1/7th of a Clue: Day 1 @ Community Food Systems Conference

*Note, writing this on a whim, partially sleep-deprived and in a rush. So excuse the quality.

Writing because I'm way too excited about this week; I'm attending the Community Food Systems conference through Tufts University. (I have Community Food Systems minor, how fitting!) Also quick reference to the "1/7th of a Clue". On a trip today, someone referenced the phrase, "I have zero clue." And then she corrected herself, on a whim, sharing that in reality she had probably like half a clue. So. But the 1/7th clue is random estimate of how much of a clue I've got the food/ag/community food systems/food justice thing figured out. There's more to learn. Which is why I'm at the conference!

So yesterday Day 1, I attended one of the field-trip sessions to the CommonWealth Kitchen, a non-profit culinary incubator, and Groundwork Somerville, a non-profit incorporating food and farms, youth development, sustainable environment and racial justice into their work. These descriptions don't do the organizations justice, so visit their websites. 

In this post, I just want to share a few things I took away from the trip. Keep it short and sweet. There are lessons for anyone 

1.) Non-profits have to start thinking like businesses.

It really pains me to say this, because the mindset of some of the greediest people alive got us in this climate mess. (Of thinking solely about profit.) And luckily, most non-profits don't care solely about profit maximization. They in fact our people with heats who care about people and the planet. Despite this, I do non-profits have to get way more innovative with the funding and sustainability of their organizations.  We live within a capitalistic model that requires capital. If we can transform the way non-profits think, it would allow them to be incredibly more powerful and effective in the work that they do. (Look at how many organizations fail because they cannot raise enough money to sustain the movement.)  

2.) Systems change; we cannot be afraid to do it all.

This reminds of a rule in book Rules for Revolutionaries I recently read, sharing how no movement can be a single issue movement. Many of the causes we fight for are interrelated and interconnected.

But during the visit to the CommonWealth Kitchen, the executive director shared a story about how many of their potential funders told them they couldn't support the organization because they were doing to much. The were working with business food incubators. They wanted to get into manufacturing. The were doing food and business education. Has someone ever told you you were doing too much?!?! DO TOO MUCH. (As long as it doesn't overwhelm you and make you ineffective at your work.) 

3.) If you want to really help people, give them a job. 

Simply put, many issues stem from people, families, etc. not having the financial resources. The disposable income to purchase healthy food, to access health care services, etc. The power of giving someone work, at a wage they can live off of ($15 an hour, as Bernie would say), that's really doing something. Instead providing frill services that don't really give someone economic independence, give them a job. 

4.) Race must be, if not at the center, a component of your food justice work.

I'll leave it at that. 

Food truck outside CommonWealth Kitchen.

Unique workspace in CommonWealth Kitchen. Facility was previously a hotdog packaging facility, these were refrigerators. 

A call for boycotting McDonald's, Wendy's and other fast food?

Every great revolution started with a boycott.

Okay, maybe not... but I'd like to think that in the future they will. Boycotts are incredibly powerful actions that, if adopted on a mass scale, can alter the course of history as we know it. Take the Montgomery bus boycotts, where from 1955-1956, African-Americans refused to ride segregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama. I can now choose to sit at the head of the TCAT or CTA or any public, or private, bus because those who predated my existence fought for a future free of segregation.

So why haven't we pushed forward, full throttle, en masse, on boycotting the companies, corporations, cities, people, organizations (the list could go on!) that continue to reject, oppress, poison, and exploit black and brown communities across the country? Is it our inability to collectively organize against such entities? Our inability to identify and thus target the true perpetrators, who are often sitting upon their thrones and fortune, all built by the people? What is it that allows us to nurture the pockets of entities that neglect our own needs?

