The DC Food For All is an open forum about food and justice in Washington, DC. We come here to talk about the ways that DC residents get food, the ways we eat it, the ways that’s changing and the ways we want to see change.
Cooking with kids – it works!
This was our first summer at the Washington Youth Garden working with the Mayor’s Green Summer Job Corp Program. Administered through the District Department of the Environment, over 800 youth are employed by the city to perform outdoor-based work to improve our urban environment. We hosted one crew of fourteen and fifteen year olds who [...]
Something New in School Food: D.C. Central Kitchen’s Local Food Connection
By Ed Bruske
The District of Columbia is about to embark on what may be the nation’s most unorthodox public school feeding program: meals from scratch using locally farmed ingredients and made by a charitable social service agency whose primary mission is feeding the homeless and teaching ex-offenders how to cook.
Beginning next week, the agency in question–D.C. Central Kitchen–will [...]
DC Food For All working for Common Good
Story and photos by Allison Burket
On July 26, despite record-breaking temperatures, over a dozen volunteers joined DC Food For All for a Saturday morning workday at Common Good City Farm!
[Common Good City Farm, Washington, DC’s only urban farm, was founded in 2006 to support healthy, affordable food access in DC communities. Two years ago, it relocated from its original home on 7th Street NW (you may remember it as the 7th Street Garden) at the request of the LeDroit Park Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC). Now located at V & 3rd Streets NW on what was formerly a baseball field on the grounds of a shuttered middle school, Common Good has since provided over 400 bags of fresh produce.
Between time spent tending the berry plants, volunteers took a tour of the farm – which includes a forest garden, a weed garden, and dutifully decaying compost piles. The farm itself was a delight, featuring arrangements of leafy greens, berry plants, and everything in between. My favorite part was the intentionally meandering, spiraling walkways that practically force visitors to stop and smell the sunflowers. The farm is organized and maintained based on principles of permaculture, which works to mimic relationships between species found in nature, thereby encouraging crops to support each other as they grow.
We later reviewed the programming components of Common Good’s educational and gleaning programs. Through the Green Tomorrow program, produce from the farm goes to neighborhood residents, who work a certain number of hours on the farm in exchange for fresh fruits and vegetables. The rest is donated to local food pantries dedicated to improving healthy food access. Common Good also engages youth in the neighborhood, encouraging in the next generation the skills and enthusiasm to eat healthy and prepare their own food.
The day ended, of course, with a potluck! A feast of beet brownies, freshly-picked peaches, and a cumin quinoa salad was well worth the sweat and sunburn.
Want to get or stay involved? We talked with Spencer, the farm manager, and Olivia, the volunteer coordinator about all sorts of ways DC Food For All readers can support Common Good:
Call your Councilmember! Common Good needs help pushing the City Council to move forward on plans to turn the empty lot next to the farm into a neighborhood park! The park would be an important asset to the community and would help draw wider neighborhood participation to the farm. Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Berry recently moved to extend the public comment period for the proposal, adding another delay to the long-overdue approval and construction of the park.
This most recent postponement increases the likelihood that the city may never come through on its promise. Call Councilmember Barry at (202) 724-8045 or Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham (202) 724-8181 to urge action on the park for LeDroit Park!
Volunteer! Olivia the volunteer coordinator also emphasized that Common Good is always looking for individuals interested in sharing their time or specific talents with the farm.
The Farm is open Monday and Thursday afternoons (3-7 pm) and Wednesday and Saturday mornings (10 am -1 pm). Visitors are always welcome to stop by, though Common Good requires that any who would like to volunteer participate in one of the volunteer orientation sessions, which usually take place the first Saturday of every month. Check here!
If you are interested in neighborhood outreach, enthusiastic about grant-writing, enjoy putting up fliers, or want to help with database management, e-mail info@commongoodcityfarm.org with “Attn: Olivia” in the subject line.
