by Tami Gordon
Being raised in New York City colored the lens of my childhood. My magical world was objectively crumbling under the heat of climate change. Under the sweltering embrace of shoulder-to-shoulder complexes bustling with Caribbean diaspora, I had my first brush with heat-related illness in the top floor bedroom of my grandmother’s home. Beyond the veil of my adolescence was a deafening silence around our experiences. An un-nuanced take would advise to move out of the Bronx altogether, but memories have homes. And, after centuries of forced displacement, my childhood refused to budge. Looking back from my final year of undergrad at Boston University to my last week of work at the Sierra Club, the pursuit of higher knowledge has introduced an irony.
Where our schools of thought are built on the exploitation of the land and people who occupy it.
Where an -opolis has legal protection for trees but not the people.
Where the irony of my Afro-Caribbean upbringing in the EJ field, holding the role of colonized and colonizer, is not lost upon me.
Hence, when reflecting on my internship, it's essential to acknowledge how I've come to realize that genuine knowledge isn't solely acquired through reading, but rather through actively listening to both myself and others, and being open to perspectives different from my own.
My Introduction to Environmental Justice
When my concrete jungle was replaced with multigenerational forest preserves, my mouth began to taste the words “environmental injustices.” My memories of sticky mosquito-net nights and the offensive smell emanating off the Hudson River began to fade. My fingers began to find and recognize things.
How red oak leaves have pointed lobes while white oak has rounded lobes; the soft ridges over the body of a Yellow Perch and the tenderness of the flesh on your tongue.
Privilege allowed me to forget who I was. To this day, Bronx residents, mainly Hispanic and Black families, still face mobility inequity, which isolates them from accessing healthy, fresh food and nearby park spaces.. According to Dr. Daniel Farber, Director of Northeastern University’s Environmental Justice Research Collaborative, “the racial composition of a town is the most powerful predictor of [...] environmental health-related problems in the Boston area and the Commonwealth” (“AGO Environmental Justice Brief | Mass.gov”). I am taken back to one of my core memories, on a day in 2014, the face of Little Miss Flint mirrors my own as we ponder with the same questions: Who is entitled to rivers? To organic food? To nature?
EJ from the Perspective of the Oppressed
Pursuing environmental justice for me is about beginning to disentangle my identity from the hold of settler colonialism and its consequences on marginalized communities. As suggested by renowned Black Critical Ecologist, Dr. Susan Pierre, we must begin to invite social philosophy to understand and critique societal power structure and how power disparities drive ecological elements – “How is the natural environment shaped by oppression and liberation? What is it about inequalities that brings about the environmental patterns we see,” she inquires (Ward). Critical ecology works on systems of oppression and environmental consequences rather than isolated experiences and their individual solutions. We need to develop an environmental justice framework into a conversation on protection from ecological destruction, mechanisms of accountability, and remedial action and resources.
Food Justice and Policy
The State of Illinois provided me with at least two meals daily throughout my primary education, emphasizing the importance of meeting basic needs without incurring debt. While square pizza and chocolate milk may not have provided the healthiest diet, they sustained me, and for that, I am forever grateful. When school transitioned to virtual learning, the lack of food at home served as a stark reminder of the many losses experienced - such as social connection, regular meals, and much more.
During my first year of college, I stumbled upon Sargent Choice Nutrition Center and spent my undergraduate career connecting students to food access programming on campus. Words like “food sovereignty” and “nutrition awareness” felt more and more familiar on my tongue as I tabled for different Boston University events.
Being an Earth and Environmental Science major, the overlap was not intuitive. My work with the Sierra Club as a Climate Leadership Intern supported my journey more into food justice. I realized that thinking of these issues in silos was robbing me and future communities of the inherent connection between humans and nature and that community, climate, and food can exist in the same realm.
The MA Local Food Action Plan is truly dedicated to supporting accessibility to healthy foods, promoting education and awareness, and fostering collaboration and support systems. It emphasizes the importance of financial assistance, improved infrastructure, and nutrition education to ensure everyone can access healthy, locally produced foods. The equally important social implications of sustainability require enhancing the roles of healthcare providers, institutions, and food assistance programs to create a more supportive environment for accessing healthy foods.
Climate Resilience in Community
One of the first field trips I did for my internship was a day trip to Mack Park Farm in Salem, MA to volunteer and interview their staff. There, I was able to meet Gord who walked my boss, Sam Lambert, and I through their food forest where we conversed over bushes of oregano and sage about our experiences around food. Gord, a Salem native, mentioned the presence of the farm’s wetland throughout their childhood and their cooperation with an Indigenous scholar about asking consent from plants before harvesting them - how something as simple as consent invites a framework of communal, interpersonal relationships with nature.
The land took care of us. Physically, community farms, like this one, helped give abandoned plots new life and gave communities autonomy from additional exposure to vehicular emissions from long distance transport. Emotionally, swaths of people took to the farm to take care of their heart - stewarding love through labor towards restoring food sovereignty when COVID dismantled local food production systems. Gaggles of bees dove through Black Dahlias as we discussed the best way to sow tomato seeds. The farm tended to the need for shared experiences, gave people a sense of ownership and stewardship, and connected residents with neighbors they may never have known.