I'll stop here. And say this. A month ago, I would have told you how I couldn't wait to get back to Chicago to begin organizing a full on, South-Side wide boycott on any fast-food corporation that profited heavily off of the sale and distribution of trash. The chicken nuggets, the fries, the shakes, all of it is trash. Not really food. Faux food. Faux food that sells because it is much cheaper (through government subsidies and investments in industrial agriculture) than the real food we should be able to afford, purchase, and consume. (Side note: I have been on a personal boycott of McDonald's since sophomore year of biology, where I saw Food Inc., and was disgusted at the truth behind a food system I played a part in.)

But. A boycott won't change the fact that thousands of families who gain nourishment from places like McDonalds. (And in my boycott, I realized that it was an impossible standard to be held to the rest of my community who depend on such places.) It's not their fault. It's not their fault that employers discriminate against them because of the color of their skin. It's not their fault our government see's no value in investing in educational opportunities for black and brown youth, so that those you can somebody have the opportunity to try and achieve economic mobility. (Are you kidding me?!?! A cop academy and no funds for Chicago Public Schools?!?!) It's not their fault that they are unable to afford real food because their either unable to find work, or unable to find work that pays livable wages. (One ought to wonder if we're intentionally being fed poor food that increases our chances of heart diseases and diabetes... to kill us.) 

A boycott could fix these problems. But it's necessary to be practical. And look at the economics behind people's motivations. Many people, I'd like to hope, choose fast food because it is cheap and quick. (Okay... and fairly good... even though it's trash.) If we were to boycott fast-food restaurants, which are densely littered throughout are communities, what are the other food options? Where else will we eat? (I'm sure you've heard the term food deserts, so you know it's not a lot fresh produce around.) We have to provide other options. Choice. There is a really exciting enterprise out in LA, EveryTable, that believes that healthy eating shouldn't be a luxury. They provide freshly prepared meals that range in price from $3.50 - $6.00. They're pretty delicious looking too, check out the website. Instead of arduously protesting fast-food, I hope to create affordable alternatives for people in the city. Alternatives, whether it be a grocery store/community hub, a new restaurant concept, etc., that can outcompete and eventually run junk out of our neighborhoods. 

Food justice encompasses many things and in this case, it's about options. And starving our communities by forcing them to eat fast food is not a way of providing fair options for our people. 

Food for Thought/Motion: In the city of Chicago, specifically on the geographical region of the South Side, a quota should be set on the number of fast-food retail chains that are able to open. (That quota should be capped in present day, preventing the further expansion of fast-food corporations into black and brown communities.) 

What do you all think? What are the benefits? The cons? The implications?  What would Rosa do? 

Food Justice Book Recommendations

In reading and reading and reading for my research this semester (and in a few courses), I wanted to share a few incredible books shedding lights on the injustices tucked away within our food system. Also, some people have been asking me for places to start... these books are a beginniing into food justice within the food system.

1. The New Food Activism: Opposition, Cooperation, and Collective Action by Alison Hope Alkon and Julie Guthman 
2. More Than Just Food: Food Justice and Community Change by Garrett Broad (Food Justice in Los Angeles)
3. Beyond the Kale: Urban Agriculture and Social Justice Activism in New York City by Kristin Reynolds and Nevin Cohen (Social Justice and Activism in New York)
4. Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodie by Seth Holmes (migrant farmworkers in Northwest United States)

If you have any recommendations, please comment below!

On Michelle Obama, Obesity, and Let's Move!

Let me be the first to admit; I’m a huge huge huge huge fan of Michelle Obama. I can't say it enough. She’s from the South side of Chicago. She attended Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, my alma mater and the place where I awkwardly grew into the young woman I am today. She's intelligent; she went on to Princeton University for undergrad and Harvard for law school. I sit and dream of the day when I get to shake hands with her, casually bonding over hair care products, pizza in Chicago, which house at WY was the best house (green house), and what it was like attempting to flourish in a predominantly white, Ivy-league institution. You know, casual. It’s admiring to watch a black woman thrive. Because really, #blackgirlsrock. But I’ve found that criticism is healthy and I’ve got a critique for Michelle Obama. Let’s talk, Let’s Move.