Did you know they take food scraps? Your kitchen waste can help nourish the farm! Drop off your food scraps (no meat or dairy please!) anytime during work hours and Common Good will help you add it to their compost pile! Click here for a full list of what they accept.
Donate! Tax-deductible donations can be made on the website. Click here!
The DC State Fair: August 28th
DC has no county or state fair where DC residents can show off their talents in baking, canning, urban agriculture, poetry, and photography, for example. We decided that was a shame, so, starting this year, we’re changing that. We, a group of three DC resident garden and food bloggers, are partnering with Columbia Heights Day to hold the first-ever DC State Fair, which will feature such contests as Tastiest Tomato, Most Funky Vegetable, Best Home-Made Pie, a DC neighborhood photography contest, best backyard chicken egg, andbest homemade jam, to name a few. DC residents will be able to submit their entries soon for a chance to win everlasting glory (and prizes!) –keep an eye on the DC State Fair website for entry forms. The DC State Fair, with contest judging and prizes, will be held on August 28th, hosted by the Columbia Heights Day festival.
The state or county fair concept is largely focused around community: The fair provides a forum for neighbors to engage one another, to share knowledge and experience, and to spotlight and reward the hard work of cooking, crafting, and farming. DC State Fair strives to achieve these same goals within the District and to help build a multicultural community focused around urban agriculture, education, and art.
In order to pull this off, DC State Fair is still looking for sponsors at all levels. These sponsors may also choose to have the honor of judging various contests. For example, DC-based businesses and organizations can be Table Sponsors, who will have a spot under the DC State Fair canopy and receive top exposure to DC State Fair attendees . Current Table Sponsors include A Few Cool Hardware Stores and Kid Power. There are also opportunities for contest sponsorship and general sponsorship from community members. For more details, please contact the DC State Fair planning committee or visit the DC State Fair’s website. DC businesses and nonprofits that focus on education, nutrition, agriculture, gardening, or related activities and that are not able to sponsor the fair can still be a part of this great event by getting a table Please contact us for more information on how to be involved on any of these levels.
Beyond the vegetable, cooking, and art competitions run by DC State Fair, Columbia Heights Day festival itself will feature two stages with musical acts and dancers, a petting zoo, a dog show, a kids’ area, and many other activities and DC-based groups.
DC State Fair’s aim is to turn this event into an annual tradition that fosters community spirit and celebrates DC’s talented residents. And maybe there will be funnel cake, too.
The planning committee consists of three DC resident food and garden bloggers: Amelia Showalter of Gradually Greener, whose post last year started the ball rolling; Jenna Huntsberger of Modern Domestic; and Ken Moore of The Indoor Garden(er).
Go green or go home! Growing a healthier community in Ward 8
This summer, a youth program called DC is Building Green Bridges has been busily gardening, learning about nutrition, and discussing food security issues east of the Anacostia River. Our students are engaged, intelligent, and working hard!
They have created a pilot ‘community needs’ survey to determine the viability of a farmers market at THEARC on Mississippi Avenue—and they’ve just conducted their first surveys at senior centers in wards 7 and 8. They have written their own blog posts and have created a social networking page for the program. Below is the their first blog post, written in the hopes to gain exposure to the program and their project. Enjoy!
Hello world, allow us to introduce ourselves: we are DC is Building Green Bridges. Building Green Bridges is a program based in Washington D.C. consisting of youth who are interested in making a better community by educating and informing the people about eating healthy, making better health choices, and ultimately, changing the way people view our city as a whole by growing our own food in the city.
Here are the goals we are hoping to achieve:
- To assess whether or not a new farmers market in Ward 8 would be beneficial to our community around THEARC, located near the Parkland Villages on Mississippi Avenue in Southeast.
- To educate the community on eating healthy and making better food choices.
- To get youth involved in positive activities in their community.
