The stories of rebels and the ripples of impact they've had on the world. <br/><br/><a href="https://delaneyxclara.substack.com/s/ripples-of-rebels?utm_medium=podcast">delaneyxclara.substack.com</a>
Ripples of Rebels
Claim This Podcastby Delaney Clara
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The stories of rebels and the ripples of impact they've had on the world. <br/><br/><a href="https://delaneyxclara.substack.com/s/ripples-of-rebels?utm_medium=podcast">delaneyxclara.substack.com</a>
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Recent Episodes
July 12, 2026
35) French Revolution Explained: Wealth Inequality Then vs. Now
<p>With Bastille Day coming up, it was only right to do an episode on the French Revolution.In 1789, 96% of France was legally locked out of power while a tiny, tax-exempt elite lived off wealth built partly on the backs of enslaved workers thousands of miles away in the French colony of Saint-Domingue — modern-day Haiti. Sound familiar?</p><p><strong>In this episode:</strong></p><p>* Why France’s tax system exempted the wealthiest and taxed everyone else — and why that structure took a fiscal crisis and a famine to finally crack</p><p>* The uncomfortable, often-erased truth: how the wealth of Saint-Domingue (Haiti) — the most profitable colony on Earth, built on enslaved labor — funded the French elite the Revolution rose up against, and why the Haitian Revolution deserves to be centered, not footnoted</p><p>* How the Estates-General, the Tennis Court Oath, and the fall of the Bastille turned decades of tension into an actual tipping point</p><p>* Why revolutions without a plan for what comes next can curdle into new authoritarianism — the Reign of Terror and Napoleon’s rise, explained honestly</p><p>* The specific U.S. laws and court rulings fueling modern wealth concentration: the carried interest loophole, the “stepped-up basis” (angel of death) loophole, the gutted estate tax, the 1999 repeal of Glass-Steagall, and Citizens United v. FEC</p><p>* Real, non-performative ways to fight wealth inequality in your own community — legislatively, economically, and locally</p><p>Sources & Citations</p><p><strong>On the French Revolution & colonial wealth:</strong></p><p>* Alpha History, <a target="_blank" href="https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/taxation/">“Taxation as a Cause of the French Revolution”</a></p><p>* World History Encyclopedia, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1960/the-three-estates-of-pre-revolutionary-france/">“The Three Estates of Pre-Revolutionary France”</a></p><p>* Colonial Williamsburg, Slavery and Remembrance: <a target="_blank" href="https://slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0111">“Haiti (Saint-Domingue)”</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0066">“Haitian Revolution”</a></p><p>* U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian: <a target="_blank" href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1784-1800/haitian-rev">“The United States and the Haitian Revolution, 1791–1804”</a></p><p>* Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Beacon Press, 1995)</p><p>* David Patrick Geggus, Haitian Revolutionary Studies (Indiana University Press, 2002)</p><p><strong>On U.S. wealth inequality & the laws behind it:</strong></p><p>* Federal Reserve, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/">Distributional Financial Accounts</a></p><p>* Institute for Policy Studies, <a target="_blank" href="https://inequality.org/facts/wealth-inequality/">Inequality.org — “Wealth Inequality”</a></p><p>* Jacob S. Hacker & Paul Pierson, <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winner-Take-All_Politics">Winner-Take-All Politics</a> (Simon & Schuster, 2010)</p><p>* Center for Public Integrity, <a target="_blank" href="https://publicintegrity.org/inequality-poverty-opportunity/taxes/unequal-burden/how-four-decades-of-tax-cuts-fueled-inequality/">“How Four Decades of Tax Cuts Fueled Inequality”</a></p><p>* Americans for Financial Reform, <a target="_blank" href="https://ourfinancialsecurity.org/resources/close-the-carried-interest-loophole-that-is-a-tax-dodge-for-super-rich-private-equity-executives/">Fact Sheet: Close the Carried Interest Loophole</a></p><p>* Brennan Center for Justice, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-united-explained">Citizens United, Explained</a></p><p>* Roosevelt Institute, <a target="_blank" href="https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/citizens-united-15-years-later/">Citizens United and the Decline of US Democracy: 15 Years Later</a></p><p>* Campaign Legal Center, <a target="_blank" href="https://campaignlegal.org/update/how-does-citizens-united-decision-still-affect-us-2026">How Does the Citizens United Decision Still Affect Us in 2026?