sweet lowdon
Detroit: "A Stronghold of Possibility"
By Grace Lee Boggs
Michigan Citizen, Sept. 30-Oct. 6, 2007
A good way to keep abreast of what's happening and what's possible in Detroit is to listen to Detroit Today WDET 101.9FM, M-F,10-12,
I caught the October 20 discussion on "buying and eating locally produced foods" featuring Jackie Victor, co-owner of Detroit's Avalon International Breads; Susan Schmidt, Food Director for Henry Ford Hospital; and Kami Pothukuchi , Wayne State University Urban Studies professor.
This year's six busloads garden tour was "a tipping point," Jackie explained. Developing a local food economy, she said, has now become the metaphor for our living simpler, healthier lives, revitalizing our neighborhoods, bringing hope to our city, and transforming our relationships with one another.
Each panelist gave a good reason for buying and eating locally grown
foods.
Kami pointed out that it keeps money in the local economy. The processing of locally grown foods can also promote state economic development.
Jackie emphasized the importance of explaining to our children the huge difference between the taste of an irregularly-shaped tomato just picked from your garden and that of a beautifully-rounded one picked over a week ago and forced to ripen during its long journey from a distant state.
Susan explained how at first she had difficulty finding local food suppliers for the huge Henry Ford Hospital complex. But that situation changed quickly when the word got out.
The panelists also suggested ways for everyone to become part of this movement, It can be something as simple as asking the waiters or owners of a restaurant where the food you're served came from. We can insist that public school lunches be prepared from locally-produced foods. We can protest legislation that favors agribusiness over the small farmer.
Comments from listeners opened up all sorts of possibilities. One listener recommended "Detroit seed banks, both for research, and also for conservation. Also training in designing and developing green houses." Another suggested transforming warehouses into greenhouses. "Acorns," one listener volunteered, " make a great food, and have been used for centuries by the natives. We need to look at native plants, and their usage. Detroit needs to do a waterfront restoration
project, and also restore parks with native species."
In many cities across the country urban farmers are growing communities, greening the landscape and revolutionizing food politics, according to an article, "Farming in the Concrete Jungle," in the August 24 In These Times.
But the movement in Detroit is unique because it is so organically connected to the end of the industrial epoch and includes Detroiters from so many walks of life.
Nearly 20 years ago Gerald Hairston created the "Gardening Angels," a loose network of African American elders raised in the South who were planting community gardens in Detroit's vacant lots not only to produce food but to give city youth a sense of process.
At the 4H headquarters on the east side William Mills used gardening to connect young people with elders and at the Catherine Ferguson Academy on the near west side Asenath Andrews and Paul Weertz made raising farm animals and building a barn an integral part of the education of teenage mothers,
On the southeast side of the city the Capuchins created Earthworks to promote social justice, sustainable agricultural practices, nutrition,and care for the Earth. At the University of Detroit Mercy architectural students created Adamah, a vision of how urban agriculture could revitalize a 2-1/2 square mile neighborhood within walking distance of downtown.
This "quiet revolution" has been evolving in Detroit over the last few decades. As Rebecca Solnit put it in the July-August Harper's:"This is the most extreme and long term hope Detroit offers us: the hope that we can reclaim what we paved over and poisoned, that nature will not punish us, that it will welcome us home – not with the landscape that was here when we arrived, perhaps, but with land that is alive, lush, and varied all the same.It is a harsh place of poverty, deprivation and a fair amount of crime, but it is also a stronghold of
possibility."
By Grace Lee Boggs
Michigan Citizen, Sept. 30-Oct. 6, 2007
A good way to keep abreast of what's happening and what's possible in Detroit is to listen to Detroit Today WDET 101.9FM, M-F,10-12,
I caught the October 20 discussion on "buying and eating locally produced foods" featuring Jackie Victor, co-owner of Detroit's Avalon International Breads; Susan Schmidt, Food Director for Henry Ford Hospital; and Kami Pothukuchi , Wayne State University Urban Studies professor.
This year's six busloads garden tour was "a tipping point," Jackie explained. Developing a local food economy, she said, has now become the metaphor for our living simpler, healthier lives, revitalizing our neighborhoods, bringing hope to our city, and transforming our relationships with one another.
Each panelist gave a good reason for buying and eating locally grown
foods.
Kami pointed out that it keeps money in the local economy. The processing of locally grown foods can also promote state economic development.
Jackie emphasized the importance of explaining to our children the huge difference between the taste of an irregularly-shaped tomato just picked from your garden and that of a beautifully-rounded one picked over a week ago and forced to ripen during its long journey from a distant state.
Susan explained how at first she had difficulty finding local food suppliers for the huge Henry Ford Hospital complex. But that situation changed quickly when the word got out.
The panelists also suggested ways for everyone to become part of this movement, It can be something as simple as asking the waiters or owners of a restaurant where the food you're served came from. We can insist that public school lunches be prepared from locally-produced foods. We can protest legislation that favors agribusiness over the small farmer.
Comments from listeners opened up all sorts of possibilities. One listener recommended "Detroit seed banks, both for research, and also for conservation. Also training in designing and developing green houses." Another suggested transforming warehouses into greenhouses. "Acorns," one listener volunteered, " make a great food, and have been used for centuries by the natives. We need to look at native plants, and their usage. Detroit needs to do a waterfront restoration
project, and also restore parks with native species."
In many cities across the country urban farmers are growing communities, greening the landscape and revolutionizing food politics, according to an article, "Farming in the Concrete Jungle," in the August 24 In These Times.
But the movement in Detroit is unique because it is so organically connected to the end of the industrial epoch and includes Detroiters from so many walks of life.
Nearly 20 years ago Gerald Hairston created the "Gardening Angels," a loose network of African American elders raised in the South who were planting community gardens in Detroit's vacant lots not only to produce food but to give city youth a sense of process.
At the 4H headquarters on the east side William Mills used gardening to connect young people with elders and at the Catherine Ferguson Academy on the near west side Asenath Andrews and Paul Weertz made raising farm animals and building a barn an integral part of the education of teenage mothers,
On the southeast side of the city the Capuchins created Earthworks to promote social justice, sustainable agricultural practices, nutrition,and care for the Earth. At the University of Detroit Mercy architectural students created Adamah, a vision of how urban agriculture could revitalize a 2-1/2 square mile neighborhood within walking distance of downtown.
This "quiet revolution" has been evolving in Detroit over the last few decades. As Rebecca Solnit put it in the July-August Harper's:"This is the most extreme and long term hope Detroit offers us: the hope that we can reclaim what we paved over and poisoned, that nature will not punish us, that it will welcome us home – not with the landscape that was here when we arrived, perhaps, but with land that is alive, lush, and varied all the same.It is a harsh place of poverty, deprivation and a fair amount of crime, but it is also a stronghold of
possibility."
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