The essence of Graffiti Alley is that of artistic expression and it gives Baltimore’s graffiti artists a safe space to showcase and improve their skills.
Dear Baltimore, Justice Has A Long Way To Go
Dear Baltimore,
George Floyd was a Black man beloved by many. He was a brother, father, grandfather, friend, and neighbor. On May 25th, 2020 George was killed by Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis Police Officer who pressed his knee into George’s neck for more than nine minutes during an arrest. Darnella Frazier, a Black teenage girl, witnessed and recorded the police brutality that led to George’s death. Nearly a year later, on Tuesday, April 20th, 2021, a jury found Derek Chauvin guilty of all charges in the death of George Floyd.
Many people hoped for a guilty verdict but did not expect it. For centuries, Black people have endured miscarriages of justice as elements of the state violated and often killed Black people and Black communities. We are grateful for the leadership and sustained advocacy, in Minneapolis and beyond, that led to yesterday’s verdict. Black lives are sacred. We must secure our truth. More work remains, and the fight for justice continues.
For all of these reasons, and more, we are not relieved. We continue to work towards a world in which no Black person fears murder by the police. Relief would be a world in which someone’s name is hashtagged because they accomplished something great and deserve celebration.
We offer our sincere condolences to George Floyd’s family. No decision by the courts will restore the loss his family has experienced. We remain in solidarity with the people who have vowed to realize the fair, equitable, and humane world we all deserve.
Here, in our beloved city of Baltimore, the work continues. Six years following the death of Freddie Gray, who was also killed by the police, we remain mindful of how far we have to go in order to bring justice and equity to our communities. Let’s continue to build and support our communities as they work to hold law enforcement accountable. Together, we must dismantle the culture of white supremacy that has claimed the lives of so many, for so long.
Yours in solidarity,
Baltimore Corps
The Digital Divide Calls For More Than Computers, How One Organization Is Providing Furniture for Virtual Learners in Baltimore
By Andrea L Stennett
Damien Haussling’s organization, Baltimore Furniture Bank (BFB), fills the need of free furniture during challenging times. Like many social impact initiatives over the last year, Baltimore Furniture Bank has had to adapt and respond to shifting community needs. BFB’s ‘Baltimore Kids in Need of Desks’ (BKIND) campaign started with a phone call from the American University offering 2,000 pieces of dorm furniture, and has since transformed into a COVID-19 responsive initiative helping families receive, and create, learning spaces at home.
Baltimore Furniture Bank started in 2019 with help from Fusion Partnerships. The organization collects gently used furniture from universities, businesses, and the public, to redistribute free of charge to people in need of furniture. In hindsight, BFB launched at a uniquely fortuitous time in history, although the idea for a furniture bank came years prior when Damien served as an AmeriCorps Vista coordinator for the homeless population in Baltimore City.
At the time, his desk was in the offices of ‘Word on the Street,’ an independent newspaper led by those with experiences of homelessness and poverty, which Damien has experienced himself. Damien’s work with AmeriCorps helped him acquire housing with friends:
“My roommate and I had developed a very good, large circle of friends, and most of these friends were closer to the middle class who maybe had more resources. So, when we were getting into a house, we had people crawling out of the woodworks with offers of free furniture…. I realized…that our friends tend to be more like us. Somebody who is experiencing homelessness has generally been mostly poor throughout their life and probably won’t have those resources. That’s when we thought, ‘Oh there has got to be some kind of furniture bank,’ and were shocked there wasn’t.”
According to Healthcare for the Homeless, nearly ½ of residents in Baltimore City live 200% below the federal poverty line and ⅓ of children live in poor households. Further, over half of Baltimore renters are living in housing they cannot afford, and may not have the disposable income to buy new furniture (The Journey Home). As of January 2020, 2,193 people in the city are estimated to be homeless (defined as those who are unsheltered, in emergency shelters, or in transitional housing) on any given night (Baltimore City 2020 Point-in-Time Count). This number is expected to drastically increase: the United States faces a looming eviction crisis due to COVID-19. Experts from The Aspen Institute anticipate the eviction crisis will affect 30–40 million Americans, most of whom will be from communities of color.
