As Detroit’s population continues to shrink, nature is starting to take the city back. A dwindling population and high unemployment has also drastically reduced the opportunites for healthy food options. The documentary Grown in Detroit, which is playing at The Rotunda tonight as part of an ongoing discussion about food justice, shows how a handful of students in the Motor City have turned to urban farming to raise their own food and fight the blight.
The film is about the urban gardening done by a public school in Detroit, where 300 students, many pregnant and parenting teens, who farm land near their school.
The screening is part of the monthly “Food Justice Movie Night” series at The Rotunda, sponsored by the Netter Center for Community Partnerships and the Urban Nutrition Initiative and admission is free and a discussion on urban farming and eating locally will follow. Dinner is included. The screening begins at 6 p.m.
We just heard through the grapevine (aka Facebook) that Manakeesh, the Lebanese cafe and bakery at 45th and Walnut, will soon start delivery.
Yep, now you can get those great manakeesh, baklava etc. brought straight to your front door Monday through Thursday from Noon to 7 p.m. The service starts tomorrow and is available to those within a 10-block radius of the shop.
A break in yesterday’s showers gave about 25 egg hunters the chance to dash around the playground at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church (3916 Locust Walk) in search of their bounty.
We were lucky to get a close-up look at the action. The slideshow below shows you what we saw.
About 50 people gathered outside of The Rotunda near 40th and Walnut to begin a march that would cross the city from “river to river” to protest upstate “fracking,” a process that uses toxic chemical to extract natural gas from shale.
Hundreds more protesters were expected to join in as the march proceeded across the Schuylkill River to Love Park and then on to Penn Treaty Park on the banks of the Delaware River for the annual Shadfest.
The march began with a reading from the Pennsylvania constitution and a brief explanation of the fracking process. The march is an attempt to raise awareness to the damage the process in northcentral Pennsylvania could do to the Delaware River watershed, which helps supply the Philadelphia area with drinking water.
UPDATES:
• The hunt at Malcolm X Park has been moved to the First Corinthian Baptist Church at 5101 Pine St. The noon start time is still on.
Rain has washed out the egg hunt scheduled for today at Clark Park. We will keep you posted on a possible rescheduling and also on the other hunts scheduled for Malcolm X Park and St. Mary’s. The original story on the hunts is here.
The Community Education Center, a non-profit and community based arts center in West Philly, needs your help. All you need to do is click a button. If enough of us do that the center will receive a $50,000 grant.
The voting is part of Kraft Foods/Maxwell House Drops of Good Community Houses grant competition. The CEC is one of 10 locations across the country vying for a $50,000 grant. Five will get the grants and the CEC is currently fifth in the voting by a fairly slim margin. Go to this page to vote. They will ask you for your e-mail address to make sure that you are a real person (don’t worry, no marketing) and then you’re done.
Rebuilding Together Philadelphia is helping with the grant. The community online magazine Flying Kite has a nice feature today on CEC Executive Director Terri Shockley.
Here is the CEC’s video pitch for the competition:
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