Two months into CUPE 3903’s 2018 strike at York University in Toronto, there was no sign of movement from the employer and the picket line spirit was flagging. But in the wake of a series of May Day strike actions, a new idea was born.
On May 7, in the middle of the night, a group of activists returned to their picket line armed with a Rototiller, and under the cover of darkness, they dug up a 525-square-foot plot at the main entrance to campus. Their idea: plant a community strike garden.
“Everybody’s feeling tired and burnt out and exhausted from picket duty,” recalls 3903 member Susannah Mulvale. “We were on this picket line every day, we had this huge space full of grass right in front of us, and we started thinking: what could it be?”
The next day they returned with an array of gardening supplies, “and in 24 hours we had a full garden up and running with flowers, vegetables, all kinds of things,” explains Mulvale.
Initially they were worried the employer would tear up the garden, so for the first week shifts of volunteers camped out at the picket line. Once it became clear the employer wasn’t interested in tampering with it, they focused their energy on making the garden thrive. Watering was a challenge. They collected several enormous tubs and found a building near the picket lines with an outdoor water faucet. Each day they drove there, collected gallons of water, and returned to water the garden. When their water source was discovered and cut off after a few months, they resorted to filling the tubs with gallons of water daily from the bathroom of strike headquarters – an even more arduous process.
This story is from the January/February 2020 edition of Briarpatch.
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This story is from the January/February 2020 edition of Briarpatch.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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