For folks like Damien who have overcome the initial hurdle of securing housing, finding resources for furniture can be another significant barrier to financial stability. A few years after his position with AmeriCorps, Damien put his idea to paper and was selected as one of Open Society Institute’s 2019 Community Fellows. The fellowship allowed Damien to focus full time on starting the furniture bank and shortly thereafter, community offers started ringing. BFB’s first major donation came from the American University when they offered 2,000 pieces of dorm furniture, including beds, desks, dressers, and bookshelves. Damien recalls:
“At the time that offer came in, I was operating out of a small sized room in Langston Hughes Community Center in Park Heights. I didn’t have a space that would accommodate all that furniture, but within a few weeks we found 6,000 sq feet of donated space in Belvedere Square.”
Though BFB initially hoped to remain in the dedicated space well into 2020, the owners needed the space back, returning BFB to their small sized room at Langston Hughes Community Center. Without a referral portal on his website to funnel needs and requests, and 2,000 pieces of school furniture in hand, Damien took to Facebook with a call to action: the BKIND campaign. Within four days of running the Facebook campaign for BKIND, BFB received enough requests for furniture that they now have started a waiting list.
With Baltimore families still in need of desks, BFB continues their call to action, this time with a different goal. Their newest #GivingTuesday campaign aims to “deliver more than 200 desks and chairs from our warehouse to the homes of our most vulnerable children while helping the homeless in Baltimore City”. As part of this campaign, BFB is committed to hiring folks who have employment barriers (including those experiencing homelessness) and paying them an equitable rate of $15 an hour. So far, they’re 37% there to their goal of raising $2,000s. People can go to their donation website to make a contribution.
Odds are, we can all agree that opening a furniture bank is a good idea, the need is there, however, operating such an organization is not an easy lift. Consistent and reasonably-priced storage space, equipment, and crew wages needed to provide free delivery, and fees for website development are all significant barriers BFB must find ways to navigate through. As BFB looks to the future, Damien wants to focus on finding resources to consistently provide free delivery which requires renting trucks and hiring crew members. Additionally, he hopes to get their website’s referral portal up and running to better link case managers, social workers, and a network of professionals with BFB’s inventory and services.
As we face COVID-19, supporting community-centered initiatives like Baltimore Furniture Bank is important more than ever before. Damien Haussling took what he learned from his lived experiences, and transformed it into an innovative organization working to address resource gaps and serve the city’s most vulnerable populations. In just a short amount of time since launching, Baltimore Furniture Bank has been able to adapt and respond to shifting community needs, all the while staying true to their story and mission.
How Can You Support Baltimore Furniture Bank?
Funds — Make a PayPal donation
Services — interested in volunteering your labor to support furniture distribution? Do you have a truck or van you would be willing to drive on moving days? Email volunteerbfb@gmail.com
Gift warehouse space!
Are you able to donate free or low-rent space that Baltimore Furniture Bank could use to store their furniture? Let them know by emailing baltimorefurniturebank@gmail.com
Connect on Social Media!
Follow Baltimore Furniture Bank on Instagram (baltimore_furniture_bank) and Facebook (@baltimorefurniturebank) and share their posts with your network!
Want to connect with more resources and organizations addressing Baltimore’s housing and poverty challenges?
Have things you’d like to donate? Before giving to Goodwill, consider pooling your resources locally with these organizations/giveaway groups:
All Items — Buying Nothing Project
Furniture & Household Items — Baltimore Furniture Bank, Second Chance
Clothing — House of Ruth, Franciscan Center, Paul’s Place, Baltimore Sex Workers Outreach Project
Towels, Bedding, & Old Vehicles — BARCS
Toiletries & Menstrual Products — Weinberg Housing & Resource Center
Thank you to Damien Haussling for sharing your story and time. And thank you to the collaborators of Stories to Support for contributing to this piece.
