Fall Activities and Reflections

The other night I attended a trunk-or -treat in the lovely company of Cinderella and Super Woman (my nieces Lexy and Abbi). I love free community events because of the cross sections of people they bring out. Families saying hello, kids running around laughing and the general feeling of celebration in the air make the stress of getting there on time and in one piece worth the hassle.

At the trunk-or-treat I bumped into a few of my kids that came to eat lunch on my bus this past Summer. It was great to see them again. They are really wonderful, thoughtful kids and they looked adorable dressed up with large pillow cases ready for candy.

A thought popped in my head that was very likely true. The candy and popcorn they were gathering that evening might be their supper for the night and may be their supper for a few nights to come. And here I was (probably loudly) complaining to the kids that half a bucket full of candy was too much and we needed to go eat a late dinner so they could go to bed.  

I don’t say this to make anyone feel sad or sorry for that family. I say it to gather some perspective and remember why I advocate so loudly for Food Justice. This specific family is not one of the families from Whispering Meadows where we are establishing a community garden, but I know this story is a reality for more and more families and I know November is going to mean a few less meals for many people due to the first round of SNAP cuts.

And that means it’s time for us to get to work.

Tomorrow starts a new round of fundraising for Build It Up East TN. We’ll be at First Friday selling apple cider in front of Nelson’s Fine Art Center, Nov. 9^th we are having a mushroom growing workshop at Shakti in the Mountains, Nov. 10^th is our Fall Fundraiser at Mid City Grill and in December we are planning a really wonderful workshop on DIY Christmas gifts.

We have a lot of work to do, but I know that it will be worth it when we break ground on the community garden and when that first family checks out seeds to grow their kitchen garden next Summer.  To get there we need our wonderful community to come out to these grand events. Every penny you spend with us promises to bring you fun times, new knowledge and knowing the fact that you are bringing some really beautiful things into fruition.  Sign up for a workshop or come to our dinner and bring all of you friends!  We look forward to seeing you there!

Saturday, Nov. 9^th, Mushroom Work Shop, Shakti in theMountains, cost is $20 per a person but everyone takes home a log ready to produce shitake mushrooms and extra logs will be available for purchase. Reserve you seat by emailing Heidi (me) at heididavis2011@gmail.com

Sunday, Nov. 10^th, Fall Luncheon, Mid City Grill 12p-2p, cost is $25 per a person; you can buy your tickets at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/488794

DIY Christmas Gifts Workshop, TBA, cost is $30 per person; learn how to make your own lotions, sugar scrub, home-canned soups and more!  Everyone will leave with some items we made in the workshop and all the instructions you need to make some amazing gifts for the holidays. Reserve your seat by emailing Heidi (me) at heididavis2011@gmail.com

                                                     If we starve them they’ll get a job.

Warning: Mild profanity ahead. 

Sometimes I sit and pray to no one in particular that politicians are just too dumb to understand how the bills they pass actually affect people in everyday life.  The reason this prayer sinks like a lead balloon from my lips is because I am unfortunate enough to know that politicians tend to know when their bills are shitty-- they just don’t care.

Congress just voted to cut 40 billion dollars from SNAP over the next ten years. SNAP recipients will lose about 30 dollars a month if not all of their of their food assistance benefits in 2014. Many others that end up needing SNAP will be unable to get any help in 2014. The average amount per a meal per a person will be less than $1.40 in 2014. The Democrats claim that 4 million low income folks, including 170,000 veterans will lose their benefits due to these cuts.

Take a minute and let that sink in.

Republicans don’t care that your family goes hungry. It’s all just political pandering to them. If you’re poor you don’t vote so why should they care about you?

Democrats probably feel really bad that your family is going hungry, but not necessarily bad enough to do anything substantive about it. It’s not like your family has a lot of money to pay them to champion your cause, you know, because you’re poor. Why should they stick out their neck for you?

