My box of books arrived a few days ago. I acquired so many books from visiting independent bookstores (most of which had many used books) that I actually had to ship them via Media Mail back to myself in New York. Over the course of the summer, I amassed 25 lbs of books. When the books arrived today at my apartment, packaged in an old wine box I had stuck labels over, I felt like my summer in the Bay Area was really over. It feels fitting to mark it with the arrival of the books, as the books mark the thoughts had, the pathways gone down, the places visited, and most of all the knowledge I gained during my experience.
When I look back on the beginning of my fellowship, I am struck by how naive I was about community-based organizations, and environmental justice work. At the end of the fellowship, I now have a much fuller and less shiny understanding of the realities of non-profits, coalitions and the environmental and environmental justice movements. One of the most influential parts was understanding that much community based work is not actually about work in the communities. It’s often about advocating for communities in a policy, legal or public setting. I’ve also seen the ways in which small non-profits struggle daily to have any tangible and measurable impact with limited funds, manpower and support. This was something that characterized my experience as I saw how small non-profits, which are often glamorized as being close to the community and therefore more effective, struggled to stay afloat, not overextend their workers, and keep up all the projects that they have ideas for.
In terms of environmental issues, my eyes have been opened to the sheer extent of what’s necessary for climate resilience in the future. My placement with Rooted in Resilience and the Resilient Communities Initiative, whose focus spanned food justice issues, climate resilience issues, and pollution issues made me aware of how interconnected these issues are, and that you cannot divorce climate change from any environmental issue. As I have been writing about throughout my fellowship, one of the elements I have become most interested in is the concept of environmental storytelling. Even in just discussing my fellowship experience now that I’m back, I’m realizing how much better at telling my own story from this summer, and the way it was interwoven with the physical environment of the Bay Area.
Learning about environmental justice and climate resilience in the environment of the Bay really affected the ways I experienced it. Aside from being influenced by the specific organizations and people I worked with, I was influenced by the overall protest history of the Bay. The food justice movement and the environmental justice movement are both rooted in an anti-oppression framework and understanding. Throughout my fellowship and my time in the Bay, I was struck by Oakland’s status as a place of protest and as a place where communities of color have formed extremely important coalitions of resistance to systems of oppression. Specifically, the formation, presence, and initiatives of the Black Panther Party are extremely important in understanding the history of environmental justice and food justice in Oakland. Three academic articles have informed my view on this (which are referenced and attached below) as well as the documentary “The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution “ by Stanley Nelson, which I watched before I went to Oakland, and numerous experiences and discussions I had over the course of the summer.
As a response to anti-Black racist violence around the country and in Oakland, Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton formed the Black Panther Party in 1966. While the prevailing narrative around the Black Panther Party is one of black people arming themselves against the police, the Black Panther Party was rooted in ideas of self-sufficient communities, and alternative models of education and food production. In fact, the violent response of the US government to the Panthers and prevailing narrative of violence around the movement to this day has far eclipsed the extremely important environmental and community work done by the Black Panther Movement. This is work that current food sovereignty movements build on and have been consciously and unconsciously influenced by. Specifically, the Panthers founded breakfast programs in the community and gardening programs at their alternative Intercommunal Youth Institute. (Curran and Gonzalez, 212-213)
In terms of food justice as a whole, Joshua Sbicca says, “Food justice that rests on an anti-oppression ideology points to three major discursive nodes that expand mobilization possibilities. First, it challenges all oppressive structures propping up the industrialized agrifood system throughout civil society, the economy, and political system. Second, FJ prioritizes building solidarity among activists and communities by promoting tactics premised on social justice and self-determination. And third, FJ prioritizes carving out creative spaces, what Carolan (2006 ) refers to as ‘‘tactile spaces,’’ for local residents to come up with solutions that are appropriate for their community and ecosystem (i.e., reflecting the situated knowledge of low income people and people of color). Radical discursive spaces can open up possibilities within which to develop material alternatives.” (Sbicca, 464) While dense, it feels important to think about this framework and the ways in which food justice is inextricably linked to other protest movements and alternative spaces, as well as the ways in which this framework can be applied to other environmental justice movements, such as climate justice. This is most likely what will stick with me the most from my experience. Imagining frameworks of anti-oppression as we go forward into an uncertain place of environmental change and disasters to ensure that human rights, justice, and food and life security are respected and championed in our approach to climate change.
Sources:
Curran, C. J., & Gonzalez, M.-T. (2011). Food Justice as Interracial Justice: Urban Farmers, Community Organizations and the Role of Government in Oakland, California. The University of Miami Inter-American Law Review, 43(1), 207-232.
Sbicca, J. (2012). Growing food justice by planting an anti-oppression foundation: opportunities
and obstacles for a budding social movement. Agric Hum Values, 29, 455-466.
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