{ Part 5 : Spring/Summer/Autumn }
Eighteen months since its inception, our project has developed a following and continues to grow and shift with daily encounters. A growing number of 'regulars' walk, jog, bike, skate or drive by to either 'shop' or 'restock' the Free Store. The original Diggers site has been replanted and expanded, both in scale and range of food plants, as a direct result of people’s support and active participation.
Both projects have succeeded in messing with the suburban obsession with security and propriety. Even the initially timid or those haunted by middle-class decorum have become increasingly confident about taking and leaving things at the Free Store, as well as tending and harvesting from the Diggers garden. The projects inspire observers and participants to engage in surprising discussions on property, authority, self-sustenance and collective responsibility. This growing interest and confidence has been accompanied by a growing understanding of how the Kamehameha Schools, the US and Hawai'i States are part and parcel of the global capitalist market system. This is an understanding based neither in unquestioning acceptance of these systems nor abstract objections to them but through the direct encounters with the Diggers Garden and Free Store. Surprisingly, we have experienced that both enthusiasts and detractors agree that neither capitalism nor State power have or will provide people with the stuff of life.
All the while, Kamehameha Schools continues to periodically threaten to either destroy or co-opt the Diggers site.
