Growing a Community (Garden)
Corps Member Rachel Glicksman works on a community garden in Central City through her placement at Jericho Road
As anyone who knows me knows, I’m all about food. I love cooking, I love eating, I find farmers markets incredibly aesthetically pleasing, if I had the time I’d make my own yogurt and cheese and bake all of my own bread. So, this year I had a vision that my housemates would be fellow foodies and that we’d salivate collectively over the carrot taken out of our backyard garden, make jam on the weekends from fresh picked berries, and have long dinners of carefully prepared meals as we discuss our daily struggles. But, I’ve had to compromise some of my values for price, convenience, and living with nine people with different food values than mine: sometimes I have to eat bread with high fructose corn syrup in it, and twice this year I’ve greatly enjoyed a meal at Sonic with my housemates.
As I graduated college, with my thesis on Garden Based Youth programs coming to a close, I dreamed of a job allowing me to create sustainable food systems, to grow food in low income communities or do nutrition education classes in public schools. Much of this drive came from my frustration with the current food system. Those who have less money can more easily afford processed foods than fruits and vegetables. Furthermore, while many of those who fund food pantries and soup kitchens carefully parse the difference between local and organic or free range and grass fed, these institutions must choose between healthy food and feeding all their clients. In short, I sought to fight for food justice.
Instead, I settled for a job as a community organizer at an affordable housing and neighborhood revitalization organization. I figured I was trying something new, and I’d see how I liked it. While I was still struggling at home to get a little more local produce into our meager food budget, I was secretly harboring dreams at work that somehow I would be able to work my foodie-self into my job. From the very beginning I saw the smallest possibility of a community garden in our neighborhood and was trying to find sparks of interest in the neighborhood. However, at some point in the fall, I tried to let some of that dream behind, and focused on working with the community on holiday celebrations to bring the neighborhood closer together.
But I had difficulty seeing progress in the neighborhood, I doubted real resident buy-in, and I found it really difficult to see how a neighborhood Halloween celebration was going to solve blight. Furthermore, our neighborhood meetings were a struggle, we would have one, three, maybe five residents attend; I felt that I was failing as an organizer. We tried different tactics – dinners, conversations, meetings at our office, meetings at someone’s house, but still we seemed light-years away from the connected and revitalized neighborhood my organization envisioned.
In the midst of this frustration at work, and this extreme self-doubt about whether what I was doing was really worth it, I also realized that I was really frustrated with the type of Jewish social justice that I had participated in growing up. The soup kitchens I volunteered in that got me interested in creating food justice, and bringing healthy, affordable food to the masses, also frustrated me because of the simplicity in their social justice. As I was preparing my text study for my site visit in January, I happened upon a thought that has stuck with me: why do Jews, who focus so deeply on building our own community for the very basic ritual functions of our religion, not think about building up others’ community as a way to create social justice? The Jewish social justice I was exposed to involved clothing drives and food pantries, not organizing communities (ours and others) to fight for social change.
With these thoughts on the nature of Jewish social justice in my mind, I returned to organizing, and I renewed my faith in that work, focusing on the importance of listening to the needs of the neighborhood I was working in and helping them to carry out their neighborhood vision. However, over the course of one-on-one conversations, the basic tool of the organizer, a picture of a garden started appearing in my mind. One person wanted to have fruit trees in the neighborhood, another straight up suggested a garden, others wanted some activity to engage the youth, and many just liked gathering together.
Community members hard at work on a community garden in Central City
After a few memos swirled around our office and a budget way bigger than I dreamed of ever proposing was approved, I sat down in the beginning of February with a group of 8 neighbors and our seed of a garden was planted. Its been a long few months, and I’m still not sure where the garden will be in a few more months, but each day things seem a little brighter. This past weekend we built four garden beds, a fence was put up yesterday, and this coming weekend, on “Dirt Day” we intend to fill our raised beds with soil and begin planting some vegetables that will tolerate the summer heat. I can’t wait for a taste of our first okra and cherry tomatoes.
Somehow as I’ve found my way back to food and pursued my original passion, I’ve realized that the garden isn’t about the food, though it’s a part of it. The garden is about community. People who might never have met – the formerly homeless alcoholic and the retired bed and breakfast owners, are coming together at a meeting and discussing styles of raised beds and what kind of fruit trees to plant. In some way, while trying to build a just food system, I’ve really laid the seeds not only for growing fruits and vegetables, but also for growing a community.
I do not know where the Faubourg Delassize Community Garden will be in a year, much less in ten years, but I hope it will be a verdant place for growing fresh produce, the hub of a neighborhood, and the spark for community change. I know challenges will stand in the way: I’m not naïve enough to think that this garden will be the lone transformative force in a deeply troubled neighborhood. But for now, this garden has allowed me to explore the meaning of Jewish social justice, given me an outlet for my foodie desires, and maybe, just maybe, has built a lasting community framework for neighborhood change.
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