“The hoe is one of the principal tools with which early Haitian farmers carved their living from remote hillsides, but the hoe dangled in the hand and played with a metal rod is also an important musical instrument…From the percussive, metallic ringing of this typical Haitian instrument comes the onomatopoeic name of another [insurrectionary emancipatory] secret society, Vlangbendeng.”
Maroon Nation by John Henry Gonzalez
Two city lots contiguous to the building at 30 E Virginia st, act as Vlangbendeng Fore Jaden (forest garden) where Haitian neighbors and refugees conduct a market garden and educational exchange in solidarity with those still in Haiti.
” ‘Gone to ground: of a fox or other animal to enter its earth or burrow. As in; rabbits evicted from one set of burrows will go to ground elsewhere.’…’plants are ground thoughts because soil cant move itself, ground as a site for thinking, plants signaling intelligence, sentient soil moved along by the force of life…going to ground demands a [anti-colonial] politics ‘verging on the vegetal’…”
Gone to Ground – Vanessa Agar Jones
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