</a></p><p>Take Action — Beyond the Food Bank</p><p>Charity treats the symptom. These are ways to push on the actual structure:</p><p><strong>Push on the legislation directly</strong></p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://americansfortaxfairness.org/">Americans for Tax Fairness</a> — tracks and campaigns on the carried interest loophole, estate tax, and other wealth-tax legislation; sign up for action alerts</p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://patrioticmillionaires.org/">Patriotic Millionaires</a> — wealthy Americans organizing specifically for higher taxes on wealth; regularly mobilizes public pressure on Congress</p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://www.brennancenter.org/">Brennan Center for Justice</a> — litigation and advocacy pushing back on Citizens United‘s effects; state-level campaign finance reform trackers</p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://campaignlegal.org/">Campaign Legal Center</a> — nonpartisan legal advocacy on money-in-politics issues, with tools to see what’s happening in your state</p><p><strong>Build power at the economic level</strong></p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://www.usworker.coop/">US Federation of Worker Cooperatives</a> — find or start a worker-owned cooperative business near you</p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://geo.coop/">Grassroots Economic Organizing (GEO)</a> — resources and network for the broader worker co-op and solidarity economy movement</p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://shelterforce.org/2026/05/06/stalled-in-state-houses-tenant-unions-organize-against-landlords-directly/">Shelterforce: Tenant Union Organizing Guide</a> — reporting and strategy on organizing building-level and citywide tenant unions</p><p><strong>Go local</strong></p><p>* Search “[your city] + participatory budgeting” or “community land trust” to find local programs letting residents directly allocate public funds</p><p>* Look up your nearest <strong>credit union</strong> or <strong>Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI)</strong> via the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.ncua.gov/consumers/credit-union-locator">National Credit Union Administration locator</a> — move savings out of mega-banks and into community-controlled finance</p><p>* Find a <strong>mutual aid network</strong> in your area (search “[your city] + mutual aid network”) for immediate, material solidarity work alongside the longer legislative fight</p> <br/><br/>Get full access to Ripples of Rebels at <a href="https://delaneyxclara.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4">delaneyxclara.substack.com/subscribe</a>
May 27, 2026
34: From Jazz & Tap Dance to Politics & Gangs - the Development of Five Points, New York
<p>What if one neighborhood held the entire origin story of American corruption, immigration, labor rights, and music? This week, we’re talking about <strong>Five Points</strong> — the most infamous neighborhood in 19th-century New York City, and arguably the most consequential few acres in American history.</p><p>We start before the streets were even laid, with the Lenape people of Mannahatta and the freshwater Collect Pond that sustained lower Manhattan for thousands of years. Then we trace how a catastrophic act of environmental negligence created a literal sinkhole of poverty — and how that sinkhole became the engine of American political corruption.</p><p>From the Black New Yorkers who built the neighborhood’s first institutions, including the African Society for Mutual Relief (the Underground Railroad’s Manhattan hub), to the hundreds of thousands of Irish famine survivors who flooded in after 1845 — we tell the full story. Why were they pitted against each other? Who benefited? And what does the answer reveal about how division is manufactured in every era, including our own?</p><p>We go deep on Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed — the greatest political scandal in American history, born right in Five Points — and trace how a machine built on immigrant votes stole an estimated $200 million from New York’s poorest citizens, all while building the Brooklyn Bridge and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We examine how investigative journalism and civic organizing finally brought Tweed down, and what that tells us about accountability in the modern era.