New Roots and Help from an Alum

In my last blog post, I talked about the lack of community participation I observed on my first day of working with my PE. Since then, I have gone to work with the organization four times. While working with them, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a GPP alum with whom I was able to have a long conversation about the community participation at City Slickers. I found out that the peak season for participation is always in the summer and spring, because community members tended to have more free time to put towards the community gardens. I had joined the mission towards the end of the harvest season where the volunteers that remain are those with steady schedules or do not have to be at home to take care of their kids. She did however point me to another project that still holds participation from the community.   

If you ever visit the main office of the organization, you’ll encounter four huge posters with blueprints and layouts of a future site, and you definitely get the feeling that the project is extremely important.

For a little over a decade, my organization has been planting, cultivating, and seeding in “community farms” they set up where ever they could find empty space that got a little sun. They cleared debris, tested for chemicals, installed planter boxes, and shoveled compost on any lands volunteered to them by members of the community which included backyards, parks, and schools. However, after all of the work that went into these community farms, the owners of these lands would often find another use for the land and kick them out. This not only caused the closure of a community farm and decrease in available produce at the farm stands but also interrupted the coming together of the community. Both parties lost a lot of time, money, and effort in these closures.  

In December 2012, the organization purchased its first plot of land, a former industrial lot of 1.4 acres , and it is the only parcel in West Oakland deeded to urban agriculture use. This groundbreaking investment gave roots to the organization and urban agriculture in West Oakland as well as finally allowed the organization to provide the community with something permanent, a sort of promise to the community that this food movement is something meant to last.   

Those four huge posters in the office are the product again of the community and allies coming together to build a community park that combines edible gardening with learning and play. Neighborhoods, allies, partners, and policy makers contributed to and celebrated this purchase.  As preconstruction started this year, community engagements meetings are being held to design the park, name the farm and park, identify collaborating partners, and plan future programming. A board of community members is currently in the works to collaborate with the board of the organization to ensure that the final product is something for the community from the minds of the community.