In 2010, Mrs. Obama launched the Let’s Move! campaign to address the increasing epidemic of childhood obesity in the United States. She envisioned it all; transforming subpar lunches in schools across the nation, empowering parents and caregivers to cut sugary drinks from meals, and making physical activity for youth the utmost priority. But for some reason, Michelle, never overtly mentioned the real reason why many of the country's youth and adult population suffer from a mountain of health problems; corporations and capitalism. (Although she has mentioned corporations, and their responsibility for false advertisement in publications... one has to dig.) And I know, I know, capitalism... the word tossed out so very often on this blog. Capitalism... the root of many of the world’s problems. No, really, it is. Racism? Poverty? Environmental degradation? C.a.p.i.t.a.l.i.s.m.

Why are we having conversations about food and healthy eating without having a conversation about the corporations, McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Kellogg, and Unilever, to name a few, who contribute to many of the nation’s budding health epidemics? The corporations that combine some of the worst, processed, high in fat, salt, sugar foods that exist and spend billions of dollars disillusioning people through incredibly elaborate marketing. (Yes, they've even fooled me innumerable times.) These groups are responsible for the obesity epidemic. To solve obesity, we have to start by cutting off the involvement these multinational corporations have within our food system.

But no, that’s impossible, we all make the choice to drink pop, eat chips, and go to McDonalds!

 No. Corporations thrive off of profiting from low-income communities who have no other choice but to get a $1 Big Mac and $1 fry from McDonalds. Step into any poor neighborhood. What do you see an abundance of? Definitely not grocery stores! It's fast food joints, liquor stores, convenience stores and the such. Corporations also have their hands down the throat of government officials, who not only fail to protect you, but profit off of exploiting individuals (the constituents they are supposed to be representing) who are unable to afford healthy, fresh produce and often times don’t have access to it. It’s no wonder that in 2015 the food and beverage spent nearly $33 million dollars lobbying in Washington D.C. This is probably one of the reasons Michelle couldn’t find it in her to point the fingers on the corporations; Obama’s being funded by them.

It happens all the time, where the responsibility to bring about change is shifted onto the individual. Similar rhetoric is used in the environmental movement; cut off the lights, use less water, eat less meat. I completely agree that these can work, but it absolves all responsibility from corporations who often times created the problem. (Say, Exxon Mobile, who knew nearly 40 years ago the link between burning fossils fuels and climate change.) We free corporations from blame when we focus on the individual to solve societal problems.

Another example; blaming the current plight of black people… on black people. (Which many try to do.) Pull yourself up by the bootstraps! You can do it if you try hard enough! Michelle’s husband, Barack Obama, actually used this strategy consistently throughout his reign as president. (Mr. Obama, I also adore you. But as I mentioned, critique is healthy.) It is ineffective to tell black people to work harder, study harder, do everything harder, without acknowledge the structural inequities, from slavery to Jim Crow to housing discrimination to mass incarceration to subprime loans, etc, that have influenced our present situation and leave many black people substantially worse off than other groups of society. We try harder... and yet were are still at a disadvantage. But I digress.

Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign imposed band-Aid solutions to the obesity epidemic. Let’s get kids to move a little more, exercise the fat off. Let’s get better food into schools. Let’s avoid the inequalities ingrained within the system and pretend that a school garden will solve the obesity epidemic. Hate to break it to you? But it won’t. It won’t if we’re not addressing the problems that we’re faced with at the core. Thus, in order to create the world Michelle Obama envision, one free of childhood obesity, one with healthy children, we have to stand up to the corporations profiting off of the distribution of fast, cheap, and unhealthy food. In the work that I do, with Get Them to the Green and other food justice and environmental education work in the future, I wholly acknowledge this fact; that our solutions must be not be band-aid solutions. It is absolutely necessary to call out the culprits and hold them accountable for the mess they created. 

