When Sol Mercado was born, her father gave her a reputation meaning solar in Spanish, as a result of, as she explains at first of this movie, she was the sunshine of his life. However for a few years, sunshine was exhausting to come back by for Sol. When she was 19, she shot and killed a rival gang member in California, and she or he served 16 years in jail consequently.
There, she found gardening via a program provided to inmates and she or he started to see her time working with crops as her freedom. Upon her launch in 2020, she started working for Planting Justice, a food-justice and urban-gardening group in Oakland, Calif., the place we see her as she begins to develop a brand new life for herself on the earth.
On this movie, Dbora Souza Silva and Emily Cohen Ibaez hint the historic connections between rising meals and freedom, and provides perception into what it takes for somebody to seek out forgiveness. Mercado and the filmmakers answered questions by way of e-mail in regards to the mission.
TIME: This movie is a part of a sequence that TIME and Sundance have supported, addressing the problem of gun violence on this nation. How does Sols story shine a light-weight on what wants to alter?
SILVA AND COHEN: At present, as a re-entry coordinator at Planting Justice, Sol helps implement gardening applications in communities which can be most uncovered to gun and gang violence. As Sol as soon as instructed us, If gardening helps me to seek out my very own self, my freedom, I imagine it could additionally assist the brand new era of youth in these communities, and supply them one thing constructive in life to maintain them away from crime.
We couldn’t agree extra with Sols instinct. Throughout our analysis part for the movie, we got here throughout new research that present a correlation between group gardens and a lower in city gun violence. Moreover, for communities who stay in meals deserts, rising their very own meals means gaining access to wholesome, recent greens.
TIME: The problems of reclaiming the ability to help oneself, the narrative ties to a legacy of enslaved folks and even the newer heritage of Sols, are so highly effective on this movie. Are you able to clarify a bit extra of that historical past to us?
SILVA AND COHEN: Within the course of of creating this movie, we did plenty of analysis and, in doing so, we found how our legacy of slavery in america has formed our present damaged meals and carceral methods. Not solely are agricultural and home employees denied the identical protections given to all different industries in america, however prisoners in California are topic to involuntary servitude, primarily working with out pay whereas incarcerated. And as within the instances of slavery, farm and incarcerated employees have used gardening as a approach to withstand their oppression.
By having company over their very own meals provision, oppressed peoples have discovered methods to nourish themselves and reconnect to the land and their very own labor, which has non secular and psychological advantages. Traditionally, folks dispossessed from land have planted gardens on small plots, typically combating to achieve rights to develop meals on these plots the place they’ll complement their diets, receive revenue, and transmit cultural heritage.
Within the Caribbean and the U.S., slaves grew gardens in forests close to the plantations the place they labored to complement the meager provisions supplied by their masters. Slaves earned cash on the Sunday market and a few gained sufficient revenue to purchase their very own freedom. Throughout the Americas, Indigenous folks invented the tactic of companion planting. They fought, and proceed to struggle, to maintain their lands for conventional gardening strategies when colonizers have tried to grab them.
Gardening will not be a quaint pastime, it’s a highly effective means to reclaim ones labor, life, and land. Meals methods are one of the highly effective manifestations of a societys financial system and tradition; in america, we have now an unforgiving capitalist financial system that we ingest into our our bodies daily. By highlighting Sols story and keenness for gardening in our movie, we hope to carry a couple of new approach to think about a world that’s abolitionist, crammed with shade, life, hope, and pleasure.
Learn extra: Why Docs Are Prescribing Nature Walks
TIME: Sol, are you able to clarify what “gardening is my freedom” means to you, each from whenever you had been in jail and now?
MERCADO: After I was in jail my solely place of freedom was the backyard on the Perception Backyard Program and the backyard that we inbuilt entrance of the housing unit that I used to be housed at. I used to be capable of go there and get my thoughts out of the jail. It was the one place the place I might overlook the place I used to be at;, I used to be capable of course of plenty of issues that led me to selecting the life-style that I selected that led me to jail. That was the one quiet and peaceable place the place I used to be capable of join with the crops and overlook for not less than a couple of hours that I used to be only a quantity in jail CDCR#WA2487 and that I used to be surrounded by an electrical barbed wire fence.
TIME: Whats the factor you need folks to find out about your life now?
MERCADO: I need them to know that rehabilitation, therapeutic and alter is feasible. I’m residing proof of that. That I’ve not taken my second likelihood at freedom without any consideration. At present I exploit my experiences to carry therapeutic and hope to others. At present I’m an advocate, I work as a reentry coordinator at Planting Justice wherein I assist those that have been incarcerated discover assets in order that they too be part of ending recidivism. I additionally facilitate self-help teams and proceed exhibiting those that have been incarcerated the significance of therapeutic whereas gardening and being round nature.
Most lately, I began going again to the jail the place I spent 16 years and introduced crops to the identical backyard that was as soon as my solely house of freedom. I share with the incarcerated women there how vital it’s to have the ability to relate with the crops when discovering therapeutic. Now, I educate them learn how to develop their very own drugs and their very own meals, however most significantly, I share with them the significance of talking up and utilizing their voice to ask for assist.
This movie was supported by TIME Studios and the Sundance Institute Documentary Movie Program with help from the Kendeda Fund, as a part of a sequence of quick documentaries addressing the problem of gun violence in America.
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