</p><p><strong>Keywords:</strong> Five Points history, Tammany Hall corruption, Irish immigration New York, Boss Tweed scandal, New York City history podcast, Lenape Manhattan, Rose Pastor Stokes, Newsies 1899, labor movement history, immigrant history America, political corruption history, Lower East Side history, Collect Pond New York, Civil War Draft Riots 1863, history podcast</p><p>FURTHER LEARNING — EMBEDDED LINKS</p><p>Books Referenced in This Episode</p><p>* <strong>Tyler Anbinder, </strong><strong>Five Points: The 19th-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World’s Most Notorious Slum</strong> (Free Press, 2001) — The definitive scholarly history of the neighborhood. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Five-Points/Tyler-Anbinder/9781439141557">Find it at Simon & Schuster</a> | <a target="_blank" href="https://archive.org/details/fivepoints19thce0000anbi">Free digital version via Internet Archive</a></p><p>* <strong>Jacob A. Riis, </strong><strong>How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York</strong> (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1890) — The muckraking photojournalism classic that shocked middle-class America into confronting tenement conditions. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45502/45502-h/45502-h.htm">Read free via Project Gutenberg</a> | <a target="_blank" href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jacob-riis/writer.html">Library of Congress exhibit on Riis</a></p><p>* <strong>Adam Hochschild, </strong><strong>Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes</strong> (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020) — The biography that brought Rose back from historical obscurity. Essential companion to our Rose Pastor Stokes episode. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.hmhbooks.com">Find it at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt</a> | <a target="_blank" href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/rebel-cinderella-adam-hochschild/1134472785">Barnes & Noble</a></p><p>* <strong>William L. Riordon, </strong><strong>Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics</strong> (1905; Penguin Classics edition available) — Tammany ward boss George Washington Plunkitt in his own unfiltered words. One of the most honest accounts of machine politics ever published. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/531252/plunkitt-of-tammany-hall-by-william-l-riordon-with-an-introduction-by-peter-quinn-and-an-afterword-by-philip-freeman/">Penguin Random House edition</a></p><p>* <strong>Tyler Anbinder, </strong><strong>City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York</strong> (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016) — The sweeping follow-up to Five Points, covering the full arc of New York’s immigrant story.</p><p>* <strong>Tyler Anbinder, </strong><strong>Plentiful Country: The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York</strong> (2024) — The newest scholarly entry on Irish immigration and the famine’s direct line to Five Points.</p><p>Museums & Institutions</p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://www.tenement.org/"><strong>The Tenement Museum</strong></a> — Located at 97 and 103 Orchard Street, just blocks from where Five Points stood. Offers guided tours of restored tenement apartments and neighborhood walking tours. One of the best living-history experiences in the country. National Historic Landmark.</p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nyhistory.org/"><strong>New-York Historical Society</strong></a> — Houses the original Draft Wheel from the 1863 Draft Riots, the bible saved from the burning Colored Orphan Asylum, and extensive Five Points-era collections.</p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://www.fabnyc.org/2022/02/03/five-points/"><strong>FABnyc — Five Points History Project</strong></a> — A detailed community history resource on Five Points with a particular focus on Black New York history in the neighborhood.</p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://maap.columbia.edu/place/25.html"><strong>Mapping the African American Past (MAAP), Columbia University</strong></a> — Interactive map and archival resources documenting Black history sites throughout New York City, including Five Points.</p><p>Primary Sources & Archival Resources</p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nytimes.com/topic/person/william-magear-tweed"><strong>New York Times Archive — Boss Tweed Investigation, 1871</strong></a> — The original investigative reporting that brought down the Tweed Ring.</p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://billofrightsinstitute.org/activities/william-boss-tweed-primary-source-analysis/"><strong>Thomas Nast Cartoons on Boss Tweed, Bill of Rights Institute</strong></a> — Primary source analysis of Nast’s Harper’s Weekly cartoons with teaching materials. Essential for understanding how journalism and visual media toppled a corrupt machine.