Food for Thought:

1. Am I being to hard on Let's Move? (If so, how do we actually solve the health and obesity epidemic affecting many countries around the world? If we're talking radical solutions, what's the core issue at hand that we need to solve?)

Final Thoughts:

I'm sure that you may think that I'm being to hard on the wonderful former First Lady. Well... I think we're not being hard enough on people on that's why we're in the mess that we are in. We excuse people for curtseying around the problem. I acknowledge that Let's Move! was a brilliantly designed campaign to spark conversation on childhood obesity, nutrition, etc. I also acknowledge that it's not enough.

What does revoltion look like?

“The enemy of ours is not just Wall Street, it’s a whole culture. You have to look at how you yourselves have become part of this culture.

You have the opportunity to create something new. You have to be thinking about values and not just abuses.

You must not be satisfied with rebellion. We need revolution. Revolution means reinventing culture.”

— Grace Lee Boggs

This letter reads to the angsty, the die hard Marx fans, the scholar [activists], ... or to anyone who, at the core of their being, gives a damn about the transformation of society. I have a question. 

What does a revolution look like?

I've become rather obsessed with this question after studying abroad, after spending the summer on an urban farm, and after reading and reading about the injustices brought about on specific groups within our society. What does revolution look like? And. How do we get there? What the world might look like if we were to overturn the current "system", a sphere of convoluted economics and politics that benefit so very few at the expense of many?

I ask this because I am exhausted. At hearing daily, the status quo further reiterating itself, and seeing absolutely nothing done about it. About inequality. Poverty. Climate Change. Racism. The list could go on and on and on. I am exhausted. And as I reflect on where life may take me after college, I sure do hope it's somewhere where I can bring about radical change. The only problem? I have no idea where to go. Where to start. I have no idea what that looks like. And that scares me. Maybe you feel the same? Please tell me you feel the same? (If not, wow I need you to comment! You have the answer, you know the answer!)

I'll speak directly to issues on food justice, since that's the theme of the blog space. I care a lot about food issues affecting Chicago. I've seen the disparity in accessibility to fresh produce and healthy food for so long that it's mind-boggling that nothing is being done about it. Well it is! says the mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emmanuel. But it's a Marianos and Whole Foods in neighborhoods that need a whole lot more than corporate grocery stores to solve the problem of food deserts (food apartheid), inequity, and poverty. 

I daydream very often, on campus at Cornell, about the things I hope to do when I go back to Chicago. (Chicago Chicago Chicago.) About further transforming vacant spaces. (SWF!) About expanding the areas that grow local tomatoes and watermelons and collard greens and peppers for people to sustain themselves. About creating educational programs to expose students to our unjust food system. About bringing to life a grocery store. This is the one I think about the most; say it's a calling if you will. 

I really want to open a grocery store. It's complex and I have a google doc filled with ideas and could go on and on about the uniqueness of the grocery store design that I have in mind. I'll spare you the time. With this idea, I'm often afraid that this will never be enough. A grocery store will never be enough to transform a system that has discriminated against black people. That has failed to provide food to all members of society. (And when I say food, I mean quality produce, not the junk of McDonalds and Burger King's that you see littered through the city.) I'm afraid that I will, like many organizations that are operating today, transform locally, but not globally. Or on the scale needed to really tilt the system in our favor. That I will, like the tiny dent in the side of the car from-the-cart-that-bumped-into-the-side-that-one-time-in-the-parking-lot (sorry I know it's long, I'm trying with metaphors), only leave a minutely lasting imprint. And that's not what this society needs. We need more. (We need the entire damn car destroyed, if you catch my drift.) So. So?

So what does a revolution look like?

Please comment. Or share any ideas. It can be in your respective field. In your respective city. In your respective vision of the world :) 

Why We Can't Talk About Food Apartheid w/out Talking About Federal Policy

Food Apartheid...

