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To survive and thrive: food, justice, and citified sovereignty in South L.A.

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To survive and thrive: food, justice, and citified sovereignty in South L.A.

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TO SURVIVE AND THRIVE:
FOOD, JUSTICE, AND CITIFIED SOVEREIGNTY IN SOUTH L.A.

By
Analena Hope Hassberg

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

AMERICAN STUDIES & ETHNICITY
December 16, 2015

ii

Dedication

To my daughter, Jasiri Ekenna Redway, for being my incentive and motivation.
Thank you for choosing me.

iii

Acknowledgements

This dissertation has been a labor of love, made possible by the generosity and support of
a constellation of people too vast to sufficiently acknowledge, but I will try.

To my dissertation committee, for believing in the importance and possibility of this
project, and my potential to complete it.

To my advisor Laura Pulido, thank you for reading endless drafts, writing countless
letters, and always being available. Your mentorship has been invaluable, and your
passion for social justice is contagious.

To Antwi Akom, for teaching me how to navigate the academy, and write my way into
the life I imagine.

To Clyde Woods and Grace Lee Boggs, for their rigorous examples.

To the USC Provost and the Ford Foundation, for financing my education through
multiple fellowships.

To the American Studies and Ethnicity Department, and everyone who helped me to
develop as a scholar: Robin D.G. Kelley (whose encyclopedic knowledge is an archive in
itself), Ruthie Wilson Gilmore (who taught me that sleep –like money– is cumulative),
Lanita Jacobs, Vicki Callahan, Alison Renteln, Nayan Shah, Kara Keeling, Christopher
Holmes Smith, Andrew Curtis, John Carlos Rowe, Dorinne Kondo, Manuel Pastor, Sarah
Banet-Weiser, Shana Redmond, Francille Rusan Wilson, Gaye Theresa Johnson: I
appreciate every word of advice and encouragement that helped me accomplish this goal.

To the ASE administrative dream team Kitty Lai, Jujuana Preston, and Sonia Rodriguez:
you all are the glue that holds our program together. Thank you for being forever kind
and infinitely helpful.

iv

To Michele Welsing, librarian extraordinaire at the Southern California Library, for your
enthusiasm and exhaustive knowledge.

To master gardener and mycologist Florence Nishida, gangsta gardener Ron Finley, and
everyone at L.A. Green Grounds –thank you for Victory Gardens, and collectivity.

To the L.A. Food Policy Council, the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network,
Growing Power, and Earthship Biotecture for real transformation.

A special thanks to Neelam Sharma, Dyane Pascall, Heather Fenney-Alexander, and
everyone at Community Services Unlimited for trusting me with your story, and letting
me become a part of it.

To my brilliant intellectual family, you are a collection of compassionate and empathetic
geniuses. My epic 2009 cohort is the reason I came to USC, and stayed. Jolie Chea,
David Stein, Amee Chew, May Alhassen, Celeste Menchaca, Jennifer DeClue, Anjali
Nath, Sriya Shrestha, Kenny Garcia, Nic Ramos, Priscilla Leiva, Jih-Fei Cheng, Crystal
Baik, Álvaro Márquez, Gretel Rosas, Laura Fugikawa, Jeffrey Govan, Emily Hobson,
Stephanie Sparling, Umayyah Cable, Colby Lens, Rebekah Garrison, Robert Eap, Garrett
Broad, Ryan Fukumori, Jessie Young, Damien Sojoyner, Jonathan Gomez, Steven
Osuna, Denise Sandoval, Ren-yo Hwang, Freda Fair, Molly Talcott, Melissa Whitley,
Thabisile Griffin: it has been an honor to learn with and from all of you.

To Jessi Quizar, for introducing me to your incredible Detroit family.

To Christina Heatherton and Jordan Camp, for maintaining my faith in revolution.

To my Govanzaki Family, (Yushi, Christiahn, and Kainami) for claypot stew, drums and
dance.

v

To Deborah al-Najjar and Naazneen Diwan for farmers markets, horoscopes, hot-tub
breaks, and A/C in the summer.

To Treva Ellison for acoustic guitar sessions on the porch, tinctures, and introvert
escapes.

To Kai M. Green for listening deeply, seeing me fully, and always encouraging me to
grow.

To Jewel Thais-Williams for raw green soup, and caring enough to call.

To my superhero Black woman midwives Racha Tahani-Lawler and Tanya Smith
Johnson for pre- and post-natal support as I birthed a baby and a dissertation.

To Yamin Chehin for clairvoyance and council.

To Alexis Pauline Gumbs and Patrisse Marie Cullors-Brignac for bona fide Black girl
magic.

To Andrea Penagos, Dalila Paola Mendez, Clare Fox, Angelica Tonatzin, Sheila
Govindarajan, Edyael Casaperalta, Neelam Pathikonda, Elisa Salcedo, Sofia Rose Smith,
Sammy Lyon, and all the wolves and witches who took me to the sea or the desert to
howl at the moon, and all the wild women who anointed me with oils and sage and copal
–your medicine has nurtured my soul.

To Tanisha Lopez, Sarah Ben-Israel, and Cindy Zeno: my lifelong friends turned sisters,
for always being proud of me, win or lose.

To my father Onyebuchi, my brothers Obinna and Ikenna, and my sister Uzoma for
reflecting new parts of myself back to me.

vi

To my sisters Amelia Joy and Viviana Demetria Grace, for inside jokes and
unconditional love.

To my mother, Jeannette Maya Susan Hassberg: my earliest and most passionate teacher.
Thank you for demonstrating how to appreciate (and stand up for) the natural, living
world.

Finally, to my partner (in crime, love, laughter, friendship, and most recently,
parenthood) Andrew Alexander Redway II, my success is beholden to your sacrifice and
patience. I have arrived at this major milestone because of the many meals you cooked,
and loads of laundry that you washed, and diapers that you changed so that I could write,
or sleep, or practice yoga to stay sane. I love you in new ways, every single day.

vii

Abstract
To Survive and Thrive: Food, Justice, and Citified Sovereignty in South L.A. uses
food as a lens to examine the relationship between the built urban environment,
differential neighborhood food access, and racialized health outcomes in Los Angeles. I
argue that food has been a revolutionary survival strategy in the region, where residents
of color employ creative strategies to reclaim their health and their neighborhoods. I offer
the term “citified sovereignty” to think through the extent to which autonomous food
environments are possible in already-constructed places like urban cities. Citified
sovereignty also functions to theorize the connection between local, U.S.-based food
justice efforts and global food sovereignty movements.
Through a mixed-methodology of historiography, participatory action research,
place-based analysis, and mapping, I investigate the following research questions: 1) to
what extent has “citified sovereignty” been possible in South Los Angeles? In other
words, how have South L.A. residents created functional, autonomous food systems? 2)
How has food justice in South L.A. extended beyond basic food access to include
processes of politicization, radicalization, community building, and place making? And
3) what are the possibilities for future urban food systems in South L.A.? To Survive and
Thrive uses stories from the margins of the healthy food movement to explore what can
be refracted through food at the intersections of race, place, space and health.

viii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedication ........................................................................................................................... ii

Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iii

Abstract ............................................................................................................................. vii

INTRODUCTION: To Survive and Thrive .........................................................................1

CHAPTER ONE: Foodscapes and Justice in South L.A. ..................................................43

CHAPTER TWO: Nurturing the Revolution .....................................................................84

CHAPTER THREE: Autonomous Roots ........................................................................117

CONCLUSION: Future Worlds ......................................................................................145

Appendix: Declaration of the Forum for Food Sovereignty ............................................178

Table 1. South Los Angeles Grocery Retail Stores by Address and Type ......................185

Works Referenced ............................................................................................................192

1

Introduction: To Survive and Thrive
This system came to value quantity over quality, uniformity over diversity,
and profit over stewardship. Farmers were encouraged to plant commodity
crops like soybeans or corn from fencerow to fencerow, and to get big or
get out. There was a relentless pursuit of cheapness over other values, and
food came to be made by automated machines and chemical processes.
Men in laboratories dreamed up foodstuffs that were calibrated with
precise amounts of sugar and fat, and that were delivered to customers by
airplanes and trucks in cardboard and plastic and cellophane. The farmer
became less important than the food scientist, the distributor, the marketer,
and the corporation (Allen 2012, 7-8).

Since World War II, technological and chemical advancements in agriculture
have helped industrial food production become the primary means of feeding the world.
The 21
st
century food system has come to operate like any other globalized commodity
market: edible provisions traverse thousands of miles across a vast food network before
being consumed by those who can afford them. While the modern food system is
incredibly profitable for players such as corporate agribusinesses, food distributors, and
large-scale farmers, it has had dire consequences for human and environmental health. To
keep crop yields high, food producers have become reliant on synthetic fertilizers and
pesticides, and increasingly, genetic engineering –all of which have been linked to birth
defects and cancers of all kinds (Vinson et al 2011, George and Shukla 2011, Reiss et al
2012, Séralini et al 2014). Furthermore, the Standard American Diet (SAD) consists of
excess fat, sugar, and sodium consumption –all of which contribute to a rise in food-
related illnesses, behavioral disorders, and premature death (Grotto and Zied 2010, Dong
et al 2015). Cattle production for beef and dairy products –staples of the SAD– is the
primary cause of greenhouse gases and worldwide water shortages (Carlsson-Kanyama
1998, Smith et al 2008, Jenkins 2012, Bernstein and Willett 2012). Meanwhile, known

2

allergens corn and wheat –also staples of the SAD—are mass-produced and heavily
subsidized by the U.S. government, ensuring their ever-present abundance and
availability in processed food products and across American farmlands (McMichael
2011, Clark et al 2012, Holt-Giménez and Patel 2012, Wilde 2013).
Every person
1
that requires clean air, water, and food to survive is impacted by
environmental degradation and globally oppressive market-based food systems.
However, despite our shared biological needs, the poor and people of color suffer
disproportionately more harm. Here in the United States, low-income urban
neighborhoods of color are generally characterized by an absence of fresh food and green
space, and an inundation of fast food, liquor, and other toxins like drugs, pollutants, and
violence. In inner cities like South Los Angeles, this phenomenon has contributed to a
culture of slow death in the form of obesity, hypertension, diabetes, and ailments like
asthma and cancer (Patel 2007, Shaw 2006, McClintock 2008, Mejia 2011). Beyond the
physical effects of high-calorie/ low-nutrient density food, the separation of people from
food system processes has created generations of consumers who are disconnected from
the land and from traditional practices of cultivating and eating. Indigenous spaces and
ways of being are also continuously and increasingly threatened by corporate food regime
practices such as the planting of monocultures
2
and the patenting of seeds.
Why Food?
The study of food is far from new. Food is central to all human life, regardless of
race or region. As such, the basic human right to food has been a particularly popular and

1 Corporations also have “personhood” under the U.S. Constitution, which affords them the same legal
protections as human beings. However, since they are not living entities, they do not bear the same
physiological health impacts of pollution, natural resource depletion, or food-related illness.
2 Monocultures refer to the cultivation of a single crop rather than a variety of different crops.

3

pressing topic of discourse for decades, gaining increased governmental attention at the
turn of the 21
st
century (Food and Agriculture Organization 1998, Beitz 2001, Kent
2005). For instance, in 2000, the Human Rights Council (formerly known as the United
Nations Commission on Human Rights) appointed an independent expert known as the
“Special Rapporteur” to examine and help enforce the right to food throughout the world.
In 2002, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) established an Intergovernmental
Working Group (IGWG) whose mission was to support Member Nations’ efforts to
achieve the right to adequate food (Mechlem 2004). Furthermore, there is much debate as
to whether governments or individuals are responsible for the delivery of the human right
to food (McCorquodale 1994, Bobbio 1996, Ingram 2008). Environmental sociologist
Monica White has argued that, where governments have failed, grassroots groups often
take the initiative to provide food as well as education within their respective
communities (White 2010).
Beyond rights discourses, scholars across disciplines (and cultures) have explored
virtually every aspect of food, from gastronomy and nutrition science (Hjalager and
Richards 2002), to the socio-cultural meanings of foodways and eating practices
(Bourdieu 1984, Mintz 1986, Bower 2007), and the experiences of immigrant
communities involved in farm labor (Daniel 1982, Calavita 1992, Guthman 2004).
Scholars who study the African Diaspora have examined African foodways throughout
the Black Atlantic (Carney 2009, Carney and Rosomoff 2011), as well as foodways
developed by enslaved Africans in bondage (Owens 1977, Covey and Eishnach 2009).
Additionally, agricultural food production was at the heart of sharecropping systems, and
desegregating lunch counters and public eateries was a fundamental organizing strategy

4

during the Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras (Levenstein 2003, Litwack 2010, Cooley
2015). Food has also been central to studies of colonialism (Friedmann 1978, 1987, 2005;
Dixon 1999). It illuminates the tension between commodity capitalism and human life
(Gereffi and Korzeniewicz 1994), and the processes of dispossession and exclusion that
accompany the transformation from subsistence crops to cash crops (Wood 2002, 2005).
Ethnographers have long examined food production and consumption at the micro
and macro level. These studies are often rooted in a particular geographic location or
community, or focused upon a specific commodity or process. For instance, Susanne
Friedberg (2004) examines the political, economic and cultural processes of globalization
through an analysis of transnational foodways and trade between France and Burkina
Faso, and Britain and Zambia respectively. Friedberg (2009) also traces the advent and
evolution of the refrigerator as a food preservation medium and modern household
appliance. Similarly, Sidney Mintz (1986) traces one commodity –sugar– to understand
the relationship between global economic processes and human nature. The study of
postcolonial, neoliberal, corporate food regimes has also been a popular area of inquiry
since sociologists Harriet Friedmann and Phillip McMichael developed what they call
“food regime theory” to understand food and agriculture systems in relation to global
capitalism, social movements, and new sites of resistance (Friedmann and McMichael
1989; Friedmann 1987, 1992, 1993, 2000, 2005, 2009; McMichael 1997, 2000, 2009,
2013).
In 1993, George Ritzer prophetically described the “McDonalization of Society”:
the homogenization of culture and the rationalization of the economic sphere as
ramifications of globalization. Since then, scholars across disciplines have used food to

5

explore the socio-economic and political implications of food and food systems
(McMichael 2000, Heynen 2005, Guthman 2008, McNally 2010), and to demystify the
connections between agri-business, government subsidies, and public health (Allen 2007;
Nestle 2010, 2013). In the first decade of the 21
st
century, against the backdrop of billion
dollar bank bailouts, subprime mortgage industry collapse, and soaring commodity prices
that forced millions of people around the world into poverty and starvation, food became
an effective medium to examine the contemporary neoliberal moment. For instance, the
unveiling of hidden food system processes has captivated mainstream audiences through
popular books like Michael Pollan’s (2006) The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History
of Four Meals, and Raj Patel’s (2008) Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the
World Food System which now appear on both coffee tables and syllabi. Tracie McMillan
(2012) offers an undercover exposé on American eating habits and health priorities in her
book The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, Farm Fields
and the Dinner Table, and documentaries like King Corn (2007), Food Inc. (2008), and
Food Matters (2008) explain the impact of a “profits over people” motive on our bodies
and lived experiences.
Food production, consumption, and distribution are central to contemporary social
crises. Using food as an analytic lens helps to make sense of “a world in which rice needs
armed guards… cars eat food and people eat oil, and no one ever gets full” (Marks 2010,
259, cited in Hughes et al 2010). There are various stakeholders within the postcolonial,
globalized urban U.S. food system; some are invested in preserving the corporate food
regime, while others call the American food industry into question and work toward
creating more just and equitable food systems. Alternative food systems are rapidly

6

taking shape, thanks in large part to growing public awareness about the health impacts
of overly processed food, and outrage over the exploitation of land, animals, and human
labor. For instance, “slow food” groups work to counter the rise of fast food and the
growing disconnect between people and their food sources while “local food” groups
combat globalization by promoting the purchase of foods grown by local farmers and
food producers (Kloppenburg et al 2000). Until recently, however, even alternative food
movements have failed to critically engage the role that racism plays in food access and
health outcomes, leaving the communities most impacted out of conversations about food
and health (Mares and Pena 2011, Slocum 2011).
In response to this omission, my own work uses a critical race analysis to
investigate 21
st
century U.S. urban food systems and food movements. I explore what
Julie Guthman (2011, 264) calls “alternatives to the alternatives”: race and class
conscious efforts to improve access to food and nutrition education in marginalized
communities. This project is in conversation with scholars who examine the role of race
and class in food access and health outcomes (Alkon and Ageyman 2011, Gottlieb and
Joshi 2010), urban agriculture’s potential to combat uneven capitalist development
(McClintock 2008), the global implications of exploitive food systems (Shiva 2005), and
food sovereignty as a healing framework to restore lost connections to the earth (Holt-
Giménez 2011). Food helps low-income urban communities of color to produce counter
narratives to (and in spite of) the conditions in which they live. It is a tool to create
alternative ways of living, being, and eating at various scales.
I am particularly invested in countering victim blame narratives that have
pathologized communities like South L.A. as intrinsically violent and culturally deficient

7

spaces of poor health. To Survive and Thrive redeems inner-city spaces from this narrow
view, and argues that disproportionate rates of food-related illness are structural and
environmental issues rather than consequences of cultural food practices (such as eating
soul food) and personal choice. Food can function both as a tool of oppression and a tool
of resistance within the same space. I am interested in the ways that South Los Angeles
residents and organizations have used food to resist structurally unequal urban
environments and to create sustainable new realities in historically oppressed spaces.
Why L.A.?
Los Angeles is a complex and incongruous city that encompasses both extremes
of poverty and prosperity within its 500 square miles, making it a particularly rich site to
explore the racial and class dynamics of local food systems. The “City of Angels” is
home to both ultra rich and exceedingly poor residents, and it is hard to believe that the
same warm, sprawling city where famous celebrities enjoy leisurely meals and shopping
sprees is also where working class people of color suffer disproportionate rates of police
abuse, unemployment, and preventable illness. In fact, the contradictory and dichotomous
nature of L.A.’s disparate environments is so glaring that, in many ways, it is not the
same city at all.
A cursory glance at the city’s racial and spatial composition reveals a strikingly
different quality of life for residents in different regions. For instance, the Westside of the
city is home to famously wealthy neighborhoods like Bel Air, which is 83% white with a
median household income of over $200,000 per year. West L.A. residents enjoy clean
parks, gated communities, bike routes and reliable buses, farmer’s markets with fresh
produce, and convenient grocery stores and restaurants with organic options. Meanwhile,

8

South L.A. is predominantly Latino and Black, with a median household income of about
$18,500 per year. South L.A. is home to several hazardous waste facilities, hundreds of
liquor stores, fast food joints as far as the eye can see, and only a handful of grocery
stores, whose fruits and vegetables are on the perpetual verge of spoiling. Even residents
of Baldwin Hills, often referred to as the “Black Beverly Hills” only earn about $37,000 a
year on average; a figure that pales in comparison to the actual, mostly-white Beverly
Hills, where the median annual income is around $100,000 per year
3
. Disparities like
these are evident in metropolitan areas across the country, but the wealth and health gap
in Los Angeles is especially stark.

3 Demographic and median income information: L.A. Times Mapping Project:
http://projects.latimes.com/mapping-la/about/ (2012).

9

“West L.A.” (L.A. Times Mapping Project 2015)

“South L.A.” (L.A. Times Mapping Project 2015)

10

“Estimated Income Comparison, West L.A. and South L.A.” (Policy Map 2015)

In terms of population density, there are over one million people in South Los
Angeles, compared to about 637,000 on the Westside. This means that the grocery stores
in South L.A. must serve over 2,000 more customers per day than the ones in West L.A.
Community Coalition (COCO) –a South L.A. based organization that works to transform
social and economic conditions in the region –found that nearly 75% of the restaurants in
South L.A. are fast food, and there are 9 liquor stores per square mile. There are also
nearly three times as many farmers markets on the Westside. It is no wonder, then, that
South L.A. residents are 2-3 times more likely to be obese than West L.A. residents, or
that South L.A. has a diabetes death rate 3.5 times higher than that of West L.A.
(Community Coalition 2013).

11

“Feast or Famine: The Glaring Inequality in Healthy Food Access”
(Community Coalition 2013)

According to COCO’s infographic, there are also liquor stores on the Westside
(two per square mile), and with a 41% rate of fast food outlets, West L.A. residents are
not exempt from food-related illness. For instance, in 2010, the leading cause of death in
the United States across all races, genders, and age groups was heart disease (Heron
2013). While this is due in part to tobacco use and elevated stress levels, there is also a
significant correlation between heart disease and high cholesterol and obesity: conditions
that result from saturated fat and high sodium intake. The deeper systemic issues
surrounding food production and consumption impact everyone on some level, but there
is a very obvious spatial and racial disparity disproportionately impacting health and life

12

chances in marginalized communities of color such as South L.A.
4

As a graduate student at the University of Southern California, I became
fascinated with the political economy of food in Los Angeles—a city whose processes of
neoliberal development, reorganization, and modernization function as a microcosm for
the nation (Bobo 2000, 3). I instantly noticed the abundance of fast food and junk food
and the dearth of fresh produce in the area just around my campus. Although it is a
multibillion-dollar institution, USC is situated in a low-income neighborhood of color, in
the heart of what is commonly known as a “food desert”. In fact, all of South L.A. is
considered a food desert, or an area where healthy food is limited (Ver Ploeg 2010). In
addition to a shortage of fresh fruits and vegetables, South L.A. is also inundated with
fast food, liquor, and junk food, which have led some to refer to the area as a “food
swamp”.

“Fast food on Figueroa Boulevard” (McNew 2008)

4
As Bobo et al (2002, 169) point out, “…a two-group model that focuses on the “ghettoization” of African
Americans vis-à-vis whites” is too limited for a multiethnic setting like Los Angeles. A regional
comparison of Los Angeles food environments takes into consideration the other ethnic groups besides
Black and white living in each area, and also recognizes that there are people of color on the Westside, as
well as whites in South L.A.

13

Although the food landscape in South L.A. is indeed uneven, using the term “food
desert” is a sweeping generalization that implies scarcity rather than abundance. It
portrays the entire region of South L.A. as a hopeless place, filled with victims in need of
saving, and it undermines the community’s agency and ability to transform their own
food environment. In a (2007) report examining the impact of food deserts on public
health in Chicago, George Kaplan points out that the word “desert”, when used as a noun,
refers to a place that is barren, unfruitful and devoid. It qualifies the place itself.
5

However, when used as a verb, the term “desert” means to abandon, leave, or turn one’s
back on (cited in Gallagher 2007). Calling South L.A. a food desert (noun) implies that
the place has no inherent value. Using desertion as a verb, however, paints a more
accurate picture of South L.A. as what Ruth Gilmore (2008) refers to as a “forgotten
place”, meaning that it has “experienced the abandonment characteristic of contemporary
capitalist and neoliberal state reorganization” (cited in Hale 2008, 31).
South L.A. is a
food desert, but not because of what it is inherently lacking. There are people and groups
working everyday to transform the food landscape. Rather, South L.A. has literally been
deserted, on a number of occasions, by industries and policies that make other parts of the
city so much more livable.
Urban neighborhoods and environments are always more complex than what
meets the eye. Just as there are also fast food restaurants and liquor stores in wealthy
neighborhoods on the Westside, there is also some healthy food in South L.A. As I
became more interested in uneven foodscapes and subsequent health outcomes, I began
to ask questions and attend local food events. I soon uncovered the threads of what

5
The term “blight” functions in a similar way. See Eagle (2007).

14

appeared to be an underground healthy food network in South Los Angeles, separate even
from the popular mainstream alternative food movement. The food network I was
discovering was made up of community gardens, worker owned cooperatives, food
distribution programs, and produce sections in the unlikeliest of places—such as
neighborhood liquor stores. All were aligned with the same mission: to provide healthy
food and health education to South L.A. residents who have been historically oppressed
and suffer disproportionately from health problems related to limited food access, such as
obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and death.
Food Justice as a Liberatory Framework
This project explores the notion of “food justice”, which is largely a U.S.-based
concept applied to urban areas. In its most simplified form, food justice is the idea that all
people have the right to healthy food, regardless of race or socioeconomic status.
6
Some
definitions also include fair labor practices for food producers, ethical treatment of
animals, and the availability of foods that are culturally relevant and sustainably
produced. For instance, NYC’s Just Food organization defines food justice as
“…communities exercising their right to grow, sell, and eat healthy food. Healthy food is
fresh, nutritious, affordable, culturally appropriate, and grown locally with care for the
well being of the land, workers, and animals. People practicing food justice leads to a
strong local food system, self-reliant communities, and a healthy environment” (Just
Food 2013). Practicing food justice takes many forms, including lobbying for policy
change, converting neighborhood retailers into healthy produce markets, planting urban
gardens, creating community supported agriculture (CSA) programs, and making health

6 Because the term “healthy” is so subjective, I am defining “healthy” foods as unprocessed foods, foods
that are organic or without pesticides, and foods that are hormone and chemical-free.

