boring i was born in fresno raised in the former community of here on my father's over to settle farm worker who brought the family for me to to be outnumbered less right and so in two thousand and two we initiated a movement for equality and one of the most important things that i want to share and might as well in the get go is the biggest asset to any movement is the community at most impact because i had issues with what i call parachuters coming in from outside once a lot of money became available for air quality  know policy that we really are i had a really you know provide all morning crew right their interest was policy victories our interest people's you know empowerment and they could be simultaneous you've got to make sure that they are especially when there is resources available our greatest concern was that we were able to invest the resources into the communities and build the power build the culture build an infrastructure to continue fighting and sustaining the gains in the one nine hundred seventy s we gained bilingual education affirmative action in california and the variety of others because the  infrastructure didn't continue in the ninety's during pete wilson the governor was extremely racist and proposed an immigration reform type of policy at the state level that was very hateful towards immigrants was able to w slip the rug out from under us and take away a lot of the gains that we had in the movement during the seventy's so with that mentality with that historical context with the ability of doing something about it you know that the communities you get engaged communities and in a way and not in the colonial manner we've had those issues where researchers come in they want to dissect you know socially dissect student sitting in the back sample take on this news brother and part of our future and what we will we put together about five years ago and there was a long communication because some of the professors just needed to get two hundred to a space of understanding what we were coming from because at some times when you're just from different environments different social environments there's there's going to be a get right so there's going to be some of this you know you can have to you know go through it you can have to go through it and we were able to go through it through the community university research for action and justice it's a long name to make it short as my courage to go back in time again so that we could we put together some principles and were very specific and very intentional in terms of you know not having the colonial met which i think feeds into the reason why we have so many problems today you know and earlier presenter mentioned let me try to recall that phrase  where it was about the way of life versus occupation way of life or something more in line mourning kind with indigenous with a sustainable way of life occupation is a quick fix what we've seen happen over and over in this nation and of course what happens with a quick fix at the end of the day it's a big problem that needs  i asking if you're willing to do a quick survey with me everyone game for a quick survey rate so question one how many of you know someone living with a tree condition just put your hand up if you do so that's about two thirds of the people in the room how many of you know someone living with cancer about the same and my final question how many of you know someone living with heart disease ok probably about half so all of those conditions are caused by po environmental conditions in fact according to the world health organization about half of all ask conditions are caused by air pollution about twenty percent of all cancers are caused by environmental conditions and about fifteen percent of all heart disease that is an amazing burden of disease caused by poor quality environment a huge burden of disease in terms of economic costs and perhaps more importantly in terms of human suffering the tragedy of this is that most of it can be prevented most of it can be prevented by stopping pollution by banning toxic chemicals and by pruett improving the way that we live the social movement that i've been looking out for the last been part of for the last thirty five years and that i've just written about and published a book about is the environmental health movement which is a very loosely constituted network of groups and organizations all trying to protect environmental health whatever type of health problem you're looking at or whatever kind of environmental  stress including pesticides that you're looking at and over the years that i've been part of this movement and it more particularly in the last four or five years i've been asking myself the question what makes this movement work what are its strategies why is it six why is it having the successes that it is and i think there are a number of strategies that we can point to that that signify why social movements and why this particular social movement is being as effect is being somewhat effective and certainly the first of those strategies has or has just been mentioned by ray and that is community organizing the heart of any social movement is community organizing its strength is in community organizing its feet its might is in the communities that it can organize in the feet that it can get on the street in the that it can do around issues identified by and in communities not issues identified by people parachuting in from outside as ray said but by the people that live and work there twenty four seven they are the best position to take action on it so community mobilizing is an essential strategy for social change the second strategy that i think we see as a whole mark of many social movements is what i call mind the gap and that is how do we look at what type of will do we want to live in politicians don't generally ask that question what type of a society do we want to leave for our children and our grandchildren what is the dream that we have of a better world of a healthy just and sustainable world and then contrast that with the reality of the situation that we have today with the environmental injustice that we have today with the spread of the g m o's that we have today with the wars that we have today there is a huge gap between what we want and where we are and all successful social movements have drawn attention to that gap i think in particular of martin luther king's i have a dream speech which isn't just about a dream it's also about the reality of racism in this country in the one nine hundred sixty s and it's highlighting back gap that social movements makes for successful social movements environmental health movement and other successful movements also draw attention to