Karen Washington: Building a Fair Food System
“The food system doesn't need to be fixed. It needs to change. And that change is shifting power back into the hands of the people who are most affected.”
🎧 36 min | Episode 12 | May 23, 2024
Karen Washington
Building a Fair Food System
For over four decades, Karen Washington has unveiled the inequities in our food system and the challenges to access fresh, nutritious produce in many communities.
As a physical therapist, Karen was committed to healthy living. Her activism took root in 1988, when she transformed an empty lot in her Bronx neighborhood into the Garden of Happiness, which nourished her community and reduced food waste. Karen's efforts grew from there. She spearheaded the La Familia Verde Garden Coalition, knitting together community gardens across the Bronx. And she co-founded Black Urban Growers, bridging the gap between urban and rural farmers. Her pioneering efforts have earned national recognition.
Today, Karen is retired from physical therapy, and she splits her time between Georgia and her farm Rise & Roots in Upstate New York. But as you can imagine, her drive remains undiminished. She now champions the next generation of BIPOC farmers, granting them access to land, and opportunities for a more equitable future.
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Transcript
(Edited slightly for clarity)
Melissa Ceria: Karen Washington, welcome.
Karen Washington: Yeah, I'm glad to be here, Melissa. Thanks for having me.
Melissa Ceria: Karen, you were raised in New York City. I'm wondering if you grew up in a family of home cooks.
Karen Washington: Yes I did. I grew up in New York City, as a matter of fact, in the Lower East Side. My relationship to food was that everything came from a grocery store. However, my mom was a great cook. What? She was a slamming, great cook. I had aunts who were cooks. Everybody in my family. You better be cooking. You know, we have this expression that you better put your foot in it, to make sure it tastes good. So, yes, surrounded by cooks.
Melissa Ceria: And so family meals were an important part of your childhood?
Karen Washington: Very much so. Family meals, we sat at the table, for breakfast, for dinner. You know, nowadays kids like going to a bedroom and stuff like that. But my parents make sure that my brother and I had our meals at the table. We said our grace. And so it was a family affair.
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Melissa Ceria [00:02:13] To what extent did your childhood experiences with food guide you in your desire to help nourish others?
Karen Washington [00:02:20] You know you never thought about the importance of food, growing up. We knew that there were people who were hungry, that had limited access to food. But in the African-American community, food was shared. You know, if you didn't have milk or eggs, you would knock on your neighbors door and say, you have any eggs or you have any milk or you have any cereal. So the emphasis on hunger and poverty, even though it was there, you had a community that shared, you know, when people didn't have food or for instance, your parents work late and when your neighbor would say, did you eat yet? And come on, sit down and let me feed you. So there was that sort of community of essence, you know, when I grew up. So like I said, food was never felt as a deficit because it was always there.
Melissa Ceria [00:03:13] Your activism begins in the late 1980s. At that time, you're working as a physical therapist. Your focus is already on health and well-being. How did your work inform your earlier ideas around nutrition?
Karen Washington [00:03:27] Yes, I would say, you know, I got a lot of my activism through this organization called the North West Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition. I think that's where I found my voice, because they taught me how to look at social issues, look at the problem, look at the issues, and then take actions. And so that was like the foundation of being grounded in finding my voice. And then as a physical therapist and working with a lot of my patients who grew up on farms and grew up white gardens and making that connection between food and health, I started asking questions about the food system. I started opening that Pandora's Box and asked the question why we live in the greatest country in the world, where we grow enough food and we waste enough food, yet that food is not getting down to the people that need it the most. And asking the important question is why is there hunger and poverty in the United States of America?
Melissa Ceria [00:04:25] That's right, because there seems to be an abundance of food on one level, and yet it isn't accessing everybody.
