CTH 2024 focuses on sustainable living. MC Tim Anderson, OG of the sustainability movement in California, will shepherd us through a star-studded list of presenters touching on all aspects of sustainable living.
Watch this page for updates on speakers & presenters, including scheduling and coordinated tours of sustainable dwellings both long-term Delta Bay residents and visiting presenters.
FEATURED BUILDER / PRESENTER: Pacifica Tiny Homes
FOOD VENDORS — Saturday food vendor: Sandwiches available in the beer / drinks tent catered by The McBoodery Deli of Isleton — Turkey, Ham, and Vegan options.
Beer Tent – Sat & Sun — Sponsored by the DELTA BAY FOUNDATION
Food Truck — Sunday – Jeeroz Food Truck — Featuring Mediterranean Fare
SUSTAINABLE LIVING PRESENTERS:
Needa Bee
Coming from a working class Pilipino first genration immigrant family, Needa Bee has always been about sustainable living – without having to think about it. Doing for self, being resourceful with what environment they were living in, and being part of communities who took care of each other as a means of survival is a way of life ingrained in her family and community. It was a mindset and understanding that many Pilipino family who have been fisherfolk and farmers on the island of Katubig for generations as far as they can remember.
Needa has made her living for the past 32 years with a food business called the Lumpia Ladies.She also has a 21 year old jewelry design, clothing design and arts production business called ital pinay. it is thru these two small businesses that she has been able to fund social justice movements and causes that she was passionate about; open and fund a tuition free Afro-Indigenous centric private school in Oakland for 17 years; fund an annual festival against gentrification called 510Day for the past 10 years; and fund the work of her non-profit The VIllage in Oakland’s foundational program – Feed The People.
Needa is very critical of the non-profit industrial complex as a system that co-ops movements and our best and brightest leaders, as well as makes sure transformative work and foundational changes are never sustainable for the communities the non-profits serve, but rather become careers that place bandaids on fatal wounds. She advocates for leaders and visionaries both established and emerging to explore self-sufficent means of sustaining their work, or investments from stakeholders as a way to sustain their works. she frames all her work, from her food business to the village in oakland, thru the lense of what life would look like if we lived in a world where we were self-sufficient and had our collective humanity intact. to be human is to be sustainable.
With the housing affordability crisis and the cost of living continuing to skyrocket, and the ever growing homeless state of emergency becoming a billion dollar industry with its epicenter here in California, being self-sufficent to solve these human rights crisis and moving from the state of survival into a state of thriving is where the answers lie to solve and ultimately end these current day crisis rooted in settler colonialism, capitalism and white supremacy.
When Needa is not cooking up food or serving her community thru her works, you can catch her performing spoken word at various Oakland and Bay Area venues several times a week.
Joyous Efiya De Asis Miralle
Joyous is a Pilipino/Black Seminole/Black woman born in Oakland and raised in the city’s Black Arts Radical Justice community. Joyous co-founded The Feed The People program with her mother Needa Bee in January 2016. She is the founder and program manager of the Village in Oakland’s newest service The Soul Food Shack – a mobile apothecary created in 2020, that provides free plant based medicines and herbal medicine education materials and workshops for unhoused Oakland residents and low-income housed Oakland residents.
The COVID19 pandemic made the lack of access to medical care to unhoused communities very clear. The pandemic also highlighted the distrust and even fear many BIPOC folks have around the U.S. Medical Industry. This is rooted in the discrimination and experimentation many of our people have experienced when seeking basic and emergency medical care. This informed the creation of – Soul Food Shack our mobile/pop-up apothecary operation that distributes plant based tinctures to help our people manage stress, anxiety, depression, addiction, dependency and immune system support. The response was amazing. People were very open to try the herbal medicines, and so many people swore up and down that the medicines were helping them manage their mental and physical health struggles.
The goal behind Soul Food Shack is to be able to get our people aware of the medicine that is always around us, show folks how to use the medicine (respectfully), and understand that there are ancient medicine and wellness systems we can turn to if the western medical industry does not serve us. our health is our wealth. to be able to know how to take care of yourself and maintain your own health and wellness by using the natural world around you even if you dont have a dime to your name – is an act of sustainable living.
