IT WAS HOT, THAT STICKY, HEAVY, BOOGIE DOWN BRONX HOT, and, as usual I was agitated. I was sweating a lot, which wasn't unusual given the fact I had gained about twenty-five pounds (11.3 kilograms) of baby fat. I kept telling myself I was going to work it off. I was going to get up early and go running. But as a single mom of two small children and few jobs in sight to support them, that was merely a pipe dream. Not to mention between April and September, my community smelled like a toilet on the account of the New York Organic Fertilizer Company, which didn't inspire much morning jogging. But I am getting ahead of myself.
On this sticky April afternoon, I was enrolling my eldest daughter in kindergarten at a local charter school, and as usual I felt this burning in the pit of my belly. This burning was an actual, physical burning. I was tired. I was finally graduating with my bachelor's after five years at a local city college. During those five years, I was hustling, doing any job I could find. I worked at Starbucks, slinging overpriced coffee. I worked as a receptionist at a small literary firm. I bartended and waitressed. I suffered the indignity of standing in the welfare line. I had faced possible eviction and had to siphon electricity from my neighbors to do my term papers, as my own lights had been turned out. I was miserable and left with feelings of failure and invalidation. I felt angry, I was angry—that was the burning in my belly. I struggled for more than five years to get this piece of paper, and nobody seemed to give a shit. There were no lofty jobs on the horizon and no piece of the American Dream for me. What was worse, I was watching the world unfold into political turmoil, and I felt tired and helpless about it all. I felt as if I couldn't do anything about it. To try to solve my own situation, I inquired about internship programs and was told that they didn't recruit from my school. My school wasn't good enough. I heard I wasn't good enough. In so many ways, I was being told that the most I could hope to achieve in this life was to be an assistant to a CEO. Well, that just wasn't good enough for me.
I was on the way home after enrolling my daughter as this internal narrative played over and over in my mind, and this hot, sticky, stinky day felt no different on my body. In fact, I didn't even realize I was going the wrong way until I saw a sign reading MADRES EN MOVIMIENTO (“Mothers on the Move” in Spanish) posted above the doorway of a storefront. I knew I was nowhere I had been before. Yet I couldn't peel myself away to find more familiar ground. Instead, I stood there dumbfounded. I was a mother, I was on the move, and here was a group of activist women doing something of that sort with some sort of cause right here in the hood. I felt overwhelmed and flushed and afraid. If my first impression of this organization was correct, that people, that women, like me were taking action, then I was not alone. I could not pull myself away from standing there in the window, but I was not yet courageous enough to walk through the door. I stared at the material hastily taped to the outreach window. There were campaigns they had won, campaigns they were currently working on, services offered locally, and referrals. I read one aloud: “Tired of that stinky smell in your neighborhood ... ” but just then an imposing black Puerto Rican woman interrupted me.
“Can I help you?” she asked. Well, actually it was more like a solicitation.
“I dunno, I was just trying to see what ya'll do here.”
“Then why you standing there? Come inside.” She turned around before I could accept or decline the invitation.
Only now, almost five years later, do I realize it was never an invitation. It was a command. She told me later she knew she “had” me. I stood at that window too long. The question really was, Would I be courageous enough to act on my feelings? Would I attempt to tame that burning in my belly? She was Wanda Salaman, the executive director of Mothers on the Move. She introduced me to Thomas Assefa, the environmental justice organizer. Finally, I knew I wasn't crazy. There was this distinct connection between the environment—or rather lack of sustainability—and poverty. Thomas explained what that stinky smell was. It was from a private facility called New York Organic Fertilizer Company. It treated 70 percent of the city's municipal waste, and it sat smack-dab in my community. Around the corner from that was one of the city's municipal water treatment facilities. I would come to learn that my community had eighteen open-air transfer stations and several power plants. All this within fewer than two miles (3.2 kilometers) of each other, all in one community.
They had me at hello. I threw myself into my volunteer work with them. I made myself available. I believed in the cause of environmental justice for community justice; it became my life and even helped to save my sanity. I was happier than I had been in a long time. I discovered a sense of validation that I was not getting anywhere else in my life outside of being a mother. For once, I felt as if I could fulfill my potential and that the things I was good at could finally be used for something meaningful.