</p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nyhistory.org/blogs/new-york-city-draft-riots"><strong>New York City Draft Riot Resources, New-York Historical Society</strong></a> — Primary source accounts and artifacts from the 1863 riots.</p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://blackpast.org/african-american-history/new-york-african-society-mutual-relief-1808-1860/"><strong>New York African Society for Mutual Relief, BlackPast.org</strong></a> — Scholarly entry on the first incorporated African American association, headquartered in Five Points.</p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jacob-riis/writer.html"><strong>Jacob Riis: Revealing “How the Other Half Lives,” Library of Congress</strong></a> — Full exhibit on Riis’s photography, writing, and reform legacy, including original manuscript materials.</p><p>Academic & Educational Resources</p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/william-boss-tweed-and-political-machines/"><strong>Bill of Rights Institute — Boss Tweed and Political Machines</strong></a> — Free educational resource on the mechanics of machine politics with primary source materials.</p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://daily.jstor.org/race-and-labor-in-the-1863-new-york-city-draft-riots/"><strong>JSTOR Daily — Race and Labor in the 1863 Draft Riots</strong></a> — Free scholarly article connecting the Draft Riots to labor economics and manufactured racial conflict.</p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/draft-riots/"><strong>Zinn Education Project — The Draft Riot Mystery</strong></a> — Teaching activity on the 1863 Draft Riots that asks students to interrogate why — modeling the kind of structural thinking we advocate on this show.</p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/18-industrial-america/jacob-riis-how-the-other-half-lives-1890/"><strong>The American Yawp Reader — Jacob Riis, “How the Other Half Lives” (1890)</strong></a> — Free primary source excerpt with historical context.</p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Boss-Tweed"><strong>Britannica — Boss Tweed</strong></a> — Reliable overview entry with timeline of Tweed’s rise, corruption, and fall.</p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Draft-Riot-of-1863"><strong>Britannica — Draft Riot of 1863</strong></a> — Comprehensive overview of the riots with further reading links.</p><p>FULL CITATION LIST</p><p>Books</p><p>* Anbinder, Tyler. Five Points: The Nineteenth-Century New York City Neighborhood that Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World’s Most Notorious Slum. New York: The Free Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780684859958.</p><p>* Anbinder, Tyler. City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.</p><p>* Anbinder, Tyler. Plentiful Country: The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York. New York: Penguin Press, 2024.</p><p>* Hochschild, Adam. Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020. ISBN: 9781328866745.</p><p>* Riis, Jacob A. How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1890. Available free via Project Gutenberg: <a target="_blank" href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45502/45502-h/45502-h.htm">https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45502/45502-h/45502-h.htm</a>.</p><p>* Riordon, William L. Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics. New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1905. Penguin Classics edition available: <a target="_blank" href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/531252/">https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/531252/</a>.</p><p>* Harris, Leslie M. In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626–1863. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.</p><p>* Ackerman, Kenneth D. Boss Tweed: The Rise and Fall of the Corrupt Pol Who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005.</p><p>Journal Articles & Academic Sources</p><p>* Sullivan, James. “The New York African Society for Mutual Relief (1808–1860).” BlackPast.org, January 22, 2011. <a target="_blank" href="https://blackpast.org/african-american-history/new-york-african-society-mutual-relief-1808-1860/">https://blackpast.org/african-american-history/new-york-african-society-mutual-relief-1808-1860/</a>.</p><p>* Wilder, Craig Steven. “The Rise and Influence of the New York African Society for Mutual Relief, 1808–1865.” Afro-Americans in New York Life and History 22, no. 2 (1998): 7–19.