Transcripts
Hi there. I'm Aileen. Welcome to my kitchen.
Speaker:I just finished preparing a pot of adobo. Adobo is a dish of
Speaker:my people. It uses a colonial name for an indigenous technique that's deeply
Speaker:flavored with vinegar, garlic, and history. It's tangy, it's pungent and
Speaker:sometimes spicy, and for me, it's a vessel for home that's carried by
Speaker:our diaspora and by our families. Adobo is found made in kitchens across
Speaker:America's rural towns and big cities, and it adapts a place and whatever
Speaker:is available. It's the comfort of this dish that makes me think about
Speaker:how communities make home and survival. Which brings me to this topic that
Speaker:we're gonna learn about today, the resilience of urban communities in their
Speaker:fight for food access. So I brought together two leaders with deep wisdom
Speaker:on this topic. Erika Allen is a social change artist, healer and farmer,
Speaker:who works in vision and plans social and economic change objectives through
Speaker:food, agriculture and green energy. Mark Winston Griffith is a community
Speaker:organizer and journalist who works to build Black self determination movements
Speaker:in Black Brooklyn. Settle in and enjoy the conversation. Erika, Mark,
Speaker:thank you for making time to connect today and gather and share stories.
Speaker:When I think about food access and food justice in urban communities,
Speaker:I felt like a conversation between the two of you offers so many
Speaker:first hand stories and truth telling. So before we jump in,
Speaker:I want to invite us to center our minds with this question.
Speaker:When you're walking through the neighborhood that you love, what are the
Speaker:sounds that you hear, the smells that are coming from neighborhood kitchens,
Speaker:and what are some of the memories and emotions that come up for
Speaker:each of you? Erika, could you start us off and take us there?
Speaker:Well, we're walking down many streets in Chicago, we're set up on the
Speaker:grid system, so it's lots of structures designed originally to keep things
Speaker:orderly, and we're a city in a garden, Urbs in Horto, that's our
Speaker:motto, and that's been the vision. How do we transform our environment to
Speaker:reflect our cultures and our ability to have food sovereignty and economic
Speaker:self determination within the context of one of the birth places of redlining?
Speaker:And Mark, take us on a walk with you. Alright, so I live
Speaker:in Crown Heights and I work in Bedford Stuyvesant, and the two neighborhoods
Speaker:are connected and make up what we'll refer to as Central Brooklyn,
Speaker:which is Black Brooklyn. And where I live, Dean Street, I'm right off
Speaker:of something called Nostrand Avenue, which to me is like Main Street.
Speaker:It's an extremely colorful street. It's a commercial, mostly commercial
Speaker:street, where you have buildings that are say, maybe two, three,
Speaker:maybe four flights, and on the ground floor, you have storefronts. And when
Speaker:I say storefronts, I mean very sort of mom and pop ish kind
Speaker:of stores. Groceries, bodegas, cleaners, bike shops, all sorts of fast food
Speaker:joints. And as you walk down or up Nostrand Avenue, what is most
Speaker:pronounced, I think, particularly for those of us who live in Crown Heights,
Speaker:is that it's a mostly Caribbean neighborhood, at least some parts of it
Speaker:are. You're gonna most likely hear some kind of reggae or dancehall. There
Speaker:gonna be a lot of people out on the street. You're gonna hear
Speaker:a lot of voices, you're gonna hear a lot of cars honking,
Speaker:and you're gonna smell mostly Caribbean food. You're gonna smell jerk chicken,
Speaker:curry chicken, oxtail, rice and peas. And for me, that's home.
Speaker:That makes me feel secure, it makes me feel happy, makes me feel
Speaker:alive, and it reminds me that this is a neighborhood of Black people.
Speaker:Alright y'all, I am hungry now, and I know we can't necessarily share
Speaker:food across the air waves, but I wish we could.
Speaker:But thank you for taking us on that walk, and I know both
Speaker:of you have these incredibly deep roots and advocating with and for and
Speaker:on behalf of community work. I want to ask, what does food sovereignty
Speaker:mean to you in your homes, in your neighborhoods? Now I'm like,
Speaker:"Okay, Chicago gotta represent our food culture too."