Karen Washington [00:04:32] When I go around the country and I talk about this particular subject, you know, we've been told time and time again that the food system is broken and needs to be fixed. And I would say time and time again, I was drinking that Kool-Aid. I was believing that until I started to see that there is a difference in the ability to access healthy food. And so as a person of color living in a low income neighborhood, and who had friends who are white and living in prominent neighborhoods, I saw the difference in the food that was there in each neighborhood, and the quality of the food, and the access of the food, and I started asking those questions and bringing them to the forefront. Why is there sort of a caste system of the food system based on the color of your skin, where you live, and how much money you have, and started to, like I say, question the food system, that said that it was broken, it needed to be fixed. And I said no, it's doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing. But the food system doesn't need to be fixed. It needs to change. And that change is shifting power back into the hands of the people who are most affected.
Melissa Ceria [00:05:47] Were you one of the few voices to bring that up at the time?
Karen Washington [00:05:50] Yes. You know what? I say that because I was beholden to no one. You know, I had a lot of people who were tied to nonprofits and had to stick to the values and the vision and the mission statement of what the organization was or is, but also to the donors that was supporting those organizations. So you had a lot of conservative donors who didn't want organizations to rock the boat, and my hands were never tied because I was a physical therapist, I was a person on my own, so it didn't matter what I could say because I had no donors influencing my opinion. So I felt very free in saying blatantly some of the injustices that was out there.
Melissa Ceria [00:06:42] So your independence bolstered your voice.
Karen Washington [00:06:45] Without a doubt. My independence bolstered my voice because I was not beholden to any funder or any organization. I was just me. And being free, I felt it's important for me to speak out against the injustices that I saw.
Melissa Ceria [00:07:01] And building on that. Do you think that people counted on you to do that for them as well?
Karen Washington [00:07:06] I hope that people didn't count on me. I hope that people listen to what I had to say. I hope I made it easy for people to realize that they, too, had an opportunity to say something. I hope that I open that door to let people know that your voice is so strong, and you can use it as an instrument to fight against injustice.
Melissa Ceria [00:07:30] You moved to live in the Bronx, Karen, with your two small children, and you decide to transform an empty lot across the street from you into a community garden. And that summer in New York City in 1988, there were the Tompkins Square Riots, which exposed deep seated tensions between the city authorities and various community groups over the use of public space. I'm wondering what was it like for you to start the Garden of Happiness in the Bronx against that backdrop and conversation around how to use public space.
Karen Washington [00:08:02] I think that it just brought to the forefront the importance of public spaces, especially in low income neighborhoods and neighborhoods of color. You know, I always say that one time New York City had over 15,000 vacant lots, and here you had a time when there was white flight, quote unquote, "the Bronx was burning", people were leaving, abandoned, buildings were coming up, people with power and privilege were leaving the city, going to the suburbs. And so you had so many pockets of despair, and these empty lots were everywhere. And so those that could not move decided to do something about it. And so grassroot organizing, you know, sweat equity people got together to turn these empty lots into community gardens. So it was called guerrilla gardening at the time. We were rebels to take on that task of cleaning them up and then starting to, to grow something, you know, something to bring life and hope back into our community when there was so much despair.
Melissa Ceria [00:09:07] Right. And when you were looking at those vacant lots, what did it make you think about? What did you see in them?
Karen Washington [00:09:16] Yeah, you know, 1985 was the first time as a black woman, a single parent of two, to have that American dream I became a homeowner, and was so excited to live in a brand new home. And across the street was supposed to be a continuation of those homes. But when the developer got to that site, it had so much bedrock that he left it. And so from 1985 to 1988, my American dream became my American nightmare. Overnight, you know, every day there would be abandoned cars, there would be trash, tires, drug activity, prostitution. And every time you would go in and you would clean up the lot and you think that something would be happening, go back the next day and overnight someone has dumped tires and someone is dumping garbage. And so it was a very, very hard period in a lot of our lives to see that, you know, and we question that, like, why do we move here? And in retrospect, you know, I think that we got a chance to to see what despair look like and what it felt like, you know, when you have limited access to resources whereby you're trying to get help from the city, the city is ignoring you, and then you also realize the reserve of community members coming in and saying, you know, we're going to make change. You know, we're not going to live like this. So let's somehow take these empty lots and make something out of them, bringing hope and beauty and, and so the initial response when it came to community gardens was to bring back that hope. It was more so beautification, to be honest with you. Then really the intention of growing food for our community, I think it was really establishing a place where people felt proud of their community, wanted to to live in an area that was green and had flowers and had trees and bushes against the blight that had existed beforehand.
