By The Minister of Information JR 
With the economic depression setting in and the effects of global warming being seen all over the planet, people are having to find ways to employ themselves as well as create cost effective healthy, earth friendly alternatives to expensive fast food and cheap gmo-products.
Marcel Diallo, a longtime Oakland community activist and cultural worker turned real estate tycoon thinks that he has one of the answers, the Village Bottom Farm in West Oakland. Earlier this year, Van Jones of the Oakland based Ella Baker Center, was appointed by the Obama administration to be the "environmental czar", bringing the spotlight of the environmental movement to Oakland.
How will Marcel's vision, which inspired by the work of MacArthur Genius Award Winner Will Allen, work? Who will it employ? What does it take to accomplish a feat of this magnitude? What has the response of city government been? What has been the response of the surrounding community? What are some of the obstacles facing the Village Farms? And who are some of the people and organizations that are collaborating with the Village Bottoms Farm to make it a reality? Will this farm change the way that Oakland residents see land, food, and their ability to grow food?
How is this new "green consciousness" affecting low income crime ridden neighborhoods like West Oakland. Donate and find out.
Disclosure: I have been familiar with subject Marcel Diallo for a number of years due to his work in the Bay Area. This relationship, will enhance the story by creating a sense of comfortability that will allow us to discuss the Village Bottoms Famrs more thoroughly since Diallo can trust that I am not out to destroy him or the Village Bottoms Farm project.
My reporting will expose the public to what is happening in West Oakland with the Village Bottoms Farms, which is located in a crime-ridden inner-city neighborhood, which was the first stop in Oakland for most Black families that moved to the Bay Area chasing World War 2 jobs. My reporting will also be off of the beaten path, because most of the time environmental non-profits are covered from the perspective of helping a community, but the difference in my reporting is that I will be reporting on a home-grown organization helping a community, not one that it has socially, politically and financially invaded, but one that it has grown with over a decade. The Village Bottoms Farm is "for us, by us".
My reporting will be an insiders look, from within the Black community, at a massive project that will employ people as well as make a community without a supermarket healthier, with the fish and produce that they will produce, right there in West Oakland where it is sold.
My reporting will look at how this plan, sits with the city of Oakland's 10 year plan for the particular area of West Oakland where the farm is located. My reporting will hopefully change the way many of the consumers of these reports look at people from this low income, impoverished, crime-ridden neighborhood, by opening up avenues for people inside and outside of this community to work together to make this exciting "green"project a success.
