Food Justice Isn’t Scary!

It’s the middle of July. It’s 85ºF outside. The sun is out and the sky is a perfect blue with little to no clouds to interrupt it. In a movie, on a day like this, I imagine that I’d be at the beach with my friends playing volleyball. The scenes are in slow motion. There’s a lot of laughter and fun music playing in the background. Not a care in the world.

In real life, I’m in a community garden shoveling huge piles of “mystery dirt” (composted material) into a sifter then hauling it one wheelbarrow at a time into another bin, where I will “sift” through it a second time. Only, this time I will sift with gloved hands , looking for plastic bits (often stickers from discarded fruit). Yes, there are plenty of bugs, and many were creepy and crawly. Yes, I am sweaty and covered in dirt after the work is all done. And yes, this is actually how I want to be spending my summer—and I’m having so much fun doing it! Let me explain why.

At a young age, I decided that I wanted to join the fight in righting the many wrongs in our world. I started off as an environmentalist, dedicated to fighting Big Oil and Big Plastic, which has contaminated every inch of our lives, our bodies, and our planet. I became aware of food waste and the severe mismanagement of a resource that over 800 million people in the world are deprived of. I learned more about social justice issues, specifically the systems of oppression that perpetuate them. The more I learned about issues like police brutality, the homelessness crisis, the prison-industrial complex, the genocide of Native Americans, US neocolonialism, and other injustices, the more passionate I became to build a justice-oriented career. It wasn’t until I decided to co-term in earth systems that I realized it was possible to build a career that was intersectional, to include both the environment and the people, which is what led me to study environmental justice (EJ).

When applying for the Partnerships for Climate Justice in the Bay Area (PCJ in the Bay) Fellowship, I finally had a clearer vision of the problems I wanted to tackle. What was missing was an understanding of the solutions and how I fit into them. I had no idea what to expect and was nervous about whether I’d be “good enough” to live up to my dreams of making an effective impact. Did I have the right skill sets to contribute effectively in justice-oriented work? Would I be able to handle it? Despite these doubts, I knew I had to apply because, if I wanted to commit to fighting for justice, I needed a place to start. Further, with everything I learned about injustice—whether it be through researching online, taking classes, or conversing with my peers—I knew that theory needed to be backed up by practice. I needed to get in the real world and build skills in justice-oriented solutions myself.

During my time as a PCJ in the Bay Fellow, I had direct experience with local solutions for food justice and learned about the real problems those solutions are addressing.

In those nine weeks, I interned at Valley Verde, a non-profit 501(3)(c) organization, which aims to improve food access for low-income families of San José and Gilroy by providing food education and micro-entrepreneurship training. San José has multiple food deserts, which are defined as an area where at least ⅓ of the population lives more than half a mile from the closest supermarket. This poses multiple issues, including getting to and from the supermarket, transportation expenses, and having access to healthy foods. If a grocery store with healthy and culturally preferred food is not within an accessible distance, then you are forced to sacrifice your health, your finances, and other parts of your wellbeing when trying to accommodate for this. This issue is amplified if you are low-income, elderly, or have chronic illness, etc. If you don’t have a car, work full-time (or over-time/night shifts), or are raising kids, how much capacity do you have to coordinate bus travel (if there even is one) to the “good” grocery store and back?

What makes Valley Verde’s work so important is their commitment to increasing the communities’ access to healthy foods by teaching community members and providing free resources for building home gardens to grow their own food. Their late founder Raul Lozano understood that families can eat healthy and save money (up to 45% of their vegetable bill!) if they grow their own produce. It just takes time and commitment.

My main role this summer was to figure out how to increase the number of regular volunteers at Valley Verde to support maintaining their community garden and general operations. Due to the pandemic, much of their structure for volunteering had fallen apart since all of the in-person components were impossible to continue. These volunteers were crucial in supporting the work of their small staff as well as acting as important connections to the communities they served. The more people that joined the Valley Verde community, the more capacity they had to give back. Thus, I needed to create incentives for volunteers to come and to continue coming.

My most formative project was launching Valley Verde’s first Sow & Grow Community Day, where community members are invited every second Saturday to come to the site and learn a new skill by participating in an educational workshop. After a little break, they then spend time in community doing a fun activity or volunteer task! As I mentioned, it was crucial for me to get hands-on experience working in food justice. Planning and hosting this event launch was helpful for me because in order to teach solutions for food justice, I had to learn them.

The workshop was titled “Intro to Food Justice: From Home Gardens to Homemade Art.” Alongside my fellow intern, we dove into what food justice looked like in a way that made it more approachable. Finally,, I was able to explain what food justice was AND do it myself. Moving forward, Valley Verde will continue to host these workshops as well as use the new volunteering infrastructure I created through their website: the Event Calendar, Volunteer FAQ Sheet, and Volunteering Opportunities pages. With this new infrastructure, it will be easier for volunteers to learn about how to get involved with Valley Verde and sign up!

With my summer fellowship now over, I’ve been able to not only see for myself what a justice-oriented solution looks like but also how I could contribute to it in my own way. I feel more solidified in my commitment to a justice-oriented career because I was able to get past learning theory and start practicing it, realizing that fighting for justice is not as daunting as I felt it would be. Getting the opportunity to work on real local solutions with Valley Verde was a much needed experience in affirming that I am capable of contributing effectively to local solutions, and I hope to continue expanding and strengthening my skills in making the world a better place.