15

discourses accessible to the people who need them most.
Food justice as an idea and a movement takes its cues from historical organizing
and grassroots movements for civil rights and social justice; particularly, the urban U.S.-
based Environmental Justice Movement. Environmental justice (EJ) emerged in response
to the disproportionate toxicity of neighborhoods of color in the United States. Low-
income minority groups have historically lived closer to hazardous waste and toxic
chemicals and further from health-promoting green spaces than other groups (Bullard
1994, Pulido 1994). Additionally, these same minority groups are often alienated from
important conversations and decision making practices that determine the safety and
health of their neighborhoods (Albrecht 1995, Pellow 2007, Taylor 2009). The
Environmental Justice Movement represents the most marginalized and routinely
silenced actors in environmental struggles: the low-income families and individuals of
color living in excessively toxic neighborhoods throughout the United States (Bullard
1983, 2000; Pulido 2000; Pastor et al 2001; Cole and Foster 2001; Shrader-Frechette
O’Neill 2002; Pellow 2004, 2007; Gottlieb 2005).
The Environmental Justice Movement also provided a critical intervention into an
overwhelmingly white, upper-class group of mainstream environmentalists. The
racialization of environmentalism (and often the environment itself) as white
marginalizes the narratives and identities of people of color, who are assumed to be
indifferent to environmental issues (Finney 2014). This assumption dangerously justifies
the racist policies and practices that shape neighborhoods of color, which are often
heavily polluted and disproportionately inundated with fast food, liquor, drugs and
violence –a toxic imbalance that contributes to excessively high rates of food and stress-

16

related illnesses among low-income people of color (Adler and Newman 2002, Albrecht
2008, Freeman 2007, Romley et al. 2007). The Environmental Justice Movement helped
to redeem the “…intimate, ever-changing and significant relationship” that people of
color have historically had with the natural environment (Finney 2014, xvi).
7

Since gaining traction as a platform for social and political mobilization against
toxic hazards in the early 1980s, the EJ framework has expanded considerably to include
such concerns as housing, education, labor, citizenship, prison expansion, and healthy
food (Taylor 1997, Pulido and Pena 1998, Braz and Gilmore 2006, Bullard 2007, Wilson
et al. 2008, Fairburn et al. 2010, Akom 2011b). Food is not new to the EJ platform. In
fact, as food scholars Alkon and Ageyman (2011) argue, “issues of food, particularly
urban agriculture, have been of concern to environmental justice activists since at least
the 1980s. …Attention to food, however, was nascent compared to the environmental
justice movement’s more established concerns such as air pollution and waste
management” (Alkon and Ageyman 2011, 9). In other words, although food justice is
inherent to environmental justice, it has since developed into a stand-alone movement
with a particular set of concerns.
Environmental Justice seeks to create safe, toxin-free communities of color,
recognizing that racism and capitalism produce and sustain unjust environmental
conditions. In a similar vein, food justice seeks to create safe, toxin-free food
environments where poor people of color have agency over their personal dietary
practices and can impact food policy decisions (Allen 2008, Alkon and Noorgard 2009,
Mares and Pena 2010). Food justice as a theory and social movement has become the
focus of scholarly inquiry in a number of fields, such as Environmental Studies, Urban

7 Finney (2014) refers specifically to the African American relationship to the natural environment.

17

Planning, Geography, Economics, Anthropology, Ethnic Studies and Food Studies, to
name but a few. Scholars have examined the meanings, importance, and implications of
food justice as it relates to other social movements (Wekerle 2004), as it helps to counter
the reduction of citizens to consumers (Levkoe 2005), and as a potentially anti-capitalist
praxis (Guthman 2011). There is also scholarship that explores the potential for a food
justice framework to transform the built physical environment (Frumkin 2011), and as a
promising remedy for a global food system in crisis (Patel and Shattuck 2009, Patel 2009,
Holt-Giménez 2011).
Human Rights, Justice, Security, and Sovereignty
Amidst growing attention to issues of food, it has become difficult to differentiate
between terms, ideas and approaches. For instance, because food justice is largely
concerned with food availability, it is frequently conflated with “food security”. Like
food justice, food security is a term that evades fixed definition and is linked to a
multitude of other discourses such as sustainability, anti-hunger, public health policy, and
environmental justice (Gottlieb 1993, Gottlieb and Fischer 1996). Similarly, food security
is also anchored in conversations about neighborhood food access, transportation, and
equitable labor and land use policies (ibid). There are arguably hundreds of different
definitions of food security (Maxwell 1996, Mechlem 2004), but the one most widely
used comes from the World Food Summit of 1996, where it was determined that “food
security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to
sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for
an active and healthy life” (cited in Food and Agriculture Organization 2006). This
definition puts food security in close conversation with discourses on the right to food,

18

which is rooted in a legal, human rights framework.
Like food security, the right to food has been addressed and defined by a number
of different agencies and organizations (Alston and Tomaševski 1984). The Committee
on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) argues that everyone should have
“…physical and economic access at all times to food in adequate quantity and quality or
to means of its procurement” (Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights,
1999). Additionally, the HRC/UN Special Rapporteur defines the human right to food as
“…the right to have regular, permanent and unrestricted access, either directly or by
means of financial purchases, to quantitatively and qualitatively adequate and sufficient
food corresponding to the cultural traditions of the people to which the consumer
belongs, and which ensure a physical and mental, individual and collective, fulfilling and
dignified life free of fear” (Ziegler 2008).
While there is resemblance and overlap between the two notions, the right to food
is largely a legal concept, addressed in national and international law, while food security
is more of a policy goal, and as Mechlem (2004, 18) argues, “there is a difference
between promoting one or other policy to improve food security, and acknowledging that
individuals have a right to food”. Furthermore, many food security policies are
spearheaded by multinational corporations, whose programs undermine and destabilize
local economies and cause generations of debt, primarily through importing subsidized
seed into starving nations (Shiva 1991, 1993, 2000, 2003). Ecofeminist and physicist
Vandana Shiva (2000) writes, “for every dollar earned as foreign exchange from exports,
six to ten dollars’ worth of destruction takes place in the local economy” (Shiva 2000,
15). In other words, international food security programs that support a system of exports

19

threaten local agriculture and cost local communities more than they earn.
Food security programs in poor countries like Haiti and Jamaica involve the
International Monetary Fund and World Bank enforcing structural adjustment programs
(SAPs) which set terms and conditions that farmers must meet before they can receive
loans. These SAPs often force farmers to adjust their land-use and growing practices to
meet market demands. “Fertile land is diverted to grow export crops, small peasants are
displaced, and the biological diversity, which provided much of the poor’s food
entitlements, is eliminated and replaced by cash crop monocultures, or land-use systems
ill-suited to the ecology or to the provision of people’s food entitlements” (Shiva 1993,
78). Although it is packaged as biopolitical altruism, the IMF and World Bank’s
conditional assistance is more in service of global capitalism than human life, and
functions to exacerbate existing hunger and poverty in struggling nations through
neoliberal policies that privatizate natural resources such as food, water and health care
(Black 2001).
Here in the United States, there have been a number of state and federal programs
designed to promote domestic food security. Perhaps the largest and most popular of
these programs is the Obama administration’s $400 million Healthy Food Financing
Initiative (HFFI), which provides tax credits and grants for businesses looking to expand
into low-income areas. Championed by Michelle Obama, the HFFI is backed by the
United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and a number of corporate sponsors
including multi-billion dollar corporate giant Wal-Mart, which cites American food
insecurity as a basis for bringing its retail stores to poor neighborhoods throughout the
country. Superstores like Target have also begun to sell fruit and vegetables (albeit

20

mostly non-organic and not local) in response to inadequate food access. Corporate
retailers selling fruits, vegetables, and overall healthier food is indeed a major victory in
the bigger picture of food system reform. Superstores and big box stores are staples of the
American food terrain, especially in poor communities. Hence, they should absolutely be
accountable to fair food production as well as fair labor practices and ethical community
development and relationships. In areas where Wal-Mart is the only retailer in town, their
commitment to providing healthier food (and, more recently, to transforming the
conditions of the food industry altogether) is crucial to public health, and sets an
important precedent for other companies to follow. “With the company capturing a
staggering 25 percent of the grocery market, there’s no greater agent of change within our
country’s food system” (Pacelle 2015).
8

Although corporate efforts to feed hungry people are an important part of
improving access to food, they can also have a detrimental impact on local food
economies in a number of ways. First, big businesses with large marketing budgets and
seductively low prices deflect community dollars away from small businesses and local
vendors, effectively dominating the food market in these areas. As Holt-Giménez and
Wang (2011, 91) point out,
Indeed, because they produce poor health outcomes and drain precious
local food dollars from underserved communities, the pervasiveness of
programs that channel surplus industrial food to low-income people of
color could itself be considered an insidious form of racism. They also
tend to divert attention from the structural causes of food insecurity and

8 In May 2015, Wal-Mart announced that, in an effort to adopt more sustainable, ethical and humane
standards, it would be requiring all of its suppliers to implement practices consistent with the Five
Freedoms of animal welfare: Freedom from Hunger and Thirst, Freedom from Discomfort, Freedom from
Pain, Injury or Disease, Freedom to Express Normal Behavior, and Freedom from Fear and Distress (see:
http://corporate.walmartWal-Mart.com/article/position-on-farm-animal-welfare). Wal-Mart’s new animal
welfare policy has the potential to transform the entire food industry, and other companies will surely
follow suit.

21

diet-related disease, and can bind local food-security efforts to the very
industrial food system that is making their community members sick.

For families with high costs of living and minimal disposable income, buying cheap food
is an easy decision, and Wal-Mart in particular boasts the cheapest prices in town. The
superstore is able to offer such low prices in part because they pay their workers
substantially less than the national average for retail workers and block worker attempts
to unionize (Greenwald et al 2005, Bianco 2009). Moreover, although job creation is
cited as a boon, a 2009 study in Chicago found that a new Wal-Mart cost the region as
many jobs as it created by absorbing local retail sales and displacing small local
businesses (Center for Urban Research and Learning et al. 2009). Superstores like Wal-
Mart and Target also take up a great deal of valuable land in low-income neighborhoods,
exacerbating the difficulty of finding suitable growing space for potential urban
agriculture projects.
The Healthy Food Financing Initiative’s tax credits and grants are designed to
incentivize food system change, however, they have been most lucrative for already-
wealthy big businesses. Grassroots food justice groups have not enjoyed the same access
to the program’s funds and entitlements. For instance, non-profit food justice
organization Community Services Unlimited (CSU) has only received small incremental
grants for its community based programming. Although CSU continually applies for
large multi-million dollar government grants, they have yet to receive one. By funding
big multi-national retailers and not local ones, federal food programs like the HFFI
contribute to the uneven distribution of development in urban neighborhoods. This
sustains a community’s dependency on corporate food producers who crowd out local

22

competition, and thus actually removes agency from communities suffering from food
insecurity.
When corporate retailers fill the void in a food desert, the community in question
does indeed become more food secure in the sense that there is literally more food
available. However, the food is available for purchase from retailers that are more
concerned with profits than the well being of customers or laborers. Food security
essentially ensures that there will always be a profit-based entity ready to sell people the
food they need to survive, but the relationship between food and health is much more
nuanced than simply supplying fruits and vegetables as commodities. Are the fruits and
vegetables in question organic or conventionally produced? This is important because, if
the food has been grown conventionally, it has likely been exposed to chemicals and
pesticides. Is the food sourced from local farmers, or has it been imported from thousands
of miles away, and therefore potentially exposed to radiation to extend its shelf life?
These are the kinds of questions that are often omitted from food security discourses.
Some of the private companies and corporations that crown themselves as leaders
in the healthy food movement are well meaning and upstanding, but others use the
opportunity to engage in greenwashing: the process by which companies with unethical
or harmful business practices misleadingly promote themselves as environmentally
friendly to garner public support (Delmas and Burbano 2011, Cherry and Snierson 2012).
Part of the greenwashing strategy employed by deceptive corporations is to offer
generous funds to nonprofit organizations with the stipulation that the recipient display
the corporate name and logo, and make it known where the money came from. This is a
mutually beneficial arrangement when the funding company is genuinely dedicated to

23

improving environmental and social conditions, and would like its public image to reflect
its values. However, there are other cases where funding a particular project or initiative
helps corporations with inequitable practices to appear virtuous and community oriented.
In addition to maintaining the corporate food regime (whether deliberately or
unwittingly), food security projects also tend to leave out important issues of land
ownership and decision-making within the food system. When the people who actually
live in a neighborhood have no authority to influence the terms of the local food system,
outside interests determine everything from the placement (or lack) of retail outlets, to the
kinds of food that is available. Having decision-making power and agency within the
local food system allows people to be proactive about their health outcomes, and also to
develop a sense of place and a collective identity around food. Otherwise, the local food
system is dictated by profit-driven corporate entities.
Anti-hunger scholars Nik Heynen, Hilda Kurtz and Amy Trauger differentiate
between global food security and community food security. They argue that community
food security emerged as a framework in the early 1980s in response to the global food
security agenda’s failure to address long term, small-scale sustainable food production
(Heynen et al 2012). For decades, community food security projects have been concerned
with identifying and addressing the roots of food insecurity, and creating accessible local
food environments in marginalized communities (Ashman et al. 1993). Holt-Giménez
and Wang (2011, 86-87) explain,
The [Community Food Security] Coalition supports food-system
alternatives by advocating for new business models, cooperative
ownership of retail outlets, direct marketing, urban agriculture, community
gardens and urban greening projects, community nutrition education, and
community-driven agricultural research. By focusing on community, the
CFSC takes the notion of food security beyond long-standing

24

governmental programs that typically focus on individual and household
food access.

However, even community food security projects often lack a critical analysis of race and
class, and fail to critique the corporate food regime, which arguably maintains food
insecurity by producing foods that do not promote optimal health. As Devon Peña (2010)
explains, “…the absence of hunger does not necessarily imply access to safe and
culturally appropriate nutrition… One can have access to food, but if this involves a diet
of “super-sized” hamburgers and sugar-loaded sodas, then one is not experiencing a
healthy cuisine; indeed, the food we eat can kill us or make us chronically ill” (Peña
2010, 153).
9

Food security models in deindustrialized areas like South L.A. are effective
insofar as they ensure that people have adequate access to food for purchase. However,
this maintains the prevailing idea that food is less a basic human right as it is a
commodity for those who can afford it, and that people are simply consumers with little
control other than our buying power (Shiva 2000, 2006; Patel 2007; Huber 2011). Food
justice on the other hand works to permanently dismantle and rectify food inequality at
the level of policy, environment, and ideology. Instead of bringing more corporate sellers
into hungry communities, food justice is about creating more accountability for the
existing corporate food suppliers, and creating markets for local producers as well. Food
justice encourages people to become more than consumers, to question where their food
comes from and how it was produced, and to demand ethical treatment of animals and
laborers. Food justice is about food, but it is also inherently linked to other struggles,

9 There are a number of community food security projects that do promote a just food system through non-
commercial food production that preserves local culture. The Detroit Black Community Food Security
Network is one such example.

25

such as climate justice, economic justice, and racial and gender justice.
Unlike food security, which reinforces food for purchase, food justice seeks to
create a more equitable food system through structural change. This makes food justice a
potentially more powerful term and organizing strategy than food security, because “…no
amount of fresh produce will solve the underlying socioeconomic problems of chronic
unemployment, labor exploitation, crumbling public education, land and real estate
speculation, and violence visited upon underserved communities of color” (Holt-Giménez
and Wang 2011, 98). Food justice as articulated in this project goes beyond improving
access to food. It demands tangible food system change that transforms people’s material
relationship to food at every level: where it comes from, how it is produced, and how it
impacts our bodies and health.
One way to move beyond access to a more comprehensive understanding of a just
food system is to look toward the idea of “food sovereignty”. As Anthropologist Teresa
Mares and Sociologist Devon Peña argue,
The food justice movement should adopt an organizing frame of food
sovereignty [which]…would allow activists, scholars, and cultivators to
depart from focusing on issues of access (as dictated by a food security
approach), to a more comprehensive focus on entitlements to land,
decision making, and control over natural assets, structural conditions that
would allow for the process of developing autotopographies that tie
individual and collective identities to deep senses of place and healthy,
culturally appropriate food practices (Mares and Peña 2011, 202).

As Mares and Peña demonstrate, food justice is less synonymous with food security
rhetoric and more closely related to the idea of food sovereignty –a transformative and
revolutionary idea that is taking root among displaced and marginalized people the world
over. It is concerned with increasing the availability of healthy food in poor

26

neighborhoods and preventing food-related illnesses. It also illuminates the intersections
between income, race, and diet, and situates food in a larger context of capitalist
exploitation and premature death.
Citified Sovereignty in the Urban Core
In 2007 at the Forum for Food Sovereignty in Sélingué, Mali, more than 500
people from over 80 countries gathered in the village of Nyéléni to create a working
definition of “food sovereignty” to ground the growing global movement. These
representatives were farmers, fishers, indigenous peoples, women and children—
everyone from all walks of life with an investment in the future of food. The group
created an all-encompassing declaration to define food sovereignty, paraphrased as
follows:
Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally
appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable
methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.
It puts the aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute and
consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the
demands of markets and corporations. It defends the interests and
inclusion of the next generation. It offers a strategy to resist and dismantle
the current corporate trade and food regime, and directions for food,
farming, pastoral and fisheries systems determined by local producers and
users. Food sovereignty prioritises local and national economies and
markets and empowers peasant and family farmer-driven agriculture,
artisanal - fishing, pastoralist-led grazing, and food production,
distribution and consumption based on environmental, social and
economic sustainability. Food sovereignty promotes transparent trade that
guarantees just incomes to all peoples as well as the rights of consumers to
control their food and nutrition. It ensures that the rights to use and
manage lands, territories, waters, seeds, livestock and biodiversity are in
the hands of those of us who produce food. Food sovereignty implies new
social relations free of oppression and inequality between men and
women, peoples, racial groups, social and economic classes and
generations (Declaration of Nyéléni, 2007).
10

10
See Appendix for full declaration.

27

Food sovereignty qualifies the demand for a particular kind of food, and centers
people –farmers, distributors and eaters—over profits. Furthermore, it reaffirms food as a
basic human right. By allowing people to decide what is planted and produced, and to be
the beneficiaries of their own harvest, food sovereignty is ironically more effective than
food security at creating long-term food secure communities. Sovereign communities do
not have to worry or wonder where their next meal will come from, nor are they limited
to purchasing food from corporations that are more concerned with profits than with the
quality or health implications of their products (Patel 2009, Huber 2011). Food
sovereignty seeks to produce a self-sufficient and generative food system that puts the
means of production (and thus the means of re-production) in the hands of people, not
private companies.
Although corporate retailers do help alleviate food insecurity, a nuanced
examination of our food system reveals that not all food access is created equal. If we
settle for industrial food and do not advocate for locally owned and operated food
producers and growers in our communities, we will soon be dispossessed of more than
our physical land and space—we also risk losing our political agency and decision
making power. Food sovereignty is about ownership rather than access. It is local, slow
and deep –everything that modern agriculture is not (Mares and Peña 2011). It supports
the people who produce the food and those of us who eat it, all the while restoring the
disintegrating human connection to the earth and the soil. A food sovereignty framework
could potentially expand the availability of fresh produce in the city without reinforcing
our dependency on corporate agribusiness. A food sovereign community can sustain itself
and its future generations. Rather than simply making more mass produced, subsidized

28

corporate food available for purchase, food sovereignty challenges the privatization of the
global food system, and the neoliberal financial institutions that maintain economic and
health disparities (Patel 2010), and “calls into question the nature and extent of corporate
control of food systems and the modalities of power that shape industrial food production
at the expense of millions of smallholder and peasant farmers” (Kurtz 2015, 3). This
critical systemic analysis makes food sovereignty a more transformational idea than food
security with regard to land use and environmental ethics as well.
Food sovereignty developed as an organizing principle in response to the rise of
large-scale industrial agriculture and the displacement of small farmers and agricultural
producers in the developing world. The global food sovereignty movement aims to build
a collective movement by “…forging alliances, supporting each others’ struggles and
extending our solidarity, strengths, and creativity to peoples all over the world” (Nyéléni
Declaration, 2007). Although food sovereignty includes all struggles regardless of the
location or scale at which they are happening, it has been particularly concerned with
rural populations and environments, and has been richly theorized at the global scale
(Patel 2007, Shiva 2008, Wittman et al 2010). There is less work that links the theory to
local, urban food justice movements here in the United States. Perhaps this is because
sovereignty in the city can seem impossible.
L.A. is heavily urbanized and industrialized, and despite its infamous sprawling
terrain, there is limited growing space. Low-income residents in particular rarely own the
land on which they “work, live, and play” (Bullard 2000). Land is often inaccessible,
privatized, and contested, and there are significant structural barriers to creating
sustainable, self-sufficient communities that grow their own food. In South L.A., even

29

liberatory urban agriculture projects like community gardens are restricted by the amount
of physical space they have to operate in, and by whether or not the stewards of the
garden actually own the plot they are farming on. Another barrier is whether low-income
working class people have the time and energy to invest in a garden project. Cultivating
food is a demanding and often grueling practice. While it can be rewarding, it is rather
unlikely that fruits and veggies can meet all of one’s nutritional needs. Even vegans with
an interest in healthy dietary practices would likely have to supplement with other foods,
which can make urban agriculture seem like more trouble than it is worth.
The majority of South L.A. residents and activists who I have interviewed about
food systems, food access, and health outcomes have indicated that they want better
access to fresh healthy food for themselves and their families; however, they are not
always aware or interested in where this better food comes from, or the underlying
politics behind its production. I learned early in my research that it is not safe to assume
that everyone sees the merit of inner-city food projects or community based development.
Furthermore, I found that many people believe improved access to corporate food
retailers is good enough, and some of them would rather have a new Smart & Final or
Costco than a community farm (Tlatoa 2013). In other words, “growing your own” is not
a universally appealing idea.
The concept and praxis of food sovereignty demands a different kind of attention
in the urban core; hence, I offer the term “citified sovereignty” to theorize local struggles
for self-determination and autonomous food environments in urban areas. Adding
“citified” puts pressure on food sovereignty to imagine what kinds of revolutionary food
systems are possible in urban spaces where people cannot make the same claims to space

30

as in rural environments. Citified sovereignty also pushes urban food justice efforts
toward less reformist and more revolutionary ends, i.e.: deconstructing and transforming
the ideological underpinnings of the food system rather than simply increasing access to
food commodities.
Food production practices vary greatly from place to place, and people have
different stakes in the food system depending on their level of income, time, skill, and
access to land and information. Unlike rural places in other parts of the world, food
sovereignty in South L.A. is not a matter of acres and hectares of land. Sometimes there
are only a few potted plants on a resident’s front porch, or a few square feet of parkway
space between the sidewalk and the street. For instance, in October 2010, TED Talk
sensation and guerilla gardener Ron Finley planted a beautiful edible garden in the
parkway space between the sidewalk and the street outside of his South L.A. home.

“Ron Finley’s Parkway Garden” (Finley 2015).

31

The garden beautified the otherwise bleak boulevard, and brought fresh (and free)
vegetables to a neighborhood characterized by its lack of healthy food. Despite its public
use value, however, Finley was cited and fined by the city of L.A., and ordered to remove
the garden. As Finley recalls,
In May 2011, I got a citation to remove my garden from the city’s Bureau
of Street Services—it said that, since the city has jurisdiction over
parkways, I had two options: clear the “overgrown vegetation” or
purchase a $400 permit. I didn’t do either, of course. The citation turned
into a warrant. I got an arrest warrant for beautifying my street—a warrant
for planting a carrot! (Finley 2015b).

Finley and his group L.A. Green Grounds garnered community support through online
petitions and newspaper articles. After much press and publicity, City Councilman Herb
Wesson got involved in support of the parkway crops, and in 2013, the L.A. City Council
voted to allow Los Angeles residents to plant parkway gardens in the city (Arnold 2015,
Finley 2015b). Planting food is the primary way that South L.A. residents like Ron Finley
and groups like L.A. Green Grounds exercise control over the rigid built environment.
Finley’s parkway garden and the South L.A. community’s mobilization to preserve it
demonstrates the struggle for citified sovereignty. Similarly, when migrants from Central
and South America planted a fourteen-acre communal farm in the heart of South L.A. and
challenged the oppressive urban land use policies that impact public health, they were
struggling to achieve citified sovereignty at a slightly larger scale.
Citified sovereignty is about applying a food sovereignty framework (which is
usually applied to the rural) to urban food justice activism and food movement building.
However, the creation of self-sufficient communities built around producing their own

32

food or owning the means of production in the urban core is not always about complete
autonomy. In other words, self-sufficiency in Los Angeles depends on developing new
relationships with independent farmers throughout L.A. County, who live and work just
outside the city, or in the Central Valley. Citified sovereignty is about creating
autonomous food-producing spaces in the city, but urban food production relies heavily
upon local rural agriculture, to which it is supplementary at best. Autonomy and local
farming in this context is not simply about the city; it is also about cooperation and
collaboration with the rural. Even with new strategies for self-sufficiency, the city needs
the countryside. In many ways, citified sovereignty evokes a restoration of old ways –a
hearkening back to moments when the rural and the urban were not so hermetically
sealed –and an exploration of new ways as well. If farms and gardens in the city of Los
Angeles were ever commonplace, and if there could once be self-sufficient rural black
farming towns such as Allensworth, California, then surely new forms of autonomy are
possible.
11

I developed the idea of citified sovereignty in conversation with sociologist David
Pellow’s framework of “the global south in the north”, in which he explores the
experiences of marginalized groups of color in industrialized nations with regard to
environmental racism. In a similar vein, I examine the predicament of South L.A.
residents whose food access and health outcomes are starkly different from their wealthy
neighbors in other parts of the city. Additionally, citified sovereignty engages the concept
of “eco-apartheid”—a systems theory which analyzes how different systems like health,

11
Located in Central California between Fresno and Bakersfield, Allensworth is the only California town
to be founded, financed, and governed by African Americans. A once thriving community, Allensworth
faced several political and economic crises, which led to its eventual decline. The town has since been
preserved as the Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park.