</p><p>* JSTOR Daily. “Race and Labor in the 1863 New York City Draft Riots.” Accessed 2025. <a target="_blank" href="https://daily.jstor.org/race-and-labor-in-the-1863-new-york-city-draft-riots/">https://daily.jstor.org/race-and-labor-in-the-1863-new-york-city-draft-riots/</a>.</p><p>Museum & Institutional Sources</p><p>* Lower East Side Tenement Museum. About Us. New York: Tenement Museum, 2024. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.tenement.org/about-us/">https://www.tenement.org/about-us/</a>.</p><p>* National Park Service. “Lower East Side Tenement Museum National Historic Site.” U.S. Department of the Interior, 2024. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nps.gov/loea/index.htm">https://www.nps.gov/loea/index.htm</a>.</p><p>* New-York Historical Society. “What Happened During the New York City Draft Riots?” New York: NYHS, 2022. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nyhistory.org/blogs/new-york-city-draft-riots">https://www.nyhistory.org/blogs/new-york-city-draft-riots</a>.</p><p>* FABnyc. “Five Points.” New York: FABnyc, February 3, 2022. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.fabnyc.org/2022/02/03/five-points/">https://www.fabnyc.org/2022/02/03/five-points/</a>.</p><p>* Mapping the African American Past (MAAP), Columbia University. “African Society for Mutual Relief Hall.” <a target="_blank" href="https://maap.columbia.edu/place/25.html">https://maap.columbia.edu/place/25.html</a>.</p><p>Primary Newspaper & Archival Sources</p><p>* The New York Times. “Tweed’s Dilemma: The Chief of the Ring Robbers Fairly Cornered.” October 27, 1871. [Digitized via RareNewspapers.com: <a target="_blank" href="https://www.rarenewspapers.com/view/588660">https://www.rarenewspapers.com/view/588660</a>.]</p><p>* Nast, Thomas. “The Tammany Tiger Loose.” Harper’s Weekly, November 11, 1871. [Available via Bill of Rights Institute: <a target="_blank" href="https://billofrightsinstitute.org/activities/william-boss-tweed-primary-source-analysis/">https://billofrightsinstitute.org/activities/william-boss-tweed-primary-source-analysis/</a>.]</p><p>* Riis, Jacob A. “How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements.” Scribner’s Magazine, December 1889. [Exhibit materials at Library of Congress: <a target="_blank" href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jacob-riis/writer.html">https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jacob-riis/writer.html</a>.]</p><p>Online Reference Sources</p><p>* Encyclopædia Britannica. “Boss Tweed.” Last updated 2025. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Boss-Tweed">https://www.britannica.com/biography/Boss-Tweed</a>.</p><p>* Encyclopædia Britannica. “Draft Riot of 1863.” Last updated 2025. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Draft-Riot-of-1863">https://www.britannica.com/event/Draft-Riot-of-1863</a>.</p><p>* HISTORY.com. “New York Draft Riots.” Last updated 2025. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.history.com/articles/draft-riots">https://www.history.com/articles/draft-riots</a>.</p><p>* Bill of Rights Institute. “William ‘Boss’ Tweed and Political Machines.” <a target="_blank" href="https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/william-boss-tweed-and-political-machines/">https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/william-boss-tweed-and-political-machines/</a>.</p><p>* Theodore Roosevelt Center. “How the Other Half Lives.” Dickinson State University, 2025. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/encyclopedia/culture-and-society/how-the-other-half-lives/">https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/encyclopedia/culture-and-society/how-the-other-half-lives/</a>.</p><p>* Tyler Anbinder faculty page, George Washington University / Amazon author biography. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.amazon.com/Five-Points/dp/B000VF7BUG">https://www.amazon.com/Five-Points/dp/B000VF7BUG</a>.</p><p>Note: The Seabury Report (1932), the testimony of the Committee of Seventy (1871), and contemporary New York Times coverage of the Tweed Ring may be accessed through the New York Public Library digital collections at </p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://digitalcollections.nypl.org">https://digitalcollections.nypl.org</a> and ProQuest Historical Newspapers.</p><p>Last updated: May 2026. All links verified at time of publication.</p> <br/><br/>Get full access to Ripples of Rebels at <a href="https://delaneyxclara.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4">delaneyxclara.substack.com/subscribe</a>
April 30, 2026
33: Is now the time to bring Victory Gardens back?