Written by Andrea Stennett & Kate Lynch
Interview conducted by Kate Lynch & Hannah Correlli
Edited by Kate Lynch, Blake Wrigley, Clarissa Chen, & Jasir Qiydaar
Photo Credit: Baltimore Furniture Bank via Facebook (@BaltimoreFurnitureBank)
Baltimore’s Black Yield Institute Moves with ‘Urgent Process’ — You Can Too
Aug 17 · 6 min read
Photo Credit: Black Yield Institute via Instagram (@blackyield)
For many of us working in the social impact sector, the COVID-19 pandemic brought about a wave of emails containing list upon list of resources and ways to support others in need. Many organizations are jumping in with two feet to do something — even if it is to gather and share resources. These responses came with both an understandable, and necessary, urgency.
Despite these efforts, the pandemic has disproportionately impacted Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities. In our previous Stories to Support piece, “Baltimore’s Black Food Sovereignty Movement: What You Need To Know,” Clarissa Chen illustrated the relationship between COVID-19, systemic racism, and food apartheid — illustrating how the current pandemic provides a new context for an issue that is not at all new. Food apartheid is yet another example that nothing -no matter how urgent- exists in a vacuum; we are always living and working within the context of systemic and institutional racism and white supremacy culture.
Eric Jackson, Founder & Servant-Director of Black Yield Institute (BYI), believes we need to move with an “urgent process” pushing against the binary of “either, or” to assert that it is a “both, and” situation. This past week Clarissa and I met with Eric to talk about how BYI approaches their work — especially during a pandemic, and gather his advice for people looking to engage in the movement for Black land and food sovereignty.
we are always living and working within the context of systemic and institutional racism
BYI is a Pan-African power institution based in South Baltimore that works towards Black land and food sovereignty. Black Yield Institute aims “to create a self-determined and self-reliant community of Black institutions, Black-owned businesses and people of African Descent in Baltimore’s poor and Black food environments.” Their five main initiatives involve two direct action projects and three programs that facilitate political education work, action network building, and community-based participatory action research. The two specific action projects are the Cherry Hill Urban Community Garden, and the Cherry Hill Food Co-op, both of which operate in Baltimore’s Cherry Hill community.
“We want to be both responsive to what’s happening in the here and now- that has been impacted by history- but also we want to make history by creating sustainable coordinated interventions that deal with where we are right now and build power toward the future.” — Eric Jackson
Black Yield Institute’s work expands beyond an organizational mission: BYI puts focus on social movement building informed by, and rooted in, community accountability. “The ultimate goal for BYI is to really be an incubator,” Eric explains. BYI’s projects, emerging from community conversations and expressed needs, are intended to become their own entities. Eric continues, “and if we’ve done our job, then we’ve developed leaders that can lead these new entities that are part of this larger movement work.”
Black Yield Institute aims “to create a self-determined and self-reliant community of Black institutions, Black-owned businesses and people of African Descent in Baltimore’s poor and Black food environments.
BYI’s holistic, intentional approach to their work has not changed amidst the current pandemic. While some engagements moved to virtual platforms, and they began distributing food and supplies to community members, they continued to connect their direct action work to their larger strategy and movement building. The lesson in this extends beyond the pandemic.
Eric described how a lack of strategy harms social movement building, including the recent reinvigoration of the Movement for Black Lives. “Emotions are driving people to the street… We should be moving with our emotions, but the armor that protects our emotions and longevity has to be our collective consciousness and has to be relationships… So when we go to the street, we are actually returning somewhere afterward to talk about what’s next.” The armor that Eric is referencing takes time and strategy to build up, and he believes we all need to be using the tools in our toolbelt to do so.
Eric’s advice for those looking to engage in movement work:
Slow down and start with you.
