28 Oct An Open Letter to the Environmentalists and Local Food Enthusiasts of Austin, TX

Dear community,

Last night I attended a meeting of folks discussing dismantling racism. They meet weekly and discuss a myriad of topics and last night they talked about food justice.  Being hungry for that conversation, hungry to hear the thoughts of so many smart, involved, and insightful people, I canceled my plans and pulled all the potluck-cooking stops. I’ve been mulling over my internal conflict over the urban farm code controversy, sitting more or less quietly by, avoiding public hearings, avoiding taking sides, unsure of what the right position could possibly be. I was eager to talk about issues of food, race and class with other folks similarly torn, and listen to their thoughts with the hope that something would crystallize, some simple answer would be presented to me.

My conflict comes not because of the nitty gritty of the code, or the specific events that led to the battle in question, but because of the underlying dynamics that the urban farm code controversy bring up, the systemic issues of inequality, colonization and oppression that are being played out in subtle and not so subtle ways through this and so many other conversations. Last night, I did a lot of thinking, and this morning, I’m writing to you, composter of would be refuse. You, urban cyclist and backyard kale grower. You, budding permaculture enthusiast. I’m a lot like you. I grow my greens, ride my bike, and get excited beyond reason about rainwater harvesting, hugelkultur gardens, and wicking beds. I teach and practice permaculture and hold my hikes in the woods to be sacred. If you’re at all like me, you’re intentions are pure. You go out of your way to do the extra work to try and save the world, or at least slow down its destruction. You believe in a world where everyone has access to healthy, ecologically sound food sources produced without exploitation of workers or the land they work on. You try to shop local, and avoid eating meat that hasn’t been cared for with compassion in its previous living and breathing incarnations. You do this because you’re willing to be inconvenienced in order to live a life in line with values you hold dear, to walk a walk of compassion with all things and all people, to be the best person you can be and build a better world than the one we live in. I know, for that reason, you’re the right person to talk to about this problem we’ve overlooked.

I’m writing because I need some help bringing to all our attention some of the unintended effects of our collective attempts to grow food in this town, to make Austin more sustainable, food-secure, and better. With the urban farm code controversy, living within a stone’s throw of three East Austin urban farms, I’ve been having a lot of conversations. I’ve been talking with farmer friends, and plenty of you, who are outraged that anybody would suggest that what urban farmers do is about profit, and can’t see how anyone could construe urban farming as harmful for the community. I’ve talked with others that see urban farming, bike lanes, and the onslaught of young white people, with their kale and their bicycles moving into the neighborhood as yet another case of gentrification – that structural racism that disposes communities and colonizes neighborhoods – eastward expansion into the black and brown frontier. I’m torn. I became an environmentalist because of the social justice implications of the way our society relates to natural resources – from exposing migrant workers to toxic pesticides, to siting toxic waste sites in communities of color. My concern for the environment and its degradation has always stemmed from concern for fellow human beings most affected by those actions that equate to nothing less than structural violence – systemized racism, classism, and yeah, even patriarchy. Saving the dolphins has always been frosting on top. It’s saving each other and stopping the structural violence involved in the food system, transportation system, etc. that has always motivated me. I love local food, urban farming, and for that matter bikes and kale, and see these things as integral to making ecological and healthy living accessible to all – but that they’re undeniably part of gentrification gives me pause.

It’s easy to pick a side and jump into an “us and them” mentality, which I’ve seen a lot of friends on either side do. Taking sides, framing the issue in terms of a “battle” or a “fight”, and declaring war on those holding an opposing opinion is easy, simple and clean cut. The true complexity of the real world comes with the realization that everybody is right. Unfortunately we don’t all hold the same power, influence, and privilege, and so it’s the responsibility of the environmentalists and white urban farmers to really honor the reality and truth being shared by our neighbors. It IS true, me and my bicycle, trendy grocery stores that are outside the price range of the long term residents (and to be honest, me), coffee shops, and yes, urban farms, are part of a steady march of largely white, middle or upper middle class foodie and environmentalist culture moving in and pushing communities of color out the other side. We’re engaged in mani-feast destiny, and there is nothing cute, quaint, or truly sustainable about it. At the same time, our food system is fundamentally broken. Those working on the front lines of urban agriculture, trying to grow food where people are that is healthy, delicious, and produced without exploitation deserve applause for their efforts, sacrifice, and courage to risk it all in search of a better way to feed ourselves. However, our food system has been so overwhelmingly disfigured from an ideal that honors the needs of human beings that even now, even with all of this work to build a local food movement and all of the challenges it entails, we need to re-evaluate and re-design. At the very least we need to do no harm to communities of color, and at best, we need to organize our food movement around the need for social justice that extends to all things; food, education, shelter and transportation. The issues of gentrification caused by the food movement are real, and we need to acknowledge them and start working to do better.