Joyous is currently a Dream Beyond Bars fellow with Communities United for Restorative Justice for Youth, where she works on abolishing the prison industrial complex by developing and advocating for restorative and transformative justice systems to replace the punitive injustice system. She is currently part of the Black Arts Movement House summer program writing a chapter for a book BAM House director is writing and compiling about the importance of cultural work in Oakland’s marginalized communities, and she helps run her family’s 30 plus year old popular Oakland food businesses – The Lumpia Ladies and ital pinay. She is also a gifted poet, dancer, choreographer, photographer, graphic designer, and has recently begun taking up aerosol arts.
Ahkayah Casey
The journey for sustainable living for me and possibly for others is to be able to provide for self. I’ve been on this journey for over 10 years trying to find my way trying to find what works for me. And what I have found is that food, water, shelter and clothing are essential. As a consumer growing up, I bought everything. When I realized that I wanted to be completely sustainable it was obvious that I had to start doing things myself, with food and shelter being my number one priorities.
A fundamental part of this journey was to return to, embrace and fight for my ancient, ancestral ways as a Black Native. This journey has become a stance and a political statement as it is in direct opposition with everything this country is built on and stands for. Due to my position as Black Native returning to the old ways, my journey has been criminalized, and this system has tried to break me down for doing what many middle class white people do with ease: live off the grid, self-sufficiently, and without apology. I hope to share my and my family’s journey towards sustainable living and the barriers and outright oppression we have faced in doing so.
I do have a background in business and tech and I offer my services as an online business strategy consultant. My passion is educating business people and entrepreneurs on the importance of online business strategy, branding, mobile development, metrics, localized and global market research.
Mitisha York Casey
Also know as Mayaha Ahyahaza. I am that I am. I am the mother of 2 beautiful girls – 4 and 15 year olds. I have been a foster youth and ward of the state my entire childhood, so fighting to live a sustainable and free life has been the essence of my journey for my whole life. I pretty much raised myself and 3 siblings – an older brother and 2 younger sisters. My mom was a street substance hustler and my dad was in and out of my life because of relationship issues and working long hours as a unified school district custodian. I adapted quickly to understanding that my life growing up in the SF projects on my own was about SURVIVAL so I turned to nature for guidance from mother Earth and Father wind. I knew as a youth that I had to be adaptable to my surroundings but to not become a product of the environment. I am the 1st of my immediate family to graduate from high school, and go to college while being a teen mom with 2 jobs maintaining a B average. I am a former CYC-(bayla) cohort and I mentored under the supervisor of sf cps 2017. He taught me that his job ain’t all what people think of it. I was also the co-coordinator of the Women’s Resource Center. I am currently an outreach worker with The Village in Oakland, where I engage with unhoused residents around the city of Oakland’s general plan 2045 – the official blueprint for the city’s future.
My journey for sustainable living evolved out of living to survive, and turning to the Black Indigenous ways of my Ancestors was the direction I went. But that decision has been met with criminalization, being targeted by the government, and being punished for living the Ancient sustainable ways. It has cost me losing my 1st daughter, who was kidnapped by the palmdale sheriff department and placed with cps child protective services against our Indian Child Welfare Act claims, including her being illegally adopted to a non indigenous family. It has resulted in my husband being arrested over and over again. It has resulted in the government currently targeting my 4 year old. It has resulted in my family enduring constant harassment and criminalization and targeting by the police trying to break us down and break up our family. I realized it didn’t matter whether I followed all the rules and laws if the system decided to discriminate against me they can and they will. Sustainable living is something that is needed now for the preservation of Mother Earth, for our own lives, and for the future. How can it be that those of us who return to our ancient ancestral life sustaining ways are criminalized and oppressed when we do so?
Ever since I can remember, I have wanted to be a veterinarian with a specialization on wildlife and fisheries, which is line walking the path of my indigenous Ancestors of understanding and taking care of the natural ecosystems. I only have three classes left to take to get my degree, but the constant targeting by police on my family for our way of life has impacted my ability to finish my education.
