Movie Nights at the Community Garden!

In the heart of Midtown, there are families living and thriving from places all across the planet - Central America, Southeast Asia, tiny spots you've never heard of here in the South.

We would like to create a true community by inviting everyone to share their traditions and start new ones, together: beginning with *movie nights* at our community garden this summer!

Our little group of gardeners with experiences of homelessness has taken 1.4 acres of abandoned land near Poplar and Cleveland and successfully nurtured it into a safe and happy space for planting in less than 3 years. Now we hope to offer the same kind of TLC to the //people// in the area, no matter what their background might be.

Our grassroots board will canvass the neighborhood to ask folks for movie suggestions and selections and we'll put together a schedule by the middle of May, with all garden supporters and helpers welcome!

Discussions and community announcements to be held afterward. From May to October, we hope to offer an estimated 21 screenings to approximately 500 guests who might never meet each other, otherwise.

[NOTE: Mosquitoes will most assuredly not be invited. All will be barred from entry employing every natural defense mechanism at our disposal. Sorry, mosquitoes.]

We will order the listed equipment and secure a safe place to store it as soon as funds are disbursed, then setup our community survey and canvass for two weekends and weekday afternoons in May. Our first screening should commence in late May or early June!

The Washington Bottoms neighborhood has seen an enormous increase in safety and community ties in the last year, but it still needs help. Rents are increasing, too, and hard-working parents are having to work longer hours away from their children. Commercial investors continually set their sights on pushing families out to unknown and remote neighborhoods with little to no access to jobs, public transit, or social services. If we are truly our brother's (and sister's) keeper, we should be keeping each other in mind as we grow food close to home and grow relationships with the people who make up this city -- especially those without a voice. We hope to provide a bit of respite from the struggle of everyday life and earn the trust necessary to join forces and advocate for a better future...strangely enough, we think community garden movie nights will accomplish that goal!