<p>We’ve done it before. Multiple times.</p><p>During World War II, everyday people — with no farming background, no land grants, no government subsidies — grew 40% of all the fresh vegetables eaten in the United States. They did it in backyards, on rooftops, in window boxes, in vacant lots. They did it because the system they relied on couldn’t hold them, and they decided to hold themselves instead.</p><p>So what would happen if we did that again? Not for a war. Not because the government told us to. But as a grassroots movement of people who are tired of paying more every year for food that traveled 1,500 miles to reach them — food grown with fossil fuel fertilizers, shipped on diesel trucks, refrigerated with electricity that still mostly burns coal. What if growing a garden was the most grounded, practical, radical thing a person could do right now?</p><p>In this episode of Ripples of Rebels, we dig into all of it.</p><p>We cover the full history of victory gardens — from the War Gardens of WWI to the 20-million-garden movement of WWII — and the parts of that history that tend to get left out: who was excluded, whose land made it all possible, and whose food knowledge was already here long before any government poster campaign. We talk about the Indigenous agricultural traditions — like the Three Sisters companion planting system developed by Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe, and dozens of other nations — that were practicing regenerative, community-sustaining food systems for thousands of years before the USDA existed.</p><p>We make the case that growing food is a form of harm reduction — not just during war, but in a moment of fuel price volatility, supply chain fragility, and a food system that passes every hidden cost down to the people least able to absorb it.</p><p>And we talk about the earth itself. Because when you grow food in healthy, living soil — composting instead of using synthetic fertilizers, mulching, avoiding tilling, planting perennials — you’re not just feeding yourself. You’re pulling carbon dioxide out of the air and locking it into the ground. If 20% of U.S. households grew food this way, we’d sequester over 2.5 billion pounds of CO₂ every year. That’s the equivalent of taking nearly 285,000 cars off the road — while also keeping close to $19 billion in grocery savings in people’s pockets instead of supply chains.</p><p>This episode ends with exactly how to get started: how to find your USDA climate zone, what resources exist for learning from Indigenous food sovereignty organizations in your region, and why your first step doesn’t need to be a raised bed — it can be a single herb on a windowsill.</p><p>Little actions are acts of resistance. The ripple is real.</p><p><strong>In this episode:</strong></p><p>* The full history of Victory Gardens from WWI through WWII</p><p>* The Japanese American farmers who were incarcerated while the Victory Garden campaign ran — and grew gardens inside the barbed wire anyway</p><p>* Indigenous agricultural knowledge as the original, ongoing food sovereignty movement</p><p>* Why growing food is harm reduction against fossil fuel dependence</p><p>* The carbon math: what happens if 5%, 20%, or 50% of households grow food sustainably</p><p>* The EPA’s social cost of carbon and what sequestering that carbon actually saves us economically</p><p>* How to find your USDA Plant Hardiness Zone</p><p>* Native Seeds/SEARCH, the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, and other organizations doing this work</p><p>* Why saving seeds is a quiet refusal of corporate agricultural control</p><p>* </p><p>CITATIONS & SOURCES</p><p><strong>VICTORY GARDENS — HISTORY</strong></p><p>* Smithsonian Institution Libraries. Cultivating America’s Gardens: Gardening for the Common Good. National Museum of American History. <a target="_blank" href="https://library.si.edu/exhibition/cultivating-americas-gardens/gardening-for-the-common-good">https://library.si.edu/exhibition/cultivating-americas-gardens/gardening-for-the-common-good</a></p><p>* Indiana University Libraries Moving Image Archive. Growing Pains: Victory Gardens and Agriculture on the WWII American Home Front. <a target="_blank" href="https://collections.libraries.indiana.edu/IULMIA/exhibits/show/growing-pains--victory-gardens/victory-gardens">https://collections.libraries.indiana.edu/IULMIA/exhibits/show/growing-pains--victory-gardens/victory-gardens</a></p><p>* Heinz History Center. All-Out for Victory Gardens! Western Pennsylvania History Blog, September 2022. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.heinzhistorycenter.org/blog/western-pennsylvania-history-all-out-for-victory-gardens/">https://www.heinzhistorycenter.org/blog/western-pennsylvania-history-all-out-for-victory-gardens/</a></p><p>* National Park Service. Victory Gardens on the World War II Home Front. U.S. Department of the Interior. