Category Archives: social cohesion

Building a Racially Just Food Movement | IATP Food and Community Fellows

April 22, 2013 – 7:05 am

“Undoing racism in the food system requires more than good intentions. We must act, employing thoughtful strategies to attack polices and practices that uphold systemic racism. Additionally, and equally importantly, ridding ourselves of the internalized thinking associated with racism is a lifelong and intergenerational work. It requires a systematic process for learning about the social construct we call race, its history and various manifestations. Organizations in the food movement should hold mandatory, frequent, on-going anti-racism trainings. There are many good anti-racist trainers throughout the United States including DR Works, The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, and Crossroads.

Finally, food movement organizations must do things differently. All organizations planning food security, food justice and food sovereignty conferences should include a track that addresses racism in the food system. Major national conferences should have several workshop offerings in the track.”

Building a Racially Just Food Movement | IATP Food and Community Fellows.

By Darlene Wolnik | Also posted in community gardens, diversity/racial justice, farmers/farming information, national food system work | Comments (0)

Shareable: Bringing People Together with Benches

March 18, 2013 – 7:30 am

I love the circle bench. How many of you have designed face to face seating for your market? Years ago in New Orleans, we added wheeled picnic tables that rolled in and out of storage on market day. I heard they bit the dust this year – which is understandable – but I know people had some great chat moments at those tables. I would notice that friends would often sit next to each other and then find themselves starting a larger conversation with unknown people across from them . Lovely.
I tried (unsuccessfully) to convince the founder to name the benches the “Jane Jacobs” benches to honor our hero but I know she would have been proud of them with or without the plaque.

Shareable: Bringing People Together with Benches.

By Darlene Wolnik | Tagged | Comments (0)

Sing-along at the IFMA

March 11, 2013 – 6:30 am

Old friends and multiple-movement-colleagues Ken Meter and Karen Lehman lead a cooperative sing along at the Illinois Farmers Market Association with a song found in a attic of a woman organizer from the 1930s, song to the tune of Auld Lang Syne called Cooperate. A sweet moment.

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By Darlene Wolnik | Also posted in farmers markets, state associations, Where's Dar now? | Comments (0)

Race, Class, and Community in San Francisco’s Mission District – “A Time of Skinny Cows”

February 21, 2013 – 7:30 am

Great article about the (negative) relationship of the food movement to gentrification and therefore culture. We have to know the entire history of our movement (including its elitist characteristics) and acknowledge how our work has positive and negative implications on the less fortunate even as we continue to push its boundaries.
Some quotes from the article that I found useful:

“We think of gentrification principally in terms of real estate, race, and class, but I more often find that food is the thermometer reading the temperature of gentrification.”

“Much of what we call food politics today—buying local, farming organic, eating vegetarian—originally came from collectives that wanted to raise awareness about industrially produced food. The People’s Food System of the mid-’70s was a network of community food stores and small-scale food collectives that organized to take back control of food from large agricultural and chemical companies; they built direct connections to farmers to establish the first farmers’ markets. Meanwhile, the Black Panthers were hosting free community breakfasts in their neighborhoods, and Alice Walters opened Chez Panisse partly as a space to talk about politics. Various collectives shared the urban farm known as the Crossroads Community (The Farm) on Potrero Avenue at the edge of the Mission.
All this activity resulted in a paradox: as radical food politics succeeded, healthy food became commodified as elite food, proving that successful social movements can be gentrified, just like neighborhoods. The best farmers’ market in San Francisco, at the Ferry Building, is also the least affordable, and Waters’ Chez Panisse, the standard-bearer of locally grown, seasonal food, has become one of the most expensive restaurants in Berkeley.”

Read more: http://www.utne.com/arts-culture/san-franciscos-mission-district-zm0z13mazwil.aspx?page=5#ixzz2LGcdfe6r

Read more: http://www.utne.com/arts-culture/san-franciscos-mission-district-zm0z13mazwil.aspx?page=2#ixzz2LGakVDbL

Race, Class, and Community in San Francisco’s Mission District – Arts & Culture – Utne Reader.

By Darlene Wolnik | Also posted in articles, economic development issues, food history, governments, immigrant issues, Main Street, racial equity | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Empathic civilization

February 4, 2013 – 7:30 am

A great framework to think about humanity and its potential.

By Darlene Wolnik | Also posted in global organizing, useful websites, video, webinars | Tagged | Comments (0)

Cash incentives in NYC and Memphis explained

January 10, 2013 – 7:30 am

Ah incentives. This is a great interview with NYC Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs about their cash incentive program. The Mexico model was the one that was explained to us in New Orleans back in 2006 (by the same public health researcher that is now working for NYC) and became the basis of the markets’ innovative work on the Gulf Coast which continues to this day. We understood (because of her training) that we were using cash as a short-term way to reduce significant barriers around open-air farmers markets, especially for low-income shoppers that face barriers such as lack of transportation, short market hours (that are often at odds with service workers schedules), the need to learn new shopping behavior, the perception of markets as elitist and so on.
To me, markets are in the business of incentivizing behavior change and we use many tools to that end: events, seating, music, children’s educational resources, support for farmers to grow their businesses and so on. Cash incentives are now well understood by public health activists and so were brought to our markets as an efficient way to do targeted outreach to at-risk communities. It’s not the answer to all of our market issues, but it has allowed us to regain our rightful place as the center of innovation in community food systems and to add some disciplined measurement strategies to our portfolio.

I really like how the NYC describes this in the interview; I like the analogy of the tax code as being a set of incentives as well.

The entire series Freakonomics is based on incentives as well. Check that out for a macro view of the subject.
Link to interview

By Darlene Wolnik | Also posted in evaluation, farmers markets, farmers/farming information, incentives, other sectors, SNAP | Tagged | Comments (0)

If children lose contact with nature they won’t fight for it

November 29, 2012 – 7:30 am

Good language in here for project proposals that involve taking student groups to farms and gardens. That the number of children involved in creative outdoor activities fell so quickly is shocking and can be addressed by activities that markets organize. Also, how access to nature can be a creative stimulant for later learning could also be the basis of your project for your targeted market day activities.

The remarkable collapse of children’s engagement with nature – which is even faster than the collapse of the natural world – is recorded in Richard Louv’s book Last Child in the Woods, and in a report published recently by the National Trust. Since the 1970s the area in which children may roam without supervision has decreased by almost 90%. In one generation the proportion of children regularly playing in wild places in the UK has fallen from more than half to fewer than one in 10. In the US, in just six years (1997-2003) children with particular outdoor hobbies fell by half. Eleven- to 15-year-olds in Britain now spend, on average, half their waking day in front of a screen.

In her famous essay the Ecology of Imagination in Childhood, Edith Cobb proposed that contact with nature stimulates creativity. Reviewing the biographies of 300 “geniuses”, she exposed a common theme: intense experiences of the natural world in the middle age of childhood (between five and 12). Animals and plants, she contended, are among “the figures of speech in the rhetoric of play … which the genius in particular of later life seems to recall”.

Studies in several nations show that children’s games are more creative in green places than in concrete playgrounds. Natural spaces encourage fantasy and roleplay, reasoning and observation. The social standing of children there depends less on physical dominance, more on inventiveness and language skills. Perhaps forcing children to study so much, rather than running wild in the woods and fields, is counter-productive.

UTNE Altwire – If children lose contact with nature they won't fight for it.

By Darlene Wolnik | Also posted in agricultural tourism, articles, children, community gardens, farmers markets, farmers/farming information, public health | Comments (1)
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