“Don’t do anything outwardly- just chill out. Then ask yourself, ‘why do you feel the impulse to do something?’… ‘what about you deserves to be connected to this work?’ It’s not about worth but why do you deserve to do it? Is it because of your privilege? And if it is, what has your privilege afforded you that you’re willing to give to establish relationships and connection to this movement…as a means of reparatory justice- to repair- rather than to make your name look good and put some pictures and nice words on Instagram. And if that’s the answer — not only slow up, but stay your ass at home.”
This candid, intrapersonal reflection is necessary to engage in movement work. We all internalize and uphold facets of white supremacy culture, knowingly and/or subconsciously. To identify those beliefs and actions, we have to be our own biggest critic — without ego and pride clouding our judgment and motivations.
Actually talk to people.
“Relationships are the building blocks of movements.”
Many of us get stuck in “analysis paralysis,” meaning we think the answer is to keep reading and learning without experiencing. Eric connected this to the dangers of only committing to “saying all the right things.” If we avoid vulnerability and authentic relationships -ones where you can risk screwing up to learn and grow- then we risk being lulled to sleep by fancy words that we might not really understand. He adds, “there’s this illusion that you’ve already grown and that you’ve come to this place of self-actualization. When the truth is you’ve been actualized through the works of other people.”
Talking to people and learning about their experiences is one approach. “You can read, but we won’t move the needle if we’re only intellectually in it. This movement should be a whole-body experience,” Eric explained.
Third, humble yourself.
“Help is not ‘help’ if it’s not helpful. So how do you know if it’s helpful? Ask people questions. Can I help? Is there room for me? If there isn’t, back the f*ck up.”
Black liberation work should be led by Black people. If you’re looking to engage in this movement work, those leading should be the ones defining the terms and conditions. Once you’ve done the introspective work and relationship building outlined above, identify what you bring to the table (skills, time, dollars, etc.) and ways to use them. Then, ask how you can be helpful.
How Can You Support Black Yield Institute?
Donate to Black Yield Institute
Volunteer at the Cherry Hill Urban Community Garden
Support the Cherry Hill Food Co-op
Stream Baltimore’s Strange Fruit — a documentary film produced by Black Yield Institute, directed by Eric Jackson and Maddie Hardy
Want to Learn More About Food Sovereignty in Baltimore?
Read: Baltimore’s Black Food Sovereignty Movement: What You Need To Know
Watch: Black Yield Institute youtube series “CHUCG TALK”
Listen: Future City podcast — Sweet Potatoes and Power: Food Security in Baltimore
Do you know of an initiative responding to COVID-19 as a racial equity issue? Complete our Airtable Form to be featured on Stories to Support!
Thank you to Eric Jackson of BYI for sharing your time, energy, and wisdom. And, thank you to the collaborators of Stories to Support for contributing to this piece.
Written by Hannah Correlli
Interview conducted by Clarissa Chen and Hannah Correlli
Edited by Clarissa Chen, Kate Lynch, Blake Wrigley, & Hess Stinson
Baltimore’s Black Food Sovereignty Movement: What You Need To Know
Jul 24 · 11 min read
Farmer Nell & Doc Cheatham: Freedom Fighters for Food Sovereignty photo from The Afro
This piece is a part of Stories to Support.
During the first week of pandemic induced “shelter in place,” people across the U.S. panic-bought flour, canned goods, and frozen vegetables; emptying the shelves in grocery stores. Americans were scared, threatened by the possibility of an unstable food supply coupled with an inability to go on weekly grocery trips. For middle and upper-class Americans, this fear was in response to a government-sanctioned quarantine. However, for low-income Americans, lacking access to healthy food can be a daily reality.
COVID-19 compounded the conditions that create food insecurity, especially for those who weren’t able to stock up on months’ worth of food. Many in Baltimore City have come face-to-face with what it means to be food insecure during a pandemic.