Speaker:So I'm like, "Wait a second." Go for it. This is a food
Speaker:town, Chicago. You hear about the deep dish, New York versus Chicago,
Speaker:which I think is a really cool paradigm, but really, I think we
Speaker:should talk about Chicago jerk, Mississippi style, or New York jerk, Caribbean,
Speaker:East coast style. The idea of immigrant cities representing the diaspora
Speaker:in all of the different ways that we're trying to weave together as
Speaker:we're reconnecting ourselves, spiritually, culturally, physically, economically,
Speaker:with our food pathways. And I think Black honor your tradition is all
Speaker:about just bringing all of those pieces together and all the cultural nuances
Speaker:of who we are as people and we're multicultural people, and just thinking
Speaker:about how that shifts depending on who we're in community with.
Speaker:And as we move with gentrification, pressures and structures, and even that
Speaker:migration within a city, because rent goes up, you're displaced and then
Speaker:you're in a new cultural community, a new country almost, because of the
Speaker:way that folks kind of recreate home communities as immigrants, most of
Speaker:us are new to this specific land, even those of us with indigenous
Speaker:ancestry, it's all been this sort of fusion, integration and survival.
Speaker:So all those come into mind in that very simple question,
Speaker:but it's a very complex narrative, and as we organize to find that
Speaker:balance, that reclamation, and that acknowledgment, I think is really important.
Speaker:Yeah, that resonates with me. When you're talking about food, there are
Speaker:oftentimes distinctions made between urban environments and rural environments.
Speaker:And so talking about food sovereignty, I think has a different resonance
Speaker:and different implications in an urban setting. Central Brooklyn, for so
Speaker:many years, the term, food desert was used, and we always thought of
Speaker:our neighborhoods in this deficit model, and we saw the disappearance and
Speaker:the flight of chain supermarkets. And now through gentrification, what we've
Speaker:seen are the introduction of supermarkets and new restaurants and new access
Speaker:to food, but access that is not designed for the people who have
Speaker:been living here for generations. So when we talk about food sovereignty,
Speaker:we think of it really in terms of regaining control, right? So it's
Speaker:not just about bringing supermarkets back into the neighborhood, it's about,
Speaker:Okay, we're Black people, we've been here for generations, how do we not
Speaker:only create our own food sources, how do we actually control the food
Speaker:economy so that there's some semblance of a self determining food economy
Speaker:that is reflected back on us? So, it doesn't just mean that we
Speaker:control what we're eating, we're controlling who is selling the food,
Speaker:where the food is being sourced and everything in between, and making sure
Speaker:that as we're creating this food economy, everyone from farmer to consumer,
Speaker:to distributor, to people doing the packing are working together and somehow
Speaker:we're generating revenue and creating agency for local people to be able
Speaker:to stay here long beyond the gentrifiers. Yeah, that resonates as well.
Speaker:And I think here in Chicago, there's just a lot of movement around
Speaker:the intersectionality between land access, the enclaves that developed just
Speaker:on south lands that are rural, they're not even peri urban that African
Speaker:American folks settled in, and were a pretty thriving farm community and
Speaker:there's a big movement to restore that and connect as we're looking at
Speaker:larger scales of production and hitting those same road blocks, how difficult
Speaker:it is to even purchase land in sunset towns. These are towns that
Speaker:if you're Black or brown, you could not stand after sunset or buy
Speaker:property in, and that makes it very difficult when you're trying to achieve
Speaker:economic sovereignty, even if you have the resources, how difficult it is
Speaker:to purchase and own land within the cities. If you don't go south,
Speaker:you don't even know. You think that everyone has the same things that
Speaker:you have in your community, which is why originally I was just glad
Speaker:that people could even have a visual of a desert to even understand
Speaker:that their reality, it was not the same as everyone else's reality.
