Community Cinema at Whole Foods Briarcliff

Community Cinema: Taking Root

Join us on July 2nd 9pm at Whole Foods Market Briarcliff for a FREE film screening of Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai. Taking Root follows Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai in her quest to reclaim her land and her culture through the simple act of planting trees. This direct action has fostered community solidarity, environmental literacy, and political resolve that helped to bring down Kenya's 24-year dictatorship.

Come early and hungry to pick up your dinner hot off the grill. Before and after the film Oakhurst Community Garden, Farmer D, and Georgia Organics will be on hand to provide you with more information on how you can take action planting gardens and trees within your own community. To sign up, please contact Amy Wheeler at amy.wheeler@wholefoods.com or visit Customer Service at Whole Foods Market Briarcliff.

Raised in the rural highlands of Kenya, educated in the United States during the 1960s civil rights era, and the first female to receive a PhD in East Africa, Maathai discovered the heart of her life's work by reconnecting with the rural women with whom she had grown up. They told her that their daily lives had become intolerable: they were walking longer distances for firewood, clean water had become scarce, the soil was disappearing from their fields, and their children were suffering from malnutrition. Maathai thought to herself, "Well, why not plant trees?" Trees provide shade, prevent soil erosion, supply firewood and building materials, and produce nutritious fruit to combat malnutrition. With this realization Maathai founded The Green Belt Movement, a grassroots organization encouraging rural women to plant trees. In tending their nurseries women had a legitimate reason to gather and discuss the roots of their problems. These grassroots women soon found themselves working successively against deforestation, poverty, ignorance, embedded economic interests, and political oppression, until they became a national political force.