Advocates pour life savings into project
By CHRISTINA WALKER Special to the Daily Press
ARIZONA AVE While most voters are concerned about sexual education in our schools, the slumping economy, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, two men are focusing on an issue that hasn’t gotten a lot of play in this year’s election coverage — organic gardening.
Daniel Bowman Simon and Casey Gustowarow are on a mission to plant a self-sustaining organic garden on the White House lawn for the future president. The two men began their trip on Aug. 4, driving all the way from New York to California. On Wednesday they arrived at the Farmers’ Market at Arizona and Second streets to collect signatures for their petition called the White House Organic Farming Project.
“Our primary goal is to get people excited about our petition,” Simon said. “We need a leader who leads by example. We need a leader who eats the right breakfast.”
The bus, called the WhoFarmMobile, is actually made up of two mini-school buses, one resting upside down on top of the other. One school bus is fully functional and serves as a home on the road for Simon and Gustowarow. The other serves as a plot to plant, becoming an edible roof. The bus is an example of the two men’s commitment to an agriculturally, self-sustainable lifestyle.
The two advocates came to Santa Monica after various sources told them they could find a lot of support for their petition in the area. So far the two have collected 1,500 signatures for their petition.
Simon and Gustowarow want to see their goal come to fruition for a variety of reasons. Besides giving the president and the first family healthy, nourishing food to eat each day, they believe it would set an example for all Americans to be more self-sustaining and would have an impact on international relations as well.
“This is a change that we can make that symbolic and simple and that would have a domino effect,” Gustowarow said.
Those born after World War II may not remember that the White House has a history of growing not just flowers, but food as well. Simon and Gustowarow pointed out that Eleanor Roosevelt inspired the nation by growing her own gardens in times of scarcity and encouraged the American public to do the same.
The two men who met in the Peace Corps in the Philippines have written five articles into their petition including one where they propose having children learn about agriculture through farming the future White House garden.
“I have children now and I’m looking at things in a different way,” said Maura Kaplan, a shopper at the market. “Our kids don’t understand that much about agriculture.”
Kaplan said she would support an organic garden on the White House lawn and favors people buying local produce wherever they reside. The overall reaction to their petition has been very favorable, Gustowarow and Simon said.
Simon was inspired to plan and embark on the trip in early August after he heard Alice Waters give her acceptance speech at the 2008 Global Environmental Citizen Awards dinner at Harvard Medical School’s Center for Health and the Global Environment.
Waters is the founder of The Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley. The schoolyard teaches children where the food they put in their mouths comes from and also promotes environmental stewardship. She is the founder of Chez Panisse Restaurant & Cafe, a restaurant that relies on locally grown food and offers a fixed price menu.
The two men had the chance to lunch with Waters and consider it a highlight of their trip so far. They will be in Los Angeles for the next two days. Then they will slowly make their way back east toward Washington D.C. where they will continue their campaign during the presidential election.
They are currently sustaining themselves with produce from their rooftop garden, as well as the generosity of those they meet along the way. Both men poured their life savings into buying the bus and they estimate that they will need to raise an additional $100,000 to carry their nonpartisan campaign to completion.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 18, 2008. Read the original PDF.