An Oakland, California-based nonprofit is hiring former inmates to plant and tend to more than 30,000 fruit and nut trees on an organic orchard, The New York Times reports, using urban farming and environmental education as a pipeline back to normal society from the cells of San Quentin State Prison.
Revenue-generating businesses subsidize Planting Justice, the 9-year-old nonprofit, to give former inmates—who make up half of the 30-person staff—what they deem “family-sustaining wages,” as well as health benefits and a month of paid leave each year.
Following the guiding principle “kale, not jail,” the program mirrors of a larger, national “green prison” movement that offers career pathways to ex-convicts.
Founders Gavin Raders and Haleh Zandi set up the orchard two years ago on a vacant, weedy patch of land in East Oakland. Today, they sell 1,100 varieties of potted trees and plants through the nonprofit’s Rolling River Nursery.
Employees must commit to staying sober and drug-free. Two were let go for “poor job performance,” and only one went back to prison. But others say it has helped them reenter society.
“I believe I have an edge up,” Planting Justice employee Bilal Coleman tells the Times. “In East Oakland, what’s fashionable are the hustlers. Now my hustle is the garden.”
The organic orchard brings in about $250,000 of the nonprofit’s $2 million annual operating budget. Some 2,000 “subscribers” make monthly pledges to Planting Justice totaling $450,000 each year.