Melissa Ceria [00:11:23] What did you decide to plant first?
Karen Washington [00:11:28] Oh. Believe it or not, tomato. I know it sounds crazy, but, you know, it's so funny because during the spring you get all these magazines from various seed companies and your eyes light up because you see the different types of peppers and tomatoes and eggplants, and you want to buy everything. You go through the pages and you see, oh, look at these beautiful carrots and kale and collards and beans, and you wind up like your mind is going crazy and your stomach is churning with excitement because there's so many things you want to grow.
Melissa Ceria [00:12:03] So tomatoes, peppers, all of these beautiful, vibrant vegetables that were growing in the garden, did people, were they invited to come and pick vegetables and serve themselves, or did you sell them through a market?
Karen Washington [00:12:15] The first year we were inviting people to come, to come join the garden. I think it was a process because I always felt that it was not my garden. It's called a community garden for a reason. And okay, you have this huge - Garden of Happiness was three quarters of an acre - so it was huge. And so to go out and put signs on the gate welcoming people, new members, you know, come in and measure out your plot, which you want to grow. It was very, very exciting. We had over like 20 members in the very beginning. And what they brought with them, they brought their culture and ethnicity. The first couple of years at the garden was mostly African-American, Southern Blacks and people from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Ricans. And then after that started a huge wave of more Dominican people, but more Mexican people and less African-American people, because they were moving now back down to the South. And then the last couple of years that I was in the garden, it was predominantly Mexican. And so I got a chance to taste and grow papalo, pepicha, tomatilloes. And they had a chance to taste some of the things that I were growing, collard greens and kale. And Scott wanted peppers. So it was just a wealth of exchanging different cultures and tasting different vegetables and having that conversation, which is so incredible, when you have a community garden.
Melissa Ceria [00:13:47] It sounds so enriching on so many levels. You were contributing to the community beyond just providing fresh produce, fresh food. You were inviting conversation, dialog.
Karen Washington [00:13:59] Definitely. And at one point I realized that a community garden wasn't just about growing food. And I say that because while in a garden, you started to hear some of the social issues that people were having. You started to hear people having issues around housing. You know, we don't have heat and hot water or health issues, you know, or children that you know all of a sudden they have Type 2 Diabetes, they are obese, or environmental problems, you know, we live in this area where there's an incinerator and my kids have asthma or your apartment is full of roaches. And so you started to realize that how in this community garden we're talking about food, it intersects so many social issues around health, around environmental issues, around housing, around education, you, the whole gamut. And you realize that it all connects because if people don't have jobs, how can they feed themselves, and people don't have a home, how can you cook, if people don't have money, how do they feed? So it all interconnects. I started to realize that so for me, it wasn't just thinking about just food alone, but looking at the social issues that have been impacting so many of our communities and using food as the cornerstone of that conversation.
Melissa Ceria [00:15:22] Karen, around that time, just as this all starts to come together and weaves this fascinating and important social tapestry, the late 90s arrive and Mayor Giuliani tries to sell many community garden properties at auctions. But you fought back. What was that time like for you?