Decolonial Ecology & Identities of the African Diaspora
Inside a small New York kitchen was where my Dad first taught me how to make a traditional Trinidadian curry. Over the bubbling of thickening gravy, he recalls life on his father’s livestock farm in Arima, Trinidad. Down the street was his mother’s restaurant, full of the smell of fresh chana and brown stew chicken. Asking him what type of food he ate was a loaded question. A Chinese restaurant would give you Lo Mein. Next door, an Indian man speaking Caribbean Hindustani pumps out Dhal and rice. The smell of pelau from an African restaurant swims between the two. The question was not what, but from where?
This memory came back to me in my visit with Mill City Growers in Lowell, Massachusetts, where a bald brown head peeked out from above the rows of White Maize and rows of callaloo. The effervescent colors of sunset orange and regal purples of his top seemed to bloom through the foliage and a smile crept across my face as I spoke with this Kenyan uncle. Pilau versus pelau is one example of the transformations of staples across the African diaspora. Bonding about our cultural ingredients paints a bigger picture of migration, colonization, and adaptation of flavors and peoples over the years.
However, accessing traditional ingredients should not be limited to their places of origin, and the lack thereof speaks to this issue of inequity in food variety. In food access programming, how often would you see ackee or mangu over green grapes and apples? A lot of immigrant community members, including myself, feel the need to compromise and re-learn nutrition from the Western perspective. Supporting urban agriculture directly combats this pattern in which immigration implies cultural isolation.
Outside of Ecology and Economy: Community Engagement
During my internship, I honed my skills in community engagement while focusing on the important intersection of food justice and climate resilience. Over the summer, the death of Sonya Massey brought me back to my questions on the environment: Who was entitled to this space? The language switched to grief and hope as I pondered how I could engage people on how to properly deal with the unreconciled grief that comes with being Black in the Americas.
During my internship, I conducted research that led me to the Sierra Club’s Campaign Planning documents and Activist Toolkits. I used the information to organize a Black Empowerment Day at the beginning of September. Ten of my friends and I gathered in the park to discuss the meaning of existence in the context of community with nature and each other and the grief that we experience when community is equated to weakness.
Outside of ecology and economy, we are people first, and people need intentional love. Conversations on acting out of a love framework redefined what community farming could be - how we could begin to reconnect with each other. A culture of domination relies on lovelessness and when neighborhoods are segregated and isolated off of superficial aesthetics, it is clear how the systems of oppression do not want you to know your neighbor. Our event ended with a libation - a ritual of collective gratitude - where I thanked my friends for showing up for themselves, and each other, re-positing the value of trusting ourselves, life, and friendship.
How can we think about being climate resilient if we are not resilient in our communities, too?
Reflections on Resistance in the Everyday
Thinking back on this past summer, the language that feels the most accurate to me at this time is “love” and “compassion.” Traditionally, the definition of love connotes romance, but like researcher Muskaan Jagadish Khemani, I invite you to challenge that and perceive love “as an ongoing choice that seeks a type of union different from national unity and closer to a community of solidarity.” The nature of being a Black nonbinary individual in a homogenous society beckons otherness and silence. But my act of resistance everyday is continuing to live in my differences and hope for better. How do I expand those moments that make me feel good? What in those moments makes me feel good?
The relationship between colonized peoples and the landbodymind mindset expands over centuries of Indigenous experience, be it in the Americas, Africa, or the Antilles, marked by resilience, foresight, and a deep connection to land. As I learn more about these frameworks, I learn more about myself and the ancestors who came before me and made it possible for these ingredients and experiences to resonate with me so soundly.
During my visit to the Bronx this summer, I had the chance to go to the New Roots Community Farm and witness my aspirations start to take shape. With my Food Stamps card, I purchased celery greens and organic honey. This place, associated with violence and death, is paradoxically supporting the lives of its residents. Overhead, odd swathes of brown-speckled bodies seduce the sky, first as snakes, then as stories - contorting & transforming like avian ink on blank pages.
Welcome, they say, to this new season of being.
Works Cited
“AGO Environmental Justice Brief | Mass.gov.” Www.mass.gov, www.mass.gov/info-details/ago-environmental-justice-brief. Accessed 4 Oct. 2024.
Muskaan Jagadish Khemani. “Embracing an Ethic of Love: A Radical Path to Revolution in a World of Exploited and Divided Workers · BG · Berlinergazette.de · EN|DE.” BG · Berlinergazette.de · EN|DE, 9 May 2023, berlinergazette.de/embracing-an-ethic-of-love/. Accessed 4 Oct. 2024.
Ward, Alie. (Host). “Critical Ecology (SOCIAL SYSTEMS + ENVIRONMENT) with Dr. Suzanne Pierre.” Ologies , Spotify, 23 Aug. 2022. https://alieward.com/ologies/criticalecology/. Accessed 4 Oct. 2024.