Mothers on the Move (otherwise known as MOM ) quickly identified and used my talents. I learned to speak to the press, write press releases, run an effective campaign, knock on doors, and canvass, and I received a crash course in the history of environmental justice. I had quickly become visible on a local level, and that once-agitated stereotype of the angry black woman had become self-assured and confident. The young lady who was encouraged to keep quiet in the corporate sector, in less than six months time, had spoken out publicly, ended up on the cover of the local community newspaper, and been quoted in the New York Times. I worked with MOM for three years, and in that time I started to feel confident that I had a different but just as effective way to make the change in the community. It was also during this time that I became pregnant with my third child, a son. While unexpected, I felt more confident than ever to raise this child. I had a paying job and finally decided to make the leap to start my own nonprofit, the BLK ProjeK. I was starting to feel validated and that my work, even my existence, was meaningful.
Through my work in my own nonprofit, I started to make some serious connections between poverty, environment, and health. I started to think back to my days in the welfare office, surrounded by disempowered poor women of color, many of them in failing health and overweight. I, like them, had food stamps, and I remembered only being able to afford low-quality, nonorganic products and overprocessed food in my local grocery store. I also remembered that there was only one grocery store in the immediate area and not much food access. This epiphany wasn't anything profound; others had already made the connection. There was a ton of material out there speaking to these connections, but I still felt there was something missing about solving it. Then, I went back to that place in my life, a place I still begrudgingly end up on occasion. The place where I was nearly thirty pounds (13.6 kilograms) heavier, sweating after walking a few blocks; the place where I felt disempowered and lonely. I thought of that feeling of helplessness and how the food traditions passed down to me were steeped in oppression and assimilation. I also remembered my inability to find culturally relevant food that was also affordable and fresh. Then I thought of how messages in the media and mainstream society somehow made me feel as if I had done something wrong for being poor. Add political and social subjugation, and you have all the ingredients for an unhealthy community.
What was the solution? Damn sure not a Whole Foods or Garden of Eden. They're merely health stores for privileged culture. While I am sure that they are wonderful places, they are not places that speak to my community and would only serve to help catalyze gentrification. What we needed was to get back to our roots, reanalyze our connection to the land, and wrest control of what we put in our bodies—and women needed to be at the forefront of that. Three out of five households in poor and working-class neighborhoods are lead by women. Historically, women have been the gatekeepers in single-parent and dual-parent households of what gets ingested. Women hold the majority of food-related service-sector jobs; coincidentally, most of those said jobs are some of the lowest paying.
As I became more knowledgeable through my work with Mothers on the Move, and as I became known as a community resource, I felt empowered. It became easier for me to put better things in my mouth and in my home, and I wanted the spaces in my neighborhood to reflect how I felt about myself. It was this empowerment that facilitated behavior change and made me want to pursue policy change that would help build a healthy, more sustainable Earth. Hot damn! I was onto something.
I knew all the things that were wrong, but I needed to find the things that were right. I started to volunteer with a local community farm in Port Morris and discovered that urban agriculture could be a powerful tool for community development, particularly for youth. I was reading Vandana Shiva and exploring eco-feminism. I was certain that it could be for women like me as well. In terms of creating alternate food systems that could subsidize the rising food costs and its impact on women, I knew low-income communities of color practicing urban agriculture was an important and significant tenet to add to it all.
At that point, I started looking around. The answer was right in my face: Every day, for seven years, I looked at a half-acre plot of underutilized land owned by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation called the Fox Playground. The only use it had at that time was as a dumping ground for dogs. Most times, the grass and weeds would get to more than three feet (0.9 meter) high. You could often find garbage strewn around the perimeter. I knew there were plans to renovate this park, and they were short by about one million dollars. I saw this as an opportunity. I wanted to turn this half acre into an urban farm, a safe place that would not only nurture the soil and grow food but also nurture the soul and grow relationships. This place would be a place of liberation. It would be called the Libertad Urban Farm and I was swelling with pride. In my mind, neglected land + community organizing = piece of cake. But that was all before I became introduced to the bureaucracy of the New York City Parks Department.
PHOTO BY FLONIA TELEGRAFI
In the meantime, I did my homework; I read articles and books on urban farming and community gardening. I asked what one did if they wanted to orchestrate a local farming coup. I knew there had to be some science behind it. But the more I learned, the more I realized that there wasn't; you just did it. That was the point, to make a splash, to empower through sheer brashness, but I also wanted to be careful. My community has its fair share of cynicism and apathy. We have long gotten used to being used and exploited and having promises that were never fulfilled. I did not want to create a project that would ultimately end up being torn down by the Parks Department. I would organize guerilla farming, but I would simultaneously engage the Parks Department to get permission to make the farm permanent. I would seek them out to be a viable community partner.