Twenty-three and a half percent of Baltimoreans live in a Healthy Food Priority Area, and Black residents are the most likely to live in one. Baltimore City defines living in a Healthy Food Priority Area (formerly known as a food desert) by four factors:
an area where the average Healthy Food Availability Index score for all food stores is low
the median household income is at or below 185 percent of the Federal Poverty Level
over 30 percent of households have no vehicle available
the distance to a supermarket is more than 1/4 mile.
Thirty-one and a half percent of Black residents in Baltimore live in a Healthy Food Priority Area, compared to only 8.9% of white residents living in food compromised areas. The CDC lists Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people under “racial and ethnic minority groups” that need to take “extra precaution” against COVID, citing living conditions due to racial segregation, imprisonment, being an essential worker, distrust in the health care system, and underlying health conditions as reasons why — these patterns are all the result of systemic and institutional racism.
These are all factors of mobility: economic, physical, and social.
COVID-19 limits mobility in unique ways: it is determined not just by what type of vehicle one owns or doesn’t own, but whether their body is older, immunosuppressed, or already sick.
COVID-19 has, in short, made food insecurity worse for Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities. It furthers the conditions of food apartheid, a term that accurately describes the history of redlining, segregation, and racial oppression that created the pattern of the Healthy Food Priority Areas we see today.
In compromising situations, human resilience inevitably creates solutions.
Warren and Lavette Blue at The Greener Garden. (Photo by Jesse James DeConto)
BIPOC activists have been expanding food access both prior to, and in response to, COVID-19. Inaccessibility to a reliable supply of healthy, affordable food has gotten worse since the pandemic, and we can find the answers of how to solve it through the works of BIPOC activists towards food sovereignty.
Food sovereignty establishes food as a right, and emphasizes control over the production and distribution of food in the hands of those who cultivate the land and eat food, as explained in the robust framework from the peasant farmers of Via Campesina.
Food sovereignty establishes food as a right.
In Baltimore, we are living on the land of Paskestikweya people who took care of this part of Earth before settler-colonizers committed genocide against the Indigenous peoples of this land. Simultaneous with atrocities being committed against Native people, European settlers then enslaved and relied on the labor of Black people to grow their food, along with being forced to produce labor for major industries of tobacco, cotton, sugar, iron, and more. In resistance to centuries-long displacement from food sovereignty, Black people have been doing the work of creating community-based systems to care for themselves and their family. In Baltimore, we turn to the leadership of Black activists who have been leading this work of creating a self-reliant, alternative food system. Black people have been cultivating this land for centuries, and Native Americans working with the land since time immemorial, however are most marginalized by the modern food system.
These leaders have been studying, practicing, actively planting seeds, preserving their land, and reclaiming ancestral practices — even as state violence has ripped away land and food access. Food Justice leaders have demonstrated that when we fight for healthy food access, we support each other through our basic needs in community. We can determine the trajectory of our own lives; we don’t have to be dependent on the systems and people that hurt us.
Growing Food
Most stories of chattel slavery reduce enslaved Black folks down to bodies used for labor, Judith A. Carney, along with other scholars, counters such dehumanization with a theory that Africans were responsible for the cultivation of rice. Having carried it with them from West Africa, Africans who were trafficked to the Americas used their agricultural knowledge to establish rice as a crop. In addition to this prized crop, European settlers also took advantage of the agricultural knowledge of Indigenous nations across the continent for their own survival. Today many agriculturists are looking to Indigenous practices on ways to restore the land and grow food sustainably.
The Greener Garden 5623 McClean Blvd, Baltimore, MD 21214
Acknowledging the history of how enslaved Black people were forced to tend to land, yet historically excluded from owning it, is necessary in modern conversations about food justice. This fact inherently ties into land justice and reparations, a history that Soul Fire Farm and co-director Leah Penniman use to center the call for reparations. Supporting resources for this call included a reparations map, and a book on what it means to farm while Black.