Speaker:And I think we're in that phase of implementers, policymakers, all the folks
Speaker:who are advocating and fighting for change and those who are building those
Speaker:constructs, all working together, it's starting to flow, which is exciting,
Speaker:but it's also even more urgent because of what's happening now with the
Speaker:COVID crisis and all of the other very clearly expressed manifestations
Speaker:of white supremacy. I wanted to pull a theme out here talking about
Speaker:power and control and organizing, what does it mean to you in your
Speaker:work in your community to be a community organizer? Word.
Speaker:It's funny, I remember when Barack Obama was elected President, that's the
Speaker:first time I remember that the term community organizer really became well
Speaker:known in popular culture, and in many ways, he was ridiculed for being
Speaker:a community organizer by the right because it really came out of a
Speaker:misunderstanding or failure to recognize the importance of organizing in
Speaker:creating the world that we have today, whether you're on the left or
Speaker:the right. Anything that we can look at as far as social,
Speaker:political, economic advancement has been as a result of some kind of organizing.
Speaker:When you think of what has to happen on the food front...
Speaker:I mean, look, I literally teach organizing, I teach community organizing
Speaker:on the graduate level, so I have a very well defined sense of
Speaker:what it means, but I know that the average person does not.
Speaker:When you say organizing, people think in act of activism in loose terms,
Speaker:and this idea of bringing people together. And I think that's obviously
Speaker:a big part of it. But it goes so far beyond that.
Speaker:I think there's a very well defined practice of identifying problems,
Speaker:bringing people together, developing leadership around it, and developing
Speaker:a base of people who identify around these issues, and in over a
Speaker:period of time building campaigns that are going to bring about social change.
Speaker:So, that's the very discreet way in which I think of community organizing,
Speaker:but I think in today's world, we need to go a little bit
Speaker:beyond that, it requires understanding how power not only works, but how
Speaker:do you go about challenging it. And if you're an organizer,
Speaker:you have to know how to step up and then step back that
Speaker:you are not the center of the activity, it's people around you and
Speaker:people who are dispossessed, who have not yet recognized their power and
Speaker:their agency, them stepping up, understanding what it means to have a leaderful
Speaker:movement of people around you, and it's making sure that people who are
Speaker:Black, people of color, queer, trans folks, women, differently abled immigrants,
Speaker:that they are centered in the work. And as an organizer who happens
Speaker:to be Black, but also happens to be a cis gendered man,
Speaker:I am one of the people who is centered, and yet I know
Speaker:that I also have to step out of that and know that there
Speaker:are other people who need to be centered in this work as well.
Speaker:Yeah, I resonate with that as well, and I remember when I first
Speaker:started, my organizing friends would say, "You're an organizer," and I'm
Speaker:like, "No, I'm not, 'cause I'm an implementer, I wanna do projects and
Speaker:I have a specific problem I'm trying to solve, not as an episodic
Speaker:component, but as a long term, deeply rooted process because of the nature
Speaker:of food and food systems and agriculture as a construct to organize around."
Speaker:So I took that path and really have tried to insert that implementation
Speaker:into the process, and I think it's beginning to work with organizers who
Speaker:are beginning to deepen their roots in the work, 'cause we're seeing the
Speaker:cyclical nature of these issues that we respond to as being something that
Speaker:we just scaffold on the next... Okay, this issue's looming, let's organize
Speaker:around this in the different arms of the community, the mutual aid community,
Speaker:the emergent farming community, the culinary community, the emergency food
Speaker:community, just all of those pieces coming together, you start to also need
Speaker:to have conversations with folks who are organizing around de funding the
Speaker:police, which is another pivot and transformational component around housing,
Speaker:around accessing financing for communities that have historically not had
Speaker:the collateral or the ability to even know where the levers are,
Speaker:let alone how to operate the levers. So this is exciting,
Speaker:it's exciting to see the multidisciplinary approach and having more people
Speaker:who are the long termers, farmers are often the last at the table,
Speaker:but everybody would be crying for farmers when there's no food on a
Speaker:table but are typically not part of the conversations and get the smallest
Speaker:percentage of that food dollar. So, we're trying to loop all of those
Speaker:pieces together to create real circular economic systems that really are
Speaker:reflective of indigenous market culture. You make a product, you sell it
Speaker:in your community, or trade it and barter it, and you're able to
Speaker:support so many people within that community supply chain. The idea of it
Speaker:not being a unilateral approach, but a multifaceted approach that's inclusive
Speaker:of everybody's talents, perspectives, time, and space. If you don't have
Speaker:a lot of time, there's some things you just can't participate in.