- To reconstruct and maintain community gardens in schools and recreation centers for younger children
Currently we are working on establishing a garden at THEARC. We are planting a flower garden with junipers, flowers, butterfly bushes and hollies. We are also helping to set up a garden at the Ferebee-Hope Elementary School, which will encourage the younger students to take advantage of the garden and plant on their own. In addition, we are visiting different gardens around the city such as The Peoples Garden, Common Goods City Farm, The U.S. Botanic Gardens, Lederer Youth Garden, and the Marion Street Garden.
Before we can implement any course of action for a farmers market, we must complete a needs assessment to help us better understand what the community would best profit from. Will a farmers market be viable? Do people want one? Our assessment won’t be very long; it’s just a few questions designed, revised, and tailored to provide us with the most information about the needs of Ward 8 residents, while at the same time not hampering your schedule with a lengthy interview.
Currently, we are brainstorming ideas for alternatives to the on street survey, one of which may be filling out the survey online. Having an online option may appeal to people who do not have time to fill out a survey in the street. Another alternative we are considering would be for people to mail a completed survey to us. This may appeal to those without an Internet connection.
If a farmers market was opened at THEARC, it would provide fresh fruits and vegetables grown in the community, for the community. Fresh produce that will be sold at THEARC would be better than the produce found in most supermarkets, because the produce in supermarkets is shipped from countries around the world, and are pumped full of chemical pesticides that are harmful to the people that eat them.
Our goal is to help the community. But in order to do that, we need the assistance of the community. Please take the time to check out our program, so that you can help make YOUR community better.
Saving Seeds: A Night Of Food, Film and Conversation On Urban Farming Through The Generations
Please join us for an evening of film, local light fare and beverages, with a focus on intergenerational urban farming on Thursday evening, August 12, 2010 at Letelier Theater (3251 Prospect Street NW).
The Neighborhood Farm Initiative (NFI) will present the documentary short, Corner Plot, the story of one man’s dedication to work his land, share his produce, and enjoy the farm life he’s always known, inside the DC beltway. In addition to Corner Plot, NFI will present a short film featuring the next generation of urban farmers, the NFI summer youth teams. The screenings will be followed by a 30 minute panel discussion/Q&A session.
For directions and parking information, please visit leteliertheater.com/directions. Doors open & light refreshments served at 6:30 pm. Program will start at 7:30 pm.
Tickets: $25. Details and presale tickets available online. Cash/checks accepted at the door, if seats/tickets are still available
The Radical Notion of Eating Together
Yesterday I posted the statement presented by the People’s Movement Assembly on Food Justice at the US Social Forum in Detroit last month. The statement is a collective declaration — of the shared principles and intentions (“…re-building local food economies in our own communities, dismantling structural racism, democratizing land access, building opportunities for the leadership of our youth, and working towards food sovereignty in partnership with social movements around the world…”).
As I reported during the Social Forum, many of these principles and intentions can be seen in practice in Detroit. My reporting there only scratched the surface of the work that’s been done — and one of the things I learned was how much discussion and collective self-reflection had come before (and in the course of) meaningful action.
In the particular case of Detroit, the local food movement engaged in a series of workshops (facilitated by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond) focused on confronting and dismantling racism in both the industrial food system and the movement itself. Participants analyzed race and power dynamics, and emerged with a shared set of ideas and vocabulary with which they can collaboratively work to restructure those dynamics.
During the People’s Movement Assembly on Food Justice at the Social Forum, participants formed a breakout group to focus specifically on this process of dismantling racism in the food system. As a white person of privilege working towards food justice in low-income, largely black communities in DC, I was grateful for the opportunity to join this group and learn more about my own role. Several leaders of Detroit’s movement helped facilitate the conversation, and we worked hard to consider what broad lessons could be drawn from their experience. The need (and desire) for greater dialogue was shared by all at the table, but many local food movements might not yet be at a point where it’s possible to gather the right set of people together in a room for a deep analysis of race, power, and white supremacy.
Yet we have to start the process somewhere (and, like it or not, that process is really best started in a place–not on a blog).
