Unearthing the Impact of Institutionalized Racism on Access to Healthy Food in Urban African-american Communities

Written by Kate Meals

Reprinted from: Kate Meals, Nurturing the Seeds of Food Justice: Unearthing the Impact of Institutionalized Racism on Access to Healthy Food in Urban African-american Communities, 15 Scholar: St. Mary’s Law Review on Race and Social Justice 97 (2012) (266 Footnotes)

“For now I ask no more than the justice of eating.”

- Pablo Neruda

On November 7, 2011, the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HRD) raided and destroyed the Morning Glory Community Garden, which served as a community-based solution to the lack of healthy, accessible food in the South Bronx since 2009. Prior to the raid, the garden collective had been working to raise four hundred dollars towards creating their own community supported agriculture program, which would provide affordable and healthy food to participants in the South Bronx.

Elliot Liu, a member of the Morning Glory garden group, stated that the first indication of the city’s plans to destroy the garden came when gardeners arrived to find a padlocked gate surrounding the lot, complete with a “no trespassing” sign. Liu and others who tend to and use the community space were surprised since the city had many opportunities to inform the group of its plans in a less confrontational manner. When the Morning Glory gardeners attempted to appeal to Community Board 1 for support in a meeting with the city housing department, District Manager Cedric Loftin informed them that the city had plans to use the garden land to build apartments, that the residents who had gathered and planted vegetables on the land did so improperly, and that the gardeners entered into “somewhere where they [had] no right to be.” In 2002, New York’s mayor and attorney general reached an agreement to preserve approximately five hundred community gardens and construct apartments on others. Two hundred gardens were left without full protection, and community garden activists reported that in several cases, “protected” gardens were destroyed in violation of the agreement. In 2004, the city of New York evicted and sold three community gardens in the South Bronx. At the time, garden advocates “sued, rallied, and planned possible defense[s] via occupations and lock downs.” Ultimately, the community was forced into a compromise that resulted in a loss of 28,000 square feet of green space. (more…)