Karen Washington [00:15:41] Oooh, baby. Yeah, it was around, in 1996, 97, 98, it's around that time when your Mayor Giuliani decided in the dead of night to bulldoze community gardens and set some of them up for auction. At first, we just, we just couldn't comprehend it. It's like, what did we do wrong to the city? We felt that we were providing a service for New York City at the time. Sweat equity. They didn't have to care for these empty lots. It was communities that were taking care of these empty lots, making their community safe, making them beautiful. And yet you had a mayor who just looked at it as a real estate project that he could give and will to the highest developer. It was a wake up call, because it forced us to start to learn how the city operates. It caused us to find out who has the power? What is it that we can do to fight this? So it was like a Civics 101 course on who has power, how can people in communities exercise their voice and their power, and so we started learning who we could align with. At that time, we had an alliance with a justice group that really helped us to inform us of our rights, which is really, really important. We also met with housing groups, businesses, because what did the meetings with the mayor try to do? He tries to pit gardens against housing groups and saying, see, you know, with these gardens, they don't want you to have housing. And in fact, most of the housing advocates were on our side because they were looking at affordable housing and they wanted green spaces. We started having meetings within our community, strategically aligning ourselves with our partners and collaborators. We had an inside person within city government to give us a heads up on what was going on behind closed doors. That was absolutely fabulous. We had infiltrated city politics to find out exactly what the mayor was doing, and so we galvanized and we started marching. You know, today, you know, you can't really march on City Hall because of 9/11. But back in the day, you know, they said you can't protest, well we marched on City Hall. We dressed up in various costumes. Some of us had costumes of flowers and plants, and we marched with signs to say what Giuliani was doing, and we weren't going anywhere. And during that time, after several days and weeks of protests, we got the ear of the Attorney General at that time who was Eliot Spitzer, who said, you know what, he put a stop to it, the Mayor did not have the right to, to do this. It was a victory for us because for the first time we exposed the importance of green space. We learned exactly our right to protest, our right to hold our local officials accountable. But we also realized how land in any municipality has political consequences. And I think that's the most important thing we got out of the movement, is that land in the city is political, and you have to go through that political process to make sure that the land that you fight for is maintained from generation to generation of potential people who want to run for public office.
Melissa Ceria [00:19:22] It sounds like that period really sharpened your advocacy skills.
Karen Washington [00:19:26] Oh, without a doubt. I learned, how, the importance of collaboration. You cannot do a fight by yourself. You have to have collaborators that are willing to work with you to really see justice happen. Don't fight alone. You know, there are people out there that want to see the same things that you want to see, and a lot of it is, is social justice.
Melissa Ceria [00:19:49] And some of the people that you joined forces with have remained with you since.
Karen Washington [00:19:55] Yeah. You never let those people go, even though you may turn the page, and may emphasize another campaign or another project. Those are the people that you still remain in contact with because when things happen, you know who to turn to for advice or who will be there, "Look, I got your back. I'm there for you", so it never ends, it never grows. Oh, you know, I think once you are a community gardener, you are one for life.
Melissa Ceria [00:20:23] I want to touch on food insecurity. A USDA report on the prevalence of food insecurity revealing disparities among racial groups. In 2022, 9.3% of white households experienced food insecurity, compared to 22.4% among black non-Hispanics and 20.8 among Hispanics. Those numbers increased across all groups from 2021 to 2022. What does today's food landscape look like from your perspective?
Karen Washington [00:20:57] It goes without saying that we know this is a major problem, and what is it going to take for people to realize. I had thought that during the crisis of Covid, when we saw people for the first time on food lines, they've lost their job, they were on food lines, we saw how tenuous the food system has, has been. And yet. No one is addressing the problem of hunger and poverty when so much food continues to be wasted. And this is a critical time in our lifetime where our food system is so, so precious. That's number one. But also there needs to be safeguards within our food system, because in an instant, a catastrophe can happen and we can find ourselves in deep, deep trouble regarding our food system. And so where is the agency to sort of tackle this food insecurity crisis? There are some folks that would say, I remember back in the day, "to solve the food insecurity problem in America especially in low income neighborhoods and neighborhoods of color, all you have to do is give these people the tools to grow their own food and have them give up soda and eat right and have them have access to, you know, organic and healthy food and exercise, and then they'll be food secure." And it's like, wait a second, but you're not looking at the structural determinants that reinforce racism and classism in today's society. And you are not having those conversations on why is it that in certain neighborhoods we don't have access to healthy food. And yet time and time again, we are told to eat healthy, but we're bombarded and surrounded by the fast food, the junk food, the processed food, that's out there. Yes, we have food. There's a lot of food, but we don't have healthy food options. And so you can still be food insecure, surrounded by the junk food, the fast food, the processed food. But is that healthy food? Is that nourishing food? No, it's not. Again, we need to tackle the problem. Why is it that healthy food is expensive? And then we also need to have a conversation on a value system. And I say that because running a farmer's market in a low income neighborhood, I had to educate my community about the cost and value of food. And I say that because, running a farmer's market, the food was not free. You had to pay for the food. You paid it with cash. You paid it with your EBT Snap or your health bucks or coupons. That's a cost and value. Because surrounded by so many food pantries and soup kitchens, granted, they do an excellent job, but I had to fight against that because food was just given out free. I had to literally, and I felt very comfortable because I was from the community, telling people that they had to pay for the food. Now there were those like, "you know, you are charging me $2 for a bunch of carrots and I can get it at the grocery store for $0.99", or "you charging me what, $2 for a bunch of collards, wait a second, I can get them for $0.99, wait a second". And I said, let's just break this down. First of all, I'm the farmer, there's a cost in me being here. Transportation, labor costs that you don't even see. And yet you are talking to me about the cost and value of this food, and I'm looking at you with your Jordan shoes on, with your nails that you just got done, your hair you just got done, and you talking to me with your Samsung and iPhone, and so having that conversation is like hmmm.
