08/01/2026
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‼️Please read‼️Today’s post by Prairie Up (shared below),is striking a particular chord for us. Today, a leader of the current white supremacist fascist movement is speaking at a fundraising event in our own city of Fishers, Indiana. Not only that, we met the head of the organization sponsoring the event several years ago. He asked us - on the fly- for a donation of plants to Carbon Neutral Indiana, his pet project at the time. We found him to be personally off-putting, but on the surface, the organization seemed compatible with NPU’s mission. We did donate some plants for a giveaway. After some research, we suspected that the organization was not on the level, to put it mildly.
Carbon Neutral Indiana no longer exists. But the person and his grifting, fascist, despicable worldview has found fertile ground here in Indiana. Indiana’s Lt Governor is from our area and also a part of today’s event. It’s a shameful regressive backslide into Indiana’s K*K tainted politics and culture. It’s embarrassing, and infuriating. These people cannot be allowed to have their way, or to claim to represent the “silent majority” of Hoosiers. Silence is complicity. We will not be silenced. We will protect our neighbors and our communities. We will not be told what to plant, and where and how. Reducing/eliminating turf lawn may seem like a small act of resistance but in reality it is one of the most strident messages we can send. We aren’t going to be led by establishment thinking any more. Plant native. 🔗⬇️ Fishers Resists
P.S. MAGA commenters are being blocked. We have been patient with them for too long.
~~~~By Benjamin Vogt~~~~
“Saturday Sermon
In my reading I frequently come across late 19th and early 20th century landscape aesthetes, often from the upper class, who proclaimed immigrant and minority urban areas weedy and messy -- equating plant wildness with not fitting in, not speaking the language, having lots of babies, etc. These socialites created beautification groups that evolved into outright eugenics wars at state fairs and in community HOA-type groups.
This legacy of thought can be traced right through redlining to sundown towns to stringent FHA loan rules making sure like lived next to like (skin color, income level) to increase and maintain property values.
Our municipal codes and HOA bylaws today are peppered with the language and echo of both supremacy and division from above, continuing to keep wedges between us so that we don't, I dunno, create a more equitable and just society devoid of violent hierarchies.
When I dare you to plant something, this is what I'm daring you about. Flowers where lawn used to be are a threat to a system dependent on the illusion of equality and democracy because the landscapes all look the same, when in fact it's about keeping you quiet, compliant, and under the boot of interests that need wealth and power continuing to flow upward. You know, water use, gas use, buying mowers and blowers and sprinklers and services to maintain the boot against your neck lest you rock the boat too much and get threatened with a fine, jail time, or a lien against your property (in mega extreme cases). And of course all those banks who hold all those mortgages and are betting in your home increasing in value as you struggle to pay the monthly interest.
Sure, gardening is about a beautiful flower that smells great and supports some bees. And it should be that as often as we can celebrate it. But it's also, underneath all this wonderful emotional connection to the life around us and honoring creation, a giant middle finger to a system of power whose tendrils are in every facet of our lives. Breaking the illusion is breaking the social contract that we've all bought into which is fragile, tentative, and totally made up -- and which we define our lives by. It's not easy. It's even a little like self immolation.
Be the threat that risks liberation of our lives and the lives around us. Cleaner air. Cleaner water. Less flooding. Support for the creatures who literally make our world run. And the peace of wild things that make home a refuge for the heart, mind, and soul vs a toxic soup of herbicides, heat island effect, poisoned air, and fertilizer runoff that chokes our waterways.
Prairie up. In all of the ways.”
