Nandi Okeke (Music)

Colleagues, I stand with unanimous consensus in support of Amendment 9. Our 70-acre farm and cultural laboratory thrive only when grounded in long-term ecological stewardship that goes beyond seasonal cycles and short-term fixes. This amendment's explicit anchoring of decade-spanning invasive species and feral animal management reflects not only environmental realities but also the embodied labor essential to our farm's resilience. Having observed closely with our workers and land caretakers, this commitment is non-negotiable for safeguarding soil health, biodiversity, and the carbon sequestration that underpins our regenerative practices. Our social and artistic endeavors depend on this ecological grounding. I urge all senators to affirm this pillar today and affirm AGATA's responsibility to future generations, neighbors, and the land itself.

Colleagues, I rise once more to emphasize how Amendment 8, which explicitly enshrines Long-term Ecological Stewardship into our Time Priorities Charter, is indispensable for AGATA’s survival and flourishing. As many have observed, our 70-acre farm is a living, breathing ecosystem subject to forces that operate on decade-long cycles: invasive plant species disruption, feral hog damage, pollinator habitat shifts, and wildfire risks. Without a firm, binding commitment to steward these realities over the long term, we risk the slow unraveling of not only our land but the community and labor networks supported by this project.

From my standpoint, centered in embodied labor on the farm and in care work, this long-term ecological stewardship is not abstract but the lived materiality of daily work that feeds into our art, our education, and our accessibility goals. Without this explicit pillar, our other priorities risk being undermined by ecological collapse or degradation—none of which are optional here.

I also wish to echo prior voices underscoring that this stewardship must be intimately connected to full-cycle waste and nutrient management, ensuring practices that do not just sustain but regenerate the soil and ecosystems our cooperative depends on. To that point, I will be watching closely and supporting complementary amendments that explicit this fundamental dimension.

This amendment stands as a benchmark of accountability, urging us to align today’s ephemeral temporal rhythms with the slow, sacred flows of land, labor, and community that form AGATA’s backbone. I urge all senators to support Amendment 8 in this spirit of foresight, care, and inclusion.

Thank you.

Colleagues, as someone closely engaged with the embodied rhythms of farm and care labor, I rise to affirm my strong support for Amendment 7, which explicitly enshrines Accessibility as a core pillar of AGATA's Time Priorities Charter. This is essential—not only to honor the multiplicity of bodies and minds here on the farm but also to recognize that true accessibility is inseparable from the effectiveness of regenerative labor itself. Our fields, workshops, and performance spaces must intentionally include Deaf, hard-of-hearing, blind, neurodiverse, and low-bandwidth neighbors as integral participants and not afterthoughts. This amendment ensures that accessibility transcends tokenism, becoming a generative design constraint that enhances resilience and community well-being. Furthermore, it rightly aligns with the urgent calls from educational and ritual senators about embodied experience and practical inclusion. By making Accessibility a pillar alongside Resilience, Redundancy, Regeneration, Community, and Education, we acknowledge the embodied, temporal, and spatial realities of labor and care that sustain AGATA's farm-art-cultural ecosystem. Let us commit boldly to dismantling barriers in our collective work and affirm that accessibility enriches every aspect of our shared mission.

Colleagues, I rise in strong support of Amendment 6 to embed Long-term Ecological Stewardship explicitly as a core pillar of our AGATA Time Priorities Charter. From my work closely observing the embodied labor on our farm, it’s clear that stewardship must extend beyond the immediate seasons and harvest cycles. The commitment to decade-scale invasive species and feral animal management guarantees that our regenerative farming doesn’t erode under external ecological pressures.

Moreover, embodying stewardship in temporal legislation acknowledges and respects the physical rhythms and labor of our farmworkers and cooperative members. We know that the land and the labor are inseparable—without sustained care over long timelines, both suffer. Embedding this pillar now will provide a firm foundation for Todd and Delaney as they plan immediate operations and longer-term farming rhythms, ensuring that ecological health is maintained and that the people who move alongside the farm’s ecosystem are centered in our care.

This amendment harmonizes deeply with our previously adopted pillars of resilience, redundancy, regeneration, community, education, and accessibility, completing the framework necessary to protect AGATA’s ecological, cultural, and social vitality in Coward for generations. I urge members to support this crucial expansion without reservation.

Colleagues, as we approach the culmination of the extensive and thoughtful debate on the AGATA Time Priorities Charter, I want to center a vital aspect from the perspective of embodied farm and care labor. It is heartening that resilience, redundancy, regeneration, community, education, accessibility, and long-term ecological stewardship are anchored in this charter — these pillars reflect the complexity of our work and our care for the land and people. However, I want to give particular emphasis to the often overlooked, yet integral, labor of our bodies as they move through the work rhythms of this farm and cultural lab. Our physical engagement with the soil, plants, animals, and fellow laborers is not merely a means to an end but the very rhythm through which resilience and regeneration are enacted and experienced daily.

This embodied labor is also deeply entangled with accessibility and education — ensuring that those who participate, from diverse physical abilities and cultural backgrounds, are supported to engage fully and meaningfully in work that is both skilled and careful. The inclusion of long-term ecological stewardship rightly demands recognition of the physical and emotional labor that sustains it, demanding that our time legislation and project plans create conditions and temporal rhythms that respect and prioritize worker health, rest, and sustainable workloads.

Let us not conceptualize time priorities solely as abstract policy pillars but as lived, physical realities shaping the health of our bodies, communities, and land over time. These realities must inform Todd and Delaney's immediate operational blocks, such as scheduling, rest periods, and participatory design of work performances and rituals, as well as our decade-spanning commitments to soil, water, and species care.

I urge us all to carry forward this embodied perspective in refining and implementing the Charter, ensuring our Time Priorities not only withstand systemic shocks but honor and elevate the farm and care laborers whose motions, efforts, and presence breathe life into AGATA.