In this episode of The Idealists (formerly Grit & Grace), Melissa partners with Sadie Nash Leadership Project, a not-for-profit that strengthens, empowers, and equips young women and gender-expansive youth of color as agents for change in their lives and in the world.
Melissa co-hosts this episode with a Sadie Nash student, Sammi Lin, and together they interview Karen Washington. The New York Times calls Karen Urban Farming’s de facto Godmother and in 2014 she was awarded the James Beard Foundation Leadership Award. In this episode, Karen delves into food sovereignty and acknowledging the history around our food systems.
“I learned about my history and understood why my people were brought (to the United States). They weren’t brought here, as people had told me when I was growing up, because we were dumb and we needed Europeans to teach us how to behave and to change our religion or culture because we were heathens and savages. I realized the reason we were brought here was because of our knowledge of agriculture. Europeans could never survive the swampy climate of the low country of the south. They didn’t know how to grow tobacco, rice, indigo, and sugar cane. They didn’t have those skills and yet we had those skills. We brought the skills with us on how to do irrigation and crop rotation...”
episode highlights.
Sammi Lin describes why she wanted to interview Karen Washington on her work with community gardens and urban farming in New York City.
Karen introduces herself and shares that she has been a farmer for over 30 years. She then explains how the farm subsidies provided in the early 1930s helped farmers get through hard times, but now many farmers are subsidized to grow particular crops, like corn. The surplus has led to a substantial increase in high fructose corn syrup based products that are then sold en masse in poor neighborhoods.
Sammi asks Karen how she works with communities who have developed food traditions around unhealthy food. Karen provides an analysis around displacement and the erasure of indigenous food and agricultural systems. She then describes how community gardens are a tool to educate young people about their food traditions.
Karen also provides an overview of how enslaved Africans originally brought knowledge from Africa to cultivate crops in the swampy south of the United States.
Melissa asks Karen about solutions and Karen offers ways for local communities to come together and support their local economies. She also describes a Black Farmer Fund she and community members are building. Karen ends the episode with a reimagining exercise on what a healthier world would look like.