Fortunately, one promising answer can be found within the very stuff of this movement: food itself. More specifically, the way that social capital is generated by the growing, preparing, and eating of food. Several participants of the subgroup shared insights into how simple, deliberate community meals are used in their community to create spaces for dialogue and relationship-building. The Detroit folks recalled that their community’s dismantling racism workshops were, in fact, an idea that germinated in the course of a series of dinners among the movement’s leaders.
And so our Dismantling Racism subgroup of the Food Justice People’s Movement Assembly at the 2010 US Social Forum concluded with the presentation of what some may consider a “radical notion”: that we should gather people together in our communities to collaboratively prepare food, eat the food, and talk about the food.
Personally, I was energized and encouraged by this experience; after all, the DC Food For All launched 9 months ago in this very way. Relationships forged in the course of these early meals continue to bear fruit today. So I’m sharing the text of the proposal forged in Detroit here in hopes that we can experiment with these accessible, social, and political community-building meals here in DC.
A proposal for dismantling racism: Let’s eat together
{Click to read the full post.}
After the Forum: People’s Movement Assembly towards Food Justice
The Social Forum — which convened in Detroit just last month — “is a movement building process… [that] provides spaces to learn from each other’s experiences and struggles, share our analysis of the problems our communities face, build relationships, and align with our international brothers and sisters to strategize how to reclaim our world.” It’ll be another three years before the US Social Forum convenes again, but in the meantime the process of the Social Forum is ongoing — as people from different movements, backgrounds and regions continue to deliberate and act upon solutions to the economic and ecological crisis.
An essential component of this process are People’s Movement Assemblies (PMA). PMAs are gatherings of people (25, 250 or more) that come together to collectively identify community issues, discuss solutions, and commit to actions.
Before the USSF2010 in Detroit, the Greater DC Social Forum (organized largely by attendees of USSF2007 in Atlanta) convened a DC People’s Movement Assembly. The Greater DC Social Forum will now convene another DC-area People’s Movement Assembly on August 7th, at 11AM at Plymouth Congregational UCC (5301 N Capitol Street NE). Attendees of USSF2010 will share the experience and ideas that they brought back from Detroit — however, this event is open to anyone who wants to work towards a better greater DC. (You can RSVP on Facebook here.)
At the pre-Detroit People’s Movement Assembly here in DC, some attendees had conversations about food justice issues—but there was not yet a PMA group self-organized around the subject. Well I am pleased to report that the signs of food justice movements across the country are strong! The challenges we face are great, but so are our opportunities. (I previously blogged about food sovereignty in Detroit here.) The USSF2010 Food Justice PMA assembled a diverse and exciting set of people, ideas, and proposals — consolidating it all into one statement to be shared with the broader Social Forum.
So, with hope that food justice/sovereignty will become an active thread of the Greater DC Social Forum process, I’m happy to share the Food Sovereignty People’s Movement Assembly resolution below. Let’s consider this document as we continue our conversation on August 7th and beyond.
Statement from the People’s Movement Assembly on Food Sovereignty, US Social Forum 2010
Over a half-century ago, Mahatma Gandhi led a multitude of Indians to the sea to make salt—in defiance of the British Empire’s monopoly on this resource critical to people’s diet. The action catalyzed the fragmented movement for Indian independence and was the beginning of the end for Britain’s rule over India. The act of “making salt” has since been repeated many times in many forms by people’s movements seeking liberation, justice and sovereignty: Cesar Chavez, Nelson Mandela, and the Zapatistas are just a few of the most prominent examples. Our food movement— one that spans the globe—seeks food sovereignty from the monopolies that dominate our food systems with the complicity of our governments. We are powerful, creative, committed and diverse. It is our time to make salt.
A movement for food sovereignty – the people’s democratic control of the food system, the right of all people to healthy, culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems - is building from every corner of the globe.
{Read more below}