I see you over there, mother-of-three.  You’re working 50 hours a week between two shitty part time jobs and still not making enough to keep up with your bills and keep food on the table for your family. They think you’re lazy.

I see you over there, soldier.  I know you’re struggling with physical and mental scars from fighting in a war that was probably started before you even were old enough to vote. You came home and we all thanked you for your service, but now you simply can’t find a job or the self-medicating you've been doing to deal with what happened makes it damn hard to keep a job. See, they think you just don’t want to work because we make it too easy for you to be poor.

I see you over there, fourth grader. I know your stomach is growling so loudly in class you are afraid your other classmates will hear it. I've watched you struggle to concentrate in class, but your head hurts and you are just too tired to listen to the math problem your teacher is going over.  They think middle class folks shouldn't have to pay for your mistakes.

And don’t think I forgot about you, grandpa. I know that if your darn legs would work right you’d gladly go back to work. You've worked hard all your life, why should now be any different? I've watched you ration off saltines so you could save up to buy grandma’s Alzheimer’s medication next week. The doctor’s got you all on more medicines than you could possibly need and you certainly can’t afford them. See, they think you are abusing the system.

I’m a Food Justice advocate. I see hunger in my community every day. I know that SNAP doesn't end hunger. I know it’s a band-aide, but, my god, can’t folks, at least, keep the damn band-aides till we figure out how to solve it? 

Y'all, "bending the arc of history towards justice" isn't a sprint, it's a marathon. So, we take the punch. We get back up. But this time we get up ready to knock them out. As my favorite social justice advocate once said, " You don't need a vote to raise hell!" 

Start getting together with folks in your community and start hashing some stuff out. Meeting at the grassroots and talking to one another is the only place we've ever found real change anyway. The system is broken; time to plant the seeds of a new one. 

I haven't been on here in SO LONG! I was drowning in grant paper work and then dived into more local initiatives so, I'll apologize that it has been a while since my last post and tell you all about the amazing things happening, deal?

The Lunch Express ended strong serving over 600 kids a day they may have even hit 700. My bus served 300 different kids this Summer. Second Harvest is busy moving into their new home and the whispers I have heard about where new programming would like to go are really exciting. I can't wait to see what they come up with next.

A new group called Everyone Acting Together in Solidarity (E.A.T.S) is working on the Second Annual Free to You BBQ. Last year they focused on local hunger issues and this year they are highlighting the Living Wage struggle. Word is they will have great food, even better music and provide a wonderful place for our community to come together and get to work on something cool.

Build It Up East TN is inching ever nearer to finding a home for the Johnson City Seed Library. Many people have expressed interest and support. Keep sending them your love! It will be a valuable resource and tool for our community to combat food insecurity.

They also have an exciting garden opportunity in the works so keep your fingers crossed that they find funding.

One Acre Cafe is on schedule to open this Fall. They will be such a wonderful new treasure to our community. They will be a nonprofit restaurant that will provide meals on a sliding scale for donations of money or time. And they want to source their food locally, even better!

I know I am forgetting projects, but you should check out all of these wonderful groups and like their social media pages. Sharing is caring.

Community gardens and small community farms are popping up in conversations and strategic plans all over Johnson City. I'll be keeping everything crossed hoping that these programs actually take off and the sooner the better.

P.S. Check out Grow Appalachia and fall in love, like I did. Till next time how about some easy listening?

                                               Grow a Garden by Kesang Marstrand

Since I was much younger I have always loved folktales, parables and fables from many different backgrounds and religions. In 7th grade I even started writing folktales featuring characters I had been learning about from Chinese and African traditions in Literature class. As an activist my favorite stories have always been about cooperation. If you have a free minute or so you should read The Sufi Story and the classic Stone Soup. 

On the Food Bus we sometimes serve sandwiches with fish-shaped bread. When I was serving them earlier this month the parable of Jesus feeding the masses with 2 fish and 5 loaves of bread started scratching at my brain and I have been wanting to write something about it for a few weeks now. I still don't think I have worked out exactly what I have felt lead to talk about, but maybe this post will work it out.