• "Food apartheid is a relentless social construct that devalues human beings and assumes that people are unworthy of having access to nutritious food. Food apartheid affects people of all races, including poor white people, although Black and brown people are affected disproportionately. Under these conditions — which are overtly abusive — whole communities are geographically and economically isolated from healthy food options." (Atlanta Black Star)
•  “Food apartheid is a human-created system of segregations, which relegates some people to food opulence and other people to food scarcity. It results in the epidemic of diabetes, heart disease, obesity and other diet-related illnesses that are plaguing communities of color,” she explains. (AlterNet)

I was going to title this, To Those Who Refuse to Come South, (an ode to those northerners in Chicago, who, out of fear, refuse to travel any further south than the South Loop. Well, besides Hyde Park and Beverly) but that would have gone too far off course of the subject of this blog, the subject of food. (Wait on it… drafting some words to send to the Chicago Tribune.) Simply put, things exist in the form that they manifest themselves for historical reasons; people and places are a summation of events taken place in the past. It is incredibly ignorant to ignore the past while analyzing the present.

So, how did Chicago become so segregated in the first place?

Most of my knowledge on the post comes from The Color of Law, a phenomenal book by Richard Rothstein that give's insights into the federal government’s role in segregating many of America's cities, including Chicago. (If you haven't read this book, I highly recommend it. It is the weapon against any ignorant person complaining about Black crime, Black poverty, or Black education, without fully understanding the forces that created these existing conditions.) As Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor explains in her book, From Black Lives Matter to Black Liberation, we cannot continue blaming black poverty on black culture and the black family. The government has to be held responsible for their discriminatory policies that, to date, have fostered segregationist policies adversely affecting the livelihoods of African Americans. 

Redlining was one strategy used by the government to foster segregation. After Congress created the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) in 1934, the FHA began insuring private mortgages, making it easier for some individuals to purchase a home. The method the FHA used to distributed private mortgages was dependent off of a system of maps in which neighborhoods were color coded based off of their "perceived stability", coming down to whether a neighborhood was occupied by black people. Areas that lacked "a single foreigner or Negro" were colored green and rated "A". Areas where black people lived were colored red and rated "D"; insurance in these neighborhoods was often impossible to achieve. "Black people were viewed as contagion," says Coates. As blacks were denied the right to housing (and loans and mortgages) due to the color of the skin, many missed out on the opportunity to gain wealth in the form of owning property.

Redlining was not the only tool used to maintain the whiteness of neighborhoods; restrictive covenants were also responsible for helping segregate cities across the US. Restrictive covenants were often legally binding agreements, written in the deeds of houses, preventing the home-owner from selling to blacks. The University of Chicago, located in Hyde Park, Chicago, was responsible for some of these restrictive covenants that aggressively excluded blacks from living anywhere near campus. “The university not only subsidized the associations but from 1933 to 1947 spent $100,000 on legal services to defend covenants and evict African Americans who had arrived in the neighborhood.” (Rothstein, 2016) In fact, the president at the time cited his duty ensure that living environments for students and faculty were “content to live.” As if the presence of black people within neighborhoods somehow how destabilized environments and made the neighborhoods near campus unlivable.

The list is inexhaustible; I could explain the zoning laws that made it easier for industry to conduct its dirty work in communities of color. I could rant about the absurd acts taken to ensure encourage whites to flee neighborhoods so that realtors could upcharge to blacks, hiring black men to drive around neighborhoods with speakers blasting or paying African-American women to push their babies around the neighborhood. I could go speak about the harassment, in the form of bomb threats, that black families received as they tried to integrate into white communities, despite the forces telling them otherwise. I could go on a harangue about how African-Americans were discriminated against in jobs, where during WWII, black men and black women were the last to be hired in factory jobs and were often segregated from white workers and paid less. (This phenomenon, although much subtler, still happens today, despite the backlash against affirmative action and other measure put in place to help the black woman or man stand a chance against a society that has so violently chewed us and spit us out.) But enough… it’s quite obvious the intentional effort put into shunning African-Americans to certain sections of the city, allow food apartheid and other forms of oppression, from education to violence, etc. to “flourish.”