human rights we've heard talk today already about the environmental justice movement environmental justice movement is really important because it makes the case that every single human being has the right to a healthy environment may seem self evident over sixty countries around the world already enshrined the right to a healthy environment in their constitutions or their national legislation not the u s of course it's been tried twice in this country both times failed civil rights movement use this strategy a lot making right arguments is really effective enough in a society that values or purports at least to about to value human rights as our society does another strategy that i would mention is making it personal how can we make this really personal how can we tell our stories and empower ourselves through telling our stories how can we create strategies and actions based on our own individual stories this is the lesson of some of the some of the social change theorists thinking particularly of miles ho who use story based strategies as a tool for social change we need more of that we need much more of that and lastly i mention confronting economics we need to confront the economic system that we are living in we know that for example the environmentally related diseases cost this country for childhood related environmental diseases for only in children cost this country about eighty billion dollars a year that's a huge amount of money in washington state alone we know i did a study about eight years ago washington state alone the costs of environmentally relate diseases run about three point five billion dollars a year we need to be making economic arguments and attacking the economic system head on social movements before us have shown  closing i just want to read one little poem from the end of my book because it's one of my favorites and it shows us that social we have had social movements they've been around for hundreds of years and we are we are literally standing on the shoulders of giants who have gone before us and this is what percy business shelley said in english poet he said rise like lions after slumber in question number shake your county commissioners wrote a letter in support of our request to the washington state department of agriculture they had one hundred eighty days to respond and the very last day they did they decided there wasn't enough evidence to render a decision so in august and september our club members have offered their hives for testing washington state university and dr steve shepard are going to be coming to test hives for a new nick a tonight presence they're going to use that data to help make their determination but if you want to get involved you need to go to your county commissioners number one and you need to tell them to get on the bus because a bus is leaving the station and then they the question then becomes how of the genetic modified food have the curator of the hunger epidemic that we're having here on the planet so we have to ask a couple of different questions one of which is are the increase in the actual yields of food that's were promised and we know from the literature quite clearly that no they have not increased the you in fact what has happened is that we've left the within the soil can keel eight the minerals and keep them not available in the plants that wipes out the beneficial bacteria in the soil and leaves non beneficial bacterium to flourish this leaves the plants immuno compromised it leaves the plants susceptible now to the pathogenic organisms the plants die at an forty different diseases amongst plants that now can be tracked to the excessive use of the life of say in the united states and he says that perhaps we've lost up to one point five million bushels of grain last year from the use of life is a genetically modified crops due to gus's wilt and drought intolerance alone so the plants are weak the soil is poisoned at the same time as you increase the use of these herbicides herbicides work via their mechanism of action by binding minerals and leaving them accessible to life how many of these minerals are getting sequestered attached to round up in the soil are sticking in the clay and coming out of the general food supply so are we then becoming mineral insufficient as people because what's the primary purpose of g m crops the primary purpose of g m crops is to be used for feed their fed to animals and then we will then consume might be downed as well yes they're seeing in livestock there's a b twelve insufficiency in the meat so is it possible then by us consuming the meat we might end up with nutrient insufficiencies is anybody looking at this data and the answer is no but that's not the only thing when you effect a plant's enzymes which if you look under with a pedia under roundup you'll see the primary in that roundup interferes with is the enzyme in charge of making essential amino acids trip to fan these are the precursors for neuro transmitters in humans in animals these are the very same nutrients we make to cal ourselves to allow ourselves to sleep well to allow ourselves to avoid aggressive behavior so then the question becomes have we seen an increase of depression anxiety a d d a d h d over the time period in which genetically modified crops were introduced and the spiked use of ground up and the answer unequivocal is yes there's been a four hundred percent increase spike use of antidepressants from the time frame in which these were introduced we're seeing autism went from one in every hundred fifty in two thousand seven to one in every hundred in two thousand and nine to one in every fifty as of march twenty third teen so there may be a correlation swanson in an article in the seattle examiner did a correlation coefficient graph to see if the increased use of glyphosate had any sort of statistical correlation to the increase in autism incidence otitis correlation you could get is a one point zero she found a correlation of point nine eight five so that's extremely close it appears that many of the factors of round being a bio cycle knocking out beneficial bacteria all autism population has bacteriological and balances the ground populations same thing so is it a possibility that instead of feeding a population and start of eating foods in thinking we're getting the  g m crops and the pesticides associated with g m crops may be causing in mild starvation of nutrients so that's an interesting argument the argument calms ok well are we feeding people by giving them nutrient insufficient feed or are we stirling them no one's turned that equation around would be interesting to see over time what people look at what they choose to see another aspect of hunger is how much of a connection are