Reimagining Food Systems. Redefining Justice.
"In order for us as poor and oppressed people to become part of a society that is meaningful, the system under which we now exist has to be radically changed. This means that we are going to have to learn to think in radical terms.
I use the term radical in its original meaning, getting down to and understanding the root cause. It means facing a system that does not lend itself to your needs and devising means by which you change that system."
- Ella Baker, 1969
(Source: Ransby, Barbara. Ella Baker & The Black Freedom Movement).
Why We Farm
For centuries, people of color and low-income individuals have been dispossessed of land by the powers that be. When we are subjected to this violence, our loss is two-fold. First, we lose our ability to provide for ourselves through loving cultivation. And second, we lose to some extent our connection with life itself. For despite what white-supremacist, capitalist society would have us believe, land is not an inanimate object to be owned and controlled. Rather, land is alive. It is from our relationship with land that the quality and nature of our lives arise, that we learn who we are as a people. Thus, our dispossession is about more than “resources”: colonists, both economic and political, understand that a people isolated from each other and disconnected from ancestral lands are easier to exploit.
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Owning our own land, growing our own food, educating our own youth, participating in our own health care and justice systems — this is the source of real power and dignity. — Leah Penniman
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We at the Springfield Food Policy Council farm in
opposition to exploitation and oppression.
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We farm to reclaim our relationship with the land and
strengthen our bonds with each other. ​
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We farm to remember what we thought was lost,
and we find that not even four hundred years of persecution
can destroy the wisdom of our ancestors.
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Young people, I want to beg of you always keep your eyes open to what Mother Nature has to teach you. By so doing you will learn many valuable things every day of your life. — George Washington Carver
