Where does our food come from? Since we pay close attention to so many aspects of food in the holiday season, host Majora Carter visits Cheryl Rogowski, a fourth-generation farmer and the first farmer to receive a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship. Cheryl gives us a tour of her farm, and we'll hear from people she works with in the many programs she has created - from mentoring migrant farmers to creating low-cost CSAs for senior citizens.
This was a wonderful and informative production. Thank you for telling us about Ms. Subra's intelligent and compassionate work. We ...
When you sit down at your holiday table, thank a bee. A third of the food on your plate is made possible by these pollinators, whose numbers are being decimated by disease and colony collapse disorder. But the bees have a champion in Marla Spivak, a University of Minnesota researcher and MacArthur "Genius" who thinks like a bee. Marla will show host Majora Carter (no newbie herself - Majora is an urban beekeeper) the secrets she's beginning to uncover about how bees can help us humans to be more resilient and to build healthier communities.
Before Katrina, Sharon Hanshaw owned a beauty salon and lived in a house on a tree-lined street. All that all changed when the hurricane hit Biloxi, Mississippi. The storm brought her not just destruction, but also transformation. As executive director of Coastal Women for Change, she has turned her losses into strength, by becoming an advocate and role model for others. Hanshaw's work empowers women to be political voices in the long-range planning and rebuilding of their community.
New Orleans East is home to the most-dense ethnically Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam. In the Gulf region, about 80 percent of Vietnamese Americans were connected to the fishing industry, and the BP oil spill hit the community hard. Vietnamese fisherfolk are trying to rebuild their lives - opening sustainable farms, gas stations, nail salons, and aquaponic projects - while also dealing with the mental anguish that surfaces when a lifetime on the water suddenly disappears.
Wilma Subra is a chemist who has spent her career defending local communities against Louisiana's powerful oil and gas industry. She received a MacArthur Fellowship for helping ”ordinary citizens understand, cope with and combat environmental issues.” When the Deepwater Horizon oil spill happened in the Gulf of Mexico, Wilma's phone started ringing and hasn't stopped. Majora Carter spends a day with Wilma Subra as she travels from her office in New Iberia — past town after town she's helped with environmental concerns during the last 30 years.
For Nat Turner, garden rakes and shovels are tools for transformation. He's transformed an old store in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward into an urban Eden. Blair Grocery is now both a nontraditional school and an urban farm run by youth who've dropped out of mainstream education. Majora spends two days observing the teaching and training that makes the Blair Grocery Project a true innovation.
There are visionaries among us — men and women with innovative ideas about changing lives and transforming communities. You may find them in the far-flung corners of the world or right down the street. With The Promised Land, a new series from Launch Minneapolis, host Majora Carter seeks out these extraordinary yet everyday people and reveals their dreams and struggles — what inspires and challenges their work and their lives. From neighborhoods in east Belfast grappling with a polluted river to kids interviewing for Green Jobs Corps in East Oakland, The Promised Land promises a steady stream of powerful radio.
Hosted by Majora Carter