It was spring of 2008, and I was definitely feeling like the little engine that could, and we were chugging along quite nicely. Within a month, donors had donated a boatload of trowels, shovels, hoes, and rakes. My friend Dwaine, who worked in agriculture, and I broke the lock to the plot of land in Fox Playground and started to plant. Stepping into that lot, we felt invincible, we felt bold ... and, well, we felt a little bit scared. But a ragtag team of revolving volunteers supported us. With Dwaine's expertise, we planted hydrangeas, marigolds, butterfly bush, mint, and sunflowers.
PHOTO BY FLONIA TELEGRAFI
People across the street in the senior building helped, little kids playing in the nearby playground helped, and even the winos that sat outside the lot with maltas and dominoes helped. If the dogs tore down our makeshift gate, the very next day someone from the community would put it back up. If the plants needed watering, the winos would do so without being asked, and we often found little girls running through Fox Playground with marigold flowers in their hair. We felt the support from the community, and it was the lifeblood of the project. All materials that were not donated were funded directly from my pocket, and with three kids and a fourth on the way, it was difficult, but the passion and enthusiasm from the community motivated me to keep going.
Every hot day that Dwaine and I were out there, our attitude and passion became contagious. Some of the residents who were unaware of our activities would stop and ask what we were doing, and my being out seemed to make them feel encouraged. Quite a few passersby would even stop and ask if they could help, and they were most certainly welcomed. I was heavily pregnant at the time, and this was no easy task for me. In fact, many of my peers expressed disbelief and admiration for my dedication. But I felt as if I didn't have a choice. I could not let something like being eight months pregnant stop the momentum of this project. When people would spark up conversation about me being pregnant and farming, I always saw this as an opportunity to talk about how urban agriculture can be used as a social benefit, an effective community development tool, or a means to food sovereignty, as well as an opportunity for environmental education.
I once spoke with some students at the University of Vermont, a mostly white, liberal, progressive school in Burlington. One well-meaning and enthusiastic student during the question-and-answer period asked me, “How do we get people in your community to care about the environment?” Too often I have heard environmental activists ponder over or outright ask me the question of how to get people of color, primarily low-income people, to care about the environment, as if somehow they weren't part of this world in peril. My answer is always that it wasn't that they were apathetic toward the environment, but that environmentalism has to be presented in a way that is relevant to the people of the community. It is certainly hard to think about climate change, deforestation, and Styrofoam cups if you can't pay the light bill or are facing eviction. I have been on that end of the stick, and I would have scoffed at the time at air quality and soil remediation if it had been brought up in conversation. But if you tie these immediate needs in to the everyday lives of people, if you help present them as relevant and illustrate how the lack of attention to them has facilitated the -isms they are currently facing, you will be surprised how many of those people become “environmentalists.”
Dwaine and I shared information with the community on how farming on brownfields and lots in the area could provide soil remediation and improved air quality. We also talked to many parents whose children suffered from asthma, which is not surprising, since there are approximately twelve thousand diesel truck trips a day through our community to the food distribution center. With those parents, we discussed how a project like ours, if replicated, could help offset much of the carbon dioxide that was emitted through the burning of fossil fuels in our community, how green spaces like this would not only feed the community but also filter the air, cleaning it of some of the particle matter that hindered their children from breathing easier.
It just seemed like good sense to us and to the residents of the community to eat good and breathe good. We were passionate about sustainable agriculture and about setting it up to be an ecosystem. This type of farming would help clean water and reduce rainwater runoff by not only absorbing it but also capturing it and using it to feed the plants and crops. This project would reduce waste through composting and by capturing the “waste” from the compost and using it to heat the greenhouse. We even discussed the possibility of farming fish and using the waste of the fish to nourish the soil. The environmental benefits of a sustainable farm are lengthy, and we shared this knowledge in abundance, while also making sure to be receptive to the wisdom of many of the elders in the community who came with a deep tie to the land. A tie they brought with them from their previous country or state.