Speaker:Who has more time? So all of that requires relationships and communication
Speaker:and an understanding of what the realities are of the different people in
Speaker:our communities. Yeah. I wanna lift up that term you used, relationships,
Speaker:because at the end of the day, that really is what community organizing
Speaker:is all about. It's building relationships and then leveraging those relationships,
Speaker:and it's really important to hear from Erika because
Speaker:so much of how we've come to understand community organizing was born in
Speaker:Chicago. When you think of the organizing that Saul Alinsky did,
Speaker:even when you think of Barack Obama, that's where he was doing his
Speaker:organizing. And a lot of organizing has gotten a bad rep because it's
Speaker:been done very transactionally, and ironically it's been done by white people
Speaker:who say they have a critique of capitalism and oppressive systems,
Speaker:but in their forms of organizing and of perpetuating the very forms of
Speaker:patriarchy, sexism, white supremacy, that they say that they're working
Speaker:against. And so I think what you've seen over the last few generations,
Speaker:particularly in something like the movement for Black lives, is a re examination
Speaker:of what organizing is, and to shoot it through a filter of a
Speaker:different understanding of organizing that was not necessarily conceived
Speaker:of by white men, but is more reflective of communities of color,
Speaker:indigenous communities that are really looking to throw off that yoke of
Speaker:oppression that oftentimes comes with the missionary approaches to organizing
Speaker:that we've seen in the past. Yeah, that's super on point.
Speaker:Peace, y'all. I'm Mark Winston Griffith, an alumnus of The Castanea Fellowship
Speaker:Program. As the Executive Director of the Brooklyn Movement Center, I was
Speaker:looking for a community of peers who also saw a world where food
Speaker:truly became a source of health, equity, and well being for all.
Speaker:Castanea brought those very leaders together, and invested in us to make
Speaker:it happen. Since then, I've collaborated with a cadre of Castanea fellows
Speaker:on a national initiative to hold philanthropy accountable, and I've tapped
Speaker:into game changing support from my food systems work here in Central Brooklyn.
Speaker:So I'm looking forward to what's ahead in my professional as well as
Speaker:my personal journey along with following the impact I know my friends in
Speaker:the program will continue to make. Learn how Castanea can support your journey.
Speaker:Visit castaneafellowship.org. That's C A S T A N E A F E L L O W S H I P.org.
Speaker:Folks who have been in the work for a long time,
Speaker:or who have been keyed into this, have seen this work building for
Speaker:years and others, especially for younger folks, maybe they are coming to
Speaker:this political awakening or political conscious now, and I want to highlight
Speaker:around the movement for Black lives, and just to hear your take,
Speaker:knowing now that there is a very visible movement around eradicating white
Speaker:supremacy, building local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black
Speaker:communities, and by creating space for Black imagination, Black joy and
Speaker:innovation, where do you see the discussions around food and what areas
Speaker:of this that you would wanna lift up, especially for young folks who
Speaker:are coming to a consciousness now? One of the reasons I wanted to
Speaker:work in food as opposed to some of the other many pressing areas
Speaker:of interest and need is just that everyone eats. It's something that,
Speaker:globally, everyone can relate to regardless of language, literacy,
Speaker:most of us have the ability to consume food. And we can tell
Speaker:a story around that regardless of our ideological, political challenges,
Speaker:we celebrate with food. That's how all of our people survived hardship,
Speaker:we were able to find joy around that, and so it's just powerful.
