A Fist Full of Soil - The Rise of Graze Against the Machine Activism

There are two bands that have contributed to the awakening of my voice:

1. Bob Marley and The Wailers album Survival was the first time I heard ANYONE recognize the STRUGGLE of my brothers and sisters of my beloved Zimbabwe. They struggled on stolen land, suppressed by a violent, white-supremacist minority government. Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) was the place of my first memories.

2. The second was Rage Against The Machine’s self-titled album. It added ANGER to the recognition of struggle. Anger that I have directed at the many I’ve encountered that STEAL, LIE and/or ABUSE power for their personal gain.

The Survival cassette tape I bought in 1981 survived with me on my solo passage from Canada to Denmark when I was 19, but it did not survive the leaky shed in which my wife Sue and I stored many belongings after moving to the UK. I replaced it with a Survival CD in 2004. The RATM CD pops and skips over some songs because of scratches, the broken front cover has been replaced and there are beer stains on the insert. It has traveled with me for almost 30 years, from Denmark, to UK and now US. I can’t think of any other possession that has survived with me that long.

"Tinged with anger, with rage, and defiance, my voice has rarely (to my frustration) been used successfully to affect change of policy or decision-makers."

Tinged with anger, with rage, and defiance, my voice has rarely (to my frustration) been used successfully to affect change of policy or decision-makers. Despite its inefficiency, the sometimes private and music-fueled rage has been a personal catharsis, one that I rely on regularly, but it’s sometimes misdirected.

Transforming Rage into Story

Then, recently, my voice was sharpened. I was invited to join Carolina Farm Stewardship Association (CFSA) Member Advocacy Program (MAP). During six sessions, seasoned CFSA advocates Jaylen Cates and Matt Kneece helped me re-direct my voice into storytelling and helped build my confidence as an advocate and activist for healthy farms and food. The most irritating thing about the program was hearing them advise over and over that successful advocacy was all about relationships, not about what I wanted to be, rage! “The policy or decision makers you are trying to influence are just people.” They said. “Yeah right,” I thought “they are power-hungry people, willing to ignore the greater good for the singular sake of power.”.

"To be a successful advocate, I was encouraged to put my rage aside and start “relationship building” with idiots..."

About halfway through the program, I felt overwhelmed. I had heard examples of successful outcomes from CFSA as well as fellow farmer advocates, all using the approach that Jaylen and Matt had outlined. I was unsure how I could affect any change at all. The skills required to affect the changes included many individuals and organizations and a broad set of skills, many of which I was ill-equipped for. To be a successful advocate, I was encouraged to put my rage aside and start “relationship building” with idiots (idiots is my choice of word). As far as I was concerned these idiots did NOT warrant respect let alone the effort it would take me to build a relationship with them.

That overwhelming feeling was amplified by the realization that I could not affect change by myself. I’ve always been a lone-wolf but I began to see examples of how strength in numbers had helped people be successful advocates of change. Not only was I being asked to change how I used my voice, but I was also being asked to leave my position as lone-wolf to join a pack. This was never going to work.

Then something shifted in one of the last sessions. Matt and Jaylen encouraged us to write our story, a story that would communicate our respective cause. I’m not unfamiliar with storytelling, I share farm life through stories on our website. But using story with policy-makers?! What surprised me was, when asked directly, I could not communicate my story in a way that could quickly grab a policy-makers attention. That changed when we were given pointers for story-telling in 6 sentences:

1.     Once upon a time there was___.

2.     Every day, ___.

3.     One day, ___.

4.     Because of that___.

5.     Because of that___.

6.     Until finally___.

It was a remarkably simple formula to focus my mind and begin the process of communicating my story. The photo below is the first draft of my story, I wrote it in 5 minutes, I have included the final at the bottom of this post.

At the end of the MAP program, I felt invigorated, inspired, yet unsure of how best to communicate my story within the context of affecting change. I would soon be given an opportunity to challenge my newly sharpened voice.

Honing my Voice with Action

A few weeks following the end of MAP, I learned about a candidate for the Dean position of NCSU College of Ag and Life Sciences, Jayson Lusk through CFSA. When I read one of his articles, that familiar rage against deceit welled up in me. I signed CFSA’s letter against Lusk’s appointment, but I felt like I needed to do more. The recent and disappointing realization that I would not be able to go to the Rage Against The Machine concert in Raleigh was an important factor. I redirected that energy into fighting the machine that Lusk represented. Every moment not filled with farm work became a moment of research, outreach and checking in with one of my CFSA mentors, Jaylen via text message to help me hone my approach.

“The rage is relentless, we need a movement with a quickness, you are the witness of change, and to counteract, we gotta take the power back!”

-Rage Against The Machine

For 2 weeks, Rage Against The Machine lyrics played in my head while I was on the tractor, when falling asleep, when waking up. Lyrics like “Why stand on a silent platform, fight the war, fuck the norm!”, “If we don’t take action now, we settle for nothing later!” and my personal favorite “The rage is relentless, we need a movement with a quickness, you are the witness of change, and to counteract, we gotta take the power back!”. My motivation was complete.

My approach was minimally planned, and the actions I took evolved as I received new information about the selection process in real-time. This is how things played out over about 10 days. The first 4 steps were planned, the rest was improvised.