we losing with the natural process by manipulating it so i have a hunger for a connection to life itself i have a hunger to understand how i fit as an organism in an incredible web of life and i'm not sure that their need is met by manipulating the web of life it's self because what we're seeing now is that it's not just the organism that you modify it's affected it's the butterflies it's the animals that consume the organisms it's the animals and plants that will be affected by the use of the pesticides so it may be a global starvation that could be happening versus a global feeding so that's my take in a nutshell on whether or not g m crops are satisfying the need of hunger talent represented in this room is as a power to change the world and i really appreciate that and thank you for your efforts for that are benefiting all of us i also want to acknowledge and take some time to this is a conference concerned with the seeds of justice so i think we need to recognize that we are meeting on the ground of a number of indigenous nations right we we live here based on our having stolen this land as a country so we need to acknowledge that always and i ask the ancestral stewards of this land for a blessing for this meeting that we're having here today so how to tell you today about a project called growing equity from the ground up and this is one of the projects of a center that i direct the center for collaborative research for an equitable california and my briefcase i have some flyers about it not enough for everybody here but i'll put them out after the talkin you can grab them and i want to say a couple things about the center before moving on to the growing equity project so this center is a university of california system wide center and our faculty fellows partner with community organizations and policymakers to address the social justice issues plaguing the least advantaged members of our society we know that the problems in the economy and employment housing education the environment nutrition and health these are all interconnected and so they must be understood and solved holistically so our community based research establishment is open and learning processes that are not just learning processes but they also organize and mobilize publics or communities so that they can exercise power for the common good one of those projects growing equity from the ground up emerged from discussions with religious leadership from the african american community in oakland california we were analyzing the new jim crow jim crow that produces the mass incarceration of black men the resegregation and failure of schools the expansion of food deserts and environmental poisoning the erosion of middle class homeownership and safe neighborhoods the destruction of the health and well being of both the young and the elderly and the reduction of economic opportunity i could list many more devastating effects and the new jim crow also reaches into every other low income community of color these communities must be the seed beds of a recreated struggle for justice a struggle emanating from the spiritual understanding of the primordial interdependence of all life on the planet growing equity from the ground up to give  a different meaning to the notion of stand your ground in the second half of the twentieth century as industrial capitalism consolidated its new global formation and increasingly move jobs  abroad and abandon the cities that had built housed low wage workers immigrants and people of color the discarded portions of our cities blight vast neighborhoods and this land must be reclaimed and repurposed under the leadership of the very people who have been cast at the bottom of the social hierarchy and made to suffer the consequences of exploitation systems when we stand our ground and understand our connection to the ground of existence to our relationship with every being and every thing then we can begin to craft a strategic long term project that puts health at the forefront that puts the creation of sustainable an equitable institutions in ecosystems at the forefront of what we do this takes extra work to resist and dismantle unsustainable inequitable food social economic and political systems it also takes internal work to dismantle the racism sexism classism and other ideologies poisoning our knowledge our feelings the deepest reaches of our being growing equity from the ground up is a sad listening and experience will training program for transformative leaders who are skilled ecological or horticultural lists farmers savvy community organizers and spiritually attuned stewards this new program will build on the forty five years of experience of the u c santa cruz organic gardening and farming apprenticeship program with its fifteen hundred graduates who have done so much to create a movement reflected in the organizations represented at this conference who will build on the experience of more than a dozen oakland community organizations that are engaged in the struggle for food and environmental justice it will build on the spiritual energies of the oakland religious community and it will build on the vibrancy of the urban youth who have refused to be defeated by the multiple systems that have tried to starve them into unconsciousness youth who hunger for an opportunity to live the fulfilling lives that they imagine for themselves growing equity from the ground up well experiment in building an alternative food system that is both ecologically sustainable and economically viable community empowerment must be willing to land reclamation and the restoration of fertility sustainable organic food production must be linked to new distribution networks and the formation of new eating habits and healthy lifestyle as healthy communities will provide the organizing foundation for transforming the injustices that have created the terrible situation that confronts us today we know it is not enough to feed the hunger that stomachs we need to feed the hunger for spiritual wholeness and lives of meaning but these hungers can only be fed by the struggle for justice and this is the ground from which we build each of us at every moment is actually creating history and culture even while history and culture create us all of us possess a constant power to transform ourselves and the world we are free to choose one way of life or another when we harness the power of our freedom and unified action and sustain that action over the long haul anything is possible this is not just a matter of faith it's a matter of fact and on that faith and that fact growing equity from the ground stands its ground and i thank you again for listening to me and i look forward to the continuing conversation the conference