Speaker:And I think the sort of understanding that the terror and the price
Speaker:that people of color pay for living in this society and being undervalued
Speaker:and abused by the food system, and how powerful it is to reclaim
Speaker:that and to transform it to be something that is not only nourishes
Speaker:us, our bodies, that we can actually economically evolve, because we've
Speaker:been held back in such strategic and well organized manners by the powers
Speaker:that be. So many people and entities are complicit on all sides,
Speaker:unless you go live in a cabin somewhere, we're all contributing to it
Speaker:and I think this is such an exciting time where we're seeing it
Speaker:being demystified. I started off like "We've got all this green space and
Speaker:these parks, Why can't we grow food?" And luckily, there's enough creatives
Speaker:and was like, "Yeah. Why can't you? It's landscape." I'm like, "Yeah. It's
Speaker:landscape, we have money for petunias. Can we just do that here and
Speaker:call that a garden? It can be beautiful." I mean, that audacity is
Speaker:so Chicago, it's like no one had a good enough way to argue
Speaker:that, and luckily, there is a visionary that just happened to be in
Speaker:the conversation that was willing to take that risk, and
Speaker:empires are won and lost because of food, and it's something that we
Speaker:are also have been exploited methodically because of food, so it just seems
Speaker:like food might be the thing for us to solve a lot of
Speaker:issues. It's such an important point because I think it's so easy to
Speaker:come to this conversation about food acting like, we're all brand new,
Speaker:right? For instance, the term "food sovereignty" if you ask the average
Speaker:person walking on the street, what does that mean? That's not really gonna
Speaker:resonate with them, and so I do acknowledge that there is a sort
Speaker:of a new framing around this, but the issues have always been there
Speaker:and food has always been a part of movement building, 'cause,
Speaker:as Erika said, it's just a fundamental part of who we are and
Speaker:how we get by. Revolutions start and can sometimes end because whether people
Speaker:can eat or not. Tell them. So I don't think there's anything too brand
Speaker:new here, but I do think that, at least in the movement spaces
Speaker:that I'm seeing is an integration and intersectionality with other issues.
Speaker:So for instance, I'm part of the National Black Food and Justice Alliance,
Speaker:I'm with the Movement for Black Lives in New York City,
Speaker:I'm part of their Cooperative Economics Alliance. And all of those different
Speaker:formations are sort of a movement recognitions of the role that food plays
Speaker:in building power and getting to liberation. There are now well defined
Speaker:efforts around food that have evolved over the years that you may not
Speaker:have seen some years ago, and understanding that food can't be just something
Speaker:we take for granted. It can't just be operating in the background.
Speaker:Our liberation is tied into being very explicit that Black and brown people
Speaker:are actually controlling food systems, and we're not meant to own land,
Speaker:we're here to steward land as entrepreneurs and as farmers and everything
Speaker:in between. I think it's really that indigenous understanding, an understanding
Speaker:who we are as Black, brown, people of color, we're talking about folks
Speaker:who have an intact cultural identity, and that we can see that manifest
Speaker:in the way that we even interact with the earth. I've been in
Speaker:this thing around, I get triggered a little bit by the land conversation,
Speaker:because even in the context of stewardings, it's still a power token as
Speaker:opposed to the earth and the understanding the earth is a living being
Speaker:that we have a responsibility towards, and it has a responsibility towards
Speaker:us, and it is very generous. Preach. We are bratty children,
Speaker:and we've had underdeveloped spiritual entities who don't understand that
Speaker:relationship, so sovereignty really comes out of the people who understand
Speaker:their place in historically, a pre colonialized imperial manner that really
Speaker:have a relationship with the earth and spirituality,
Speaker:that deconstruction is important. It's an important thing to re ground because
Speaker:then it becomes so easy to get caught up into the game,
Speaker:but the strategy around how we move through the system requires a moment
Speaker:of perspective to make sure we're not becoming that, 'cause it's so easy
Speaker:to get caught up in that and then you're like, "Oh,
Speaker:shoot, I didn't grow any food for myself," and then the winter's here,
Speaker:and being so distracted because we are disconnected from the earth.