In Baltimore, we are blessed to be in a community with many farmers who have cultivated vacant lots into urban gardens and harvest the fruits of their labor to share at farmstands, markets, and community supported agriculture shares. The Farm Alliance has compiled a list of all Black-owned and operated farms in the city, as well as created a fund to support education for Black farmers.
Nationally, Civil Eats has compiled a list of organizations working towards food sovereignty and justice.
Distributing Food
Cooperatives have been an alternative means of creating food access through mutual investment and support. Some of the first cooperatives were founded by Black people as a necessary work towards liberation. Fannie Lou Hamer, most famous for her Civil Rights work around registering voters, saw establishing sustainable food access as a necessity for Black liberation and created the Freedom Farms Cooperative. Families that participated got a pig they had to care for, with the promise that they would bring bag two piglets the next year, among receiving housing, employment, and education.
“The time has come now when we are going to have to get what we need ourselves. We may get a little help, here and there, but in the main we’re going to have to do it ourselves.” Fannie Lou Hamer
The Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Cooperative Union (CAFCU), founded in the 1880s, brought Black farmers together to establish leadership in Southern agriculture. At its peak, the CFACU had one million members, who benefited from newsletters to share agricultural practices, raised mutual aid funds to support the sick and elderly, and allied farmers to be an active voice in local and regional politics.
Fannie Lou Hamer
W.E.B DuBois archived the history of cooperatives in Black communities in his piece, “Economic Cooperation among Negro Americans”, noting how Black people pooled resources in church congregations, worker-owned businesses, fraternal societies, and mutual aid groups. Published in 1907, he counted 154 Black-owned cooperatives.
The Black Panther Party started the Free Breakfast Program in 1969, distributing breakfast to Black children. They recognized the need for community services and created the program to serve kids (especially since many of them weren’t able to focus or learn in school for a variety of reasons — not having access to meals was one of them). They worked with local churches, grocery stores, and mothers, to bring free breakfast in at least 36 cities around the US. They notably pioneered this effort before 1975, when federally-funded free breakfast was expanded.
Arabbers in Baltimore have been since the end of the Civil War, and while only a few of these horse-cart mobile markets still market on the streets of Baltimore today, the Arabber Preservation Society maintains the history and value of their work in expanding food access in Black neighborhoods.
Arabber in the 20th century
Today, the No Boundaries Coalition runs a program called Fresh at the Avenue, connecting residents of Sandtown to affordable produce at the Avenue Market. During COVID-19, they’ve been distributing food via home deliveries to their neighbors.
The Black Church Food Security Network promotes growing and distributing food on the land of historically Black churches. They connect Black farmers and producers to churches and are running a Faith, Food, and Freedom Summer Campaign to encourage gardening, working with Black farmers, and food storage. Normally, they also run a Soil to Sanctuary Market at Pleasant Hope Baptist Church.
Many Black farmers and food businesses are continuing to vend at a physically distant Wednesday Druid Hill Farmers’ Market this summer. The Cherry Hill Food Cooperative is currently building to create a grocery store that would be owned, operated, and benefiting Cherry Hill residents.
Preparing and Eating Food
Food is the manifestation of ancestral dreams; serving as a creation of physical and spiritual nourishment. For many, food is one of the facets of culture that has remained resilient through journeys of immigration, and the terrors of enslavement and land robbery. The preparation and cooking of food is a practice that has been historically gendered, especially in commercial settings, and often relies on the labor of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color.
Enslaved people were responsible for cooking meals for the families of their enslavers. Through both adaptation and forced labor, Black people have indelibly shaped what we think of as Southern food today. However there are few Black chefs in the ranks of a mostly white male-dominated culinary field. Edna Lewis brought Black southern cooking into the spotlight when she wrote The Taste of Country Cooking, a cookbook and memoir about her life growing up in rural Virginia. Today, chef-activists like Tunde Wey are calling attention to the economic ownership white folks have over Southern food, though it originated in the hands of enslaved Black women and men.