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/victory-gardens-on-the-world-war-ii-home-front.htm">https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/victory-gardens-on-the-world-war-ii-home-front.htm</a></p><p>* Wikipedia. Victory Garden. (For general overview and citation crosscheck.) <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden</a></p><p><strong>JAPANESE AMERICAN INCARCERATION & GARDENS</strong></p><p>* Morehouse, Lisa. “Farming Behind Barbed Wire: Japanese-Americans Remember WWII Incarceration.” NPR: The Salt, February 19, 2017. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/02/19/515822026/farming-behind-barbed-wire-japanese-americans-remember-wwii-incarceration">https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/02/19/515822026/farming-behind-barbed-wire-japanese-americans-remember-wwii-incarceration</a></p><p>* Ozawa, Koji Harris (2016). “The Archaeology of Gardens in Japanese American Incarceration Camps.” Master’s thesis, Department of Anthropology, San Francisco State University. Cited in NPS Victory Gardens article above.</p><p><strong>INDIGENOUS FOOD SOVEREIGNTY & THE THREE SISTERS</strong></p><p>* USDA National Agricultural Library. The Three Sisters of Indigenous American Agriculture. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nal.usda.gov/collections/stories/three-sisters">https://www.nal.usda.gov/collections/stories/three-sisters</a></p><p>* Indigenous Climate Hub. “The Three Sisters as Indigenous Sustainable Agricultural Practice.” June 2023. <a target="_blank" href="https://indigenousclimatehub.ca/2023/06/the-three-sisters-as-indigenous-sustainable-agricultural-practice/">https://indigenousclimatehub.ca/2023/06/the-three-sisters-as-indigenous-sustainable-agricultural-practice/</a></p><p>* Klopotek, Brian, Talon Claybrook, and Joe Scott. “Indigenous companion planting in the great churn: Three sisters in Kalapuya ilihi.” Environment and Society, September 2022. SAGE Journals. (Peer-reviewed.) <a target="_blank" href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/25148486221126618">https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/25148486221126618</a></p><p>* Michigan State University Native American Institute. “Preserving Indigenous Culture Through Three Sisters Gardening.” October 2024. <a target="_blank" href="https://nai.msu.edu/newsletters/october-2024/preserving-indigenous-culture-through-three-sisters-gardening">https://nai.msu.edu/newsletters/october-2024/preserving-indigenous-culture-through-three-sisters-gardening</a></p><p>* One Earth. “Three Sisters Farming: A Model of Regenerative Agriculture.” September 2025. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.oneearth.org/three-sisters-gardens/">https://www.oneearth.org/three-sisters-gardens/</a></p><p><strong>CARBON SEQUESTRATION IN SOIL & GARDENS</strong></p><p>* Gattinger, A. et al. “Organic Farming and Soil Carbon Sequestration: What Do We Really Know About the Benefits?” PLOS ONE / PMC, 2012. (Peer-reviewed meta-analysis of 32 publications.) <a target="_blank" href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3357676/">https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3357676/</a></p><p>* Wang, Ruying et al. “Carbon Sequestration in Turfgrass–Soil Systems.” Plants, Oregon State University / USDA-ARS, September 2022. (Peer-reviewed.) <a target="_blank" href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9571228/">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9571228/</a></p><p>* Discover Soil / Springer Nature. “Understanding Soil Carbon Sequestration: Mechanistic Insights, Management Approaches, and Future Challenges.” November 2025. <a target="_blank" href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s44378-025-00133-5">https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s44378-025-00133-5</a></p><p>* Green America. Climate Victory Gardens — on measuring carbon sequestration in home gardens and the legacy of the WWII gardening movement. <a target="_blank" href="https://greenamerica.org/climate-victory-gardens">https://greenamerica.org/climate-victory-gardens</a></p><p><strong>FOOD SYSTEM EMISSIONS</strong></p><p>* Crippa, M. et al. “Food systems are responsible for a third of global anthropogenic GHG emissions.” Nature Food, 2021. (Peer-reviewed. Source of the 34% estimate.) Summarized by Our World in Data: <a target="_blank" href="https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions-food">https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions-food</a></p><p>* IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land, Chapter 5: Food Security. (Source