33

housing, education and transportation interact over time to produce differently racialized
spaces (powell 2008, Jones 2008, Akom 2011b). Eco-apartheid identifies structural
racism as a root cause of differential food access, health outcomes, and racial and class
demographics. In Los Angeles for instance, eco-apartheid is evident in the simultaneous
presence of affluent white areas with good schools and grocery stores, and poor
neighborhoods of color with high rates of violence, drug abuse, and low-quality food.
Citified sovereignty also builds on Devon Peña’s theory of autonomy, or “the
ability of local cultures to assert control over their own space (and places)” (Peña 2003,
11). Put simply, citified sovereignty is self-determination and place making in what Peña
(2003) would call an “already-made place”: in this case, a rigidly structured city with a
complex set of geographical, political, and economic conditions. Alkon and Agyeman
(2011) argue that efforts toward food autonomy are complex and far ranging, from
demands for separate physical spaces, to cyber spaces exclusively for vegans of color.
Citified sovereignty composes a narrative to think through urban land use and claims on
city space, and efforts toward autonomy within the city. It links the place-specific
conditions of South L.A. to global movements for land and livelihood.
Citified sovereignty is also a generative framework that imagines new ways for
oppressed groups to move beyond surviving and into thriving. It allows for the possibility
of urban food systems that are not exclusively dependent on the state and private
industry, but are instead autonomous and self-sustaining. Urban theorist and historian
Mike Davis suggests that Los Angeles has “come to play the double role of utopia and
dystopia for advanced capitalism” (Davis 2006, 18). Citified sovereignty explores the
utopias within these dystopias, and the ways that the local and global are connected

34

through food, shared oppressions, and resistance efforts. Nonetheless, although food
sovereignty and citified sovereignty call for a more revolutionary transformation of food
systems than food security, there are limitations and challenges to these frameworks as
well. Without power, sovereignty is little more than a theory at best, and a slogan at
worst. This dissertation explores some of the tensions and pressures surrounding
struggles for citified sovereignty, and the potential to actualize it in the years to come.
Theory, Methodology, and Research Questions
To Survive and Thrive: Food, Justice, and Citified Sovereignty in South L.A.
examines the liberatory possibility of what I call citified sovereignty, as well as its
limitations. What are the various shapes that it takes? How has it been successful? What
can be gleaned from instances where it has failed? More specifically, I explore the
following research questions: 1) to what extent has “citified sovereignty” been possible in
South Los Angeles? In other words, how have South L.A. residents created functional,
autonomous food systems? 2) How has food justice in South L.A. extended beyond basic
food access to include processes of politicization, radicalization, community building,
and place making? And 3) what are the possibilities for future urban food systems in
South L.A.?
To answer these questions, I utilize a mixed-methodology of historiography,
participatory action research, place-based analysis, and mapping to illustrate the social
and physical nature of South L.A.’s uneven foodscape. Today’s urban food justice efforts
are part of a genealogy of freedom struggles that used food to transform and reclaim
Black and Brown communities. In South Los Angeles for instance, contemporary
initiatives to create community gardens within food deserts, and collectively owned and

35

operated co-ops in marginalized areas are all direct or indirect outgrowths of efforts by
revolutionary groups like the Black Panthers and the South Central Farmers, who created
autonomous food systems for the most oppressed Angelenos decades ago. I conducted
interviews with South L.A. food justice organizations, policy makers, and residents, and I
explored local archives that document historic food justice efforts and the extent to which
citified sovereignty has been possible in the city. I also sought out people and groups
using food to transform cities in other parts of the country to investigate what they were
doing, how and why it was working, and whether it could apply to L.A. in some shape or
form. Furthermore, I created original maps of South L.A.’s foodscape, and a table of the
different kinds of grocery retailers in the region by address and type, and I explored
inventive, sustainable design technologies that could revolutionize agriculture, housing,
and work in the 21
st
century and beyond.
My entry into this work began as an undergraduate at San Francisco State
University, where I became part of the Cesar Chavez Research Institute and had the
opportunity to work as a lead research assistant on several groundbreaking research
projects. The “Green Metropolis Opportunity Project” first introduced me to
Environmental Justice Theory, GIS mapping, and other quantitative methods to examine
race, place, and industrial pollution in the San Francisco Bay Area. Similarly, the “Black
Out-Migration Project” and the “Revolutionary Urbanism Project” explored the
transformation of public urban spaces and the shifting practices of meaning making in
low-income Black communities. Conducting research and teaching at the nexus of
gentrification and environmental racism (and discovering how difficult it was to obtain
healthy food for myself upon moving to South L.A.) inspired me to develop an

36

environmental justice framework to examine the proximity of South L.A. residents to
food-related “hazards” such as liquor stores and fast food restaurants, and their
simultaneous distance from food-related “goods” like fresh fruits and vegetables. I found
that food access and health outcomes correlate directly with racial and class
demographics in Los Angeles, and I was inspired to explore the socio-economic, physical
and ideological factors that have shaped food practices in low-income South L.A.
neighborhoods.
This dissertation is partially an auto-ethnographic study in which I use my own
deep engagement doing food justice work in South L.A. to tell stories from the margins
of the city’s healthy food movement, where residents of color (who lack the leisure time
and capital to “vote with their forks” or buy organic) apply other creative strategies to
reclaim their health. I sought out and became involved with the people and groups
actively working to reclaim healthy bodies, healthy food, and healthy communities. I
found several organizations doing food justice work in a comprehensive way: moving
beyond limiting discourses of access and food availability, and toward a critique of the
corporate food system and its alternatives. These groups are supporting local farmers and
businesses, and helping South L.A. residents to shift their dependence on industrial food.
My experiences have taught me that communities of color work hard to resist oppressive
environments on a daily basis. South L.A. residents in particular have responded to
structurally unequal and toxic urban environments by developing liberatory alternative
food systems.
My immersion in the South Los Angeles food justice community has allowed me
to build trust and rapport with the people and organizations in the region, and I have

37

developed relationships that have given me insider access and perspective that other
researchers may not have. This dissertation has been profoundly informed by my own
experiences doing pioneering food justice work in South Los Angeles. For instance, I am
an active board member of Community Services Unlimited (CSU), a local 501C3 that
uses food to create sustainable and self-sufficient communities in South Los Angeles. I
began volunteering with CSU in 2010, and I came on as a board member in 2012. In both
roles, I helped to organize events and fundraise with the group, and I did not begin to ask
questions or conduct interviews for this project until I had built a rapport with their staff
and interns, and the residents that they serve. Additionally, I served as a steering
committee member for the L.A. Food Policy Council’s Community Market Conversion
program, which strives to turn the plethora of liquor stores and convenience stores in
South L.A. into healthy food retailers, and I also organized several garden projects with
L.A. Green Grounds: a local grassroots organization that helps South L.A. residents to
plant edible gardens in their yards and parkways.
Because food justice work (like every kind of social justice work) depends on as
many people as possible contributing their time and energy to achieve the desired results,
I made sure to engage with the organizations I discuss in this project in a deep and
meaningful way. I wanted to make sure that I was engaging reciprocally and giving back
as much as I put in, rather than taking up space in the background or distracting people
with interview questions. Critical Ethnography is the process of critical theory in action,
in which “…social life is represented and analyzed for the political purpose of
overcoming social oppression” (Habermas 1972, cited in Madison 2005, 6). Critical
ethnographers, then, are advocates for social justice and the transformation of hegemonic

38

conditions. As such, I take quite seriously my accountability to the communities that I
study.
In some instances throughout this project I use the collective term “we” to discuss
the organizations I work with, and at other moments I use “they”. My use of “we” is in
reference to projects that I have specifically worked on while “they” is reserved for
endeavors that either preceded my involvement or those in which I played a minimal or
secondary role. Additionally, while this project has particular concerns with Blackness
and Black people, South Los Angeles is nearly 60% Latin@, so the spatial nature of a
project about food justice in South Los Angeles requires that my analysis also include the
experiences of Latin@ residents. Rather than using race exclusively as an analytic, I also
use place to contextualize the ways that a structurally uneven built environment produces
racialized health outcomes in the city of L.A. While some food justice efforts in the U.S.
are explicitly Black projects, food justice in South L.A. is currently undertaken by multi-
racial organizations, and even those efforts rooted in Black radical traditions are multi-
ethnic in their makeup today. I also choose to capitalize “Black” and “Brown” when used
as ethnic identities.
Chapter Breakdown
In the chapters that follow, I use food as a lens to examine urban development,
structural racism, activism, and resilience in South L.A. In Chapter One: “Foodscapes
and Justice in South L.A.”, I use my own deep engagement with food justice groups in
South Los Angeles to assess the uneven food landscape or “foodscape”: namely, how it
came to be, how it impacts food access and health outcomes in the region, and how local
organizations are working to transform it. I examine the processes of migration that

39

brought millions of Black people to California from the southern United States during
World War II to work in shipyards and factories, arguing that this geographical shift from
rural agricultural life to urban industrial life transformed Black relationships to food and
food production. Additionally, I explore the processes that shaped South L.A.’s uneven
development/underdevelopment, such as discrimination in the housing market, and
instances of civil unrest, which drove supermarkets out of the region on two different
occasions. This chapter also considers the policies and programs that have helped make
citified sovereignty and food justice tangible in South L.A., and the ongoing local efforts
to transform the foodscape into one that is conducive to health and wellness.
Chapter Two “Nurturing the Revolution” explores the Southern California
Chapter of the Black Panther Party through archival research and interviews, and frames
the Party’s food-related survival programs as important precursors to food justice work
taking place in South L.A. at present. I trace the survival programs through Community
Services Unlimited, a 501C3 organization that was founded by the Southern California
Party Chapter in 1977 and has continued to serve the people of South L.A. by promoting
self-reliance and sustainability through urban farming, low-cost produce, and youth
development programs. This chapter illustrates how food justice can extend beyond
meeting physical needs for sustenance. The Panthers used food to politicize and
radicalize Black people, and build a shared identity in South L.A. and across the country.
CSU also uses food to instill a sense of place and build community, however, they
provide healthy, plant-based food to offset the impacts of food related illness in South
L.A. CSU maintains the Panther motto of “serving the people, body and soul”, but their

40

approach and the socio-political meaning of the food is different, shaped by today’s
present conditions.
Chapter Three “Autonomous Roots” considers contemporary urban agriculture
efforts to reclaim public city space, address structural inequalities, and preserve cultural
histories. I begin with the temporary sovereign presence of L.A.’s fourteen-acre South
Central Farm, and its highly publicized destruction: an event that shifted public
consciousness around the uses of urban space on a national and international scale. For
over a decade, approximately 350 families from countries throughout Latin America
transformed the once empty lot into a lush, thriving paradise with over 150 different
edible and medicinal plant species. Moreover, beyond the physical crops, the South
Central Farmers were also cultivating a sense of place and community that they carried
with them from their places of origin. The very existence of the farm challenged the
politics of urban planning and policy making, and transformed the built urban
environment to fit the unique physical and cultural needs of the community. I argue in
this chapter that the South Central Farm helped lay the foundation for food justice efforts
in South L.A. –particularly those related to urban agriculture and the transformative
potential of taking back public city spaces. “Autonomous Roots” considers the extent to
which autonomous urban food systems are possible, the forces that threaten to shut these
efforts down or appropriate them, and the state of constant flux surrounding urban
agriculture. Using the South Central Farm as a point of departure, I examine other farm-
centered food justice projects that attempt to enact even a temporary sense of citified
sovereignty in South Los Angeles.

41

Lastly, the conclusion “Future Worlds” asks what kinds of sustainable, healthy
futures are possible in deindustrialized cities, where limited and unusable urban space
requires creative strategies. While traditional plants-in-the-ground agriculture is a critical
part of sustainable future food systems, most of us who live in cities do not own the land
we stand and plant on, thus we are always vulnerable to losing our homes, farms and
gardens. California also experiences consistent water shortages, and even small-scale
farming is incredibly water intensive. New, truly sustainable food systems are critical to
offset increasingly unpredictable futures. “Future Worlds” examines alternative ways to
produce food within rigid city structures. I use citified sovereignty as a generative
concept in this chapter to link local struggles for food justice to other struggles for food,
land, and livelihood in other parts of the country and the world. I also explore sustainable
system theories like permaculture, aquaponics, and composting, and design principles
like sustainable housing, which can range in size and complexity, and operate at virtually
any scale. In short, this chapter considers the innovative potential for abundant, non-
dystopic futures in South L.A. and beyond.
In theory, local food systems can sustain local communities and feed entire
neighborhoods. Self-sustaining agriculture systems are relatively simple to build and to
maintain, and a growing number of people are ready and excited for new ways of being
and eating in the urban core. However, there is a profit-based corporate food regime with
much invested in preserving the global food system, regardless of the environmental and
societal ills that it produces. Neoliberal advanced capitalism makes ideas of sovereignty
and autonomy seem merely symbolic, elusive, and aspirational at best. Utopian food
projects are inspiring, but they are also vulnerable—particularly at the grassroots level—

42

and prone to failure and appropriation. In deindustrialized urban spaces like South Los
Angeles, citified sovereignty may always be like the perpetual carrot dangling in front of
a hamster’s wheel, just out of reach. This can make future efforts feel futile, and success
short-lived. Nonetheless, To Survive and Thrive: Food, Justice, and Citified Sovereignty
in South L.A. suggests that even those efforts that do not turn out as planned are still
impactful, and they make space for new endeavors. As with all struggles for justice, the
road to success is paved with failures and setbacks, but I remain hopeful. As novelist and
activist Arundhdati Roy once said in her (2003) speech “Confronting Empire”, “Another
world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing”.

43

Chapter One: Foodscapes and Justice in South L.A.

Migration, Modernity, and the Changing Nature of Foodways
California has long been a leading food producer. With its fertile soil and
temperate year-round weather, the region grows nearly half of the nation’s fruits,
vegetables and nuts. Certain commercial crops such as almonds, pomegranates, and
artichokes are produced almost exclusively in California, and then exported around the
world (California Department of Food and Agriculture 2011). Even a novice gardener
will notice how quickly and abundantly plants grow in the warm Los Angeles sunshine,
and there seem to be an endless number of vacant lots perfect for shared community
gardens. However, food insecurity and hunger persists in California, in spite of the
region’s “highly productive and profitable agricultural landscape” (Brown and Getz
2011, cited in Alkon and Agyeman 2011, p. 121). Moreover, many South Angelenos
12

come from families with long histories and indigenous traditions connecting them to the
soil and the medicinal qualities of herbs and plants. How, then, did the city’s Black and
Brown populations become so disproportionately susceptible to food related illness and
premature death? I suggest that L.A.’s striking racial, socioeconomic and health
disparities are deeply intertwined with processes of urban development, migration,
racialization, and resistance.
World War II was a major catalyst for the changing economic and racial
demographics of Los Angeles (Garcia 2001; Sides 2003; Pulido 2006, 36), and in a few
short decades, industrialization and modernization created a widening chasm between the
people, the land, and the food (production and consumption). This was especially true for

12 “Angeleno” refers to inhabitants of Los Angeles.

44

Black people traveling westward to participate in the wartime boom. The majority of
Black Californians can trace their roots to the American South: particularly Texas and
Louisiana (Dodson and Diouf 2004). Between 1940 and 1970, millions of Black people
left the South for West Coast destinations such as Los Angeles and the San Francisco
Bay Area. “World War II had set off a virtual stampede. In all of California, there had
been only 124,306 colored people in 1940, before the United States entered the war. But
during the rest of that decade, the population almost quadrupled –337,866 more hopeful
souls flooded into California for the shipyard jobs that came with the wartime and
postwar economy” (Wilkerson 2010, 187). Even Black Panther Party cofounder Huey
Newton came to Oakland, California from Monroe, Louisiana in 1943 (ibid).
13

Prior to the Great Migration, California’s economy had been largely based on
agriculture and food production, but the war lured millions to come and work in an
exciting new machine-based economy (Boggs 1986, cited in Boggs and Ward 2011).
More than just a geographical shift from rural to urban, this exodus was also an
ideological turn away from the provincial in favor of modernity and development. With
industrialization came what geographer Neil Smith (2008, 50) calls a “…false ideological
dualism of nature and society”. Within this dichotomy, nature is subordinated and even
erased by processes of modernity—particularly with regard to agriculture and food
networks (Goodman 2002, Whit 1999). The physical relocation of Black bodies and
identities produced ideological shifts in Black Americans’ relationships to land, food and
health. As “urban” became synonymous with “modern”, the work of agriculture became

13
The largest migration in American history was the Dust Bowl migration during the 1930s, in which 2.5
million people moved out of the Plains states due to severe drought and dust storms. An estimated 300,000
white migrants flooded into California, displacing Mexican farmworkers and redefining relationships to
land and food (Steinbeck 2006).

45

stigmatized and unsophisticated. Consequently, Black cultural food practices were
continuously and permanently altered by new technologies of production and ideologies
of modernity and progress. Historian and food scholar Douglass Opie (2010, 57) argues
that migration and development reshaped traditional African and Caribbean foodways,
citing a lack of space for gardens, a colder climate, and new cooking technologies like
modern stoves. Opie writes, “In the South, people ate peas and beans of one kind or
another two to three times a week. In the North, people ate them only occasionally and
then often ate the canned variety because of the limited access to land and because the
colder climatic conditions restricted their ability to grown inexpensive garden
vegetables”.
Industrialization also shifted food practices in urban settings with the rise of
processed foods, which had a lasting impact on food purchasing and preparation in Black
urban communities.
14
People not only worked in food-product canning and processing
plants, but they also increasingly purchased canned and processed foods to feed to their
families. In addition to the mechanization of food and the introduction of processed
foods, there was suddenly ubiquitous concrete where there used to be soil, and smog
where there was once clean air. For people with a rich agricultural history both in the
United States and throughout the diaspora, this radically different urban environment
produced a material and ideological shift, which severely impacted Black health
outcomes, life chances and livelihood. In just a few short decades, Black Californians
found themselves estranged from generations of traditional food practices and foodways.

14
The impact of industry on Black Angeleno’s relationships to food production is symbolized in Charles
Burnett’s 1978 film Killer of Sheep, in which the main character, Stan, works long hours for low pay at a
Watts slaughterhouse, surrounded by endless, monotonous carnage.

46

While estrangement from cultural eating habits is one reason for poor health
outcomes in Black communities, Black foodways themselves are regularly cited as the
culprit. Although Black foodways are vast and complex, they are generally reduced to
discussions of “soul food”, which is often dismissed as mere scraps from the master’s
table and lacking any real cultural value. Diets high in saturated fat, sodium, and sugar,
and lacking in nutrient density have been shown to produce adverse health outcomes
(Davis and Melina 2000, Dunn‐Emke et al 2001, Schlosser 2012). Needless to say, many
soul food dishes fit this description. Some of soul food’s most stringent detractors are, in
fact, Black people. For instance, after many years of soul food consumption, Black
comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory swore off the cuisine in favor of a fruit
and vegetable-based diet when he found a correlation between his regular consumption of
the cuisine and his own weight and health (Gregory 1974).
15
Similarly, Black cultural
nationalist Amiri Baraka, once a faithful advocate of soul food and its cultural
importance, ultimately “…rejected traditional, southern food practices as harmful to
communal health” (Wallach 2014, 16). Furthermore, Elijah Muhammad and the Nation
of Islam (NOI) are known for their “condemnation of traditional southern black dietary
practices” as physically and mentally damaging to Black people (Witt 2004, cited in
Wallach 2014, 10).
Today’s commodified version of soul food has indeed been reduced to a few fatty,
salty, sugary dishes, and thus contributes to racialized health disparities. However, many
scholars argue that “real” soul food is actually a fusion of traditional African cooking
methods and new European and Native American practices (Yentsch 2007, cited in

15
Gregory (1974) also renounced meat in partucular, due to ethical resrvations about killing animals.

47

Bower 2007, 61). According to William Whit (2007), “virtually all Africans who came to
the United States, whether before or after the formation of the Republic, came from what
were food-growing societies”, and thus their cultural foods and food practices are rich
and varied (cited in Bower 2007, 47). Moreover, even when enslaved, Africans regularly
maintained gardens to supplement their diets with vegetables of all kinds (Whit 2007,
Hurt 2013).
Historian and Black Studies scholar Jennifer Jensen Wallach writes, “food habits
are always markers of identity and can be decoded to reveal much about the eater’s
social, environmental, and cultural world” (Wallach 2014, 29). For Black eaters, food is
all at once social, spiritual, performative, and political. This includes soul food, which,
though disparaged in some circles, is an important element of Black history and culture
with deep significance beyond edible meals (Witt 2004). Accordingly, many scholars,
chefs, and filmmakers have worked to reclaim and redefine soul food as a potentially
healthful culinary experience. For instance, in his 2013 documentary, Byron Hurt
explores soul food and its impact on Black bodies and Black culture. He argues that
industrial food systems and fast food (including fast soul food) are the real culprits
behind disproportionately high rates of preventable illnesses in Black communities.
Similarly, chef Bryant Terry offers new recipes for old favorites (such as collard greens
and corn bread), and evokes culinary traditions from across the African diaspora (Terry
2009, 2014). Meanwhile, Black vegan Breeze Harper (2010, 37-38) suggests that pre-
colonial soul food was plant-based and holistic, and that such a diet today could help to
heal racialized physical, emotional and spiritual ailments.

48

Although foodways are not exempt, to place blame solely on soul food and other
cultural eating practices is to overlook the environmental component that prevents good
health in communities of color. At present, neighborhoods with large African American
populations have been shown to have fewer supermarkets, more fast food restaurants, and
a higher risk of food-related illness (Sloane et al 2003, Lewis et al 2011). The
overabundance of fast foods and the absence of fresh foods that has made Blacks and
Latinos disproportionately susceptible to food related illness and premature death is a
phenomenon that law professor Andrea Freeman refers to as “food oppression”: one
component of a set of institutional race- and class-based inequalities impacting inner city
communities of color (Freeman 2007). The relationship between race, place, space, and
health is complex and intricate. What follows is a look at how the racialized built
environment shapes lives and landscapes in South Los Angeles, especially with regard to
food access and health outcomes.
Racialized Spatial Development and the Built Urban Environment
Although physical geographers have historically defined “space” in largely
concretized and absolute terms, there is scholarship that expands upon empirical and
static notions to explore the fluctuating social and cultural significance of space as well.
For instance, David Harvey, Henri Lefebvre, and Doreen Massey examine the
relationships between space and capital (Harvey 1989, 1996, 2009, 2010), the notion of
“social space” and the creation of urban city space (Lefebvre 1991, Lefebvre and Lebas
1996), and the role of race, gender, and socioeconomic status on the reproduction of
space (Massey 1992, 1994, 1999, 2005).

49

“Space” is also frequently conflated with “place”. Both are deeply imbued with
meanings that change over time and vary based on race, gender, class and region.
Geographers Tim Cresswell and Yi-Fu Tuan argue that places are spaces made
meaningful by human experience (Cresswell 2004, Tuan 1977). A significant place to
some can be an unimportant space to others. Doreen Massey (1991) also grapples with
how to retain a local sense of place in the face of increasing globalization and
homogenization. Moreover, contributions by Dolores Hayden, Michael Dear and Mike
Davis have explored processes of meaning making in the postmodern metropolis –
particularly the shifting terrain of Los Angeles (Hayden 1995; Dear 2000; Davis 2006,
2014). A space can either promote well-being or dis-ease among its inhabitants. Where
we live directly impacts dietary practices, and thus, health outcomes and wellness (or
unwellness, as is often the case). Furthermore, limited food access and poor health in
inner city communities of color are directly related to an uneven built environment.
The built environment is essentially that which is constructed by and for human
use, although many environmental historians and sociologists argue that the natural
environment is also largely a human construction (Hancock 2000, Srinivasan et al 2003).
Frumkin et al (2011) describe the built environment as: “...those settings designed,
created, and maintained by human efforts –buildings, neighborhoods, public plazas,
playgrounds, roadways and ...even seemingly natural settings, such as parks” (cited in
Dannenberg et al 2011, 5). In other words, the built environment did not appear
organically but was deliberately constructed by human beings. A toxic built environment
is implicated in a host of health concerns ranging from food-related illnesses such as
obesity and diabetes (Booth et al 2005, Papas et al 2007, Lopez-Zetina 2006, Gordon-

50

Larsen et al 2005), respiratory ailments such as asthma (Brisbon et al 2004, Cummins and
Jackson 2001, Perdue et al 2003), terminal diseases and various cancers (Frank et al
2003, Jackson 2003), and several different mental health issues and behavioral disorders
(Evans 2003, Halpern 1995). Needless to say, for particularly vulnerable groups such as
the elderly, the poor, and people of color, these impacts are further magnified and
multiplied.
According to American Studies scholar George Lipsitz, there is a “racial
imagination that relegates people of different races to different spaces [and] produces
grossly unequal access to education, employment, transportation, and shelter” (Lipsitz
2011, 6). In other words, the racial makeup of neighborhoods is deliberately produced,
and differential food access and health outcomes are byproducts of racialized spaces.
Differently racialized spaces like West and South L.A. are imbued with different racial
meanings, characteristics, and values. White spaces often have far greater access to the
resources and amenities needed for a healthy life and livelihood. Meanwhile, the opposite
is true for spaces of color, which are more likely to host environmental hazards such as
highways and factories instead. Furthermore, although the racialization of space and the
spatialization of race have come to be seen as natural, in truth, discriminatory systemic
processes such as unequal lending and zoning policies actually determine the racial
makeup of deindustrialized cities. As demonstrated by Bobo et al in their (2002) study on
Los Angeles “…social inequality and the dynamics that produce (and reproduce) it are
clearly related to racial and ethnic group distinctions [and]… enduring racial residential
segregation is one of the main underpinnings of the racialization of inequality” (Bobo et
al 2002, 4).

51

Sociologist Antwi Akom (2011) offers the term “eco-apartheid” as a framework
for understanding the relationship between the unequal distribution of institutional
resources and environmental toxins, and the production of racialized space. Akom argues,
“…the structures we create, develop, and maintain in turn impact our racial and social
identities by shaping the production of knowledge and naturalizing social meanings”
(Akom 2011, 836). The term “apartheid” is an Afrikaans word meaning “the state of
being apart”, and refers to a system of policies that enforce racial segregation. The most
famous example is the regime instituted and upheld by the Afrikaner National Party of
South Africa in the second half of the 20
th
Century, in which non-white South Africans
were forced to live in separate areas with separate facilities from whites (Hill 1964).
However, scholars have demonstrated that similar policies and practices have shaped
American ghettos and created an urban underclass here in the United States as well
(Massey 1990, Massey and Denton 1993).
LA’s racial, spatial, and economic composition is “…a product of federal
subsidies a half-century ago and early housing policy decisions, as well as contemporary
land use policies that encourage large lot development and low-income housing policies
that concentrate poor renters into struggling pockets of poverty and isolation” (powell
2008, 791). Post-World War II planning decisions and economic policies had long-term
impacts on the racial makeup and the lived experience of Los Angeles residents. For
instance, racial steering and various types of “redlining” created racially segregated
neighborhoods with vastly different resources. Redlining occurs when institutions limit or
restrict access to various financial services in minority neighborhoods. In the housing
market for instance, banks deny loans or extend credit lines with unfair terms to minority

52

applicants based on their race or the racial makeup of their neighborhoods. Racially
restrictive covenants also prohibited Black and Latino families from purchasing or
leasing housing in certain white neighborhoods (Sides 2003). It was not until the Fair
Housing Act of 1968 that redlining and racially restrictive covenants were deemed
illegal, but real estate brokers continued to “steer” homebuyers of color away from white
areas, ensuring that the city remained racially segregated (Bullard 1994, Bullard 2011).
These processes ensure that white spaces are filled mostly with white people, and all the
structural amenities needed for comfortable and healthy lifestyles.
In South Los Angeles –a famously Black and Brown area, there is an
overwhelming ratio of “fringe food” outlets such as fast food restaurants, gas stations,
and liquor stores to grocery stores and healthy retailers. Meanwhile, West L.A. –a region
that has become synonymous with whiteness —is a haven for farmers markets and cold-
pressed juice joints. Although West L.A. has a racialized built environment that has been
deliberately constructed to attract and maintain white residency (Lipsitz 2011), the
neighborhood is not exclusively white. Nor is South L.A. exclusively Black and Brown.
There are indeed a minority of poor whites in South Los Angeles, and some wealthy
people of color on the Westside of the city. Moreover, there are some “healthy”
vegetarian and even vegan eateries in south L.A.
16
Still, organic and other healthy food is
an (expensive) exception, and is largely unavailable to residents who must travel outside
of their neighborhoods to get to it, incurring the additional costs of travel time and
transportation to get the food back home.

