2nd and 3rd Wednesday's (6/10, 6/17, 7/8, 7/15, 8/12, 8/19, 9/9, 9/16)
Chico Peace and Justice Center Garden, 526 Broadway @ 6-8pm

This year the Gardeners' Swap Meets will be held at regular locations on Wednesday's and Friday's.  Biking, walking, and bringing your own bags is encouraged. Wednesday Swap Meets start June 10 and conclude October 7 (see complete schedule below).  Friday Swap Meets are year round!

As with last year, please plan on going home with roughly as much produce as you arrive with.  Unloading seventeen zucchini and taking a single plum is not nice.

WHAT ARE GARDENERS' SWAP MEETS?
Do you have an excess of eggplants and a shortage of tomatoes?  A plethora of peaches but a craving for apricots?  Fill your container of choice with your extra (but edible) home-grown fruits and/or veggies and SWAP them with another grower for something you like better.  The swap meets are a free, weekly, community-building event sponsored by the Chico Food Network. Don’t have a garden?  No problem—wild blackberries, the fruit from neglected plum trees and the like are welcome as well, but please avoid picking from plants growing close to major roads.

A Position Paper on Afghanistan
Chico Peace and Justice Center Board of Directors
Adopted 15 April 2009

 In an effort to serve our work for peace and justice through offering information and recommending courses of action on crucial contemporary issues, the Chico Peace and Justice Center presents the following position paper, with supporting material attached, for the consideration and active response of our Chico community.

Background considerations:

Afghanistan has a three millennium history of invasion by foreign powers, none of these successful in the long run.  The United States now stands in this tradition, a country itself burdened by persistent but failing efforts at military invasion in Vietnam and Iraq in recent decades. 

The escalation of an already failing effort does not promise success, and the reluctance of other parties to increase their own military involvement registers their reading of this wasteful strategy as well.  The recommendations of military leaders, naturally, assumes that military force is the means to be applied, but the problems of Afghanistan —and there are many—are not amenable to a military solution. 

The Chico Peace and JusticeCenter will no longer offer its garden or ordained Handsministers to the public for wedding ceremonies. With the passage of Proposition 8, same-sex couples have lost their right to express their commitment and acquire legal status as a married couple. Ordained ministers that have performed same-sex marriages at the center are no longer willing to offer their services.

After the California Supreme Court declared that the state Constitution protected a fundamental "right to marry" extending equally to same-sex couples, and the Butte County Clerk-Recorder Candace Grubbs refused to perform civil marriages, the Chico Peace and Justice Center stepped in. Services were offered to the public free of charge.  

We are in historic times. The Obama campaign mobilized millions of people, and his election has brought a new sense of hope and possibility to the nation.  The Chico Peace and Justice Center is working in solidarity with United for Peace and Justice to build on this momentum and the rich history that made the election of an African-American possible.

Read more here about the Chico Beyond War Coalition.