Serendipity?

I didn’t know at the time, growing up, that a lot of the things existed the way they did for a reason, for life is not as serendipitous as we think it to be. I figured that we as blacks had relegated ourselves to the South side. (I’m so sorry West Siders, I’m definitely leaving you out! West Side too!) That it was our fault that many people lived in the conditions that exist on the South side. How naïve of me. The segregation that exists has allowed black communities to remain vulnerable to the effects of capitalism and racism. (Say, through corporate presence in the form of McDonald’s and racist policing of young black men, when God knows increasing the presence of the Chicago Police Department isn’t going to change gang violence.) People often ignore these facts, so I’ll repeat them again. Federal policy, racism and capitalism have allowed these spaces to exist. Federal policy, racism and capitalism have allowed food apartheid to thrive. Refer to the definitions above of food apartheid; they should now make even more sense.

Wrapping up, when you’re ever in Chicago, if you’re ever in Chicago, do me a favor, please? Drive south; drive around and observe the environment that exists, the neighborhoods, the people, the stores that sell food, etc. Just look outside the window and observe what you see. And this time, take into account the forces that have put the picture into frame.

Sources:

Coates, T. (2015). The case for reparations. The Atlantic, June 2014.

Rothstein, R. (2017). The color of law: A forgotten history of how our government segregated America. New York, NY: Liveright.

Food Apartheid: The Silent Killer in the Black Community

How Do We End 'Food Apartheid' in America? With Farms Like This One

4 Questions; on SWF, Experience, Community and Success.

“Go out and be a center, a life-giving center, as it were, to a whole community, when the opportunity comes, when you may give life where there is no life, hope where there is no hope, power where there is no power. Begin in a humble way, and work to build institutions that will put black people on their feet.”

— bell hooks

What did you actually do this summer?

I enjoy the expression on people’s faces when I tell them I worked on a farm for the summer. A farm?! You mean, in like, southern Illinois?

Well, yes, I worked on a farm this summer… an urban farm with Sweet Water Foundation (SWF) on the southside of Chicago. I was allowed to work at SWF thanks to Cornell, through the DYO Internship and through Societal Solutions Scholars Program (S2 Scholars), a fellowship in the Dyson School. I submitted a proposal based off of growing food in underutilized spaces (front lawns, vacant lots, backyards, etc.) and selling them in a grocery store. It's much more nuanced, so if you wanna see the actual proposal, email me :)

During the start of my internship, I conducted research on the feasibility of this idea by speaking with businesses and nonprofits across the country such as organizations like Groceryships and inspirational activists such as Nikki Silvestri. I asked a variety of questions, trying to get a what solutions are most effective in solving the problem of food inaccessibility: what barriers exist for the individuals you work with the get access to food, what are the flaws of grocery stores in providing fresh, affordable and accessible food to individuals, etc.

Besides the research component of my internship, the most valuable experience interning was feeling the work that goes into growing food. Urban agriculture is something I always romanticized in my head; we should grow food on every vacant lot, every front lawn, every boulevard! First, farming isn’t easy! A lot of energy and power and sweat go into growing those beautiful tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, etc. that are seen at our farmers markets.

I also realize now that it’s much more nuanced than simply growing food in food deserts. It’s not only about food availability. People may have access to healthier food, but they still might not eat those foods or know how to prepare them in a culturally specific manner. The realization has influenced the nature of my project and pushed my research this semester, in finding a way to design a solution that addresses of component of food inaccessibility and food apartheid.

What was your experience like working on a farm?