16
These restaurants are located in Inglewood, CA, a neighborhood adjacent to South Los Angeles. See p.
61-62 for further discussion of healthy South L.A. restaurants.

53

Unsurprisingly, inadequate food access in South L.A. has had a detrimental
impact on health outcomes in the region. A 2004 community food assessment in South
L.A. found that Black families eat significantly fewer home cooked meals than other
groups (Community Services Unlimited 2004), and Community Coalition (COCO) found
that South L.A. residents had significantly higher rates of food-related illnesses such as
diabetes and obesity than other parts of the city. COCO attributes this to the food
environment and argues, “healthy eating is not simply a matter of personal choice. Some
communities have a bounty of healthy food options while others don’t. Where you live
can determine your health and quality of life” (Community Coalition 2013).
There are instances where neighborhoods of color have been cleaned up and
transformed to be more livable. The Bay View-Hunter’s Point District in San Francisco is
one such place. For generations, the Bay View has been the site of several hazardous
nuclear and industrial waste facilities, and over the last decade major efforts have been
made to remediate the toxicity. However, as the neighborhood became more desirable,
the cost of living also increased, and many residents of color found themselves displaced
to peripheral Bay Area cities, no longer able to afford their homes (Ginwright and Akom
2007). Such is the cruel irony of gentrification: the families who have fought for
environmental justice for generations are forced out once their neighborhoods actually
become habitable.
Another phenomenon taking place in gentrified spaces of color across the U.S. is
the rebranding and renaming of neighborhoods and regions. It is common for developers
and real estate boosters to change the names of Black and Brown neighborhoods–
particularly those notorious for crime, violence, or resistance movements—to shift the

54

public image of the space. For instance, Detroit’s historic Cass Corridor has been recently
rebranded as “Midtown” (Williams 2013), and the South Bronx—renowned birthplace of
Hip Hop in New York City, is rapidly becoming a hipster haven known as “SoBro”
(Berger 2005, Galella 2011). Similarly, “South L.A.” is a relatively new moniker for the
area once known as “South Central”, a name that still evokes images of gang violence
and civil unrest—especially among those unfamiliar with the region. Changing the name
of a stigmatized space functions to erase unfavorable associations, but it does not by itself
change the true nature of the place. As self proclaimed “gangsta gardener” Ron Finley
says in his Ted Talk,
I live in South Central. This is South Central [shows images]: liquor
stores, fast food, vacant lots. So the city planners, they get together and
they figure they're going to change the name South Central to make it
represent something else, so they change it to South Los Angeles, like this
is going to fix what's really going wrong in the city. This is South Los
Angeles [shows same images]. Liquor stores, fast food, vacant lots (Finley
2013).

Like Finley, many activists and residents resent the city’s attempts to gloss over
the community’s needs with a cosmetic name change. Besides the fact that merely
changing the name does not automatically change material conditions, many argue that
“South L.A.” disconnects the neighborhood from the rich Black cultural history of
Central Avenue (Sides 2014). What is more, as if one name change were not enough,
Councilman Bernie Parks has recently suggested changing South L.A. to “SOLA”. As
journalist and Los Angeles resident Erin Aubrey Kaplan explains, “South L.A. is a
sanitized version of South Central, and now SOLA wants to reduce that to a quasi-
acronym that conjures up not a place at all, but a logo. The real aim here is to further

55

whittle away the association of South Central/South L.A. itself with the racial chaos of
gangs, poverty, etc. Scrub it clean” (Kaplan 2015).
There is power in naming, and what we call a place can remove or instill
important meanings. Even though it is contested in some circles, I choose to use “South
L.A.” in this project because that is the nomenclature used by the organizations I work
with. For these groups, the name change is more expansive than it is exclusive, and it
represents a fresh start for the region. As a transplanted Bay Area native, I’ve only ever
known “South L.A.” intimately. “South Central” was a place that I only knew through
news media and Hollywood depictions. Moreover, when I hear the acronym “SOLA”, I
think of the South Los Angeles Food co-op and their efforts to transform the
neighborhood’s foodscape through healthy food and collective ownership. As Ron Finley
suggests, renaming a place does not change its material reality, and the deliberate racial,
spatial and environmental production of South (Central) Los Angeles is clear by any
name.
17

Locally Undesirable Land Use and the Production of Black Urban Space
Environmental racism is “…the idea that nonwhites are disproportionately
exposed to pollution” (Pulido 2000, 12).
18
Environmental racism manifests in a number
of ways, most commonly through the unequal siting of hazards known as “locally
undesirable land uses” or “LULUs” in neighborhoods of color. LULUs can be toxic
facilities like incinerators, landfills or power plants, or structures like freeways, which
divide and disrupt neighborhoods in addition to polluting them. As demonstrated by the
South L.A. foodscape, toxicity also manifests through food, so locally undesirable land

17
See p. 77-79 for further discussion on the SOLA food co-op.
18
See also: Bullard 1993, Pulido 1996b, Boer et al 1997, Kevin 1997 Cole and Foster 2001, Akom 2007.

56

uses can also be liquor stores or fast food restaurants. In the upwardly mobile Black
neighborhood of Baldwin Hills, the most obvious LULU is the Inglewood oil field.

“Inglewood Oil Field” (Summers 2015a).

Before the uprisings of 1965, Baldwin Hills and the surrounding areas were
predominantly white. Sociologist Darnell Hunt argues that the demographic shift was
partly related to racialized violence and resistance in Watts: a Black neighborhood over
15 miles away. Hunt writes, “Although most of the activities associated with the Watts
uprisings occurred several miles away from the tranquil environs of Baldwin Hills, many
of the original white homeowners in the area undoubtedly found the explosion of black
outrage too close for comfort” (Hunt 2010, 9). After this episode of “white flight”,
19
the
exclusive neighborhood in the hills became available to a new population of Black
celebrities, athletes, and upwardly mobile Black professionals. However, although Black
residents of Baldwin Hills enjoy a measure of economic affluence compared to other
Black Angelenos, they still find themselves spatially adjacent to poor Blacks, and are

19 White flight refers to the phenomenon in which white residents move out of a neighborhood when
minority residents move in.

57

thus susceptible to the same environmental hazards and locally undesirable land uses that
plague their neighbors in the flatlands.
Baldwin Hills boasts beautiful architecture, breathtaking panoramic views, and
majority Black residency. It is also home to one of the nations largest urban oil fields. At
1100 acres, the Inglewood Oil Field sprawls from Inglewood to Culver City and right
through Baldwin Hills. Indeed, if one to drive north or south on La Brea Avenue between
Slauson and Rodeo, it would be hard to miss the dark silhouettes of pumps endlessly
probing the earth, eerie and prominent against the expansive hillside.

“Inglewood Oil Field Map” (Summers 2015b).

Oil and gas were first discovered in the area in 1924, and Los Angeles quickly became
one of the nation’s leading oil producers. In 2003 when the Chevron Corporation sold the

58

Inglewood Oil Field’s drilling rights to Texas-based oil company Plains Exploration &
Production (PXP), drilling increased by 65% with 600 new wells (Source Watch 2013).
Many of the Inglewood oil and gas reserves are located beneath residential
homes, and its wells border the edges of the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area where
locals go to hike, exercise, and play with their children. It is common for industrial
polluters to finance and designate “natural” settings such as trails and parks near hazard
sites as an attempt to protect their public image. These efforts are part of a process called
“greenwashing”, which was conceived in the 1980s as a corporate counterstrategy after a
number of ecological disasters illuminated the negative health impact of the responsible
corporations (Bruno 1998, McMichael 2000).
20

In 2006, a few years after the sale of the Inglewood oil field to PXP, local
residents who reported noxious fumes seeping from drilling sites had to be evacuated
from their homes on two separate occasions. Residents’ concerns about their health and
safety, and the close proximity of the oil field have been further amplified since learning
that PXP is using hydraulic fracturin, also known as “hydrofracking” or just “fracking”,
which is the process of injecting a mixture of chemicals, sand and water into the ground
to create cracks in the rocks to extract natural gas and petroleum. Fracking has proven to
be incredibly profitable for oil and gas companies, but there are numerous concerns about
its environmental and human impact. Opponents of fracking cite ground water
contamination, fresh water depletion, air quality degradation, and noise/land pollution as
negative side effects. The United States Geological Survey has also identified fracking on
or near fault lines as a trigger for seismic activity like earthquakes, landslides, and other

20
See p. 22 for more discussion of greenwashing.

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geological disasters. According to a statement from the Citizens Coalition for a Safe
Community, “The Los Angeles community has seen realized risks from urban oil and gas
production hazards as disasters... Oil and gas exploration and production along with
hydraulic fracturing is full of risks that no community should be made to accept, it is only
common sense” (Citizens Coalition for a Safe Community, 2012).
PXP has maintained that there is no evidence of human health risks associated
with their drilling, and they even commissioned a peer-reviewed study as part of a
settlement with Los Angeles County, Culver City, and a number of other environmental
and community groups in July 2011. However, several local and national community
organizations including Baldwin Hills Oil Watch and ProPublica have argued that the
study was biased in favor of PXP and written by scientists and consultants who were
sponsored by PXP. Environmental advocates also claim that the study omitted critical
information about the long-term effects on groundwater and earthquake risk (Food and
Water Watch 2012).
There are debates among environmentalists as to whether locally undesirable
land uses like the Inglewood Oil Field are deliberately sited in neighborhoods of color, or
if the siting of harmful facilities drives racial and class dynamics to change (Pastor et al
2001, Bullard 2004). Some argue that a community hosting a toxic industrial site such as
a landfill or an incinerator is likely to have lower housing costs, which would logically
result in low-income residency (Been 1994, Been 1997). Toxic neighborhoods may also
have higher minority populations as a result of redlining and racial steering in the housing
market (Chapple 2010, cited in Hunt 2010). Alternatively, environmental scholar Robert
Bullard claims that LULU citing is not random, but is, in fact, deliberate (Bullard 2007,

60

4). Communities with limited political power and social and economic capital are less
likely to organize resistance to the placement of hazards, and thus are easy prey for
industrial polluters seeking “the path of least resistance” in their siting decisions (Cole
and Foster 2001, Pastor et al 2001). Despite this chicken-or-egg conundrum, it is widely
agreed that low-income residents and residents of color are ultimately most likely to live
in areas with substandard environmental quality and heavy industrial pollution.
21
They
also disproportionately inhabit substandard housing, and they are more likely than other
groups to experience rodent and insect infestations, leaks, and malfunctioning plumbing
and/or heating systems in their homes. When it comes to transportation, poor
communities face a double-edged sword: they have insufficient access to the cars, trains,
and buses necessary to get them to and from work, hospitals, supermarkets, etc. At the
same time, the LULUs associated with transportation (such as freeways and bus stations)
are more likely to be situated in communities of color, exposing residents to air and noise
pollution, and a number of related health risks (Morello-Frosch et al 2001, Frumkin
2003).
22

The siting of particular food establishments is also an issue of locally undesirable
land use, with real consequences on people’s lives and livelihoods. For instance, when
organic produce is a rare find but there is a McDonald’s on every other corner, residents
are receiving clear messages from the built environment about what kind of food to eat.
In 2008, in response to the uneven distribution of food related hazards, the Los Angeles
city council approved a moratorium on new stand-alone fast food restaurants in South

21
In the case of Baldwin Hills, the Inglewood Oil Field (as well as the LAX Airport and the 405 freeway)
preceded Black move-in.
22
Although South L.A. residents experience a disproportionate amount of environmental hazards, there
have been major improvements to the neighborhood in ways that are favorable to health. For instance, the
Baldwin Hills Plaza offers a weekly farmer’s market, as well as a free weekly yoga class and zumba class.

61

L.A. (Creighton 2009, Sturm and Cohen 2009). This public health effort was designed to
offset the rising obesity rates in the region and to give other restaurants a chance to locate
in the neighborhood, which was already saturated with fast food outlets. According to the
New York Times, “...there are nearly 1,000 fast-food restaurants in the 30 or so square
miles of South Los Angeles covered by the regulations. Some 30 percent of the 750,000
residents in the area are obese, double the rate in wealthier parts of the city” (Hennessy-
Fiske and Zahniser 2008).
Critics of the ordinance point out that focusing on fast food restaurants alone has
not significantly reduced South L.A. obesity rates as there are still a number of other
fringe food outlets such as liquor stores and gas stations that provide high-calorie, low-
nutrient, processed foods in the area (RAND Health 2009). However, it is an important
precedent and a huge step toward transforming and resisting LULUs in the foodscape
here in the United States, where “place is racialized with benefits, resources, and
opportunities unevenly distributed across the urban landscape [and] it is far easier to find
fast-food outlets and payday loan stores than sit-down restaurants and commercial banks
in middle-income black neighborhoods” (Bullard 2007, 4).
In low-income neighborhoods of color, fast food restaurants, gas stations, and
liquor stores far outnumber sit-down eateries and grocery stores (Alwitt and Donley
1997, Bullard 2007, Powell et al. 2007). Of all the sit-down restaurants in South Los
Angeles, only a few describe themselves as “healthy”. For instance, Inglewood-based
vegan restaurant “Stuff I Eat” offers an appetizing array of plant-based dishes. “Mr.
Wisdom LA”, an organic health food store and restaurant on Slauson Boulevard, serves
juices, smoothies, energy drinks, and veggie burgers in addition to a range of health

62

supplements and elixirs. Similarly, “Simply Wholesome” (also on Slauson Boulevard) is
another restaurant/health food store combination. Their market offers an impressive
selection of vitamins, beauty products, teas, snacks, and even health-related books and
pamphlets. In a neighborhood like South L.A., where the overabundance of fringe food
and absence of fresh has contributed to disproportionate levels of food-related illness and
premature death (Cotterill and Franklin 1995, Freeman 2007, Franco et al 2009),
restaurants like these are important parts of the burgeoning healthy foodscape. However,
considering that many families in the area have limited disposable income, these
restaurant’s prices are relatively high. Moreover, although Simply Wholesome’s
restaurant menu includes organic, vegan, and sugar-free options, they also serve
milkshakes, deep fried beef patties, and various cakes, which arguably detracts from the
establishment’s overall health profile.
Deconstructing South L.A.’s Foodscape
The terms “supermarket” and “grocery store” are often used interchangeably;
however, they are not exactly the same. Grocery stores primarily sell food items while
supermarkets sell food items and other household items including toiletries and kitchen
and laundry supplies. Supermarkets are also significantly larger than traditional grocery
stores, and they may have pharmacies, bakeries, and delicatessens as sections within the
store. An additional category is the “superstore” or “hypermarket” which combines a
supermarket and department store in one massive building. Stores like Wal-Mart and
Target are examples of this model.
In South L.A. the Kroger Company corners the grocery retail market with both
mid-line supermarkets such as Ralph’s, and price-impact warehouse stores like Food 4

63

Less, which caters to low-income shoppers and offers a range of discounted products.
According to the Kroger website, the price-impact stores offer “distinctive ethnic
products, catering to the demographics of the neighborhoods that they serve” (Kroger
2015). Admittedly then, South L.A.’s Black and Brown population is a driving factor in
the siting of the warehouse stores and the products they sell. Although Kroger boasts
excellent value for low prices, many shoppers have complained about the low quality of
food the company provides. There is a running joke in South L.A. food circles that
veggies should be green and meat should be brown, but at Food 4 Less, the meat is green
and the veggies are brown.
Though Ralph’s supermarkets are slightly higher end than its warehouse stores,
even these have questionable produce and are mainly filled with low-nutrient density
goods, sweets, and treats.
23
Ralph’s does have what it calls “signature” stores that offer a
wider variety of organic and artisan items, but there are none in South L.A. The closest
one is in Mid City, north of the region’s boundaries. There are also a number of
independently owned grocery chains like Superior, as well as mini-markets and meat-
markets that carry specialty products and culturally-specific items. However, these often
do not carry organic produce options, and are packed with liquor, cigarettes, candy, soda,
chips, and other junk foods all strategically placed throughout the store.
24

Dominant rhetoric about food deserts centers on 1) a deficiency of grocery stores
and/or supermarkets in low-income neighborhoods and neighborhoods of color, and 2)

23 Some food scholars argue that modern supermarkets are not a reliable source of healthy food because
they are loaded with subsidized, genetically modified corn and soy-based products (Pollan 2006, Schlosser
2012).
24 Supermarkets are deliberately designed to manipulate shoppers and the most unhealthy foods are found
in the center of the stores and at the registers. Shopping the perimeter of grocery stores is one way to find
healthier goods.

64

resident’s physical distance from grocery stores and/or supermarkets, and their access to
transportation (Blanchard and Lyson 2002, Whelan et al 2002, Wrigley et al 2002, Shaw
2006, Oregon Research Institute 2009). However, food-related illnesses like obesity are
not caused or understood by supermarket scarcity alone. Instead, it is necessary to
examine the type and quality of food that marginalized communities do have access to,
and to situate food access in a broader structural and socioeconomic context (McClintock
2008, Borradaile et al., 2009, Segal 2010).
25

“Color-Coded Grocery Retail Locations, South L.A.” (Policy Map 2015).

A 2013 Gallup poll showed that obesity is actually more closely linked to income and
race than it is to neighborhood access to particular kinds of stores (Gallup 2013). In South

25
See also Table 1: South Los Angeles Grocery Retail Stores by Address and Type

65

L.A. the issue is not that there are no grocery stores, but rather that the existing stores are
limited, and they sell substandard products (Community Services Unlimited 2004). Also,
there are far more sources of unhealthy food in the neighborhood that are readily
available to shoppers. South L.A. residents who choose to cook their own meals at home
instead of eating out must travel anywhere from 8-15 miles outside the neighborhood to
do their grocery shopping, or settle for the scant local options.
The supermarket landscape materialized as a result of numerous factors. Like
other real estate entities, supermarkets also practice a form of redlining in their decisions
to locate in certain parts of the city and not others. For instance, Mary Lee (1998) of the
Los Angeles Food Policy Council argues that in the case of South L.A., an influx of large
supermarkets during the 1950s forced many small grocery retailers out of business
completely. The ones that remained open had to shift from grocery to liquor sales to
make a profit. Although Black neighborhoods throughout the United States have
experienced similar ebbs and flows of development and abandonment, Lee argues that
South L.A. is unique because the very superstores that forced out small businesses in the
50s fled the area themselves after the L.A. riots in 1965 (Lee 1998). To compound
matters, the city exploded in flames again in 1992, inciting another mass exodus of
retailers and food suppliers. Several grocery stores and mini-marts were also destroyed
during the uprisings, leaving the area with a plethora of liquor stores and almost no
sources of healthy food.
Before the smoke had cleared after the 1992 civil unrest, Mayor Tom Bradley and
Governor Pete Wilson announced the formation of Rebuild L.A., “An ‘extra-
governmental task force’ that would later become a nonprofit corporation, [which] sought

66

to harness the power of the private sector where — presumably — the public sector had
failed” (Sides 2012). Rebuild L.A. was designed to replace and recover the millions of
dollars worth of property damage caused by the uprisings through commercial
development in affected areas. Though it seemed well intended at first, critics of Rebuild
L.A. argue that it failed to actively engage grassroots and community groups in its agenda
(Gottlieb et al 2006). Instead, the program focused almost exclusively on the private
sector, industry groups and individual companies, and overlooked the deeper structural
issues such as inadequate education and healthcare, and rampant unemployment (ibid).
Still, it is significant that South L.A.’s uneven foodscape took center stage in the efforts
to restore the city, with an estimated 30% of Rebuild L.A. investments coming from the
supermarket industry (Ashman et al 1993). “More than for any other business, Ueberroth
and his Rebuild L.A. compatriots touted the enormous job-creation potential of new
super-markets in the inner city…The supermarket claims became, in turn, the cornerstone
of the early Rebuild L.A. strategy” (Gottlieb et al 2006, 180-181).
Reinvesting in the post-uprising inner city was not only profitable, but it
improved supermarket companies’ public images as well. Major supermarket chains
Vons, Ralphs, and Smart & Final promised a total of 32 new grocery stores for the
underserved area. However, despite all the promises, a (2002) study by Occidental
College found that, ten years later, there was no net gain of supermarkets in South L.A.
(Shaffer 2002).
26
As of 2015, there is still a scarcity of full service stores in the Rebuild
L.A. area; proof that the private sector alone is not enough to solve the problem of food
insecurity in the inner city (Larson 2002, Shaffer and Gottlieb 2007, Vallianatos 2009).

26
Some grocery stores did return, namely Ralph’s and its warehouse discount store Food 4 Less. Food 4
Less is known for selling fruits and vegetables that are rarely organic or pesticide free, and substandard
products whose quality pales in comparison to stores located in wealthier parts of the city.

67

Convenience, Price, and Healthy Choice
To achieve real food system change, conversations about healthy food must be
more nuanced than supermarket access. Aside from supermarkets, South L.A. residents
looking to shop locally also have an abundance of liquor stores, drug stores, gas stations,
mini-marts and convenience stores to choose from.
27
Many of these are local businesses,
which keeps retail dollars in the community but does not improve public health if they
sell the same sugary, fatty, salty foods as the big chains (Gilmer 2013). These outlets
carry select grocery items such as milk, bread and cereal, and provide a plethora of fringe
foods such as candy, chips and sodas. Convenience is a driving factor in consumer
choice. Americans are always looking for a quick and easy shopping experience, and we
are collectively far more likely to grab a snack and eat on the go than to sit down at the
table for a meal (Belasco 2014). Consequently, the convenience store has become a
ubiquitous part of the California landscape. Also known as “corner stores” (or “bodegas”
on the east coast), these small stores can sell alcohol and tobacco like liquor stores, and
Tylenol, tampons and pregnancy tests like drug stores. They may also be connected to
gas stations, or exist as standalone stores that sell packaged toiletries and other household
items in addition to food.
Corner stores are particularly popular in low-income and minority neighborhoods
where food budgets are limited (Morland et al. 2002, Moore and Diez 2006, Sturm 2008).
As Borradaile et al. (2009, 1297) argue, “a dollar has a high rate of return in an urban
corner store”, particularly for high calorie, energy dense foods. However, other than the
rare bunch of bananas, these retailers almost exclusively deal in prepackaged and

27
See: Table 1. South Los Angeles Grocery Retail Stores by Address and Type.

68

processed food products with a long shelf life. Perishable foods are not economically
viable for this retail model, and processed foods also enhance the value of foods like
potatoes, which are more profitable as potato chips, or corn, which is more profitable as
breakfast cereal or sweetener for soda (Nestle 2013). Moreover, items such as milk, bread
and cereal are priced significantly higher at convenience stores than grocery stores, and
are sold in smaller sizes (Liese et al 2007). Although convenience stores do simplify the
shopping experience, they are actually quite inconvenient when it comes to the quality
and price of their merchandise (Chung and Myers 1999, Sides 2012), and there are few
options for low-income people with limited mobility living in areas where a convenience
store or liquor store is the nearest and perhaps only food retailer. As Mary Lee explains,
“liquor stores may be heavily patronized, not because they offer high quality or good
value, but because they have a captive market, given the poor quality of the public transit
system and the geographic vastness of South L.A. (Lee 1998, 16).
At first glance, the South L.A. foodscape seems to be comprised solely of junk
food, fast food, and processed food. When I stroll down Figueroa Boulevard near the
University of Southern California, or down Crenshaw Boulevard near my home, the
number of liquor stores and fast food chains on nearly every corner overwhelms me.
Even if I opt out of burgers and fries from McDonald’s, Burger King or Carl’s Jr., I am
still lured by Taco Bell, KFC, El Pollo Loco, and even Yoshinoya–a Japanese noodle
bowl chain. Once my eyes adjust to the fluorescent fast food logos looming large against
the skyline, I begin to notice the smaller eateries –pupuserias, soul food and sushi
restaurants. These are all slightly healthier choices than the corporate chains, but I am
still hard pressed to find a meal that is plant-based, organic, sustainably produced, or

69

locally grown when looking for lunch in South L.A. Finding a meal that is all of these at
once is nearly impossible. Herein lies the paradox of poor urban neighborhoods when it
comes to food: they are simultaneously bereft of fresh fruits and vegetables and flooded
with high sodium, low-nutrient value foods.
South L.A. is at once a “food desert” (an area where healthy food is limited) and a
“food swamp” (an area inundated with fast food and junk food). However, there is
another, somewhat hidden level to the South L.A. foodscape: one that is less visible but
much more radical. In my quest for healthy food in South L.A., I discovered that beneath
the glittery emblems of the industrial food system, there is an underground food network
where people are more than mere victims of oppressive policies. Through food, some
South L.A. residents are innovatively transforming their relationship to health,
community, space and place. From grassroots to policy makers to nonprofit
organizations, food grounds the most innovative efforts to level the uneven built
environment.
Market Conversions and Cooperation: From Vices to Veggies
The average American shopper has deeply ingrained and often subconscious
ideologies about where food should come from and how it should look. Having become
increasingly detached from the means of production, and subjected to endless
manipulation by the food industry and advertising, consumers are often repulsed by
imperfect produce that doesn’t shimmer under track lights (Friedberg 2009). Ironically,
poor people with the most limited food access are often the most discriminating when it
comes to their food. For instance, during a food justice lecture to a group of Black and
Brown students at Cal Poly Pomona in 2015, I asked them to tell me about their food

70

environments and their access to nutritious food. While some reported that they shop at
Whole Foods and/or grow their own vegetables, the majority of them described
neighborhoods where fast food and liquor stores dominated the landscape. When asked
hypothetically whether they would eat fruits and vegetables from a convenience store,
these students responded with a resounding chorus of “No! Absolutely not! They
wouldn’t be fresh” (Hassberg 2015a).
“Freshness” is an elusive characteristic with no universal definition, and yet, it is
perhaps the most important quality that Americans seek in their food (Friedberg 2009).
My students were palpably appalled by the idea of eating veggies from the corner market
because corner markets and liquor stores typically signify the opposite of freshness. They
could not wrap their minds around a bushel of apples randomly located next to the
chewing gum, or the slushy machine. They cringed at the thought of people touching the
corner market fruits and vegetables, molesting away their freshness and reducing them to
germ-riddled hazards for the unwitting customer to bring home. When I reminded them
that people touch the produce in supermarkets and grocery stores and at farmers markets
all the time, they countered, “Sure, but corner stores and liquor stores are dirty places.
The kinds of people who shop in these places are dirty.”
The students’ disdain reveals that not only is the food itself an issue in
marginalized communities, but the spaces where food is available are also markers of
unsanitary contamination, which is represented by the population that patronizes them.
However, what if we were not just talking about a few bananas in a gas station or liquor
store? When I asked if the students would consider eating produce from a corner market
if there were a properly ventilated, temperature-controlled section in the store where the

71

veggies and fruits would be stocked, their expressions changed. “Yeah”, they responded
thoughtfully, “that would be different” (ibid).
The Community Market Conversion Program (CMC) developed in response to
supermarket abandonment and uneven retail environments in Los Angeles. It began as a
façade improvement program to convert the storefronts of convenience markets, meat
markets and liquor stores into healthy food providers. The idea behind the program is that
shoppers would be more inclined to purchase produce from a local retailer if there were a
legitimate “produce section” that were properly refrigerated and well designed. Westside
retailers like Whole Foods provide shoppers with a complete sensory experience, from
the design of the building, to the fragrant flowers strategically placed near the doors, to
the fancy artisan chesses and meats, and rows of symmetrically stacked fruits and
vegetables. Most Whole Foods stores also offer samples and special events, and some
even have DJ’s spinning music for patrons to enjoy. Conversely, in South L.A., the
closest Whole Foods Market is eight miles away.
28
Here, no-frills warehouse stores like
Food 4 Less are a more common staple. There is no wine tasting or live music, and the
quality of the food is vastly inferior –the produce is always on the verge of spoiling, and
it is almost impossible to find organic options. Even chain stores such as Ralph’s (which
is found in both South and West L.A.) are different in the respective locations –both in
terms of the external veneer, and the products inside.
I first became involved with the Community Market Conversion Program (CMC
in mid-2011. Clare Fox, then Director of Policy and Innovation for the L.A. Food Policy
Council contacted me by email. A mutual friend had recently introduced us, wanting the

28 This is based on the distance between the University of California and the Whole Foods Market in
Beverly Hills. The distance is even greater for locations further South.