Dr. Christopher Carter, a professor at University of California, San Diego, has focused his studies on what it means to eat soulfully, a question that is rooted in his theological lens on food. He discusses the racialization of food, and how eating soulfully should embody the three virtues of “embracing our soul, justice for food workers, and care of the earth.”
Today in Baltimore, the Black Vegetarian Society of Maryland, Thrive Baltimore, and Holistic Wellness and Health are all Black-led organizations and businesses that focus on promoting healthy, plant-based diets within the Black community by way of increasing access to nutritional education, affordability of plant-based foods, and supporting Black-owned businesses. Gregory Brown, Kimberly Ellis, Krystal Mack, Catina Smith aka Chef Cat, and David Thomas are just a few of the Black chefs and food creatives that are claiming space for eating soulfully within the culinary arts and entrepreneurial ecosystem.
We can foster Black ownership within the food system by eating at Black-owned restaurants in Baltimore. Many of these Black-owned restaurants serve not just as a place to support the economic growth, but as a grounds for convening to work on other forms of justice.
Healing Land
Regenerating soil and healing the land that food is grown, harvested, and consumed on is both the end and the beginning of the food system.
A collaboration between leaders within the food and land justice movements became Land Justice, an anthology of essays that called for the food justice movement to come together to secure land access.
The first Community Land Trust, was founded by Black Civil Rights activists in 1970, called New Communities, Inc, a 5000 acre plot in Georgia. The founders bought the land on a loan, and struggled to maintain it all under a segregationist governor and the debt they carried. Despite systemic struggles, the organization still remains today, resilient and active as a 501(c)(4) organization.
The community land trust is a model that United Workers used as a foundation to establish the Affordable Housing Trust Fund through organizing a ballot initiative in Baltimore. United Workers, among the Energy Justice Network and the Institute for Local Self Reliance, also fights for a zero-waste future to ultimately shut down the incinerators and landfills that pollute the air and the earth, intentionally placed in majority-Black communities.
In alignment with zero-waste goals, the Baltimore Compost Collective increases composting in South Baltimore and regenerates food scraps into life-giving soil, or Black gold as founder Marvin Hayes calls it. Baltimore City Office of Sustainability runs free, public food scraps drop off sites at farmers’ markets — in Waverly on 32nd St on Saturdays 8–12pm and the Baltimore Farmers’ Market and Bazaar downtown from 7–12pm.
Looking at the past work of Black, Indigenous, and people of color is a practice that allows us to recognize the roots of where food sovereignty work has come from. This is a de-colonial and “unsettling” practice. Within this context, we are encourages by Black organizations in Baltimore that are on the front-lines of fighting food insecurity during COVID-19 today. These same communities have been responsible for the success and growth of our food system for centuries.
This week, we encourage you to take action by learning. As our gears continue to turn and make connections that bring us to cultivating justice in our practices, honor your own journey of uncovering truth in your mind, and honor the work that has been paved by revolutionary BIPOC folks.
Generations of farmers, cultivators, revolutionaries have laid a pathway, sowed the seeds, and grown a flourishing environment that is a safe space for us to do the work of educating ourselves to ultimately liberate our mindsets. Give thanks, cherish, and absorb it all.
For our next Stories to Support, we will be featuring the work of the Black Yield Institute in Cherry Hill, with more hands-on action items that Baltimore can support and learn about their work.
Organizations in Baltimore working on food access in response to COVID-19
Resources referenced throughout the article can be found here.
Resources on BIPOC food sovereignty, as referenced throughout the article.
Thank you to the Stories to Support team for contributing to this piece.
Written by Clarissa Chen
Research by Clarissa Chen and Hannah Correlli
Edited by Hannah Correlli, Shawn Gunaratne, Kate Lynch, Jasir Qiydaar, and Hess Stinson
Ideation by Clarissa Chen, Hannah Correlli, Colby Sangree