Ryan Van Lenning is a writer and community organizer focusing on issues of social justice, food justice/urban agriculture, and sustainable transit. He is also passionate about anti-militarism, media reform, and building alternative economies in sustainable cities. Among other places, his work appears in Terrain Magazine: Northern California’s Environmental Magazine, Truthout, and Matador Change. Prior to becoming caught in the web of Bay Area ink-slinging and activism, he taught in the Humanities Department at a community college in Ohio, where he created courses in Environmental Ethics and World Religions: Peace and Violence. He is both a hyper-localist and a globalist, a home-body and travel-addict, and a city explorer and nature aficionado, just a few of the many paradoxes with which he is afflicted. Contact him at ryan@oaklandlocal.com, follow him on twitter @vanlenning, and find more at his blogs Pull the Root, Travelin' Bones, and Rumi and the Cholo.