72

two “food justice people” in his life to meet. Now Clare was reaching out to see if I was
interested in helping to shape a new food justice pilot program designed to expand access
to nutritious food and revitalize the food retail environment in South L.A. I had been in
South L.A. for about a year and a half, and needless to say, I was thrilled to help think
through a food justice framework for this groundbreaking program.
The South Los Angeles CMC Pilot was an initiative of the Community
Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles (CRA/LA) in partnership with the
L.A. Food Policy Council, the Department of Public Health’s RENEW L.A. County
program, the California Endowment, and Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative. This
partnership allowed the CMC the resources and funding to perform interior and external
layout transformations, and to provide training for storeowners on managing fresh
produce inventory.

73

“Mama’s Chicken Storefront, Before and After” (Fox 2013a)

In addition to transforming the physical storefronts and bringing in healthier food
options, the CMC also provided healthy recipes, special events and workshops around
nutrition, food traditions, and community wellness. Nutrition education is important
because even the most beautifully designed produce section in a corner store will not
fundamentally change the relationship that a community has to food and health.

74

“Juicing Workshop at Mama’s Chicken” (Fox 2013b).

Over the course of several months, I attended numerous steering committee
meetings, workshops with pilot-program storeowners, and special neighborhood events to
generate interest in the Community Market Conversion Program. We even formed teams
to knock on doors and distribute flyers around the community to increase patronage for
the soon-to-be converted stores. The majority of residents we encountered were excited
about the possibility of high quality, culturally relevant, locally-sourced food that would
also be affordable because the renovated stores would accept SNAP and WIC—state
funded food assistance benefits. As the community excitement about the CMC grew, so
did my own. I was confident that any program that used food to link public health and
neighborhood development to a community’s cultural identity would certainly be long
lasting and effective. Not only would it be good for residents but it would also benefit the

75

local farmers and producers who provided food to the renovated markets. At one point
there were even talks of sourcing from local community gardens and urban farms to
strengthen the South L.A. food justice network even more. However, this never
happened, and the CMC program no longer exists. Rather, it has changed shape.
Following the dissolution of the Community Redevelopment Agency in 2012, the
CMC lost funding and momentum as these projects sometimes do, and it was unable to
move past the pilot phase. After impressive community attendance at several CRA/LA
oversight board meetings to advocate for the continuation of the CMC, as of 2015, only
one of the four pilot stores (Las Palmas Carniceria) will be receiving the full store
investment that was initially promised, and this is because City Councilman Curren
Price’s Office allocated its own dollars toward the project. The other three stores received
a partial renovation for the introduction of produce. Of those three, one (Mama's
Chicken) still has a vibrant produce section, one store closed completely (Oak's Junior
Market), and the last (Money Saver Meats) no longer provides produce.
All of our steering committee meetings, workshops, door knocking, and
neighborhood events were not in vain, however, because the CMC program has since
been converted into the Healthy Neighborhood Market Network (HNMN); a training
series for business and leadership development support for neighborhood markets
interested in all kinds of strides toward healthy food on various scales. The HNMN
program supports market makeovers that are being led by other organizations and
agencies, such as the Asian and Pacific Islander Obesity Prevention Alliance (APIOPA)
and the Department of Public Health.

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Although the CMC did not live up to its full potential, the HNMN has continued
to create sustainability and self-sufficiency in South L.A. through market conversion
efforts. For instance, when the Ralph’s supermarket on Martin Luther King Blvd. and
Western Avenue closed in 2013, some South L.A. residents sought another supermarket
in its place. However, the Healthy Neighborhood Market Network worked in partnership
with Community Coalition (COCO) and Community Services Unlimited (CSU) to bring
fresh, local produce, eggs, and homemade jams to an existing retailer –a liquor store on
39
th
Street and Western Avenue.

“Century Liquor & Market Healthy Food Section” (Healthy Neighborhood
Market Network 2014).

Once declared a public nuisance for its alcohol sales in 2008 (Holman 2014), Century
Market –formerly Century Liquor– is now offering healthy food. Since 2014, store owner
Steve Jong Soo Park has maintained a small but vibrant internal produce section, and also

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hosts a weekly produce stand in the store’s parking lot, enticing passersby with colorful
veggies, healthful herbs, tasty samples and friendly CSU staff. Turning Century Liquor
into Century Market has transformed South L.A.’s food environment, and it has also been
a catalyst for improving the relationship between storeowners and community members:
particularly Korean storeowners and Black Angelenos—a relationship that has been
fraught for decades.
From Co-optation to Cooperation: a Collective Model of Autonomy
While market conversions help turn existing South L.A. retailers into healthy food
providers, some food justice efforts are working to create something completely new. The
South L.A. Food Co-op (SoLA) aims to bring natural, organic, non-GMO food to South
Los Angeles through a unique retail model that does not currently exist in the
neighborhood: a collectively owned and operated full-service, natural foods store.
Spearheaded by Bahni Turpin, SoLA is designed to combat retail drainage and help
promote better health in the South L.A. by filling the healthy food retail void in the
region. In addition to food, SoLA also plans to offer organic coffee and tonics, as well as
workshops and classes on nutrition, cooking, and natural healing. The goal is to provide a
holistic, multi-pronged intervention into the chronic poor health that afflicts so many
South Angelenos.
As of 2015, the co-op is looking to purchase a brick and mortar location for its
operations, preferably in or near the Leimert Park area: a historical Black arts district in
South L.A. In the meantime, they are hosting membership drives featuring live bands,
poets, local vendors, and healthy food demos to connect with the local community.

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“SoLA Information Booth” (SoLA Food Co-Op 2015)

SoLA promises to “stock all the organic foods that we travel seven to thirteen miles now
to get” (Turpin 2013). What makes SoLA such a distinctive retail enterprise is that they
hope to purchase a building after generating community interest. Instead of “if we build
it, they will come”, SoLA’s motto is “if they come, then we can build it” (Robinson
1989). Moreover, SoLA’s founders also encourage local residents to offer suggestions
and visions for how they would like the co-op to operate. This is freedom dreaming and
citified sovereignty at its best: planting the seeds we wish to see grow, then inviting the
community to help water the garden.
Generating financial support for a collectively owned and operated food co-op has
been challenging, even though the South L.A. community is largely in favor of natural,
local, healthy food. Lifetime membership in the co-op is $200, which can feel like a large

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sum for low-income people. A lack of disposable income is a barrier to achieving
autonomy in South L.A. Low-income residents often cannot afford to invest in healthy
food or the organizations that provide it. However, SoLA founders remain hopeful that
their vision will be a success. With the exception of CSU produce stands and farmer’s
markets, there are very few healthy food resources in the region, and the closest food co-
op is in Santa Monica, over ten miles West of South L.A. Moreover, as a cooperative,
SoLA promotes democratic ownership and leadership, which allows members the
attractive prospect of shared agency and control over the shape of South L.A.’s food
environment.
SoLA’s founders recognized that organic and other healthy food is largely
unavailable in the South L.A. foodscape. As a result, residents regularly leave the
community to shop, which means they incur the additional costs of travel time and
transportation to get the food back home. This also increases the carbon footprints of
shoppers as well as that of the food itself, which has likely traveled thousands of miles
before landing on a supermarket shelf. Shopping in other communities also results in
dollar drainage, which means that outside retailers make money from South L.A.
shoppers. Even shopping locally can be an economic drain because most of the
businesses in South L.A. are not locally owned.
Fortunately, South L.A. is becoming home to an increasing number of healthy
food retailers. For instance, “Grilled Fraiche” is a mobile food truck that offers grilled
shrimp, salmon, chicken, and veggie dishes over brown rice or quinoa and salad greens.

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“Grilled Fraiche Shrimp Bowl with Plantains” (Bennett 2015a).

Spearheaded by local chef Edwin “E-Dubble” Redway, Grilled Fraiche services the entire
city, but their main hub is the West Adams district, where Chef E-Dubble was born and
raised –an intentional move to bring healthy and tasty food to the neighborhood.
Similarly, “Daily Organics” was founded by long time West Adams resident Renee
Gunter. Gunter was inspired to help bring more fresh produce to West Adams after co-
starring in a 2013 theater production about food justice in South L.A.
29
Daily Organics
began as a delivery program for certified organic produce in 2013, and has since opened a
storefront at 5746 Adams Boulevard, where customers can purchase organic fruits,
vegetables, coffee, and seasonal jams. Both Grilled Fraiche and Daily Organics offer high

29
Gunter played the role of Mrs. Robinson and the voice of hand-puppet Greta Green in Cornerstone
Theater Company’s 2013 stage play “SEED: A Weird Act of Faith” (Gilmer 2013). SEED explored food
system disparities, urban agriculture, and food activism in South Los Angeles.

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quality food, and while their prices are competitively priced compared to eateries and
retailers on the Westside, some low-income South L.A. residents may be unable to afford
their products. Still, the very presence of Black-owned and operated enterprises in South
L.A. helps to offset the rapid gentrification in the region, and in the West Adams
neighborhood in particular.
Beyond Choice
Discourse around food is often situated in the context of price and choice: you get
what you pay for, and if you value your health you will pay more for your food. It is also
assumed that if you simply educate yourself you will make better nutritional decisions
(Guthman 2008). However, these kinds of discussions neglect to account for the
socioeconomic and structural disparities that make healthy food completely unavailable
in certain neighborhoods. After all, what good is choice when, perceivably, there is none?
As Marion Nestle argues, it is necessary to “…refocus attention on the environmental –
that is, the social, commercial, and institutional– influences on food choice, rather than
on the personal” (Nestle 2013, xiv). This is especially true in a place like South L.A.,
where corporations with strong advertising power do everything to remain competitive as
consumers display an increasing desire for healthier food (Lewis et al 2011). Food
assistance benefits such as WIC, SNAP, and Cal Fresh (formerly known as food stamps)
are now accepted at certain farmers markets and other food programs such as Community
Services Unlimited. Conversely, these benefits are also accepted at Burger King, as
displayed on big banners hanging from its South L.A. restaurants. Some may argue that
consumer taste and desire drives the choice to patronize fast food joints instead of
farmer’s markets, particularly as more healthy food options become available. However,

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choice is about more than just availability; it is also about awareness, and transforming
individual perceptions of value, like how much a meal costs in dollars versus how much
it costs in health outcomes, and what is at risk if our food system becomes completely
corporatized.
The groups working to create a healthy foodscape in South Los Angeles recognize
that a locally based food system has the potential to improve physical health and financial
realities for the community in ways that the globalized corporate food regime does not.
Local food means less water, feed, waste, and human energy is required per pound of
meat and vegetables. Local food means that we can build trust and relationships between
local farmers and consumers, which is impossible if our food comes from halfway around
the world. A thriving local food system that addresses the unique needs of the
surrounding community is at the core of struggles for citified sovereignty. In South L.A.,
it would ensure that people who cannot easily leave the neighborhood due to lack of
transportation, limited mobility, disability and so forth are not stuck with meager options
and low quality. Additionally, increasing the availability of plant-based foods would
combat the high rates of preventable food-related illnesses in the region, giving sick
people a chance to reclaim their health and longevity. Rather than calling for more
supermarkets like most food security projects do, market conversions like the CMC
demonstrate that we can take what already exists in South L.A. and transform it to fit the
needs of the community. This is a powerful concept in terms of citified sovereignty and
reclaiming space, because the community spearheads efforts to transform the
neighborhood.
The structural factors that prevent certain groups from obtaining optimal health

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are deep seeded, and so are the efforts to transform them. As Clare Fox of the L.A. Food
Policy Council once told me, “there are policies that get in the way of food justice, and
there are policies that can facilitate and catalyze food justice. I think it’s about removing
policy barriers, and decades of community organizing have gotten us to the place where
this is possible” (Fox 2013c). Organizations seeking justice for the inner city are not new,
and food justice in particular has a long legacy in South Los Angeles. The following
chapter explores another historical organization that used food as a tool of liberation and
promoted self-determination in South L.A.: The Southern California Chapter of the Black
Panther Party.

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Chapter Two: Nurturing the Revolution

On one Saturday every spring, hundreds of South L.A. residents and their families
gather at Normandie Avenue Elementary School to celebrate our most beloved of planets:
Earth. Master gardeners offer tips on edible gardening, fruit tree pruning, and how to
construct “seed bombs” for guerilla reforestation of vacant city lots.
30
There are healthy
meal recipes, cooking demonstrations, and workshops on how to make natural body care
products using healing oils and medicinal herbs like rosemary and lavender, which grow
wild and free throughout the city’s urban landscape. Children roar with laughter as they
race around the courtyard with faces painted and bellies full of good food. Meanwhile,
adults learn how to make their homes more energy efficient, and find out where to buy
local, affordable, pesticide-free fruits and vegetables. Every part of the festival is a
collaborative effort to help rekindle South L.A.’s connection to the Earth –in spite of the
neighborhood’s lack of green space, fresh air, and healthy food.
The annual “Earth Day South L.A.” (EDSLA) celebration is completely
antithetical to prevailing media portrayals of South Los Angeles, where accounts of poor
dietary choices, food addictions, and devastating rates of sickness and death are
abundant. However, there is a lesser-known story of communities working from within
toxic spaces to achieve health and wellness in a myriad of ways, and Earth Day South
L.A. is just one of several new and exciting efforts to reclaim food, land, and ideologies
of health in the region. Interventions like these are cutting-edge in many ways, but they
also have deep roots in longstanding social justice efforts by radical groups. EDSLA in

30 Seed bombs are a mixture of soil, compost, seeds and water. They can be tossed into empty lots, and are
an easy and effective way to propagate barren areas.

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particular is the brainchild of Community Services Unlimited (CSU), a 501C3
organization created by the Southern California Chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP)
in 1977 as part of a continuing effort to serve the South L.A. community for the
foreseeable future. CSU has since expanded upon Black Panther models of feeding the
community by adding the extra element of healthy, plant-based food to address the
phenomena of preventable diet-related illness and premature death, but the mantra of
“serving the people, body and soul” has remained unchanged.
In this chapter I trace the radical lineage of the Southern California Chapter of the
Black Panther Party through Community Services Unlimited. While most accounts
maintain that the Panther Party more or less disintegrated in the early 1980s after years of
government infiltration and mass incarceration, I argue that although its formal structure
changed, the Party’s survival platform persisted through Community Services Unlimited
and their transformational food praxes. For instance, Earth Day South L.A. is a
contemporary embodiment of the free clinics and food giveaways that defined the
Panther Party’s survival programs in the 1960s. Moreover, I argue that by founding
Community Services Unlimited, where food is central to the praxis of revolution, the
Panthers helped to sow the early seeds of what has become L.A.’s food justice
movement. While food and land ownership have always been central to Black freedom
struggles more broadly, the Black Panther Party helped to frame the peculiar relationship
between race, advanced capitalism, food access and health outcomes in the urban core.
Point number ten of the Panther’s 10-point platform begins, “We want land, bread,
housing, education, clothing, justice and peace”, which demonstrates the foundational
importance of food to all other struggles for equity.

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For the Panthers, food was central to achieving self-determination and working
toward autonomy in the inner city. Similarly, CSU uses food to develop a collective
place-based identity through urban farming, nutrition and agricultural education, youth
leadership training, and community economic development. What follows is an
examination of the more subtle tactics of revolution; particularly those associated with
the gendered and often invisible work of food production. Through archival materials
from the Black Panther Party Collection at the Southern California Library and the
Sankofa archive at Community Services Unlimited, I explore the lasting impact of the
BPP and the ways that food still functions as a tool of community building, place making,
and politicization in South Los Angeles. I interrogate what is revolutionary about feeding
marginalized communities, and to whom this is threatening. As former Black Panther
Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver (1969) has stated,
Revolution, in its essence, means precisely the rearrangement of a system.
Many people think of revolution only as overt violence –as guns shooting
and conflagrations, as flames leaping into the air, bodies in the streets and
the uprising masses storming city hall. This is only one phase of the
revolutionary process.
31

The Black Panther Party is notorious for its militancy, but their subversively
revolutionary survival programs helped them to garner community support and federal ire
at their peak.

31
Eldridge Cleaver ultimately came to oppose the BPP survival programming, as he was in favor of more
overtly militant tactics (Jones 1998, Alkebulan 2007). Nonetheless, his definition of revolution underpins
the way that the Party served the people.

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Survival in the Face of Deliberate Neglect: Towards Autonomy of the Body
Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale developed the Black Panther Party in 1966 in
response to police brutality, poverty, and other forms of Black oppression. The Party was
also designed to address the omission of these elements from the political platform of
cultural nationalist groups. According to former Panther Joan Kelly-Williams, it was
difficult to organize Black people in Los Angeles when the Southern California Chapter
of the Black Panther Party first took root in 1968, because many Black Angelenos were
suspicious that the party was “just another gang coming on the set” (KPFA 1970).
However, the Panther’s organized presence actually reduced gang violence in South L.A.,
and community wariness was eventually replaced with enthusiasm. By the summer of
1969, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had already declared the Black Panther Party for Self
Defense to be the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States of America
(Conway 2010). This may come as no surprise considering that militant, masculinist
symbols of the Black Panther Party are the ones most common in the American memory
and imaginary. Widely-circulated images of Black men marching through city streets
with beret-capped Afros and loaded shotguns often obscure the simple yet revolutionary
principles of self-determination and community service that the Party employed to fortify
the Black community, one healthy person at a time (Keeling 2007).
Although the Party gained notoriety in the national media as militants after their
infamous 1967 march at the State Capitol in Sacramento to protect their right to bear
arms and continue police patrols, their notion of self-defense was largely community
health based. Party cofounder Huey Newton (1980, 21) explains,
What never became clear to the public, largely because it was always
deemphasized in the media, was that the armed self-defense program of

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the Party was just one form of what Party leaders viewed as self-defense
against oppression. …The Panther means for implementing its concept of
self-defense was its various survival programs… [and] it was these broad-
based programs, including the free food programs where thousands of
bags of groceries were given away to the poor citizens of the community,
that gave the Party great appeal to poor and Black people throughout the
country.

The survival programs were deliberately designed to serve the people and salvage
the Panther’s public image, which had been maligned in the mainstream media. In an
intentional shift away from the armed resistance that had brought much bad press, the
Party rearticulated its commitment to the development of community institutions in
service of the people. As Alondra Nelson explains, “…health was a site where the stakes
of injustice could be exposed and a prism through which struggles for equality could be
refracted (Nelson 2011, 5). Food was central to the survival agenda because the BPP
recognized hunger as one of the greatest forms of oppression in the United States, and
feeding people (especially children) as a key to liberation (Hilliard 2007). Hence, the
survival platform, coupled with an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist ideology earned the
Party massive support and rapport in Black communities across the United States
(Newton 1980, Murch 2010).
The premise behind the survival programs was the idea that oppressed people
needed their basic needs met as a precursor to any revolutionary organizing or action.
JoNina Abron (1998) writes, “in order to fully develop the human capital of a
community, the day-to-day needs of the people must be addressed. Party members
understood that in order to maximize one’s potential, personal safety, nourishment, and
adequate health care was paramount (Abron 1998, 179). Hungry people could not
effectively organize for freedom, so feeding the people was a revolutionary act. The

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survival programs were conceived and designed to fortify Black people at the level of the
individual body first, and then scale outward to transform the wider community. As Huey
Newton explains, “if the people are not here revolution cannot be achieved, for the people
and only the people make revolutions (Newton 1970, cited in Hilliard and Weise 2011,
161). Giving free food to oppressed people was a subtle yet revolutionary tactic.
The most widely renowned and perhaps most successful of the food programs was
Free Breakfast for School Children, which began in 1969 in Oakland, California. The
breakfast program operated nationwide and, at its peak, served anywhere from 15,000-
30,000 hungry children on a daily basis (Heynen 2009). Supported by volunteer labor,
donated food, and monetary contributions from local businesses, the Panthers worked to
fulfill basic needs that were not being met in Black communities where the majority of
youth were arriving at school hungry, tired, and unable to concentrate on a daily basis. In
addition to serving free food, the survival platform consisted of over thirty five other
programs including armed “cop watches” to monitor and curb police brutality, free health
clinics and Sickle Cell Anemia testing, liberation schools, free legal aid and legal
education, consumer advocacy, martial arts and self-defense, organized buses for people
to visit loved ones in prison, and escort services for senior citizens (Radical Education
Project 1969).

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Community Services Unlimited

“Community Services Unlimited 1978” (Community Services Unlimited 2015).

In 1977, Community Services Unlimited was born as an attempt to preserve the
Panther legacy and continue to serve the South L.A. community in the years to come.
Often referred to as the “nonprofit arm” of the Southern California Chapter of the BPP,
CSU has indeed been like a branch that grew from its parent plant and propagated nicely
on its own. Community Services Unlimited has continued to use food as a revolutionary
tool to promote self-reliance and sustainability in South L.A. For the first two decades of
its existence, CSU was an explicit continuation of the Panther survival programs, and
continued the Party’s health screenings and regular food giveaways in South L.A. When
Executive Director Neelam Sharma joined CSU in 1996, she noticed that although the
organization was still serving the people, there was very little that set CSU apart from the

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other free food programs in the neighborhood, operated by churches and food banks
(Sharma 2013). Sharma wanted CSU to offer the South L.A. community something
different, so in 1998 she helped to rewrite CSU’s mission/vision statement to read as
follows:
Our mission is to foster the creation of communities actively working to
address the inequalities and systemic barriers that make sustainable
communities and self-reliant life-styles unattainable. We are committed to
supporting and creating justice-driven community-based programs and
educational initiatives, which seek to foster dialogue, and create awareness
and critical consciousness. We envision equitable, healthful and
sustainable communities that are self-reliant, inter-relating and where
every individual has the support and resources needed to develop to their
fullest capacity (Community Services Unlimited 2015).

Sharma’s influence also extended into CSU’s programming. In 2002, the organization
cofounded the Healthy School Food Coalition (HSFC), and was instrumental in the L.A.
Unified School District’s “soda ban” and the subsequent passing of the Obesity
Prevention Motion (Environmental Research Foundation 2015). The very next year in
2003, CSU helped to form “Active Community to Improve Our Nutrition” (ACTION),
and conducted a youth- and community-driven food assessment of South Los Angeles
(Community Services Unlimited 2004).
The ACTION assessment helped CSU to build lasting relationships with South
L.A. storeowners, and it also led to the development of new CSU programming to
address the environmental problems identified by the study. For instance, in 2004, CSU
collaborated with Normandie Avenue Elementary and John Muir Middle Schools to
create what they call “mini-farms” replete with edible gardens and fruit trees, which CSU
maintains and uses for educational purposes. In 2005, CSU joined forces with the EXPO
Center in the heart of South L.A. to turn an adjacent empty lot into another mini urban

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farm that is collectively maintained by CSU staff, interns, and the thousand-plus
volunteers who come to CSU’s free workshops and classes every year.
CSU’s most popular workshop series is the Garden Gateway (GG) Program, which
grew out of a 2006 initiative to create a native plant garden at the Southern California
Library, and has since expanded to become a set of intergenerational hands-on courses
that use nutrition and gardening to teach participants how to overcome the health impacts
of differential food access and environmental racism. During the three-hour sessions,
South L.A. residents learn tangible skills, such as how to start plant seedlings, or maintain
chicken coops, or even build an outdoor tandoori oven. Since the Garden Gateway
Program receives annual funding from a University of Southern California Good
Neighbor grant, CSU can give away materials as well. In other words, they can teach
participants how to build raised bed gardens as a means to avoid potential lead
contamination, and then they can provide participants with the lumber and the diagrams
to build their own raised bed gardens at home.
Youth interns are integrated into all of CSU’s programming, but the Growing
Healthy Program (GH), and the From the Ground UP! Apprenticeship Program (FGU),
specifically provide them with business and leadership skills through farming and
marketing. For instance, FGU apprentices help to maintain CSU’s Mini Urban Exposition
Farm and the Normandie Avenue Elementary School garden, where they learn to harvest
fresh fruits and vegetables and dehydrate and package herbs.

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“CSU Mini-Urban Farms” (Community Services Unlimited 2011).