Speaker:Slow down some of the visions that I think we collectively share around
Speaker:how we would love to live in community. Dr. King's dream of the
Speaker:beloved community, the idea that what used to be cultural norms that we're
Speaker:craving at the genetic level, it's like an aching, like a bone marrow
Speaker:aching of wanting that reconnection and having to process that along with
Speaker:a tremendous amount run of anchor around displacement and terror that we're
Speaker:still psychologically and physically living through. It's something that
Speaker:is difficult to even contain in one conversation in your own mind,
Speaker:and it's important to almost be there on a consistent basis to keep
Speaker:the humanity alive while we shut ourselves down just to survive the pain
Speaker:of the things that are happening, and it's about processing that there were
Speaker:15 people shot at a party over that began, like that reality,
Speaker:and I'm afraid that, Am I gonna make it?
Speaker:And that we're doing that work along with trying to figure out how
Speaker:to create community food supply chains, like that piece with land sovereignty,
Speaker:indigenous culture, trying to thrive and survive, but that terror.
Speaker:It's so important what you're saying because when you think of what Erika
Speaker:does and the relationship she has to the land in an urban environment,
Speaker:it's so important because we in urban environments, we get into the habit
Speaker:of being the extractors, of being on the far consumer end of the
Speaker:food system and being very detached from not only the land,
Speaker:but just the whole process of nurturing land, growing food and the humanity
Speaker:that gets interwoven into it. And so as I'm here in Crown Heights
Speaker:or Bed Stuy, most of us just have no inkling of how the
Speaker:food is arriving on our plate. And so the food coop that we're
Speaker:organizing, for instance, it's a cooperative because we wanna be very intentional
Speaker:about re imagining our relationship to food, more deeply appreciating the
Speaker:land and the resources that it takes to actually produce this food,
Speaker:and will make us, I think, more thoughtful people on this planet and
Speaker:really start to think of us as stewards as opposed to owners and
Speaker:takers, which is I think what the urban environment really breathes in you,
Speaker:it's like we're just here to take and really have literally no organic
Speaker:relationship to the environment around us. This work is so deeply personal,
Speaker:and then it's also so collective around these daily acts, these daily lives,
Speaker:as well as these centuries long histories that we're all living through
Speaker:right now. You have your wider communities that call you at the break
Speaker:of dawn because there's that trust and relationship. I know you're both
Speaker:also parents and have a role in your families, knowing that there's this
Speaker:lineage of inheriting the work and wanting to reconnect to land and to food,
Speaker:what are some words that you have for your own children or for
Speaker:the young people in your lives? I think that these issues are multigenerational.
Speaker:I believe that we can solve or at least have models that we're
Speaker:able to thrive in within our lifetime and within our children's lifetime,
Speaker:and I believe that we'll be able to have a multiplier effect once
Speaker:things are aligned. I'm seeing it with my son already, how all the
Speaker:things that have transpired since 2008, since he was born, and our children
Speaker:are having to live through some of the most challenging times,
Speaker:and also some of the most beautiful times of being able to be
Speaker:globally connected, to be able to really communicate our own narratives,
Speaker:and to grow our own food, it could take a step back as
Speaker:we're taking these huge technological steps forward, that balancing act,
Speaker:they're doing it. Let's try to get into this existing structure,
Speaker:which is a lot of the work that my dad was doing around
Speaker:scaling up and showing the magnificence of what could be if we had
Speaker:access to economic resources and inspiring a whole generation of folks to
Speaker:realize how it should be. I think our children will be able to
Speaker:see that and to see it in balance with the existing structures.
Speaker:Yeah, I have children around the same age as Erika. I have a
Speaker:17 year old and a 13 year old, two boys, and
Speaker:for me, I don't try to drill into their heads what they should
Speaker:think or what they should do. I think that they see me,
Speaker:they know that there's not a lot of separation between my work life
Speaker:and my home life, they know that I'm committed, and yet I don't
Speaker:demand that they follow my footsteps, but what I do ask of them
Speaker:is to be conscious and conscious in a way that's not obvious,
Speaker:in the sense that I think that what people are learning about social
Speaker:justice and power and politics is very performative. It's a sense of saying
Speaker:the right things, showing up on protest lines, which are all extremely important,
Speaker:but I think it's all the things that you do in between,
Speaker:it's how you live your life day to day. So I don't necessarily
Speaker:expect my children to be running organizations and being on the front lines
Speaker:of social justice, but I do expect whatever they do with their lives,
Speaker:that's gonna be consistent with social justice values, that they understand
Speaker:in their bones what patriarchy looks like and feels like, and really try
Speaker:to do their best not to perpetuate it, to have a deep understanding
Speaker:of how white supremacy shows up and how capitalism is a nasty and destructive
Speaker:practice and a way of being around the world, what I do for
Speaker:my children is less about my polemics or my propaganda, but how they
Speaker:see me spending my days and what I care about, and I can't
Speaker:tell you how many Zoom calls my children have been privy to.
