The Next Eco-Warriors (29 page)

PHOTO BY KAROL ORZECHOWSK

Twenty-nine
United States
Urban Farmer

PHOTO BY VICTOR CHU

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 M
ADRES
EN
M
OVIMIENTO
(“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.