The youth learn real-life application of math and marketing by selling goods at
CSU produce stands and through partnering vendors as part of the Village Market Place
(VMP) social enterprise: a wholesale and retail food business that focuses on increasing
access to high quality, locally grown, Beyond Organic
32
produce. The Village Market
Place was developed in 2007 with the goal of providing fresh, affordable, culturally-
appropriate food to South L.A. residents through neighborhood produce stands, a produce
bag subscription program, and by sourcing wholesale produce to local stores and
restaurants. VMP food comes primarily from the EXPO mini farm, CSU’s school farms,
and small local farmers in the region as well. In addition to fruits and vegetables, the

32
“Beyond Organic” is fruits and vegetables that are locally and sustainably sourced and grown without
chemicals or pesticides, but not officially certified organic, thus avoiding the expensive certification
process and passing the savings on to the people. A more in depth discussion of CSU’s Beyond Organic
programming can be found in chapter four: Autonomous Roots.

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VMP also offers a wide range of other “value-added” specialty items such as flours,
coffee, dry beans, herbs, jams, sauces, teas and spices.

“Dyane Pascall of Community Services Unlimited gives Karyn Williams a bag of
produce outside St. John's Well Child and Family Center in South L.A.” (Mel Melcon /
Los Angeles Times 2013).

Community Services Unlimited has undergone a series of overhauls and location
changes in its nearly four decades of working to create a community-based local food
system in South Central Los Angeles. The organization was housed in Neelam Sharma’s
garage until 2008, when grant funding from the Kellogg Foundation helped finance a
move to the original site of the Aquarian Bookshop—a renowned Black-owned bookstore
that caught fire and closed during the 1992 L.A. uprisings. In 2012, with the support of a
Community Development Grant, CSU was able to expand and create a storefront at the
Mercado La Paloma –a bustling South L.A. marketplace with vendors and restaurants.
The storefront allowed CSU to build a significant customer base and engage the South

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L.A. community in conversations about health and food justice. Then, in 2013, the VMP
relocated to the United University Church (UUC) –an independent institution on the
University of Southern California’s campus that has historically worked to promote a
social justice agenda in line with CSU’s mission.
Early in 2015, CSU purchased its newest location: the Paul Robeson building at
6569 South Vermont Avenue. The 5,000 square foot building and 10,000 square foot lot
will allow the organization to create an on-site commercial kitchen and urban farm, and
open a produce and grocery market in the underserved area. With this increased capacity,
CSU can sustain the numerous food-based programs that encourage healthier lifestyles
and develop radical political consciousness in South Los Angeles. Each time the
organization has changed locations, CSU staff, interns, and board members have met and
deliberated extensively to reach the best decision for the overall good of the group and its
mission. Fortunately, the organization has been able to remain rooted in South L.A.
despite any challenges that each specific site may have posed, and CSU has continued to
flourish, emerging more unified and more effective each time.
Eggs With a Side of Political Education: the Threat of Free Breakfast and an
Educated Proletariat
“Survival” as deployed by the Panther programs was about meeting basic physical
needs in Black communities that had long been neglected by the state, but it also hinged
upon people’s understanding of themselves in the world. Going beyond simply filling
empty bellies, the Party made sure that people understood why they were starving, why
their communities were under constant siege by police, and why no matter how hard they
worked, poor Black people could not easily alleviate their debt or living conditions. It

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was especially important that Black children understood the connection between class
struggles and racial exploitation in the U.S. and the experiences of oppressed people
around the world. Perhaps the most threatening element of the Survival programs
(besides delegitimizing the state) was that they filled Black communities with more than
just food. Many also functioned as a platform to cultivate racial pride and consciousness,
and to offer real alternatives and pathways out of suffering. Through songs, games and
cartoons, children developed a revolutionary consciousness that combined Black
radicalism with a sharp critique of capitalism. By illuminating the capitalist
underpinnings of lived inequality and hardship in poor Black communities, the Panthers
were also politicizing the people, and in so doing, effectively constructing what Roger
Freeman –aide to then Governor Ronald Reagan—had deemed as dangerous as dynamite:
an “educated proletariat”.
Having learned to make sense of structural inequality by studying Franz Fanon and
Malcolm X, and taking cues from Mao Tse-Tung, Karl Marx, and Che Guevara to build
their framework and ten-point platform, the Panthers made the personal political, and
offered intersectional analytical tools along with the food they served. Fortifying children
with the nutrition necessary to concentrate better in school quickly led to a critique of the
American institution of education and the development of Liberation Schools: impromptu
spaces where Black children learned Panther ideology and Black history once their
stomachs were full (Alkebulan 2007).
Consequently, as J. Edgar Hoover demonstrated in a number of seething memos to
his regional FBI offices, the breakfast programs for schoolchildren and their “insidious
poison” were a particular thorn in the side of the state (Churchill 2002b, 146). But what

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was so intimidating about feeding hungry children? After all, the breakfast programs
were “...both the model and impetus for all federally funded school breakfast programs in
existence within the United States today” (Heynen 2009, 411). It stands to reason that it
was the liberation schools, which often functioned in tandem with the free breakfasts, that
Hoover’s FBI found so menacing as the Party expanded its survival programs into the
broader Black community (Self 2006, Williamson 2005). In addition to food and
curriculum for youth, the Panthers also held regular adult political education classes
about capitalism, Black history and culture, and the merit and praxis of revolution.
“Panthers believed that exploited and oppressed people deserved an education that
provided them with the tools to critically examine the capitalist structure, understand
their reality as Blacks in America, and then plot a course for change” (Williamson 2005,
138).
The political education component that accompanied the food served by the Party
was designed to expose racialized processes of state violence, the limits and failures of
capitalism, and the systemic oppression of people of color. Self-sufficient, healthy, and
radicalized Black communities posed a serious threat to a regime based from its inception
upon the exploitation, domination and control of Black bodies. Accordingly, as the BPP
gained traction and built relationships in Black communities, so intensified the repressive
efforts of the FBI, and the Black Panther Party for Self Defense soon became the central
target of the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO): a secret, illegal
operation that intended to dissolve, quell and “neutralize” a growing Black revolutionary
consciousness (Churchill 2002a).

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Almost immediately following the Party’s inception, COINTELPRO commenced
its mission to dismantle and create discord within the group and among its many
followers and collaborators. As early as 1967, infiltrators and provocateurs were
employed to plant seeds of dissent.
33
Claims of poisoned food in the breakfast programs
and child abuse in the liberation schools were published and aired through syndicated
media outlets to incite fear and deter parents from enrolling their children in Panther
programs (Newton 1980). Police were dispatched to raid and ransack clinics and
kitchens, and local BPP chapter offices were intentionally set on fire and their files stolen
or destroyed. A steady stream of negative images and misinformation was deployed by
the Federal Bureau of Investigations to incite public fear (Churchill 2002b).

In a
desperate attempt to thwart the rising credibility of the BPP, several Party members were
viciously beaten, imprisoned (some still to this day), and savagely murdered; a testament
to “... the extent to which the BPP and the Black Power Movement of which it was a part,
succeeded in eroding black consensus to U.S. sovereignty” (Keeling 2007).
Both the Black Panther Party and Community Services Unlimited have emphasized
the importance of political education to achieving liberation. In the 60s, the BPP taught
groups of predominantly Black youth about capitalism, freedom, and to understand their
interconnectedness with other oppressed people. As a 21
st
century continuation of the
Party, CSU also teaches marginalized youth of color about the universal nature of social
stratification, privilege, and oppression, encouraging them to examine their own material
reality and lived experiences through the lens of food and health. CSU prepares young
people to become social and environmental leaders in their schools and communities.

33 A particularly devastating feud was the one instigated between the BPP and Maulana Karenga’s US
organization, which led to the assassination of John Huggins and Bunchy Carter at UCLA in 1969.

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Their accessible curriculum centers hands-on agricultural and nutritional education, as
well as food cultivation, preparation, and distribution. Youth interns are also required to
attend classes, workshops, and “pedagogy circles” to become familiar with ideologies of
Black freedom and liberation. In these circles and spaces the interns read texts on
colonialism and revolutionary movements, and they learn the ways that racialization
takes place, both within the United States and abroad.
Along with the Liberation Schools, the other major vehicle for Panther curriculum
was the Party’s newsletter The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service, which
thoroughly exposed the contradictions of capitalism and Black suffering in America. The
Black Panther was an important pedagogical tool, with a weekly circulation of up to
150,000 in the U.S., and subscribers in other countries (Hilliard 2007). Without mincing
words, the paper regularly offered scathing critiques of the misaligned priorities of the
U.S. nation state and the failures of capitalism.
Poverty, hunger and joblessness is very visible and very real in this so
called democratic country. The name of the game is capitalism. Capitalism
can be broken down into a system of haves and have nots. This society
does not relate to humanitarianism but rather to profit gained by a few at
the expense of the majority. …The non-existent relationship between the
establishment and the people is clearly shown by the poverty,
unemployment and decadent housing conditions in a country that boasts of
being the richest in the world…the establishment is spending billions of
dollars sending rockets up to the moon and millions more in Viet Nam
(sic) conducting genocide on our brothers and sisters of color over there.
Yet these same bastards can’t even feed hungry children breakfast in the
morning. ‘BULLSHIT’ (The Black Panther, Monday March 31, 1969, 9)

Maintaining a self-published news service to reach the people remained central to
later manifestations of the BPP. In 1994, CSU’s lead organizers helped to form the New
Panther Vanguard Movement (formerly called the “New African American Vanguard
Movement”), which launched its own news service The Black Panther Newspaper in

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1995. That same year, CSU and the NVPM co-founded Panther UK: A publication
created in partnership with radical freedom organizers in the United Kingdom.

“Panther UK Newsletter” (Hassberg 2015e).

In the mid-1970s, former CSU Executive Director B. Kwaku Duren, Anthony Thigpenn,
and Michael Zinzun founded The Coalition Against Police Abuse (CAPA) “…in
response to the historically persistent waves of police shooting, beatings, and harassment
that so evidently define Black neighborhoods” (Vargas 2008, 27). In the mid-1990s, as
South Central L.A. was still reeling from the civil unrest that devastated the community
after the 1992 Rodney King verdict, CSU partnered with the Coalition Against Police
Abuse (CAPA) to orchestrate a cease-fire and gang truce between Bloods and Crips
(Vargas 2008). However, while Panthers facilitated peace in Los Angeles, there was a
concurrent surge in gang-related violence in the UK, where CSU Executive Director

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Neelam Sharma grew up and became politicized. Accordingly, the founders of Panther
UK organized a speaking tour to bring L.A.’s gang truce leaders to speak to Black and
Brown youth throughout the UK about alternatives to gang violence and the importance
of healthy communities.

“Bloods and Crips UK Tour, Signed Poster” (Hassberg 2015b).
True to the notion that oppression anywhere impacts everyone everywhere, CSU and
Panther UK facilitated a transatlantic Black radicalism that worked to serve the people on
both sides of the pond.
The Panthers used free food, political education, and their weekly publication to
organize Black communities against systemic, racialized violence. The survival programs
provided tangible resources while cultivating racial pride and political consciousness. It
was common knowledge that the state did not deliver basic protections to Black people,

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but the Panthers provided language and theory to help Black communities to fully
understand their oppression. As Panther Marshall “Eddie” Conway writes,
One group was beating and killing them and the other group was trying to
feed and protect them, the choice was not rocket science, it was the choice
between being beaten or being fed. …Seeing hundreds of people emerge
from our centers with food and not empty promises, serves to educate the
people as to who is really concerned about their future (Conway 2010).

In April of 1969, the Southern California Chapter implemented their first Breakfast
program at the University 7th Day Adventist Church on Budlong Avenue –respectfully
titled the “John Huggins Hot Breakfast for Children Program” in honor of the slain
Deputy Minister of Information (Hilliard 2008). In December of the same year, Los
Angeles Panthers suffered a massive attack on several of their offices, the worst of which
occurred at the Central office at 4115 South Central Avenue (Everett 2009). “Those
inside the Party's Central Avenue office opted to defend themselves by shooting it out
with the police for nearly five hours, refusing to surrender until their arrests could be
effected in broad daylight and before hundreds of spectators” (Churchill 2014, 99).
Building community is no easy feat. The Black Panthers managed to establish trust
and rapport in Los Angeles, even in the face of character defamation, extreme repression,
and state-sanctioned violence. For instance, the Central office had been home to a
breakfast program for children before the shootout. After the attack, a Black woman who
lived in the neighborhood generously continued the breakfast program in her own home
because, as she said, “the children still had to be fed” (KPFA 1970). Serving the needs of
the Black community humanized the Party in South L.A. where the BPP was providing
critical services that were otherwise unavailable. The repressive response of the state to
the Black Panther survival programs signals that although the greatest threat to the power

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structure may have been Black men with guns, Black people nurturing and feeding
themselves was alarming in its own right (Conway 2010).
In 1975 when the State Breakfast Program (SBP) was implemented in regions
across the country, the Panthers were understandably skeptical, and they distrusted the
seemingly philanthropic, altruistic move on the part of the state. Although it was
purported to improve health and academic achievement, scholars argue that the state’s
free breakfast and lunch programs deliberately co-opted the role the Party had embraced
in the Black community (Heynen 2009, Giménez 2011). In the August 16, 1969 issue of
The Black Panther, six years before the first state-sponsored school food program,
Indianapolis Chapter Minister of Information Donald Campbell wrote,
…It was brought to the attention of the Ministry of Information that the
power structure had made strides to implement a Breakfast program for
School Children in the fall. …We want the children fed, and if it takes the
vanguard party to show the piggish administration how to serve the people
instead of exploiting them, then we say right on… But we must not be
fooled …we must adopt a ‘wait and see’ attitude, but while we wait and
see we do not intend to stop serving the people (The Black Panther,
August 16, 1969 p. 14).

Although they recognized it as appropriation, the BPP still warily considered government
breakfast programs a nominal victory. Having already set an example for how to properly
serve the people, the Party cautiously acknowledged the government’s attempts to do the
same. Meanwhile, they vowed to continue their own direct service programs at the local
and nationwide level.

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Intra-racial Solidarity
Recognizing the rapid global expansion of capitalism and the parallels between
Black exploitation in America and the oppression of poor people around the world, the
Panthers developed alliances with other groups and organizations beyond the Black
community. The party had relationships with groups such as the Chicano Brown Berets,
the Chinese Red Guard Party, and the New York/Chicago based Puerto Rican Young
Lords (Jones 1998). The Young Lords were particularly inspired by the revolutionary
principles of the BPP, and they implemented similar survival programs in their
communities that radically changed the relationship between Latino youth and their lived
environments. For instance, in 1969 the Young Lords’ seized the First Spanish Methodist
Church (now popularly known as “the people’s church”) after it refused to host a
breakfast program and day care (Judson 2003, KPFA 1970). The group occupied the
building and “for 11 days they used it as a site for health testing, food programs, poetry
readings, and lessons in Puerto Rican and black history” (Place Matters 2015). The
Panther model was easily adaptable by the Young Lords who struggled with a similar set
of oppressions in the urban core across the country.
The Party was also deeply aligned with the United Farm Workers Union (UFW)
and the Delano Grape Strike, which protested grape workers’ low pay and abhorrent
working conditions. During the strike, the UFW was in the process of boycotting several
retailers who refused to recognize their labor demands (Pulido 1996, 71). In support of
the UFW, Panthers in Los Angeles joined picket lines and stood up to police on behalf of
protesters. Party co-founder Bobby Seale also “…created a "motor pool" for party use
that was employed in the Safeway boycott. In the evenings when people went shopping

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for groceries, party members would not only explain to them why they should be
boycotting Safeway, but they also provided transportation to the Lucky's grocery stores,
which had donated to the Free Breakfast for Children Program and had agreed not to sell
California grapes” (Araiza 2009, 204). Additionally, The Black Panther news service
printed several inserts advising Black consumers to boycott table grapes in solidarity. The
UFW boycott opened up new and important dialogues within Black communities about
food production, pesticides, and labor rights, and both organizations’ political power was
strengthened considerably by this affiliation. Conversely, the UFW was mutually and
reciprocally supportive of the BPP during the 1969 police raids on L.A. Panther offices,
immediately offering their moral and strategic support.
Although Community Services Unlimited has Black radical roots, it has become a
multiracial organization, led and operated by staff whose ethnic identities range from
Indian to Jewish to Latino to Trinidadian. What unites them is their political
consciousness and commitment to liberation through healthy food access for
marginalized groups in the urban core. Food functions to unify seemingly disparate
groups across multiple lines of difference. For CSU, food helps people begin to see
themselves in the struggles of others. Because everyone must eat, racialized disparities
are more easily understood when framed in terms of food access, human rights, and
health outcomes. In order for social change to manifest, members of dominant groups
must learn how to be allies, and to defend the rights and livelihoods of the oppressed.
These kinds of alliances have been vital to historic victories, from abolition movements
to dismantle slavery, to multiracial civil rights initiatives that worked towards the

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liberation of oppressed groups. As Barbara Ransby explains in her discussion of the
Black Lives Matter Movement,
…If we liberate the black poor, or if the black poor liberate themselves,
we will uplift everybody else who’s been kept down. In other words, any
serious analysis of racial capitalism must recognize that to seek liberation
for black people is also to destabilize inequality in the United States at
large, and to create new possibilities for all who live here (Ransby 2015).

Sankofa: Learning from the Past to Build towards the Future
By 1982 the Black Panther Party had been effectively infiltrated and largely
dismantled, due largely to the repressive efforts of COINTELPRO, the crack cocaine
epidemic of the 1980s, and the rise of the prison industrial complex. Many Party
members became addicted to drugs, others were killed or incarcerated, and still others
were exiled and forced to leave the U.S. altogether.
34
The Southern California Chapter
was not exempt, however they preserved and protected their legacy by founding their
nonprofit organization Community Services Unlimited. There have been a plethora of
student films and multimedia projects featuring Community Services Unlimited and their
important presence in South L.A. (Guilford and Joe 2012). However, while these projects
have explored the organization’s contemporary crusade for food justice, they generally do
not address the organization’s Black Panther roots. This is also the case with academic
work, with the exception of a few scholars (Bonacich and Alimahomed-Wilson 2011,
Broad 2013b, Hondagneu-Sotelo 2014). As of this writing, the lineage of Community
Services Unlimited has not been thoroughly traced in any medium. To address this, CSU
recently initiated the Sankofa Project: the first community-based history that documents
the many transmutations of the organization.

34 See: Assata Shakur, Eldridge Cleaver, Pete O’Neal, D.L. Cox—Panthers in exile.

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“Sankofa” is a Ghanaian word which means, “to go back and get it”, or “learning
from the past to build toward the future”. The purpose of CSU’s Sankofa Project is
multifold. First, it is designed to excavate the radical ancestry that undergirds the
organization, as told by the people who have been fundamental to the organization since
its humble beginnings. Since 2013, I have had the opportunity to assist with this powerful
autobiographical process. In addition to developing and framing the organization’s
unique historical narrative, we have also worked to preserve hundreds of accompanying
stories, photos, and relics in an accessible new South L.A. archive.

“Sankofa Archive” (Hassberg 2015c)

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“Sankofa Archive (2)” (Hassberg 2015d).

This collection documents the Black Panther Survival programs in Los Angeles, as well
as the ways that the Party’s revolutionary ideology lives on through Community Services
Unlimited, even through changing times. The goal is to illuminate the historical (and
potentially future) role of food in processes of place making and social justice movement
building in South L.A.
The Sankofa Project also aims to help create a working definition of food justice
that is delinked from food security. In short, CSU argues that “food justice” provides
alternatives to the corporate food regime and seeks to heal the root causes of food
insecurity through community building and self-sufficiency. Conversely, “food security”
does little to critique or remedy the corporate food regime, or the environmental
degradation and human exploitation that it produces. Food justice (when done

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effectively) is grounded in a praxis and practice of liberation. It works to permanently
rectify oppressive systems and structures through community empowerment. For
instance, unlike other organizations that work to bring healthier food to underserved
areas, CSU does not advise low-income people of color to simply bite the bullet and pay
an exorbitant amount for healthy food from a corporate retailer. Instead, like the Panthers
before them, CSU teaches people to deconstruct the industrial food regime and the
racialized capitalist processes responsible for the dearth of fresh produce in communities
like South L.A. As Holt-Gimenéz and Wang (2011, 89) explain,
The Black Panthers sought to dismantle the capitalist structures of racism.
They rooted out racism in the food system by bringing it under local,
autonomous Black control. The call among many of today’s FJ activists
for local control over food and dismantling racism in the food system
echoes some of the liberation politics of the Black Panthers. Less common
today are the structural critiques of capitalism and racism that were
integral to the Party’s political work.

In addition to defining food justice and telling CSU’s story, the Sankofa Project
also identifies other organizations across the country with Black Panther roots who define
food justice in a similar way: specifically, the Detroit Black Community Food Security
Network (DBCFSN) in Detroit, and the Social Justice Learning Institute (SJLI) in
Inglewood, CA. The idea behind this is to build relationships and alliances along a
national pipeline with food justice groups who are politically aligned. Lastly, the Sankofa
Project researches “food funding” to identify who is funding food system projects, what
kinds of projects are receiving the funds, and how the money is being used.
Radicalism and Anti-Capitalism in the 21
st
Century
In a departure from the mainstream non-violent methods displayed in media
depictions of the Civil Rights Movement, the Panthers did not promote sit-ins at

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restaurants so that Blacks could earn the privilege of shopping and eating where they
were unwelcome. Instead, they provided tangible alternatives to shopping with
“avaricious businessmen”, and did not hesitate to call for economic boycotts, urging
neighborhood residents to stay away from any franchises that did not support their
survival. Still, the breakfast programs did rely heavily upon contributions and donations
from local supermarkets and businesses –especially Black businesses. Huey P. Newton
explains,
When the Black capitalist contributes to the survival programs and makes
a contribution to the community, the community will give him their
support and thus strengthen his business. If he does not make any
contribution to the survival of the community the people will not support
him and his enterprise will wither away because of his own negligence.
…In this way, Black capitalism will be transformed from a relationship of
exploitation of the community to a relationship of service to the
community, which will contribute to the survival of everyone (Newton
1972, 108).

Although Huey maintained that there is no salvation in capitalism, the survival
programs required material goods to operate. Huey believed that the survival programs
could even transform Black capitalists, if they would use their privilege to support the
Black community. The Party’s survival programs demonstrated a model of economic
self-determination in the Black community based on a departure from the oppressive
processes of capitalism, and instead sought to develop mutually beneficial relationships
with individual businesses.
Approaching self-determination and autonomy are no easy feat within the urban
core of a capitalist nation-state. The decision to form CSU as a 501C3 stems in part from
the repression the Panther Party suffered while trying to serve the people. In some ways,
501C3 status functions as a safety net that preserves the Party’s legacy, although there are

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shortcomings within the nonprofit structure. Like its Panther predecessors, Community
Services Unlimited brings resources into underserved communities and promotes self-
determination. However, contrary to what its name suggests, the Party’s brainchild
organization is indeed limited: by the challenge of maintaining a critique of capitalism
and a revolutionary framework when there are several complex relationships to be
mindful of, such as those between urban gardeners and city planners, between health
conscious consumers and corporate capitalists, and between nonprofit organizations and
their funders.
When I asked CSU Executive Director Neelam Sharma to speak to these
contradictions she mused,
I feel like radicalism in this age has to be very different. We are living in
different times. I think that to really be truly radical these days we have to
be really thoughtful about what we’re doing and what we’re creating… are
we doing something that is actually serving, or is it just being rhetorical? I
think it’s about creating things that build people’s skills to do for
themselves, because the way the world is going to change is very different
from the way that the revolutionaries of the past envisioned it. It’s not
going to be a violent revolution like the Bolshevik revolution or the Cuban
revolution where there’s an overthrow of government by a handful of
organized and armed individuals… the state is too heavily armed and too
well organized. The way that the world is going to change is through mass
consciousness, through an absolute need for things to change… like gas
running out, you know? A need. I think that real revolutionaries, people
who really see their place as promoting the continuance of radicalism and
progressive thought and ideas and practice really should be engaged in
how best to build sustainability so that when the shit hits the fan, there’s
some of us who can actually come together and carve out some kind of
reality based on what we know and the skills that we’ve gathered (Sharma
2013).