This story is an often quoted miracle about what God can do with even the smallest resources (i.e. a little boy gave Jesus the bread and fish and the amount given was not nearly enough to feed the masses). Well, I believe in miracles, for sure. I've seen too many miracles happen when communities are brought together to achieve their goal. I have not really taken to reading the Bible literally so  my mind's eye tends to see the feeding of the masses as something closer to what happened in the Stone Soup story rather than supernatural division of the fish and bread.

Most days getting the Food Bus on the road with adequate amounts of resources feels like a miracle. Everyday this program needs many people for it to happen. I couldn't even give you a true number on exactly how many people put in some long hours to make this program possible, but I am so grateful to be working with them.

Solving our food security issues feels like it will take a miracle and a good dose of divine intervention. As a community we can make miracles happen and no contribution is too meager to help in the struggle. But the key is that we will have to come together to solve it. That means we have to step out of our comfort zones to meet and learn from people of all walks of life that are living the daily struggle. It means taking to task the people making decisions on food policy. And most importantly, it means finding others that are doing this work and figuring out how we can work together to build a better food system. The struggle is constant and never-ending, but there will be wins, big wins. When folks come together we manifest the wins.

Have you heard about this thing called the Farm Bill?

For the past year or so I have been following this piece of legislation with utter outrage most of the time. The Farm Bill authorizes funding for most federal farm and food polices and it is supposed to be reauthorized every five years. The Farm Bill is Big Ag's playground to secure subsides for certain crops over others and it's a big reason why crappy food is some much cheaper than real, fresh food. It is also how programs like S.N.A.P (formerly known as Food Stamps) is funded.

 In the past year I have heard every thing from huge fast food chains fighting to accept S.N.A.P benefits to funding programs that increase access to locally grown food being thrown in the mix to see what will end up in this bill. In fact, I could probably dedicate a whole blog to the Farm Bill and how it impacts us. But, one aspect actually made it into the bill that I cannot stand for and I want to talk about it and some about the intersection of Racism and Food Access.

If you are one of those post-racial America types I dare you to stick around for the rest of this blog because I am about to drop some truth on you. Racism is alive and well in America. Racism is not about individual interactions. You can treat people decent all you want, but it won't change the fact that some structures are set up to screw people of color, especially if they happen to also fall in the category of the working poor. It also won't change the fact that these structures hurt everyone, not just people of color, and we all have a stake in forcing them to change.

Now I'll explain my reason for jumping up on my soap box today. The Senate just accepted a deal that would kick the formerly incarcerated off of food assistance programs. They are trying to gut, I mean cut, funding for food assistance programs like S.N.A.P. because they are rubber band programs. This means that when the economy is doing well and people have jobs less people need this program so it shrinks and we spend less on it. When the economy tanks, like it did in 2008, more people become eligible for the program and we spend more on it to cover the new folks. People have been fighting for years to make food assistance programs static. We would only spend this amount of money on programs a year and when it runs out of money it is good luck to you good kind folks that need it. But, please do try again next year.

Some folks may be saying, "Well, if they are going to cut the program it only seems fair to give benefits to people that haven't landed themselves in jail, right?"

Yeah, I have a problem with the "deserving poor" argument. A big one.

Food is a basic need for survival, therefore food access should be a right. Deciding that some people are more deserving of assistance than others is ludicrous, unfair and completely unjust. As a Food Justice advocate I will not stand for someone to starve because they got put on the cradle-to-prison pipeline

Secondly, The Prison Industrial Complex is RACIST and guaranteed to punish the poor far more harshly than any other class.

Robert Greenstein the founder and President of the Center of Budget and and Policy Priorites said:

" The amendment would bar from SNAP (food stamps), for life, anyone who was ever convicted of one of a specified list of violent crimes at any time — even if they committed the crime decades ago in their youth and have served their sentence, paid their debt to society, and been a good citizen ever since.  In addition, the amendment would mean lower SNAP benefits for their children and other family members.

