By Matt Young
I’ve recently arrived in Washington from a place a whole world apart, New Mexico, and I’m still delving into how community works in the District. While my Congressional work to date has suggested a less than transparent, if not detached, relationship between the halls of power and the residents of the District, Rooting DC has given me a whole new perspective on the vibrant, stirring, service-driven nature of Washington, DC
The event brought together hundreds of activists, chefs, gardeners, farmers, community organizers, students, nonprofit professionals, and even politicians to bring a fully-integrated local food system to fruition. It represents a growing movement in D.C. to collaborate on how a local food system should look.
I found myself not just learning how to make a seasonal winter salad from Niko Welch; how to can lusciously spice-packed carrots from Liz Falk; how to realize and sustain a sustainable business model from Robert Egger; how to build kitchen connections between Mennonite farmers and inner-city youth from Kristin Roberts; and how to continually and passionately push for social change and a community voice from Andrea Northrup, Carl Rollins, and Parisa Norouzi.
I also learned that as disconnected as Capitol Hill may be from the rest of the District of Columbia and the country at large, that optimism, transparency, accountability, innovation, responsibility, and community exists at the level of grassroots food systems. Such values provide the root base not only for healthy produce and stewardship, but healthy societies and healthy ecologies.
How appropriate, too, that something that can nourish us in the most rudimentary sense, such as a fresh batch of mustard greens, can also nourish us in the most systemic of ways, to draw people together to ensure sustainable cultivation of a new, true democracy
Matt Young currently serves as a Congressional assistant for Representative Peter Welch on Capitol Hill. When not answering constituent mail, Matt likes to dig deep into creating sustainable communities, listening to and writing stories of those voices you don’t hear everyday, and planting, weeding, harvesting, and getting dirty in crop rows, all skills he learned deeply through Real Food Challenge involvement at St. Lawrence University (Class of 2009).
Thanks to Andrew Plotsky for photos!