On the surface, it is difficult to understand Community Services Unlimited as a
revolutionary organization, given that its survival depends on private funding and the sale
(not donation) of food to South L.A. residents. However, as Panther Party co-founder

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Bobby Seale has argued, “a revolutionary program is one set forth by revolutionaries, by
those who want to change the existing system to a better system” (Seale 1970, 413).
Community Services Unlimited was an innovative survival strategy put forth by a
revolutionary group as a means of self-preservation and community transformation. In an
intentional departure from the state and federal programs that maintain the root causes of
structural oppression in poor communities, the Panthers sought to make lasting systemic
change for the most marginalized groups. Similarly, in a departure from contemporary
food security programs which uphold an inherently exploitive food system, CSU’s food
justice programs work to transform the structural underpinnings of the food system and
create a new and better one in its place.
Since the Panther Party’s decline, Community Services Unlimited has continued to
transform and liberate Black communities through methods that are aligned with the
original Survival programs, but necessarily different, shaped by the world at present.
Whereas the Panthers were explicitly anti-capitalist in their approach (they gave free food
to poor hungry people), CSU embodies a more market-driven method in which they make
local, pesticide-free foods accessible and affordable for purchase. Mirroring the BPP’s
cautious skepticism about funding sources, CSU is very selective about accepting
financial support from corporate sponsors. They make great efforts to fundraise primarily
among community partners, and have forfeited money from funding entities that do not
reflect the organization’s principles. For instance, in 2011, CSU was presented with the
opportunity to apply for a grant from the Wal-Mart Corporation. After much internal
struggle, CSU ultimately decided against it. Neelam Sharma recalls, “that money was
conditional. Of course it would have helped us, and we needed it, but it would negate

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everything that we stand for. We would rather find the money somewhere else, and we
did” (Sharma 2013). With roots in Black Freedom struggles and Black radical organizing,
CSU takes pride in embodying a living example of self-determination and integrity.
However, in addition to serving the people, they must also keep the organization afloat.
As Alkon and Agyeman (2011) point out, “market-based solutions imply that food
desert residents need only achieve the ability to purchase healthier food…[and market-
based solutions] are inherently undemocratic because they require money” (Alkon and
Agyeman 2011, 341). It is true that today’s food justice organizing work depends heavily
upon funds from private entities and foundations. This causes many nonprofits to get
caught in a problematic cycle of continually applying for short-term funding to stay
afloat: a phenomenon known as the “nonprofit industrial complex” (Incite! Women of
Color Against Violence 2007). CSU has not been exempt, and in 2010, as nonprofits
across the country were imploding due to lack of funding, CSU’s core employees worked
for free all summer, praying for a financial miracle. When a Community Food Projects
grant from the USDA came through at the 11
th
hour, the group used the funds to expand
their Village Market Place social enterprise as a means to ensure that the organization
could become community-sustained. Although VMP goods are not free, they are
affordable, and the sales help CSU to offset their dependence on grant and foundation
funding to keep its programming going.
The Black Panther Party used food to make an explicit intervention into the effects
of American poverty—such as malnutrition, inadequate healthcare, and substandard
education. Community Services Unlimited has continued to use food to help low-income
Black and Brown communities meet their nutritional needs and better understand

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structural oppression. Although the Black Panthers were anti-capitalist in theory, they
also depended on donations from local capitalist food retailers in order to provide free
food to the community. CSU may not be explicitly anti-capitalist, but if capitalism is
inherently about accumulation of profits and exploitation of labor (Marx 1992), then a
community-supported organization whose surplus goes to low-income youth
development and local food systems is a departure from capitalism. Sometimes even
using the “master’s tools” (Lorde 2012, 113) —in this case, nonprofit status and money
from private companies and foundations—can be subversive, insofar as it gives people a
means to sustain and reproduce themselves in spaces and places where they otherwise
could not. When it becomes oppressive, we must turn to each other for support.
The Changing Same
The forces that Black Americans have long struggled against have morphed and
changed shape, but they are still in place. The promises of industrialization and
modernity have gone largely unfulfilled, especially in the urban core. We have
quantifiably more money, but it has less value and everything is more expensive. The
militarized police state still violently profiles and murders Black citizens, and now they
also use drones and advanced surveillance technology. We have more information but
less privacy, and smarter phones but poorer education. We also have more food but less
nutritional value, so we are at once obese and malnourished in the richest nation in the
world, during the worst recession since the Great Depression. Understandably then,
contemporary food justice efforts are taking place in a very different political economic
climate than the Panther era.

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The 21
st
century globalized food system is wrought with new health challenges
that were not on the public radar in the 1960s and 70s. Substances like genetically
modified organisms (GMOs), high fructose corn syrup, and trans fats are present in the
majority of commercially processed foods, and while there is a growing awareness about
where and how our food is grown and produced, it is nearly impossible to avoid these
additives when one is poor. CSU’s continued crusade against hunger and food inequality
is compounded by efforts to stave off the symptoms of a modern industrial diet, because
for the first time ever, this generation of youth is not expected to outlive their parents due
to food-related illnesses like obesity and diabetes (Belluck 2005). In the decades since the
Panther Party’s decline, low-income urban neighborhoods like South Los Angeles have
been especially inundated with fast food, processed junk food, liquor, and conventionally
grown fruits and vegetables drenched in pesticides. CSU strives to promote a new,
healthy urban lifestyle in which it is both desirable and realistic for marginalized people
to consume pesticide-free fruits and vegetables that have been locally and sustainably
grown.
The food justice work that Community Services Unlimited does builds upon the
Panther model of “serving the people, body and soul”, however, while the goal of feeding
hungry people has remained the same, the nature of the food and its socio-political
meaning has changed. The cuisine that characterizes our national memory of the Civil
Rights and Black Power Movements is a far cry from the gluten free, dairy free, cage free
goods that distinguish 21
st
century alternative food and health movements. What the
Panthers served for breakfast in the 60s would likely not be socially acceptable in today’s
health-obsessed society, where culturally specific food practices are intrinsically linked to

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the food-related illnesses that contribute to premature death in Black communities (Opie
2010, Hurt 2013). While there are a number of perspectives on the historical relevance
and impact of soul food and its value today, the Panthers’ eggs, grits, sausage and toast
were undeniably vital to the health and longevity of the Black community.
35
Moreover,
the act of simply feeding the community at all provided a template for contemporary food
justice work.
The Panther model was one of action; spending less time talking about social ills
and more time rectifying them, and not waiting for the state to do what needed to be
done. The survival platform was, as June Jordan (1980) would say, the recognition that
we are the ones we have been waiting for. The Panthers identified the holes and the
neglect in Black communities and immediately began to fill them with tangible solutions
and a renegade model of autonomy that both shamed the state and held it accountable for
its failures. Building healthy individuals to build healthy communities is as central to
CSU’s mission as it was to the Black Panther Party in the 60s, and food is still a viable
medium to shape the world that we want in place of the one we are critiquing. In any
garden, the seeds we water are the ones that will grow, and we must nurture the seeds of
collectivism and longevity if we are to produce healthy futures. In the next chapter, I
explore other revolutionary strategies for survival in South Los Angeles; particularly
efforts to create alternatives to the oppressive corporate food regime and build new,
healthy lifestyles within otherwise toxic spaces.

35
In the 1960s and 70s, while the Panthers were serving pork sausages and soul food to hungry children,
cultural nationalists like Amiri Baraka and Maulana Karenga’s US Organization were advocating for
vegetarian diets to offset health related illness and develop a separate Black identity in the United States
(see: Wallach 2014). This chapter traces the development of Community Services Unlimited, a South L.A.
food justice organization founded by the Southern California Black Panther Party. Later iterations of this
work will further address the linkages between cultural nationalism, Black vegetarianism, and
contemporary food justice movements.

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Chapter Three: Autonomous Roots
…It is in the interstitial spaces of cities that transnational communities are
remaking local places (Peña 2006b, 5).

In the summer of 2013, I helped Community Services Unlimited to coordinate the
Rooted in Community National Youth Leadership Summit (RIC), which brought 150
gifted young food justice activists to South Los Angeles for a week of community health
training and skill building. For the past 16 years, this important and innovative
conference has taken place annually in cities across the United States from Boston to the
Bay Area. RIC is a network of youth and adult allies committed to engaging marginalized
communities in the creation of a more just and equitable food system. Through regional
gatherings, intensive mentorship, art, and a Youth Food Bill of Rights, the RIC network
works to amplify the voices of young people of color in the food movement, and to
transform ideologies and relationships to food. Both RIC and CSU engage young people
in conversations about social justice and the decision-making processes that shape our
collective futures, as they are the ones who will inherit the world. Food justice is a
particularly effective youth organizing tool for both groups. Young people who eat foods
with high caloric value and low-nutrient density are more likely to perform poorly
academically, and develop food related illnesses. Conversely, youth who develop an early
awareness of health and sustainability are more likely to have intentional food practices
as adults (Peterson et al 2000, Booth et al 2005, Gottlieb 2010, Nestle 2013).
From January to July of 2013, I worked with CSU staff, other board members,
and volunteers to develop an exciting curriculum to teach RIC youth and CSU interns
about the ways that food justice shaped and was shaped by South Los Angeles. Many of

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the visiting youth had never flown on an airplane before that week, and they were excited
to be in California. At about the mid-week point, after a jam-packed itinerary of events,
activities and speakers, we took the group on a South L.A. Food Justice Tour. They had
been shuttled around in a rickety old yellow school bus for hours, and were visibly tired.
They had already eaten their lunches, and most were out of water before we reached our
last stop on the tour. Still, spirits were high as we banged and rattled from one location to
the next, thanks in large part to our lively tour guide Andres, from Community Health
Councils –a non-profit health and social justice organization in South L.A. Most of the
youth only knew Los Angeles through popular media tropes and rap culture, and Andres
kept them engaged with anecdotes about everything from the historic Dunbar Hotel, to
90s gang culture in the region. When the bus finally pulled over, we filed off one by one,
each stepping gingerly over the shattered glass at the curb, and avoiding the piles of dog
waste sitting like landmines along the sidewalk. Freight trains blared past behind us as we
came to stand facing an expansive patch of dusty earth: the phantom location of the South
Central Farm.

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“14-Acre South Central Farm” (Barden 2011).

At East 41
st
street and South Alameda, the fourteen-acre South Central Farm was
one of the largest urban farms in the country from 1994-2006 before the land was
reclaimed by the previous owner and demolished. Where there was once a variety of
medicinal plants and fruit trees to give shade, there is now only the brutal summer heat,
the freight trains, and the buzzing of flies. We had come to meet Alberto Tlatoa, who had
generously offered to teach us about the historic South Central Farm, and his experience
growing up on this land.
Interrupting Modernity and Making Place
Tlatoa arrived with his small son, approaching slowly through the wavy heat like
a mirage himself. There was sadness on his face as he painted a picture of an urban oasis
within the industrialized city where indigenous farmers nurtured heirloom seeds through

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generations of hands and soil. We could almost smell the herbs and feel the breeze as he
spoke to us about the families and crop varieties that once flourished on the farm. It was
hard to believe that the bucolic scene Tlatoa described took place on the same barren plot
of land in front of us, which has stood empty for nearly a decade since the farm was
razed. Without the fruit trees, medicinal herbs and indigenous farmers, the fourteen once-
fertile acres just fade into the bleak industrialized backdrop of the Alameda Corridor.
36

“South Central Farm, Before and After” (Growing Community 2014).

Beyond the physical crops, the South Central Farmers also cultivated a sense of
place and community that was not static but rather transnational. In other words, place
moves with migrants as their physical bodies move, and South Central Farmers from

36 The Alameda Corridor is a 20-mile long rail cargo expressway that links the ports of Long Beach and
Los Angeles to the railroad mainlines near downtown Los Angeles.

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Chiapas and Michoacán bring their places of origin with them. Devon Peña (2006b, 4-5)
argues,
LA is the place where the ancient heirloom seeds of land, race, maíz,
calabacita, and frijol find their way up north from Chiapas, and other
points south to meet and grate-up against the hot pavement of freeways
and parking lots, growing through the cracks and thriving in vibrant inner
city cultural landscapes –the socially-driven spaces defined and shaped by
the grassroots.

This re-territorialization of urban space allowed the South Central Farmers to maintain
their indigenous identities alongside their indigenous crops (Mares and Peña 2011). Most
if not all of the families who worked the South Central Farm soil were diasporic people
whose roots extend transnationally to places throughout Mesoamerica. For displaced and
transplanted people whose identities are shaped by the land, a space to make one’s own is
critical to the preservation of indigenous foods, medicines and practices. As Tlatoa
(2014) explains,
When you give the community a space that they can make their own,
that’s what they’ll do. [The farm] really built a sense of community and
food justice, but I wouldn’t even call it ‘food justice’ in the sense that the
term is being used now. It was just something that they already know and
it’s embedded in our culture: growing food and preservation of seeds,
culture, and culturally relevant specialty foods grown here and outside the
US that can’t be found in other markets. The most beautiful part about it is
that we were passing that knowledge along to our future generations
(Tlatoa 2014).

The transmission of practical knowledge in spite (and because) of repressive and
unstable physical conditions is a direct act of resistance –an effort to ensure cultural
survival in the face of deliberate displacement and erasure (Scott 1998, Peña 2002, Ray
2013). The presence of the South Central farmers in the heart of South L.A., thriving
there against all odds, is what Peña (2002, 73) describes as “re-emplacement”: the
process by which indigenous cultures take root in unlikely places. Through re-

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emplacement, place-based identities are restored and also made new as they form in
opposition to displacement and environmental degradation. The bucolic South Central
Farm was both a physical space and an emblematic place that interrupted industrialized
modernity, food insecurity, and cultural alienation in South L.A. It was an oasis of
liberation that facilitated autonomy and self-determination for the families involved, and
it helped to liberate them from food insecurity, even if only partially. The farmers were
resisting food inequality in their immediate built environment, and filling a need in the
community that was not being met by the state or private industry. The South Central
farm may not have explicitly identified itself as a food justice project (although it
undeniably functioned as such), but it was definitely an environmental justice project
from its very inception.
Environmental (In)Justice, Enclosure, and Liberated Space
In the 1980s, when real estate lawyer Ralph Horowitz and the Alameda-Barbara
Investment Company (ABIC) wanted to build a trash incinerator on the land parcel that
would later become the South Central Farm, the Concerned Citizens of South Central Los
Angeles (CCSLA) protested on the basis that an incinerator would pose disproportionate
health risks to the surrounding community (Irazábal and Punja 2009). The incinerator
was successfully thwarted, and in the mid-1990s as the city made efforts to recover from
civil unrest, the land (which the city had purchased through eminent domain) was
allocated to become an urban farm project, funded by the Department of Agriculture,
Rebuild L.A., and other grants (ibid). The South Central Farm was a veritable EJ victory,
in which the community blocked private interests and secured rare green space in the
inner city. Additionally, the plants on the farm not only fed the community but they also

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offset the effects of toxic industrial pollutants from trains, trucks and warehouses
bordering the farm on all sides.
For the next decade, the South Central Farm operated as a collective of roughly
350 families who transformed the once under-utilized space into a lush, thriving paradise
with over 150 different edible and medicinal plant species. However, in the shadows of
the utopian project, Ralph Horowitz was on a mission to reclaim the farm. Horowitz sued
the city several times, “…arguing a breach of agreement and a violation of his right of
first refusal, that is, the right to buy back the land since it was not being utilized for the
proposed ‘public good’ use for which it was originally taken in the 1980s—the trash
incinerator” (Irazábal and Punja 2009, 12). Despite a $5 million settlement with the City
of L.A. in 2003 and an additional $16 million offer in 2006 from the Annenberg
Foundation, Horowitz refused to negotiate, ordered the farmer’s immediate removal, and
even sued the farmers for nearly a million dollars (Philpott 2007, Irazábal and Punja
2009). The farmers and their many supporters watched in sadness and disbelief as the
carefully cultivated crops inside the barricaded farm withered and died. “On July 5, the
farm was bulldozed over, including many trees, in front of the traumatized farming
families and friends” (Irazábal and Punja 2009, 13).
In many ways, the reappropriation of the South Central Farm was a modern
enclosure of the commons. Although the land was not legally recognized by the state as a
commons prior to the creation of the farm, its demolition was “inseparable from terror
and the destruction of independence and community”: characteristics inherent to the
enclosure process (Linebaugh 2014, 142). Ellen Meiksins Wood (2002, 108) writes that
enclosures are “…not simply a physical fencing of land but the extinction of common and

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customary use rights on which many people depended for their livelihood”. In the case of
the South Central Farm, the land was reappropriated, fenced off, and destroyed in 2006.
The incentive was to put the land to more profitable use, but as of 2015, it still remains
bare. Despite the city allowing the farmers to use the space, it was never legally allocated
to them, and thus they were never legally protected from Ralph Horowitz repurchasing it.
In this vein, the South Central Farm was never a common, but rather a liberated space.
Destroying the once thriving South Central farm only to leave a barren lot in its
place was an act of violence done in the name of private property. Vandana Shiva (2006)
argues that consumption of more than what we need is an act of violence. Conversely,
living collectively in a culture of individuation, and utilizing every square foot of fertile
soil to grow medicinal herbs and nutritious vegetables is a peaceful act that builds
conviviality and community. It is a revolutionary act to maintain a connection to ones
history when modernity makes everything “new and improved” every few months. In our
prepackaged, convenience-over-everything world, the South Central Farmers stayed
connected to the past through slow food, cultivated and prepared by hand.
The South Central Farmers’ decision to reclaim city soil was a radical survival
strategy in the face of hunger, instability, and placelessness created by privatization and
displacement. As Devon Peña (2006a, 15) explains, the migrant Latino families who
became South Angelenos were all at once “…bodies produced by neoliberalism and
bodies that produce their own resistance and counter‐strategies against corporatist
hegemony”. Many of the stewards of the South Central Farm suffered from displacement
long before the reclamation of the fourteen-acres in the Alameda Corridor. In fact, most
of the families that held South Central farm plots can trace their lineage back to Mexico

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and Central America: places where neoliberal policies spurred massive outmigration and
drove legions of farmers to seek respite in the United States.
The Green Revolution and Agroecology
Between the 1940s and 1960s, a series of technological and chemical
advancements funded by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundation permanently changed
agricultural production and helped lay the foundation for the neoliberal corporate food
regime (Holt-Giménez 2011, 316). Initially developed to end hunger in countries with
high rates of malnutrition and starvation, the “Green Revolution” introduced genetically
enhanced seeds and new agricultural technologies such as irrigation systems, pesticides,
and fertilizers to farmers in the United States, Mexico, and countries throughout Asia for
the first time (Liverman 1990). These substances increased crop yield significantly, and
managed to keep grain production consistent with population growth. Norman Borlaug,
the “father” of the Green Revolution, even won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for helping
to end world hunger.
New farming practices and technologies did help to combat hunger and food
scarcity. However, although farmers were able to produce higher outputs on smaller
parcels of land, the Green Revolution actually exacerbated many environmental and
food-related problems. For instance, ecologists argue that high intensity agriculture
causes high levels of soil erosion and livestock disease, and the amount of chemicals and
energy required to maintain conventional agriculture make it unsustainable. Ecologist
David Tilman (1998, 211) argues, “there has been a price to pay, and it includes
contamination of groundwaters, release of greenhouse gases, loss of crop genetic
diversity and eutrophication of rivers, streams, lakes and coastal marine ecosystems”.

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Ecofeminist Vandana Shiva also links new agricultural technologies such as industrial
scale irrigation systems to violent social and political conflicts over water access in India
(Shiva 1991). Additionally, some of the places where Green Revolution programs were
most successful ironically began to experience higher rates of malnourishment and
deficiency diseases after the Green Revolution began (Cullather 2011). For instance, in
the 1940s, Mexico was quite self-sufficient, and was in fact a major exporter of
foodstuffs to the rest of the world. After the Green Revolution, however, Mexico became
increasingly dependent on U.S. exports, and began to experience elevated levels of
hunger and debt (Holt-Giménez et al 2006).
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is currently championing a new “doubly”
Green Revolution, using rhetoric that is eerily similar to the Rockefeller Foundation’s
original undertaking, with sights set on Subsaharan Africa. The Alliance for a Green
Revolution in Africa (dubbed “AGRA”) aims to combat African food insecurity through
increased genetic engineering and crop breeding, high-input technologies, and
privatization (Holt-Giménez et al 2006, Holt-Giménez and Altieri 2013). Critics argue
that AGRA ignores the voices of indigenous peasant farmers and upholds the same
destructive policies as the original Green Revolution, which created generations of debt,
poverty, and dependence. Agroecologists like Eric Holt-Giménez suggest that instead of
AGRA and other neoliberal agricultural programs that promote chemically enhanced
productivity and genetic manipulation, what we need is a truly new Green Revolution
based on cooperation, autonomy, and agro ecology.
Agroecology is a systems approach that combines traditional knowledge and
culturally specific agriculture practices to develop sustainable food environments. Its

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principles are based on conservation, cooperation, crop diversity and community
empowerment (Altieri 2002, Altieri 2009). Agro ecosystems are designed to enhance the
production and productivity of the natural environment in a sustainable way with minimal
displacement and reliance on human labor. They are largely self-sufficient and promote
human autonomy by preserving indigenous knowledge and local resources. Furthermore,
linking agro ecology with radical food sovereignty politics could conceivably combat
hunger and poverty in much of the world.
Agroecology has a pivotal role to play in the future of our food systems.
…If agroecologists build strategic alliances with Radical food sovereignty
struggles, the countermovement to the corporate food regime could be
strengthened. A strong countermovement could generate considerable
political will for the transformative reform of our food systems. The
livelihoods of smallholders, the elimination of hunger, the restoration of
the planet's agrobiodiversity and agroecosystem resilience would all be
better served under this scenario (Holt-Giménez and Altieri 2013, 97-98).

The South Central Farmers exemplified this countermovement, right in the heart
of South Los Angeles. Although it was ultimately bulldozed, the existence (and highly
publicized destruction) of the South Central Farm created a shift in public consciousness
on a national and international scale. Its presence in the heart of the city for over a decade
changed the way that we imagine the uses of urban space, and the role of food and
farming in community building and place making. Moreover, the South Central Farmers
embodied what I call citified sovereignty: They turned insecurity into security through
the creation of a functional, self-governing community in the heart of the city. In so
doing, they demonstrated that even in the urban core it is possible to implement a
different kind of use-value that privileges cultural and indigenous knowledge and
practices over capitalist exchange value (Broad 2013, Peña 2006b). Farming in the city
(and especially farming communally in one of Los Angeles’ most highly industrialized

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neighborhoods) was a direct threat to private industry. The South Central Farmers
reclaimed a plot of urban space and used it for the good of the people. Simply by
resurrecting their own traditional agriculture practices, the South Central Farmers were
inadvertently reclaiming public space and the commons, and disavowing notions of
private property and wasteful ownership.
The autonomous cultivation of food on a fourteen-acre plot of land in the
industrialized inner city is citified sovereignty in its purest form. While surrounded by
concrete, the South Central Farmers resurrected and redeployed indigenous knowledge of
edible plants and medicinal herbs as a mode of survival and self-preservation. The South
Central Farmers’ autonomous cultivation of food in the inner city was a “grassroots
restoration ecology that produced formidable resistance to neoliberal enclosure and
privatization of potential urban common spaces” (Mares and Peña 2011, 208). The
farmers challenged the politics of urban planning and policy making, and transformed the
built urban environment to fit the unique physical and cultural needs of the community.
37

At its best, citified sovereignty helps marginalized people to take control of their
health and their neighborhoods while holding indigenous knowledge at the fore and
working in harmony with the earth. It pushes back against enclosure of the commons, and
provides strategies to create healthy futures and new realities in historically racist and
toxic spaces. However, as the fate of the South Central Farm demonstrates, “the cultural
spaces established by the farmers were no longer autonomous when confronted by capital
and state power” (Alkon and Agyeman 2011, 342). Despite its potential, citified
sovereignty is precarious, vulnerable, and difficult to maintain.

37
Brown and Getz (2011, 12) point out that “[farmworkers] who produce the nation’s food are among the
most likely to be hungry or food insecure”.

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Beyond Organic: Resisting Frankenfood
Since the Green Revolution, genetically engineered (GE) food has been touted as
a cutting-edge new way to feed the world, especially in poor and developing nations
(Magdoff 2008, Von Braun 2008, Rosset 2008, Headey and Fan 2008). In 2008, global
food prices rose substantially and devastated economies and poor people around the
world. This led to many highly publicized conversations about the advantages of
genetically modified (GM) agriculture as a solution to world hunger (Clapp 2009, Juma
2011, Blake 2015). The Non GMO Project defines genetically modified organisms
(GMO) as “living organisms whose genetic material has been artificially manipulated in a
laboratory through genetic engineering, or GE”, adding that “this relatively new science
creates unstable combinations of plant, animal, bacteria and viral genes that do not occur
in nature or through traditional crossbreeding methods” (Non GMO Project, 2015).
GM crops grow faster and larger than non-GM crops, and are scientifically
enhanced to resist pests and extreme weather. Biotechnology corporations claim that
genetically modified foods are the only way to feed a growing global population while
conserving resources. They also claim that these substances are safe to consume, and
regularly hire their own scientific research teams to support this argument. However,
critics argue that genetically modified organisms should be avoided because their long-
term impacts are unknown, and they cannot be recalled once released into the
environment. Moreover, unbiased scientific studies have linked genetically modified
organisms to cancers and tumors in mice (Burns 2002, Séralini 2007, Séralini et al 2012,
Nicole 2012), as well as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) among the worlds’ honeybee
population (Ho and Cummins 2007, Amos 2011).

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Countries throughout the world from Haiti to the United Kingdom have imposed
bans and moratoriums on genetically modified organisms in the food supply as the health
risks become more apparent and widely known (Shiva 2004, Barker 2007, Bownas
2012). Here in the U.S. however, GMO foods are not prohibited. In fact, they are
encouraged and even subsidized by the federal government (Shiva 2005, Patel 2010,
Holt-Giménez and Patel 2012). Food producers are not required even to label GMO
ingredients in their products, effectively undermining freedom of choice for the American
consumer. In 2012, Proposition 37—a proposition for the mandatory labeling of
genetically engineered food—was introduced to the California ballot. Initially it appeared
that the majority of Californians were in favor of the labeling initiative, and many were
confident that it would pass, propelling the alternative food movement to new heights.
However, while the “Yes on 37” camp was strong, spearheaded by organic companies
and natural health organizations, the “No on 37 camp” was stronger, or rather, it was
more well funded. Large corporate food and beverage retailers like Coca Cola and
General Mills opposed Prop 37, as did multinational agribusiness giants Monsanto and
Dupont, and chemical drug manufacturer Bayer (Westervelt 2012). Nearly $25 million
was spent on commercials and mailers to persuade voters to believe that the initiative
would be costly for food producers, which would increase food prices. In a disappointing
defeat, Proposition 37 lost by 51.4% to 48.6%.
GMOs have become so prevalent that if a product is not organic or labeled
otherwise, we can assume it has one or more ingredients that have been genetically
engineered. However, because corporate agribusinesses pay plenty to suppress
conversations about GMOs and their impacts, most consumers are unaware of their

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presence. According to the Institute for Responsible Technology (IRT), as of 2010, 94%
of soy, 88% of corn, and 95% of sugar beets in the U.S. food supply were genetically
modified.
38
These three ingredients in particular are found in the majority of processed
foods, and low-income neighborhoods of color are a major hub for processed foods.
Furthermore, over 80% of all GMOs are engineered for herbicide tolerance, which allows
farmers to spray their fields with herbicides that will kill only the weeds, not the crops
(Greenpeace International 2011). Herbicide-resistant crops are genetically engineered to
tolerate exposure to glyphosate: the active ingredient in most herbicides, including the
Monsanto Corporation’s popular product “Roundup”. Hence, herbicide-resistant GM
crops are known as 'Roundup Ready' (RR).
Although growing Roundup Ready crops does simplify the process of weed
control and maximizes labor efficiency for farmers, herbicide resistant crops have led to
the phenomenon of “super weeds” and “super bugs”, which requires the use of
increasingly toxic poisons. Herein lies the terrifying relationship between conventional
agriculture and chemical warfare: a number of the substances widely used as 21
st
century
pesticides were developed in the 1940s, and sold during wartime to destroy enemy crops
and defoliate enemy territories (Robin 2014, Clowney and Mosto 2009). Many popular
pesticides have chemical compounds identical or nearly identical to those used during
World War II: organophosphates (nerve gases), chloropicrin (tear gas), and Agent
Orange—a broad-spectrum defoliant (Solomon 2012, Robin 2014). For instance, “2, 4-
D” is one of two active ingredients in Agent Orange, and is one of the most common
pesticides still in use today, despite its links to cancer, birth defects, neurological

38 The Institute for Responsible Technology is a world leader in educating policy makers and the public about
genetically modified (GM) foods and crops.