Speaker:My 17 year old asks me every day about this person and that
Speaker:person and the issues... It's amazing how much they're actually sucking
Speaker:up and absorbing, and so I just try to walk the walk and
Speaker:be the person who I think that they should respect and live the
Speaker:values that I feel like they should follow as well.
Speaker:As we come back to these reminders of daily practice, daily acts and
Speaker:ends, it's just very personal, visceral relationships to food, want to invite
Speaker:you to share, if there is a ingredient or a dish to you
Speaker:that is supporting you and your families in the re imagination of what's
Speaker:possible. Just something that's close to your heart. Ooh, that's such a
Speaker:good one. For me, it's amaranth, callaloo. It is one of the most
Speaker:resilient plants that has this complex array of amino acids and protein.
Speaker:You can eat it when it's little sprouts raw, and then you gotta
Speaker:cook it. It's got this velvety mouth feel. It absorbs all the flavors,
Speaker:the garlic, all the spices. It is to me the essence of resilience,
Speaker:'cause it is just a prolific grain, you can make bread out of
Speaker:it and the seed grows everywhere. Our South Chicago farm is seven acres.
Speaker:It's a dynamic space, and it is the prevalent weed. It is the
Speaker:most glorious plant, you can survive on it. If that's all you eat,
Speaker:you're good to go. I love plants like that 'cause it really represents
Speaker:us, it represents people of the earth. And having that relationship with
Speaker:any plant, but a plant that is that perfect, that it is gonna
Speaker:come up when it's 50 to below, it shows up the next year.
Speaker:We kind of laugh hysterically when it's like this carpet of this beautiful
Speaker:kind of garnet red little haze, and it's like, "Oh, we did not
Speaker:do a good job of tilling that up." But it's also a delight
Speaker:because that's a bunch of food that we're gonna have to weed,
Speaker:but as we're weeding, we're filling our baskets to feed, to share,
Speaker:to sell. That fecundity, that generosity to me is what represents our cultures,
Speaker:all of our cultures. Yeah, for me, it's not one ingredient,
Speaker:but it's a combination of them, and I would say jerk.
Speaker:Jerk is really important in my family. I cook jerk chicken and my
Speaker:kids... I'm just really amazed. I could cook jerk every single day,
Speaker:and they would still approach it like it was the first day they've
Speaker:ever tasted it. And I don't cook it inside the house,
Speaker:I have a grill outside and I cook it there. Sometimes it's on
Speaker:the regular grill, sometimes it's on wood and with a metal base that
Speaker:harkens back to how jerk chicken was originally cooked in a pit.
Speaker:And so not only does it represent good food to me,
Speaker:but it also connects them to their Jamaican heritage, my Jamaican heritage.
Speaker:And Erika used the term resilience. For me, jerk also is a representation
Speaker:of resilience. It goes back generations, if not centuries, in the Caribbean,
Speaker:and so for me it just represents the resilience of colonialized people who've
Speaker:been able to, through it all, develop their own culture and their own
Speaker:strength. And I really celebrate when my children eat it because I feel
Speaker:like they are bringing that energy and culture into their lives as well.
Speaker:It's such a creolized food, right? It's the spice trade, this whole idea
Speaker:that we weren't multicultural people before any Europeans started trying
Speaker:to dominate the world. We were all in relation already and you can
Speaker:see it in the food and the art, the expressions, the consistencies.