Melissa Ceria [00:25:02] How did that go down?
Karen Washington [00:25:04] You know, we would laugh it off, but they said, "you know what? Ms. Washington, dag on, you know, you right." And for me having that conversation because farmers need to be paid, you know, the food is not free. And we don't have those conversations in low income neighborhoods because in their mind food is free. You know, if people come and they would do interviews in my neighborhood and I would say, come into my neighborhood with a project of economic development in wealth. You come into the neighborhood and you want to sign up people for social services like welfare and, soup kitchen line, instead of coming into my neighborhood and saying, "You know what? Hmm, I got an idea. How many of you want to, like, start a business?"
Melissa Ceria [00:25:57] So empowering people in the community, giving them agency.
Karen Washington [00:26:01] Giving them agency to own a business, having something that they can build generational wealth.
Melissa Ceria [00:26:09] Right. Your work Karen continues to focus on empowering others. You support black farmers, and you make sure that they can access capital that's crucial to allowing them to build their businesses. And you've said the question that we want to ask black farmers and black businesses is "how can we help you succeed?" What steps are you taking to ensure that success for BIPOC farmers?
Karen Washington [00:26:39] The biggest hurdle for BIPOC farmers getting started is access to capital, BIPOC farmers and businesses. And so here you have a farmer, you have a business, to start a business, they go into a bank. And the first thing the bank will maybe say, "hello, how are you?", but they want to see, okay, your business plan and your credit. If you have bad credit, they can say either "sorry, we can't give you a grant, we can't give you any loans, or we can give you loans, but the interest rate is going to be high". And so the question is, has never been let's look at your portfolio, your business plan, I see you may have problems with the credit, let's see how we, how we can help you succeed. So Black Farmer Fund does that. You know, we look at a business, we look at their portfolio, and we say to them, let's provide technical assistance. Let's find ways that we can make you successful. And that's the approach that works.
Melissa Ceria [00:27:48] Farming strikes me as a predominantly male world. But what message does it send that you are women championing these changes and are you attracting more women farmers?
Karen Washington [00:28:02] There's only women farmers, but people of color farmers. You know, just the 2022 census just came out, and across the board, farmers and farmland is diminishing. And so we have to look at the future. The average age of a farmer is between 58-62 years of age. You have a lot of farmers, their children don't want to farm, but yet you have this resiliency of young people that understand their history and their legacy. I'm going to sort of step back because growing up, for me, farming was slave work. It was a slave mentality. You didn't even want to think about farming, until for me, I was close to 40 years of age when all of a sudden I started to peel back some of the obstacles when it came to farming. Back into slavery. I had to go back to slavery. How we were brought here because, you know, again, the scenario was always here. We were brought here ignorant, dumb, you know, we had to be taught how to do things. And in fact, wait a second, we came from kings and queens. We knew how to grow food. That's part of who we are, agrarian people. And we came to this country to save itself, to grow the food, to feed this country. This country was built on the backs of enslaved and indigenous people. And no way could the settlers survive in a swamp climate in the low country of the South, whereby blacks knew how to grow food and listen, wait a second, wait a second, my people came here, and they grew the food, and their methods of farming were used, and their implements and tools, that knowledge, they brought here. It changed my world. It changed my world because no longer was I looking at my people in terms of servitude and looking down. All of a sudden, I looked at my people with a sense of pride. That all along this has been kept from me. This negativity, narrative of my people being brought here, my ancestors, my ancestral lineage of people being brought here when in fact they brought their knowledge of cuisine and knowledge of agriculture to this land. And as a result, I tell young black and brown people, be proud of your ancestral lineage. You have that running through your veins. Look at the color of your skin, the color of your skin is soil. You have a right to be here. And all of a sudden, you see this massive amount of young people that want to farm. They want to work in tandem with nature. They want to grow food that's nourishing for their body. They want to get close to the spiritual aspect of growing food or being close. Something that has been missing when it comes to the commercialization, exploitation, extraction of this capitalistic agricultural system. They want to go back to the basics of working with nature instead of against nature. And you see so many young people now turning because they see the way the food system is not working, it's not working. And they want to find a full system that works for them in their communities.