No day was the same, I can tell you that! Work ranged from a variety of activities; planting squash, cucumbers, and watermelons out on the farm, pulling weeds, including the prickly ones that are a pain to uproot, helping Mama Betty, resident chef, prepare a meal for the group that was coming for the day, preparing newsletters, or running the farmers market on Fridays, harvesting, washing and selling. There’s even more going on at SWF, including architecture and design courses taking place with high school students and furniture design out in the workshop space, but for sake of brevity, I will keep it short and encourage you to go visit SWF (5749 S. Perry Avenue, Chicago IL) to go see the work taking place.

Did you meet any interesting people?

YES, EVERYONE! I don’t want to name names because I’m going to leave someone out; there are too many people to mention. Every single person that I interacted with this summer impacted my perspective on individuals relationship with community and with food. Did I also mention I got to meet Danny Glover and Arne Duncan?! Just gonna drop that on you. Check out the pics. 

How has your experience redefined what success looks like?

In choosing this job, I think a lot of reactions from people of me working on a farm come from this concept we have of success ingrained within our minds. That a successful person takes x path to get y. That they have these credentials, attended x university, and if they attended z university, even better, even more prestigious. In choosing to work back home with a non-profit, I was rejecting the system in place of taking smart people and putting them in dull jobs that don’t inspire them, invigorate them, or give them the proper outlet to create effective change within their respective communities.

For me, it’s doing something engaged. Working with people. Building connections and community. There is no amount of prestige or money that can do that. Quite honestly, I spent a lot of time fascinated by the name of a university or the salary of certain jobs. It’s very easy to do, especially given the academic and competitive environment on campus; you want to be just as good as the next person.

I have actively chosen to take back what success means and looks like for myself. What do I value? I really have to ask myself this question daily.  It’s not about money or power or prestige or validation by others. Sweet Water Foundation has shown me an alternative, a more organic and meaningful way of living. At the end of my internship, I have never been more mentally, physically, and spiritually satisfied than any experience that I’ve had in my entire life. I’d never expect to find another family amongst my own family in Chicago.

Food For Thought?

Given the quote,

“work which improves the condition of mankind, work which extends knowledge and increase power and enriches literature and elevates thought”, - Grace Lee Boggs

Is your work (whether in school or out of school) reflective of the work above? How can you transform your work into something that is more conducive to societal change?

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Summer Reading...

List of things I've read (or am in process of reading) this summer that have impacted the way I've think, which has impacted the way I see Chicago, black liberation, and food and agriculture. And few words on these books. 

• The Next American Revolution by Grace Lee Boggs (galvanizer for activists, visionaries) 
• Salvation; Black People and Love by bell hooks (importance liberation in love) 
• Belonging: A Culture of Place by bell hooks (story black ppl connection land, environment, more)
• No Is Not Enough by Naomi Klein (resist shock politics and uniting of various movements)
• From #Black Lives Matter to Black Liberation by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (title says all)
• The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein (housing policy deeply affected African-Americans) 
• An Autobiography by Angela Davis (insight into rise of one of my intellectual and activist heroes)
• Black Radical Tradition, collection of works, phenomenal and great base for anyone interested in learning about crucial black figures (http://ouleft.org/wp-content/uploads/BlackRadicalTradition.pdf) 
• Women, Race and Class by Angela Y. Davis (intersectionality, black women...)
• The Sellout by Paul Beatty (black guy in Cali who segregates school and owns slave... read it)

Feel free to enjoy some of the book quotes below as well. 

Comment any additions I should add to my list.

“Our relationship to the earth is radical: it lies at the root of our consciousness and our culture and of any sense of a rich life and right livelihood.”

— David Barnhill (via bell hooks)

“Most black people live in ways that threaten to shorten our life, eating fast foods, suffering from illnesses that could be prevented with proper exercise and nutrition.”

— bell hooks

“We must all decolonize our minds in Western culture to be able to think differently about nature, about the destruction of human cause.”