So, a young man who was convicted of a single crime at age 19 who then reforms and is now elderly, poor, and raising grandchildren would be thrown off SNAP, and his grandchildren’s benefits would be cut."

How is this just? How is it helpful? But, most importantly, how is this amendment going to effect people in real life? 

I can tell you it is going to hit the poor and people of color hardest. People like the good folks in Petersburg, VA that I spent last Summer working with to promote food security and health in their neighborhood and learning a ton about what Racism and Food Access looks like in real life. 

Petersburg residents are 90% African American. The entire city is a food desert/ food swamp. They are still effected by the outcomes of the resistance to integration with  many older folks being unable to read  because back in the day the Governor shut down the school system for five years instead of allowing black students to attend white schools and they missed those critical years of learning. Petersburg has the eighth lowest life expectancy in the the U.S. And the city likes to try children as adults to show they are super tough on crime. 

Folks that I care about are in danger of losing absolutely necessary benefits. People are elderly, they don't have any health care, experience a lot of pain, they can't work and self medicate with alcohol and drugs. Say somebody gets drunk and gets into a fight and lands themselves in jail,  which is not an uncommon story, what is this amendment going to mean for them and their family? 

They already lived in a city that had low food access. Now they won't be able to even buy the crappy cancer-causing food at the corner stores. And we already have a long history in our country revolving around what food certain groups of people have access to buy and eat as an extension of Environmental Racism.

In Kate Meals paper on Food Access in African American communities she writes:

"Nationwide, 38.1 million people, or 12.4 percent of the population, identify as African-American (or Black). When compared with the U.S. population as whole, African-Americans experience “hunger, poverty, unemployment, and income disparity” at disproportionate levels. In 2010, rates of food insecurity in African-American households were higher than the national average, at 25.1 percent. In 2008, 27.2 percent of African-American families had difficulty getting enough to eat, compared with 11.6 percent in Caucasian households overall."

Add on top of this disparity the problems people of color face with our justice system and this amendment means a lot of folks and families could lose their benefits. For some people this will mean another ticket back to jail either for falling into dangerous, high-paying, illegal work so they have enough money to buy food or because in jail they will at least get three meals a day. 

When the system is set up for people to fail it's hard for folks to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Especially when their bootstraps were cut up a long time ago. 

This amendment is wrong. This amendment is unjust. This amendment will pass if we don't do something to stop it and to stop it will take a lot more than just calling our representatives. 

Hey y'all!

This weekend was long in coming and I think it's going to be short in leaving.

Our program is serving between 650-700 kids a day at last count. That's about double what we were prepared for so this week has been interesting to say the least at all of the sites. Here is hoping next week goes smoothly. I'm planning another round of outreach this weekend and we are switching up some of our stops to see if we can get more folks on the bus. I'll keep you updated on how we are doing.

Now I wanted to talk about another project going on in Johnson City. I am also working with Grand Aspirations on local initiatives through our group Build It Up East TN. We have sister programs all over doing some great work including our name sake and good pals at Build It Up West VA. You all should check them out!

One of the community projects we have been batting around is starting a seed library...some where. The purpose would be to increase knowledge about seed saving, protect heirloom and open-pollinated seeds and getting seeds and knowledge out to anyone that wants to start gardening. Plus, we would get a chance to give GMO seed producers like Monsanto the finger in a matter of speaking.

If you have been following the rulings of the lower courts and recently the Supreme Court then you know it's not looking all that good for food policy or farmers. Intellectual property patents have been used as a cruel tactic to take over the food supply. If you control the seeds, you control the food. And right now Big Ag is tilting us all towards monocrops and destroying the biodiversity of our food under the flag of ending global hunger.

If you are like me, then you agree that this is more of an equation to guarantee global hunger.