Melissa Ceria [00:31:40] That's a very encouraging sign for the future. I'm excited to hear that.
Karen Washington [00:31:45] I'm excited to.
Melissa Ceria [00:31:47] You've described what motivates these young individuals today, despite the challenges of rising costs, of biodiversity loss, even of climate change. Is it because they are coming together? And as you have said in the past, they are working in community.
Karen Washington [00:32:06] Without a doubt. Without a doubt. That's one thing I try to tell upcoming farmers with the little star is in their eyes and you just see, they are all like oh, like this, so excited. And it's like, wait a second, like, well first of all, I know you're excited, but let's be real. You need a farming community you can't farm alone. You know, you, you need to surround yourself with different aspects of what people can bring to the table when it comes to farming. Farming is a business, so you need people who have the business savvy. You need people who know about media, you know you need marketing. You need skills when it comes to soil management. There's so many things, variables that are out there that you need, but you need to work in community. And then once you establish your farm, then you need to also, your farm itself needs to be in communication and collaboration with other farms doing the same sort of work so that you're not alone. So when a crisis comes that you can then share the crisis with, with your other farmers, you can come together and see how you can mitigate the problem and have it solved.
Melissa Ceria [00:33:14] Are you hopeful about the future of farming?
Karen Washington [00:33:16] I am so hopeful about the future. As long as we can get over this hurdle of what is happening, the crisis around the world, this war mentality that is, is hanging over our heads. The majority of people want to be able to live their life in peace, in harmony, and in love. You know, I look at my life now and I got this word from the Black Farmer Fund when we had a day of abundance. I took that word abundance as part of my aim in life. That now, as I enter my, the decade of the 70s, I'm leaving behind the idea of deficit. And I am reaching, and going forward with the air of abundance. And so each and every day my outlook is on being positive. My outlook is on abundance. I've lived a lifetime in, and I want to concentrate on the abundance that I see in people, the abundance I see in the world, abundance in the planet, and find ways to really steer my heart in my soul, in in that world of giving.
Melissa Ceria [00:34:32] I have a closing question for you, Karen. How has this work changed you over time?
Karen Washington [00:34:38] It definitely has not hardened my heart, because there are ways that it can harden your heart. But what it has done for me is given me hope, is given me hope, because there is this next generation of young people that want to do right. They want to see a society where people care for each other. They want to break the chains of a capitalistic society that exploits people and extracts resources from our planet. You know, people talk about going to Mars and going into outer space, and it's like, well, wait a second. You know, we have, we have Earth here. And I see how young people want to take care of the earth. They have that urgency. They want to take care of the earth, but they want to do it in a way that benefits everyone, not one group of a 1% of people who have power and privilege, but they want it to be a place where they encourage diversity. They are not afraid of it. The old guard is afraid of diversity, young people, they are embracing it. And that's where I find my hope.
Melissa Ceria [00:35:47] And that must be a beautiful vision with which you can move confidently towards the future. I want to thank you for taking the time to speak with me. I wish you much success as you continue to advocate around these important issues, and I also wish you much abundance.
Karen Washington [00:36:06] Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.