— bell hooks

“Many of our national problems either originate with residential segregation or have become intractable because of it.”

— Richard Rothstein

“Such exploitation was possible only because public policy denied African Americans opportunities to participate in the city’s white housing market.”

— Richard Rothstein

“The Justice Department’s investigation of Ferguson, Missouri, police practices found that African Americans were stopped by police more frequently than whites, but of those who were stopped and searched, more whites were found to be carrying illegal drugs than African Americans. If police wanted to increase their chances of finding drugs, they would be better off conducting “stop and frisk” operations in white than in black neighborhoods.”

— Richard Rothstein

Food as a means for liberation?

“We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.”

— Angela Davis

As a self-proclaimed Black environmentalist, I’ve been finding my way between the intersectionality of the environmental movement and the liberation for Black people. Recently, I’ve come across the means of food as a tool to not only relinquish our addiction to an agricultural system that is detrimental to the planet and health of people across the world, but also for the ability for food to free people, most importantly of color, from the oppressive forces of society. Malcolm X once said in this striking quote,

“Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality…”

I decided, ultimately, that I wanted to spend my final year at my respective university researching food apartheid more in-depth in my hometown of Chicago. I do this, because it’s personal. Thus, the project is political in nature. The personal is political. I can easily think of the times, living in Chatham or Calumet City or Woodlawn or Bronzeville, when fast food was the most accessible option for dinner… and as much as I like Harold's, I'd love other, more healthier options to be just as accessible. Do you know there are nearly 34 Harold's in Chicago? (Although it feels like there are way more... Harold's is the Starbucks of the South side.) How insane if we invested in grocery stores as much as we did fried chicken restaurants? Say, a Harold's Chicken of grocery store chains that are blacked-owned and operated for African-American communities?

What will it take to radically uproot the intentionally placed food deserts in African-American communities on the South side of Chicago? 

This is the question I will be delving into this upcoming school year. Why are African-Americans disproportionately exposed to food deserts? How is that linked to education for black youth and crime rates? How is food valued? Or are there other underlying social or cultural forces affecting what food we choose to consume? Is a Marianos or Whole Foods enough to solve food apartheid? Or it just another market with which corporations (without an interest in social transformation) can tap into and capitalize on? Are these efforts sufficient in addressing food inaccessibility or are there still thousands of people still unable to have easy access to healthy, affordable food? Concluding, if so, how do we address that?

These are some of the questions I hope to explore in the course of the next year or so. This online platform will be an incubating space for those ideas. This space is meant to be a representation of the research I will be conducting this upcoming year. It’s meant to be a place for accountability to those who have allowed the problem to exist. A space for discussion and engagement with these issues. 

In writing and research this next year, I hope to engage with more people on the subject of food, specifically pertaining black lives. A lot of the posts will end with questions (some, helpful for my research) with which I'd love for the general audience to engage in. It's called social media right?!?! 

To wrap this up, it's very important to dream (MLK WAS A DREAMER); I spend way to much time doing so. In dreaming, its natural to begin envisioning a better world-city-planet. A utopia that works for all and not for some. My food vision involves black people not spending their dollars at McDonalds or other corporations that don't give a fuck about them. That black people become food-sovereign and create a local economy around urban farmers. We are the true agriculturalist in the country historically; let's return, through self-determination, to our roots. That we eat food that was grown by us, free of chemicals detrimental to our bodies. That we take back our vacant homes lots and did something transformational (socially, environmentally, and economically) with them. That we find a way to push against the system that pushes, so forcefully, upon black and brown bodies. 

I believe that food can be used as a tool for liberation; a means of nourishing every aspect of our being. It is not the only means, but a very important one. As I embark on this experience, I hope to not only learn more about myself, my city, and my people, but also about the solutions that are necessary in radically, attacking the issue at the root. 

Food for Thought: 

[_______] as a means for liberation? What would you fill in the blank with?