of the 21–37% range.) <a target="_blank" href="https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/chapter/chapter-5/">https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/chapter/chapter-5/</a></p><p>* Tubiello, Francesco N. et al. “Greenhouse gas emissions from food systems: building the evidence base.” Environmental Research Letters, IOP Science, 2021. (Peer-reviewed.) <a target="_blank" href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac018e">https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac018e</a></p><p><strong>SOCIAL COST OF CARBON</strong></p><p>* U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Report on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases: Estimates Incorporating Recent Scientific Advances. Final Report, December 2023. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2023-12/epa_scghg_2023_report_final.pdf">https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2023-12/epa_scghg_2023_report_final.pdf</a></p><p>* Resources for the Future. Social Cost of Carbon 101. (Plain-language explainer on the $190/ton EPA estimate and the peer-reviewed Nature study by Rennert et al., 2022.) <a target="_blank" href="https://www.rff.org/publications/explainers/social-cost-carbon-101/">https://www.rff.org/publications/explainers/social-cost-carbon-101/</a></p><p>* Rennert, Kevin et al. “Comprehensive Evidence Implies a Higher Social Cost of CO₂.” Nature, 2022. (Peer-reviewed. Foundational study behind the EPA’s updated estimate.) DOI: <a target="_blank" href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05224-9">https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05224-9</a></p><p><strong>FOOD TRANSPORTATION & FOSSIL FUEL DEPENDENCE</strong></p><p>* Fleet Farming. “The History of Victory Gardening, and Why We Should Bring Back Victory Gardens.” December 2021. (Source of food mileage data and supply chain fossil fuel analysis.) <a target="_blank" href="https://fleetfarming.org/the-history-of-victory-gardening-and-why-we-should-bring-back-victory-gardens/">https://fleetfarming.org/the-history-of-victory-gardening-and-why-we-should-bring-back-victory-gardens/</a></p><p>RESOURCES TO LEARN MORE & TAKE ACTION</p><p><strong>Find your climate zone:</strong></p><p>* USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map: </p><p>https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov</p><p>* Find your county cooperative extension service: <a target="_blank" href="https://extension.org/find-cooperative-extension/">https://extension.org/find-cooperative-extension/</a></p><p><strong>Indigenous food sovereignty & native seeds:</strong></p><p>* Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance: </p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://nafsa.online">https://nafsa.online</a></p><p>* Native Seeds/SEARCH (Southwest Indigenous seeds): </p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.nativeseeds.org">https://www.nativeseeds.org</a></p><p>* Seed Savers Exchange: </p><p>https://www.seedsavers.org</p><p>* Whose land are you on? Indigenous territory map: </p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://native-land.ca">https://native-land.ca</a></p><p><strong>Climate Victory Gardens:</strong></p><p>* Green America’s Climate Victory Garden Registry: <a target="_blank" href="https://greenamerica.org/climate-victory-gardens">https://greenamerica.org/climate-victory-gardens</a></p><p>* Permaculture Gardens — Climate Victory Garden guide: <a target="_blank" href="https://www.permaculturegardens.org/climate-victory-gardens">https://www.permaculturegardens.org/climate-victory-gardens</a></p><p><strong>Free wood chips for mulching:</strong></p><p>* ChipDrop (local arborist wood chip deliveries, often free): </p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://getchipdrop.com">https://getchipdrop.com</a></p><p><strong>Find a community garden near you:</strong></p><p>* American Community Gardening Association: </p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.communitygarden.org">https://www.communitygarden.org</a></p><p><strong>Keep learning:</strong></p><p>* Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass — Indigenous plant knowledge and reciprocity with the land</p><p>* Charles Lathrop Pack, The War Garden Victorious (1919) — primary historical source on WWI gardens, now in public domain</p><p>Ripples of Rebels is a podcast about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Produced and hosted by Delaney Clara. Find more at delaneyxclara.substack.com.</p> <br/><br/>Get full access to Ripples of Rebels at <a href="https://delaneyxclara.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4">delaneyxclara.substack.com/subscribe</a>
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