If the system is broken we must grow a new one.

So what do you all think? Should we start a seed library in Johnson City?

Unicoi, TN 

Well, my worst fear happened today. The very first day of service we ran out of food. It was an easy fix, we survived and even managed to just be 15 minutes off schedule the whole day.

The drive home was particularly beautiful after a stressful day and I realized why I love it here so much. I realized why I love coming home no matter how far I've gone. It's the view. Every where you turn rich blue hues and many shades of green dazzle your eyes. The mountains surround us in this fantastic hug. You can't help but feel at peace and protected by the mountains.

 Now, lets talk a little about food access.

Many of the neighborhoods I visit are government subsidized housing or working class folks that are just barely above the poverty line. These folks have the knowledge and ability to access help for assistance programs if they need them. They even knew that you can buy seeds with your  S.N.A.P. benefits (formerly known as Food Stamps).

Then there is Railroad St.

Railroad St. is the wrong side of the tracks neighborhood in Erwin. I won't lie, it's a pretty shady area of town known as the home of our very minimal gang activity and drug deals galore. I'll also be honest and say that this is a part of town I try to avoid and it's the only neighborhood on my list that I was worried about visiting alone despite knowing folks down there and knowing they are good people. This is another intersection I'll have to talk about another time.

It is full of working class folks that barely make enough to shelter themselves and have to decide between food and a place to live often. It is full of immigrants and many multi-generational homes. The housing that folks can barely afford is dilapidated and probably very unsafe. This neighborhood needs some justice. Folks have been beaten down by life and by a broken system that sees them as collateral damage for too long.

When I went door to door talking to people about our food bus I ran into stories of folks that were in desperate need of food and didn't know where or how to get help. They had S.N.A.P, but it ran out in two weeks and for the rest of the month they barely had anything. They knew about the dinners at the Methodist church on Wednesdays and they knew about how to get a referral from DHS to get a box of food from Care and Share once a month, but they needed more help and I could tell because they were all getting on the thin side. Well, that's where my knowledge of charity ran out an my anger at the lack of food access in my own town boiled up.

I would probably classify where they live as a food swamp. A food swamp is an area that has low access to food and the food that is available for purchase is usually cheap, high-calorie, nutrient-poor, GMO, chemically altered, crappy food.  Places to get food in a food swamp are typically gas stations, usually corner stores, Dollar Stores, etc.

Food Justice is more than having food to eat. Food access means more than the ability to buy food. And food insecurity, as in not having a clue from where or when your next meal is coming, is a big problem locally, nationally and globally. You don't have to travel far to find people having a hard time feeding themselves. People are starving here. People are starving in developing countries.What are we going to do about it?

Feeding the hungry is an important step. We must go beyond that simple act and ask important questions. Why are people hungry? How do we empower them to take back control of their own food security? Is this something we can do alone or do we need broader scale measures? And specifically pertaining to myself and this neighborhood in my home town: Why is this neighborhood in such terrible conditions and lacking access to clearly needed basic resources for survival?

Charity makes poverty bearable, it doesn't solve problems or, in some cases, even help people. Not really. Charity creates an Us vs. Them mentality. WE are "helping" THEM. This is not helpful nor is it okay to think in these terms. But before I climb up on my soap box about Charity vs. Solidarity I will stop and continue.

I heard an excellent quote from some random person talking about military cuts on NPR today. I'll take the time to look him up and give him credit later. He said, "the first act in solidarity is breaking bread with one another." --see why I liked it so much?

 Now I am breaking bread with this community. I hope this is my first act of solidarity with them. I hope to learn from the people that live there and I know that I will. I'm not sure how to start being a good ally and showing solidarity with this community yet, but I am open, listening, thinking and connecting. Let's hope that turns into something useful. Till then I choose to keep working on anti-hunger and anti-poverty issues. I'll keep talking about food access and demanding that everyone in my community has Food Justice.