Climate change has forced us to rethink our options about many things, including how and where we grow our food.
James Miner, Principal of urban design and planning at Sasaki Associates in Watertown, has focused much of his practice on creating more sustainable communities for future generations. Miner lectures and writes extensively on the various ways in which local food can be used to promote economic development and other advantages.
Jessie Banhazl, founder and CEO of Green City Growers, who over the past five years has proven that sustainable agriculture can be both healthy and profitable. Last year, she planted a barren rooftop at Fenway Park and it yielded 4,000 pounds of produce for urban farmers. By growing fresh food in the most unlikely places, Jessie is helping change people’s perception of what is possible by launching her own rooftop farming revolution.
The bulk of mainstream media in the U.S. is now owned by a handful of corporations that continue to gobble up smaller outlets and independent presses. Some say that we have created a perfect echo chamber and that the plurality of a free press is just a sad joke. Turning on the TV or scrolling through the headlines offers only the illusion of choice.
Our speakers include Lonnie Isabel. Isabel teaches at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Isabel spent 25 years in the newspaper business, covering or directing the coverage of several presidential campaigns including the fabled 2000 election. He also ran the coverage of Hillary Clinton’s run for Senate, the impeachment of Bill Clinton, and just about every major national and international story of his generation. He has covered each national political convention since 1984.
He was previously Executive Business and Global News Editor for the Huffington Post, where he oversaw business, technology and international reporting while writing a column that earned a Loeb award for commentary. Goodman was the National Economic Correspondent for the New York Times during the Great Recession. There, he played a central role in “The Reckoning,” a series of stories on the roots of the 2008 financial crisis, which won a Loeb and was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize. Goodman is the author of Past Due: The End of Easy Money and the Renewal of the American Economy.
Under his direction, WBUR’s News Department has garnered more than 50 national and local awards recognizing the quality and depth of its news coverage. Fleming first worked at the station in 1981 as a general assignment reporter. In 1992, he became WBUR’s News Director, a position he held until 2004. In that role he oversaw the breadth, depth and daily workings of the news produced at WBUR and helped to manage the content of daily broadcasts in their diverse forms.