Neighbors, we ask you sign our petition that we will send to the city council. 

Dear City Council,

In this state of emergency, many of us Cantabridgians are finding ourselves increasingly food insecure. We don’t know where the food is going to come from or how we are going to afford it. The supply chain has already been disrupted, causing massive amounts of industrial waste while stores lack sufficient stock. As farmworkers, meatpackers, and truck drivers are forced to continue working without sufficient protections, many are falling ill, which has experts predicting the cost of food will increase in tandem with food scarcity. And as unemployment  escalates nationwide to its highest rate since the Great Depression, many will struggle more than ever to feed their families. 

Cambridge City Growers is a grass-roots effort to minimize this risk to our community. We have come together as neighbors to grow our own food and share it among the most vulnerable in the community. In the spirit of the Food not Lawns movement, we are ready to empower each other to turn grass into gardens. 

However, it is public land--from sidewalk plots, to school grounds, to sections of city parks-- that we feel could be utilized most productively to grow vegetables and serve the community.  The need is significant and urgent, and we are blessed with numerous public land areas that may be well-suited to the task:  The grounds of Tobin School and other schools, Kingsley Park, Cambridge Common, the Main Library and Magazine Beach, to name a few.  We are in the process of identifying other  spaces within Cambridge that could be utilized in this way.  

We, as an organized group of neighbors, ask you, the City Council to support this effort to grow food for the Cambridge community by granting access to and assisting in the productive use of public land in our city.  

Thank you.