However, our enthusiasm was not shared by all. Some residents felt that the space was better used as a dumping ground for dog crap; some felt urban agriculture was a conundrum and that a city was no place for growing food. Local environmental organizations expressed concern that the environmental hazards were too risky for growing food. Even a community member said to us, “This community don't need no farm, the people just gone tear it up.” But probably the biggest critic of them all was Bronx borough commissioner Hector Aponte. At one point in a meeting facilitated by Councilwoman Arroyo, he became combative and explicitly stated to me: “As long as I am the Bronx borough commissioner, there will not be any food growing on park lawns, not at St. Mary's, not at Van Cortlandt, and not at Fox Playground!”
Hmph, I guess he told me. I was put off to say the least; I was also appalled at how public officials who have absolutely no investment in the communities they oversee can be so quick to exclude the larger community from the decision-making process. Even with all that said, I was still not prepared for what the Parks Department had in store, which was to ultimately shut me out of the park and try to stop the momentum of this project altogether.
I rang everyone, from the Parks Department commissioner to the Bronx borough president, pleading with them to help me with Aponte's tyranny. I kept getting the same old story: “Your project sounds great, and while I may not necessarily agree with Commissioner Aponte, it's his backyard, so hey ... ” I was all but beat down. But then we decided to fight back, fight back with a block party. We held the Libertad Urban Farm Family Fun Block Party in late September, and man, it was slamming. The day was warm but not too hot, and I had woken up that morning feeling inspired and determined.
People were buzzing around, our promotional posters still present. Our DJ was setting up and our band all the way from Boston was tuning up. There was chicken and fresh corn on the cob on the grill, and the smell wafted all the way down for blocks. Rap music played in the background while kids and women got down on yoga mats in downward dog position. Seniors volunteered from 745 Fox Street helped to sign people in and hand out free donated veggies. All those detractors who said low-income folks didn't care about the Earth should have seen the crowd taking the workshops on urban agriculture and forestry that day. Every elected official was present or represented, and much to my surprise, we even got a call from the outreach coordinator of New York state Senator Chuck Schumer's office. I was flying high—my big mouth, Dwaine's expertise, and our combined dedication had us on the right path—but the high was short-lived.
The Monday following the block party, I received a call from the Parks Department informing me that they were suddenly ready to renovate. After six months of telling everyone involved in the park that they didn't know when they would have the money to break ground, suddenly they got sure. He was nice enough to tell me I could go retrieve our raised beds and plants, but where the hell was I going to put them? I lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment. We hoped our guerilla farming and community organizing would push the Parks Department to legitimize the farm and integrate it into the existing plans. Instead, it only propelled them forward to appease a few restless community members and stop the Libertad Urban Farm.
I felt a sense of panic, as if someone had hit me in the gut and I couldn't breathe. For a week, there was this knot in the pit of my stomach, and when they tore up my plants, I stood across the street and cried. It truly felt as if someone had stolen something special from me personally and, more important, from my community. In a week, we lost everything we had worked so hard for. Community members stopped me and expressed sorrow that our project wasn't going to happen. But I explained that just because it won't happen at the Fox Playground doesn't mean it won't happen.
In our hood and much of the Bronx, there are still many lots that need remediating. Urban farms are ripe for the growing, and we will build them together as a community. I have kept the concept of the Libertad Urban Farm alive, we hold monthly community meetings where we get feedback from community members, and we are currently in the process of engaging a private landowner to grant us a lease on our next location. I remember that nothing worth having comes easy, and there are pioneers who have struggled longer and harder and watched their dreams and the dreams of their people come to fruition.
In May 2010, we engaged in an act of civil disobedience on Memorial Day, breaking into a neglected lot and cleaning it up. We planted sunflowers, and within a week, unlike the sunflowers at the previous site, they started to bloom quickly and resiliently. In a matter of three weeks, they were tall and proud just like my community. Their brilliant yellow and sunshiney figures give me faith and hope that our little urban farm would grow and blossom just the same.
And as the guerilla garden grows, I've come to realize that we the people have every right to manifest what we want to see in our world, and no stinking bureaucrat can stop the will of the people, especially when there is food involved.
¡Viva la Libertad!
PHOTO BY FLONIA TELEGRAFI
Tanya Fields is the executive director and founder of the BLK ProjeK, a nonprofit that empowers women through urban agriculture, civic engagement, and holistic health. She is still an active member of Madres en Movimiento and is working diligently to find a permanent home for the Libertad Urban Farm. Currently, Tanya is successfully running a yoga program for underprivileged women and a farm share, bringing healthy, affordable produce to the hood.
Thirty Britain Cycling Crusader
PHOTO BY SUSIE WHEELDON