“Gentrification is so complex! How could we ever stop it?!” you say? Well, you are right to understand this process that we, the “green” sustainable community are implicit in, as very complex. However, the underpinnings are pretty simple. Land that communities of color live in is valued less than land that largely white communities live in. There’s a basic assumption there. It’s the same assumption that caused white flight from cities after desegregation, the same assumption that was the basis for redlining. It was at the root of Jim Crow laws and the slavery that was the first form of non-migratory agriculture East Austin saw. The assumption is one of white supremacy, which is far more subtle and far reaching than the KKK associations you may have with that phrase.

White supremacy simply means that we assume white communities have more value than communities of color. It’s the prevailing assumption that white communities are safer, nicer, kinder, smarter, more cultured, harder working, and more valuable. It’s that same assumption that creates a class divide along racial lines, giving white communities better jobs, better access to education, food, and capital of all kinds. It’s this assumption of white supremacy that has made the soil of east Austin, some of the MOST fertile soil in the nation, toxic. The legacy of slavery (I’ve heard that the farmhouse at Boggy Creek was literally the master’s house once upon a not so distant past), Jim Crow, red lining, ongoing white supremacy, and gentrification are infused in that fertile blacklands prairie clay. This is not to say that urban farmers are inherently malicious conniving racist land-grabbers, but they do make the neighborhood trendy and thus prone to slimy tentacles of developers with their condos, and the increasing rent and property value that come with white neighbors, farmers markets, and cute brunch spots. Ironically these are the same forces that could eventually price the farmers themselves out of the neighborhood. Gentrification hurts us ALL in the end.

We’re growing our food movement in a flood plain rich with social sedimentation eroded from another time. It’s time to understand that process; it’s time to understand the soil, the bedrock, the social geology that we’re growing this movement in. How did our metaphorical soil come to be? How do we begin to engage in some metaphorical bioremediation efforts? It’s time to dismantle these structures of racism and classism, and while we’re at it why not patriarchy and hetro-nomativity, so that our movement can flourish and bear fruit that doesn’t carry that quiet, toxic residue of oppression.

Changing the farm code won’t stop gentrification. Shutting down farms won’t stop it. Passing code to protect urban farms won’t fix the underlying issues of food injustice rooted in institutional racism, classism, and patriarchy that keep food insecure communities food insecure. However dismantling oppression can help us build a better food system, and a better culture that serves all human beings. It can slow and stop gentrification – and stop the heart wrenching pattern of displacing communities of color, which it seems should be our first order of business. Without doing that work, without coming together in solidarity, we all lose. Not only do long time east side communities get displaced, so do the farmers. Eventually, we will find ourselves looking at the same topographical map of privilege and oppression, only it will have been tinted green and luxury condos will have been built on some of the best farm land in the country.

So, I am asking you – you who will valiantly cart compostables in your bag all day rather than throw them in the trash, you who will cook around those strange CSA box surprises because you feel good knowing you’re supporting a good cause, you who are trying to walk a walk down a fairly unused path –I’m asking you to blaze a fresh trail with me. I am asking my fellow green leaders to put on a different pair of glasses for a second. I am asking you to really look, with a fresh and critical eye, to really listen to the concerns of long time citizens of the east-side without attachment to any outcomes surrounding urban farms or food forests. I’m asking you to learn more about Austin’s troubled racial history. I’m asking you to take a solar charged flashlight into the dark and musty recesses of your heart, and have the courage to confront the white supremacy that as a country, as a culture, we’re taught from very early on – it lives in all of us no matter how far down its been pushed, or how well we pretend not to see it. I’m asking you to help undo racism, to have the integrity to start the conversation with me.

How can we dismantle racism? How can we build a food movement, and environmental movement, that is led by the very people most adversely affected by environmental degradation and lack of meaningful food access? That’s a big question, but I know that it starts with really listening to what affected communities want and need. It might not be urban farms, community gardens, or bike lanes. It might not even be food issues at all. We need to ask and then really listen to the answers we get. It might not be what we're doing. In fact, it likely isn't. We need to be prepared to hear things we don’t really want to hear and not dismiss them as uninformed, naive, or out of touch. More likely than not, those adjectives should be used to describe us. We need to be willing to stand up for racial justice and class justice in this town alongside standing up for clean creeks, good food, the right to backyard chickens and urban apiaries. We need to listen to our whole community, especially those that have been systematically silenced. We need to do the work of community building by learning to support our neighbors the way neighbors should, in solidarity. We can start by listening more honestly and compassionately to each other. It’s going to be a lot of hard work – but I know we’re up for it.

With all my love and compassion,

Dani Slabaugh