Speaker:And then callaloo, how we even plan that Mark? Callaloo and jerk? That's
Speaker:just like... Exactly. Exactly. 'Cause in those jerk flavors mixin' with
Speaker:them callaloo grains... Exactly. And then everyone has their own mix of
Speaker:jerk, right? Yep, yep, yep. It's so diverse and it's such a healthy
Speaker:competition, right? You want a certain kind, some of the sweet jerk or
Speaker:a fire hot jerk and it changes based on the quality of the
Speaker:chicken, right? Which globally, if you say you're vegetarian, it doesn't
Speaker:include chicken, so you're good. Right. Chicken, fish. Oh, you're vegetarian?
Speaker:Oh, you eat chicken, right? Which is a hilarious joke. Exactly. That's true.
Speaker:That's true. Which is like a legit thing because... That is so true. It's
Speaker:not like, you're not grabbing a yard bird, and
Speaker:that's some work. It's a different relationship with nature. And I just
Speaker:love that, and that's how we learn and share a story and remember.
Speaker:I believe in genetic memory. I believe that smells, flavors just hit us
Speaker:at a visceral level that we can't even verbalize with this English we use.
Speaker:It doesn't resonate. It's hard to kind of articulate that connection.
Speaker:Well, we've got a future combo platter that I can't wait to have.
Speaker:Jerk, callaloo. Mark, Erika, it's just such a gift to gather with you
Speaker:on our kitchen table, and you've taken us on a journey that's touching
Speaker:the places that are home and back into themes of why relationship and
Speaker:remembering is so important in this work and that re imagination that you're
Speaker:so committed to. And if you have some advice, one simple thing that
Speaker:each of us can do that can make a huge difference in the
Speaker:places that we call home, share that with us. I think I wanna
Speaker:speak specifically to urban dwellers and encourage us to just be more conscious,
Speaker:to be more thoughtful of what we're eating. Investigate where the food has
Speaker:come from, who has handled it, who grew it, what kind of conditions
Speaker:they labored under, how far the food has come, and just be very
Speaker:conscious of that and to take note of it as you're eating it
Speaker:and as you're preparing it. And I guess I wanna just also give
Speaker:a shout out to people who identify as cisgendered men. One of the
Speaker:things when I was talking about preparing food for my sons,
Speaker:what is really important to me is they see fatherhood as an act
Speaker:of active nurturing and caretaking. And so when they see me cooking,
Speaker:they weave that into their own identity. And there's no more sacred and
Speaker:beautiful thing you can do for your family than to prepare food for
Speaker:them. And if you're able to not just buy it, but grow it
Speaker:and prepare it and cook it, I just think that you are transferring
Speaker:so much love, so much culture, so much history, so much understanding of
Speaker:who we are, literally into the bodies of your family, and so I
Speaker:wanna lift that up. So I think the thing that I would like
Speaker:to share is the importance of cultural restoration, that the listener thinks
Speaker:about who they are, who their people are, and where they come from
Speaker:in the context of how to move through the world differently.
Speaker:How to connect with communities of color, with one another, so that we're
Speaker:all able to better see each other and have an empathetic connection.
Speaker:And through that lens, we can begin to, as a society,
Speaker:reprioritize how we invest our resources. Movements are built and sustained
Speaker:through relationships and community, and that if we're able to shore that
Speaker:up with aligned public resources that are well coordinated and understood
Speaker:and transparent and rooted in love, we're all really yearning to leave this
Speaker:past era behind and move into a new Green era.
Speaker:Yeah, and I think that we need to remember that every day,
Speaker:that although selective editing helps us to survive, it's hard to live in
Speaker:the reality of what our people are struggling through, but it's the only
Speaker:way that we can hold ourselves responsible and extract ourselves from being
Speaker:complicit in the trauma that we have to inhabit every day.
Speaker:I just wanna see joy. I stay in that space of reality.
Speaker:I don't wanna cloud that, and let the little bit of privilege,
Speaker:that comfort I've been afforded, we all need that rest to go inward,
Speaker:but that we're able to continue to really stay in the reality so
