Call-in: Uhuru Foods denied ability to raise resources at Maker Faire

Dear Uhuru Foods and Uhuru Movement Supporters,

We are calling on you to express your outrage at the decision by Ovations, the food coordinators for the Maker Faire 2009 to terminate the contract of Uhuru Foods to raise resources in support of the Uhuru Movement programs for African self-determination at this year's Maker Faire.

Please take a moment to read this appeal and to contact the organizers of this year's Maker Faire immediately, as the fair is taking place on May 30th and 31st.

Uhuru Foods received word of the contract termination Friday afternoon, May 22nd, just one week prior to the festival. They refused to say why they are excluding Uhuru Foods from this event.

Uhuru Foods has already invested considerable resources in this fundraiser, having purchased inventory, equipment and airfare for participants. On top of that, Uhuru Foods has provided excellent healthy vegetarian food for the past two years at Maker Faire with a great reception from the crowds, and has given the public the opportunity to support programs on the ground that benefit the African community.

We believe that excluding Uhuru Food runs counter to the mission of the Maker Faire. It ensures that the festival is an exclusive enterprise that does not include the voice, perspective and struggle of the African working class.

It is urgent that Maker Faire reverse the decision and allow Uhuru Foods to raise these urgently needed resources. Excluding Uhuru Foods from the Maker Faire is anti-black and goes against the African community's struggle for true sustainability and justice that African people are leading through the Uhuru Movement.

We believe that a sustainable future for everyone requires that African people have control and benefit from their land and resources - the gold, diamonds, minerals - that our social system has come to rely on and that have created the wealth of Silicon Valley and the overall white population and created misery and suffering for hundreds of years for African people. These are the people that the Uhuru Movement represents.

The African community has faced brutal police assaults, beatings, harassment and murders. African people fill California prisons as a result of designer laws, such as the three strikes law, and the California prison system in the last period of time has fed the economy of California.

The Uhuru Movement, Uhuru Foods and the Uhuru Movement have an extensive and growing base of support throughout the California Bay Area, where we have done food booths for three decades. Uhuru Foods is also supported internationally where the Uhuru Movement is positively influencing the lives of black people.

Uhuru Foods is known for defending and supporting the rights of the African community locally and globally and raising funds for independent programs of the black community that serve to change conditions of life for African people, who face low life expectancy, high infant mortality, unfathomable poverty and internationally documented police brutality. Many regular customers frequent our booths as a way to participate in solidarity with the black community.

Uhuru Foods has been providing great food and excellent service at Northern California streetfairs, festivals and special events for 30 years. We are a preferred vendor at many prestigious Northern California events, including the Monterey Jazz Festival, many San Francisco neighborhood streetfairs, San Francisco Pride and Oakland’s Art and Soul.

This work of Uhuru Foods is extraordinarily important, especially during these dire times. A report by the Alameda County Health Department released in 2008 informs us of grave disparities in living conditions, just inside of Oakland itself; conditions that mirror those of African communities throughout the country. The report tells us that:

An African born in West Oakland, as compared to a white child born in the Oakland hills:
• Will live 15 years less.
• Is 1 ½ times more likely to be born premature with a low birth rate
• Is 7 times more likely to be born into poverty
• As an adult, will be 5 times more likely to be hospitalized with diabetes, twice as likely to die of heart disease, 3 times more likely to die of a stroke and twice as likely to die of cancer.

At the same time, the state government is cutting all social services, medicare and welfare, which will only increase these disparities and bring absolute poverty to the African community. The economic situation is so dire in California that teachers are involved in civil disobedience.

The Uhuru Movement is building programs like the African Village Survival Initiative (AVSI), which includes community gardens, renewable and sustainable energy projects, rainwater harvesting projects and economic development programs. This initiative is designed to collectively allow for the survival of African people wherever they are from East Oakland to East Africa. A project already implemented in Sierra Leone provides 3,000 litres of water a day to a community that had no water one year ago.

We cannot settle for the exclusion of the black community from this event, especially in these critical and challenging times. We believe that the resources that Uhuru Foods raises at Maker Faire must be made available to African people. We believe the voice of the oppressed African community must be heard.

We call on all supporters of the Uhuru Movement and of the right of the African community to resist and change their conditions to call or email the individuals listed here immediately.
If necessary, leave messages and request a response.
a. Express your outrage at the exclusion of Uhuru Foods and support for the black community from Maker Faire
b. Demand that Uhuru Foods booth be reinstated at the Maker Faire:


Charlie Neary, Vice President of Ovations,
cneary [at] ovationsfoodservices.com
925-426-5128

Sherry Huss, Director of Maker Faire
sherry [at] oreilly.com
707-827-7074

Chris Carpenter, General Manager of the
San Mateo Event Center
ccarpenter [at] smeventcenter.com
650-574-3247


Thank you for your support for the Uhuru Movement and for justice for the African community!