1.     I read of one of Lusk’s articles that blasted local food using economic principles.

2.     I asked my son Marcus (who is an economist) to read it and help me understand the principles

3.     I combined the story Matt and Jaylen had helped me craft, how Lusk had excluded economic principles that would support local food (thanks to my son) and my personal reasons as an NC farmer not to select Lusk into my voice against his appointment.

4.     I attended Lusk’s presentation and submitted my question/comment. Lusk left less than 5 minutes for questions. Mine was not one of the two questions asked.

5.     This is when the improvisation started. I tagged Lusk with my question on LinkedIn – unsurprisingly, he did not respond

At this point I felt a bit defeated. I had spent time doing all this work for nothing. Jaylen then shared that there was an open comment period and that I could submit my concerns about Lusks appointment via a NCSU website. I submitted an expanded version of the question I had written for Lusk’s presentation. But I still felt like this wasn’t enough. While I was on the NCSU website, I located the names of all the people on the Dean selection committee and sent a connection request to all that had a profile on LinkedIn, hoping that I could influence them directly. One accepted.

"Being one of possibly hundreds of voices submitting comments via a website, felt safe. But trying to influence a stranger one-on-one was intimidating."

I must admit, I felt anxious at my initial outreach to him. Being one of possibly hundreds of voices submitting comments via a website, felt safe. But trying to influence a stranger one-on-one was intimidating. But once I had shared my story and asked him not to support Lusk, it became evident that this was just another conversation about farming. Over a number of days I continued to correspond with him via LinkedIn messenger, sharing not only my thoughts on Lusk and my story, but also things that were happening on the farm, examples of how our food had positively influenced our local community and I extended an open invitation for he and his family to visit the farm.

Alongside this I was also texting my network of farmers and friends asking them to post comments against Lusk on the NCSU website and asking my LinkedIn network to do the same.

”Rumor has it that Lusk is the clear frontrunner” he wrote, “You need to get louder.”

A week after Lusks presentation and the day before the open comment period on the NCSU website was set to close, I received a text from a professor I know at NCSU. He had seen one of my posts on LinkedIn. ”Rumor has it that Lusk is the clear frontrunner” he wrote, “You need to get louder.”

That kicked me into a higher gear. I sent more texts to the people I had already contacted, sharing the bad news and asking them to employ others into action. I ended each text conversation by directing RATM’s lyrics straight at them “You are the witness of change, and to counteract, we gotta take the power back!”. It felt powerful.

My second higher-gear action was an impassioned plea to my selection committee contact to share my story with the rest of the selection committee. “You got it Mike.”, he responded

My final action was combining the comments my wife and son had submitted via the NCSU website with my own in a personal email to the NCSU Provost who, I had learned. would be instrumental in making the final decision. The email subject was meant to be attention grabbing. It read Farmers Against Lusk – A Family’s Story.

A week later, I got another text from the NCSU Professor who had encouraged me to get louder: “You did it! Failed Search. Starting over.”.  “Holy shit!!!”, was all I could offer in return. I couldn’t believe it. My voice along with the rest of my pack was ACTUALLY effective in changing minds!

WE TOOK THE POWER BACK!

I expressed my surprise at the decision to my selection committee contact and thanked him personally. I also admitted to him that I had little hope of this outcome. “… thanks for providing your perspectives on Jason Lusk, it really helped the final decision to start a new search for an ideal candidate.”, he responded. He also accepted my invitation to visit Ozark Akerz. He and his wife are making the short trip from Raleigh to visit us this fall.

Since that day I have been encouraged to help search for new candidates for the Dean position to be considered in the next round. I have two in mind and will be writing them personally to ask if they are interested and their permission to advocate on their behalf. There is no rage involved this time, motivation will need to rise from new depths. In the words of Bob Marley & The Wailers “Through the powers of the most high, we keep on surfacing”.

Graze Against The Machine Activism takes many forms. You can counteract the machine with direct and vigorous action in support of regenerative farms and the earth

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This is my personal story. It was included as part of a broader message campaign to successfully advocate against the appointment of Lusk: There was a 5-year-old who was diagnosed with cancer. The cancer stole his toes, his feet, his legs. It left him paralyzed from the chest down. His fantom itching and pain woke him at night, crying loudly, unable to find relief. A woman witnessed this. Her heart burst open, and with it a cancer grew above it. A man witnessed both cancers. His son was given 3 months to live 15 months after his diagnosis, his wife’s oncologist stopped her treatments so they would not kill her before the cancer did..

That man was me.

Nutrition and healthy food became extremely important to my wife and the son’s recovery. My family bet everything on ourselves to start a regenerative farm to grow nutritional and healthy food for ourselves and our community.

We started with tomatoes and peppers and chickens which led to cattle, turkeys, and geese. They all roam freely on the farm.

I thought we could pay all our bills from farming in 5-7 years. It was going well. But disease followed us, an entire crop of tomatoes lost, then Covid took 50% of our business, restaurants.

We started looking for new ways to pay the bills, exploring how to monetize our regenerative principles and practices, not just products. Our practices include increasing biodiversity, silvopasture and carbon-sequestration.*We still have a long way to go to pay all the bills from farming. There are very few opportunities in the private or public sector for small farms that want to diversify their offerings But miracles have been proven to happen. The doctors were wrong about my son having 3 months to live. He is now 26 and part of a nation wheelchair basketball championship team.

*Policy makers add: There is proving to be very few opportunities in the private or public sector for small farms that diversify their offerings…