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disorders and hormone disruption in human beings (Shiva 1991, Zierler 2008, Clowney
and Mosto 2009).
The effects of pesticide exposure are particularly acute for people working
directly with the crops. According to a (2003) report on human exposure to
environmental chemicals released by the U.S. Center for Disease Control, “…women,
children and elderly people …exceed the officially established ‘acceptable’ dose for
chronic exposure [and] Mexican Americans also had significantly higher body burdens
than other ethnic groups of the waste and breakdown products of the insecticides lindane
and DDT” (Shafer et al 2004, 6-7). The rise of Roundup Ready crops in particular has led
to a steep increase in the use of glyphosate on conventionally produced foods, which has
been linked to miscarriages, lymphomas, brain tumors, and neurological disorders such as
Parkinson’s Disease (Greenpeace International 2011).
The small oligopoly of corporations who own and control more than half of the
world's seed supply have been able to patent GMOs and control their use, and they make
a profit every time a farmer needs to purchase more seeds. Agribusiness companies
regularly issue “terminator” seeds that are genetically designed to germinate only once,
which prohibits farmers from saving seeds and forces them to purchase new ones each
planting season. Moreover, because the main function of pollen is to travel and
reproduce, patented GMO pollen regularly drifts into neighboring fields. Farmers who
wish to grow non-GMO or organic crops are extremely vulnerable to GMO
contamination, which biotechnology companies are rarely liable for (Heald and Smith
2006, Cox 2008). In fact, GM patent holders can actually sue small farmers for patent
violation when contamination occurs. Monsanto, a leading biotech corporation, regularly

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exercises this right.
If the wind blows the patented pollen onto a bystanding farmer’s corn
plants and those plants are pollinated, then the farmer has arguably used
the pollen in violation of the Monsanto patent. The pollinated plants would
then produce hybrid seeds in potential violation of Monsanto’s method
patent for hybridization and its product patent for hybrid seeds. If the
plants are harvested and the hybrid seed sold, a further violation of
Monsanto’s right to sell the patented seeds may occur (Heald and Smith
2006, 4).

The introduction of genetically modified monocultures may produce higher
yields, but it seriously threatens sovereignty and national food security and destroys the
diversity of indigenous agriculture (Shiva 2005). Moreover, altering the genetic structure
of plants through hybridization and dwarfing has been shown to disrupt the hormonal
structure of the plant, causing mutations that could have potentially harmful effects on
human bodies and natural ecosystems (Speilmeyer et al 2002, Hedden 2003). According
to professor of plant and soil science Fred Magdoff, “the main advantage of genetically
modified organism (GMO) seeds is that they help to simplify the process of farming and
allow large acreages to be under the management of a single entity [because] large
supermarkets would rather deal with a few farmers growing on a large scale than with
many small farmers” (Magdoff 2008, 9). However, prioritizing simplified farming and
market processes over people, soil, and culture has led many to believe that the global
food industry is not organized to feed the hungry, but rather to generate profits for
corporate agribusiness (Angus 2008).
Faced with a chemically toxic food supply and shrouded genetic engineering
processes whose long-term health impacts remain to be seen, a growing number of people
are looking for alternatives to industrial food, which is cheap “…not because it is
efficient—either in terms of resource or energy efficiency—but because it is supported by

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subsidies and it externalizes all costs—the wars, the diseases, the environmental
destruction, the cultural decay, the social disintegration” (Shiva 2005, 164). The costs of
industrial food are displaced from our wallets to our bodies. In other words, what
consumers save in dollars at the time of purchasing a meal may end up as medical bills
down the line. Studies have shown that organic food has significantly more nutrients and
fewer pesticides than conventionally grown produce, but many low-income families and
individuals are deterred from going organic by the significantly higher prices. Surveys
conducted by CSU youth interns have found that the primary reason people choose not to
eat organic food is cost, and nearly everyone surveyed has indicated that they would
choose organic over conventional if the price difference were not so steep.
In response to an increasingly contaminated and unaffordable food supply,
Community Services Unlimited (CSU) offers “Beyond Organic” produce: fruits and
vegetables that are locally and sustainably sourced and grown without chemicals or
pesticides, but not officially certified organic, thus avoiding the expensive certification
process and passing the savings on to the people. “Beyond Organic” was conceived to
circumvent the capitalist processes that make healthy food unaffordable in South Los
Angeles by providing fresh, local food that has been produced without chemicals, at a
fraction of the price.
CSU produce is grown “organically”, which simply means naturally, without the
use of artificial chemicals or fertilizers. However, it is not certified organic because the
certification process is tedious and expensive. By choosing not to participate in the
certification process, CSU supports small growers as well as low-income communities by
building a rapport between the two. Buyers are also encouraged to visit the Mini Urban

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Farms for volunteer workdays and special events to see for themselves how the food is
grown.
Whether produce is grown on one of CSU’s mini urban farms throughout South
L.A. or sourced from local small farmers in the region, the growers guarantee that their
goods have been grown naturally using methods that go beyond those required by the
USDA. CSU sells its Beyond Organic produce at special events and catering jobs, at its
four weekly neighborhood produce stands, and through a weekly produce bag
subscription program that offers convenient pick up locations as well as home delivery.
Since 2007, CSU has generated nearly $500,000 in food sales. They have made $220,000
in produce stand retail sales, serving approximately 31,500 customers who spend an
average of $7 per transaction. The produce bag subscription program has generated
approximately $165,000 in sales and provided over 850 unique subscribers with
approximately 15,000 produce bags. Additionally, CSU has made $35,000 in wholesale
revenue and another $75,000 in catering sales. These figures demonstrate the demand and
desire for affordable, high quality local produce food in South Los Angeles. CSU also
accepts Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits (also known as SNAP or
EBT), making their products even more accessible to low-income residents in the
community.

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L.A. Green Grounds and the New Victory Gardens
Another organization working toward citified sovereignty at a different scale is
L.A. Green Grounds: a grassroots organization that helps South L.A. residents to plant
edible gardens in their yards and parkways. Led by Master Gardener and mycologist
Florence Nishida, LAGG takes its cues from the historical wartime Victory Gardens.
Victory Gardens, also known as “war gardens”, were critical during World War II, when
up to 50 percent of the fruits and vegetables that Americans consumed came from urban
gardens planted and cultivated to offset the government’s rationing of foodstuffs (Peña
2012). In a similar effort, L.A. Green Grounds aims to use urban farming to win the war
on poverty and poor people in South L.A.
I first encountered LAGG in 2011 after hearing Florence Nishida speak about the
organization at USC. My research interests around food, race, and health outcomes were
newly forming, and I was inspired by Nishida’s passion about getting more people of
color involved in healthy food production through the creation of community gardens in
our very own homes. During her presentation, Nishida told a particularly poignant story
about an African American woman who sought help with her garden. The woman felt
disconnected from the land and the practice of growing her own food. Her parents had
maintained gardens while she was a child, but she felt unable to do herself because she
lived in the city and had no idea where to begin. This woman also suffered from a
number of food related illnesses and wanted to improve her health by changing her diet.
After attending an LAGG gardening workshop, the woman came and implored Nishida to
visit her garden. She claimed that she had tried to plant some tomatoes in her backyard,
but they wouldn’t grow, even though they had plenty of sun and she watered them daily.

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When Nishida arrived, she checked the soil quality, sunlight access, and other elements
that might impede her garden. Finally, she dug down into the spot where the woman had
planted, and found a package of tomatoes from the grocery store, still in the plastic
wrapper.
Shortly after meeting Florence Nishida, I attended my first “Dig-in”:
39
a process
in which South L.A. residents interested in growing fruits, vegetables and herbs in their
own homes invite their friends and neighbors to work collectively with master gardeners
and knowledgeable volunteers to get a garden started in one day. The goal is to help
people with limited options make informed decisions about the food they eat, and to
improve access to items that are easier to grow than to purchase in some neighborhoods –
such as specialty greens and medicinal herbs. Moreover, LAGG encourages residents to
invite their friends and neighbors to participate in Dig-ins so that the new garden
becomes a community space rather than a private plot, and so that there will be more
people to help with maintenance and harvesting of the food. As Nishida says, “its
remarkable how much one little plot can produce. A garden in one person’s backyard
could potentially feed the whole block!” And in a country where more than half of the
food we grow is thrown away (Smithers 2013), this is a revolutionary transformation of
use value, sharing economies, and perhaps most simply, how food comes to our tables.

39 “Dig-In” is also a play on words that not only draws on the call to eat (dig in!) but also indirectly evokes
the Civil Right’s tactic “sit-in”: a non-violent protest method in which people occupy public spaces.

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“Front Yard Garden Dig-In” (L.A. Green Grounds 2012).

Since 2011, I have participated in several Dig-ins, and even helped to coordinate a
few for South L.A. residents in need of better healthy food access. While most of these
attempts were successful and resulted in beautiful community garden spaces where
grassy lawns or empty parkways once stood, they did not always achieve the desired
outcome. For instance, in 2011 I helped to coordinate a dig-in for Ms. Ruth,
40
a long time
South L.A. resident. Ms. Ruth was an elderly and disabled Black woman who was once
an avid gardener and missed the taste of veggies straight from the soil. At first, all signs
pointed to success and food justice seemed tangible. I sent out a call for volunteers far
and wide, and people excited about the possibility of a community garden met it with
much enthusiasm.

40 Name has been changed to protect confidentiality.

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Although there were nearly one hundred people on my original email thread, only
about five actually joined the LAGG team to assist in the initial planting efforts, and none
of them were around when it came time to weed and water Ms. Ruth’s garden. Even Ms.
Ruth’s own sons, neighbors and friends were nowhere to be found. The work of
maintaining the “community” garden fell solely upon me and my dear friend and
colleague Yushi Yamazaki, who would graciously join me in the merciless summer heat
to pull up the ever-present crabgrass and water the thirsty soil. Tired and sore, we would
leave Ms. Ruth’s garden with paper shopping bags filled to the brim with kale, collards
and mustard greens. Yushi and I spent that summer and much of the fall showing up at
dinner parties, hikes, and writing dates with bundles of greens (affectionately named
“bou-kales”) as gifts for our friends and colleagues. Ironically, more food than we could
eat or give away was growing in a garden in the heart of a food desert. As the fall wore
on and our other commitments became pressing, the crops wound up going to seed and
withering in the scorching Los Angeles sun.
Redefining Failure and Value
We had planted Ms Ruth’s garden with the intention that she herself would sit
back there and enjoy it, but she never ventured fully into the garden. She only looked at it
from the porch—joyfully, to be sure, but from afar. She did eat some of the healthy
homegrown veggies, but only when we harvested them, and much of what we brought to
her spoiled because she was unable to cook much for herself. Ms. Ruth passed away in
September of 2014, and as the ground at her garden still lies fallow, I often wonder what
is necessary for a project like this to succeed, particularly when people support the idea in
theory but are not available to do the work. Also, it begs the question of how to define

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success and failure when it comes to urban garden projects. Was it not a success even just
to move from idea to action, and to plant a garden that brought Ms. Ruth some joy and
fresh food, even if temporarily? Like people, all plants eventually die, and the beauty of
gardening and planting is that there is always another chance to plant something new. It is
reassuring to remember that, as Clifford Geertz (1973) and Kamala Visweswaran (1994)
have persuasively argued, in ethnographic undertakings such as this one, failure is not
only possible but quite probable, because “…our failures are as much part of the process
of knowledge constitution as are our oft-heralded ‘successes’” (Visweswaran 1994, 99).
The South Central Farm was destroyed, despite its many benefits to public health
and public space, and despite the impressive effort put forth by farmers, activists and
organizers to save it. Although the farm managed to sustain hundreds of families (and
their transnational, diasporic, indigenous traditions) and create a sense of place, pride,
and peace in the heart of the city, in the end, private property rights eclipsed the farm’s
communal land use value. However, despite the tragic outcome of the multiple year battle
over the contested acreage, it was not a complete defeat. Although the farm was
ultimately razed, it thrived for nearly a decade and helped to amend the poor health and
premature death so common in South L.A. Even its highly publicized destruction did the
important work of revealing the flawed mechanisms of a system that disavows human life
and the preservation of indigenous knowledge in the name of capital. The contentious
struggle with city officials and private property owners helped to open up new
conversations about sovereignty, place, and the right to city space.
The fact that the South Central Farm came to fruition in the wake of the Rodney
King verdict as the city burned with rage and sadness also demonstrates the dialectical

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nature of change: the most dire situations often produce the most radical and sustainable
solutions. As Dolores Hayden suggests, “even bitter experiences and fights communities
have lost need to be remembered –so as not to diminish their importance” (Hayden 1995,
11). Just as Proposition 37 to label GMO food in California did not pass but still shifted
consciousness about what we are eating, citified sovereignty challenges conceptions of
what is possible in urban places, and physically transforms the landscape. However
temporary it may be, if a project promotes healthy lifestyles in otherwise unhealthy
places and empowers marginalized people to meet their own needs, then it is, in essence,
a success.
The South Central Farm helped lay the foundation –the autonomous roots –for
new agriculture projects and food justice efforts in the years to come. It was an important
example of the liberatory potential of food justice and citified sovereignty, and at the
same time it demonstrated the limits to autonomy in the urban core. Taking back public
city spaces for agriculture can be incredibly transformative, but attempts to stake a claim
to privatized spaces are always fraught with challenges. There is much to learn from the
farm’s existence and destruction, particularly, that we may not always emerge victorious.
Still, our efforts are not in vain. As South Central Farmer Alberto Tlatoa says,
We need to start reclaiming our concrete because most of our
neighborhoods are concrete. The people making decisions for our
communities are often outsiders who don’t understand us culturally, or our
eating habits. …They underestimate the power in South Central, and the
knowledge that exists in our roots as well (Tlatoa 2013).

In 2015, almost a decade after the farm was bulldozed, the South Central Farmers
continue to organize and fight to for their fourteen-acre land parcel, demonstrating the
resilience of the human spirit in the face of destructive global capitalism. On East 41
st
and

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South Alameda streets the original plot stands empty and barren –the ghost of its full
potential still haunting South L.A. However, pending their return, the South Central
Farmers have kept the South Central Farm alive in Buttonwillow, California, 130 miles
away. They still source produce to farmers markets throughout L.A. and to food
organizations like CSU. The farmers are still doing radical work to achieve food justice
in South L.A., albeit from outside the city’s limits.
CSU’s Mini Urban Farms provide green space and healthy food while empowering
the South L.A. community, but they too face threats of destruction, similar to that which
befell the South Central Farm. Since May 2015, CSU’s Mini Urban Farm at the EXPO
Center has been fighting a proposal to build a parking lot in its place—which was the
original intent for the land. According to the petition to save the farm, the EXPO Center
is under pressure from the State of California and the University of Southern California
“…to provide parking for USC football home games and other special events that attract
and primarily benefit residents from outside South LA. The center is proposing to build a
new farm in the current EXPO amphitheater and is promoting this as a ‘relocation’ of the
farm” (change.org 2015). The encroachment of a parking lot upon the EXPO Farm less
than a decade after the South Central Farm’s hostile takeover triggers fear and outrage
among CSU supporters. The destruction of the tiny one-acre farm would fit a nominal
amount of cars at the expense of a rare oasis of green space in South L.A. Moreover, the
corporate promise to rebuild the farm elsewhere—a painstaking enterprise that would
almost certainly fall upon CSU staff and volunteers to accomplish—feels empty when
public space is under increasing private threat.

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Understandably, the South L.A. food justice community has little faith in private
interests to support food access and green space in underserved neighborhoods. This is
why the EXPO farm exists in the first place, and is such a critical neighborhood resource.
Community Services Unlimited uses food to build community and create healthy food
access in South L.A., where both government and the private sector have failed to
adequately support residents’ lives and livelihoods, particularly in terms of food. The
EXPO Mini Urban Farm is a citified sovereignty project insofar as it gives marginalized
South Angelenos the means to sustain and reproduce themselves via food access,
community building, and reclamation of the built environment. Like the South Central
Farm, the current struggle to preserve the much-loved Mini Urban Farm in the face of
encroaching private interests demonstrates the limits to autonomy in the urban core.
Farming is difficult and sovereignty is fleeting, especially in the city. L.A. Green
Grounds helps low-income South Angelenos plant beautiful edible landscapes, but these
landscapes are not self-sustaining. If no one shows up to help maintain the crops, they,
too, will return to dust and grass like the fourteen barren acres on 41
st
and South
Alameda. The relative “failure” of food justice projects begs the question of whether
autonomy is possible at all in South L.A. where there is a constant risk of being shut
down, appropriated, or simply neglected, but there is a transformative potential that arises
from crisis and repression. The woman who planted a package of tomatoes still wrapped
in plastic because she desperately wanted healthy food demonstrates the severity of the
generational disconnect between people –Black people in particular –and the land
beneath our feet. Therefore, even if a garden effort eventually “fails”, it is still successful

144

if it allows even one person to put their hands into the soil, or adopt a healthy new recipe
for their family. Transformation is exponential. Every little bit matters.

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Conclusion: Future Worlds
For our own survival we must assume responsibility for creating a new
nation (Boggs and Kurashige 2011, 33).

Those of us invested in creating livable futures do so in the face of an endless stream
of bad news: apocalyptic forewarnings by climate scientists, increasingly privatized
commons, and genocidal state sanctioned violence on Black and Brown bodies. Although
plant based diets have been shown to be better for our bodies as well as the planet
(Jacobson 2006, Stehfest et al 2009, Harper 2010), our food system is still flooded with
unethical and unsustainable products and practices. Federal subsidies of beef and
genetically engineered corn and soy ensure their abundance in the American diet,
maintaining a perpetual cycle of poor health, hospital bills, and premature death. The use
of harmful pesticides by agribusiness giants has been linked to everything from cancer to
Colony Collapse Disorder; a startling phenomenon that has devastated between 30% and
50% of the United States’ honey bee colonies and which jeopardizes the future of the
global human food supply (Schacker 2008, Benjamin 2010).
The shift from industrial to post-industrial technologies has restructured world
agriculture to become “less and less an anchor of societies, states, and cultures, and more
and more a tenuous component of corporate global sourcing strategies” (McMichael
2000, 23). For instance, the logic of the current globalized food system is such that
Californians buy imported garlic from China even though Gilroy, CA is considered the
garlic capital of the world. Food that travels thousands of miles “from farm gate to dinner
plate” (ibid) generates profits for the numerous middlemen whose hands the product
passes through. It makes no difference that local garlic production is more energy

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efficient, or that consuming garlic in its freshest state has greater health benefits. All that
matters under a capitalist food system is the profit margin.
While “growing your own” has become a rallying cry of alternative food
movements, most of us who live in cities do not own the land we stand and plant on, and
thus always run the risk of losing our homes, farms and gardens. Nonetheless, even
though it often appears that our collective health, land, and vitality are beyond repair,
there has been a marked rise in activism and resistance to governmental austerity
measures, privatization, economic inequality, and environmental degradation. As
processes of climate change, globalized development, and the patenting of seeds and
DNA intensify, so does the movement to develop sustainable survival strategies that
alleviate human suffering and ecological destruction.
41
A growing number of policies and
organizations have begun to address issues of limited and unusable urban space in
deindustrialized cities, and food has assumed a new centrality to our collective survival
and wellbeing.
This chapter considers the future of food in an urbanized world and the centrality
of food justice, environmental justice, and citified sovereignty to 21st century
sustainability efforts. In the pages that follow, I discuss my own experiences working
within the North American food justice network with groups who use food to make
utopias out of the ruins of modernity. From South L.A. to Taos, to Detroit, to Milwaukee,
I have met people of color who are more than just victims of unfortunate circumstances.
Rather, they are resilient innovators who are reclaiming and transforming the oppressive
built environment. “Future Worlds” suggests that there is a radical possibility that arises

41 Vandana Shiva was already signaling the dangers of genetic engineering, seed patents, and free-market
capitalism as early as the 1980s (Shiva 1988, 1989).

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from necessity in the most marginalized spaces and among those most impacted by
structural inequality (Du Bois 1935, Costa-Vargas 2010, Lipsitz 2011). Instances of
citified sovereignty are generally small and locally based, but there is a connective tissue
that links disparate communities in deindustrialized cities across the country, where
people are having solution-based conversations about limited and unusable urban space at
every scale.
Reimagining Work
In October of 2011 I traveled to Detroit, Michigan with my friend and food justice
colleague Jessi Quizar to attend the “Reimagining Work” conference. For three incredible
days, activists, artists, and organizers from all over the country filled Detroit’s Hope
Center to reimagine the concept of work in a moment when the U.S. economy was failing
on all cylinders. I was surrounded by people who were (or would become) my food
justice heroes: Legendary Marxist freedom fighter Grace Lee Boggs, Malik Yakini of the
revolutionary Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN), Myrtle
Thompson and Wayne Curtis of Feedom Freedom, and world-renowned physicist and
environmentalist Vandana Shiva, who gave our keynote address from India via Skype.
It was an important and exciting historical moment: 2011 had been a year of
major international mobilization against austerity budgets and attacks on the public sector
and working class. The Occupy Movement had just begun to gain traction and national
attention, and suddenly the social and economic inequalities that upheld capitalism were
painfully clear. With all of the major social service cuts, tuition hikes, and bailouts for big
banks and corporations, the shiny veneer of capitalism was rapidly chipping and peeling
away to reveal the system’s exploitive underpinnings. For the first time in my lifetime,

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there was a mass awareness that this empire could indeed fall, and we had become
acutely aware of the devaluation and exploitation of our collective time and energy. We
had gathered in Detroit to dream of new systems and ways of being, in which our efforts
and labor had value beyond menial jobs and meager paychecks.
It is noteworthy that we had gathered in Detroit to collectively “freedom dream”
(Kelley 2003), as Detroit is the city where the dialectics of failure and possibility in the
United States are perhaps most obvious and deeply felt. While the empty lots and
abandoned homes signify industrial and economic desertion, the shoulder-height collard
greens and kale flourishing in these empty lots also indicate the possibility, and, in fact,
the certainty that, as Grace Lee Boggs excitedly told us, “another world is possible,
necessary, and happening” (Boggs 2013). After the 2008 bank bailouts and housing
crisis, amid the worst recession since the Great Depression, Americans experienced
unprecedented rates of unemployment and despair, despite neoliberal promises of
modernity and free market riches. The automotive sector was central to the financial
downturn, and Detroit—the Motor City—was economically devastated.
Fifty years ago Detroit was booming, with two million hard working
people living the American Dream. Then the auto industry fell on hard
times and so did Detroit. Most people moved away, whole neighborhoods
turned into wastelands. But some have a vision for a new Detroit, as a
human scaled city in a post industrial world. And with urban farms, peace
zones, and spoken word poets they are starting to make it real (Young and
Dworkin 2012).

The auto industry crash nearly took the people down with it, inciting a mass
exodus out of the city. Once one of the top five largest cities in the United States, Detroit
was down to just over 700,000 by the time I visited in 2011 (Seelye 2011). However,

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Detroiters
42
have always been resilient, and there have been many historical moments of
possibility that preceded this one (Boggs and Ward 2011, Sugrue 2014).
In spite of counterproductive federal policies and unfriendly state laws, in
spite of false steps and inadequate tools, in spite of political turmoil and
social upheaval, local efforts continued. At no time during this half
century did such efforts stop, although sometimes they slowed and became
practically invisible. Someone was always trying to plan and develop a
better city, and someone always will, for the foreseeable future (Thomas
2013, 221).

During that crisp autumn weekend, I learned that “work” should not be tedious
and mindless. Rather, work is a sacred act of love that must be reclaimed and deployed in
service of people and communities. Instead of narrowly calling for more jobs that would
ultimately generate more profits for wealthy corporations, we were asked to re-imagine
our very identities, desires and values: are we consumers or citizens? Do we want
commodities or commons? Security or autonomy? What does it really mean to “make a
living” and what does one really need to live? The basic necessities –food, water, and
shelter– have all become commodities for which we trade our money (Magdoff 2008).
When we begin to rethink “work” as something in the service of humanity, versus “jobs”
which function in service of capital, we begin to also redefine ourselves. Instead of
merely being consumers, we become people in community with one another.
43

As old realities foreclose, they make way for new possibilities and openings to
build a radically different world in service of a time beyond our own—a practice and
process that I refer to as “future world building”. Considering the oppressive nature of the

42
“Detroiter” refers to inhabitants of Detroit.
43
Not all consumer identities have been imposed by capitalism and modernity. Some consumer identities
are produced through working class struggles to achieve more power in the marketplace by reducing prices
(often through consumer advocacy groups), improving quality and access to products, and creating
cooperatives. For instance, during the Great Depression, Ella Baker and George Schuyler worked to
galvanize the Black working class around a collective consumer identity. For them, consumer activism was
politically and economically revolutionary (Ransby 2005, 82-86).

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corporate food system and its harmful impact on people and the planet, reimagining work
and creating future worlds or “living cultures” (Shiva 2005) that sustain cultural diversity
and human life requires that we also redefine our relationships to each other, to the land,
and to the food that we put into our bodies. In Detroit, the abandonment by capital and
industry ironically opened up space for a “human scaled city” (Young and Dworkin
2012) in which the people who remained worked together and returned to the practice of
farming to rise from the doldrums. Los Angeles has experienced similar episodes of
neglect and repression by industry and government, and food has been central to survival
strategies here as well. This chapter considers the innovative forms of future world
building happening in deindustrialized cities across the country, and offers strategies for
abundant, sustainable, non-dystopic futures in South L.A. and beyond.
The Potential and the Pitfalls of Urban Agriculture
Urban agriculture has been rightfully heralded as a necessary and powerful
response to the crises facing U.S. cities. Growing and eating one’s own food improves
health and combats food-related illnesses like obesity and diabetes (Milburn 2004,
Vallianatos et al 2004, Story et al 2008). Working with the soil also has proven
therapeutic benefits, and can help people to recover from PTSD and other mental health
issues (Atkinson 2009, Sempik 2010, Bruce 2013). In addition to healthy food,
community gardens also provide a sense of place in marginalized areas (Peña 2006a,
2006b; Mares and Peña 2011). Put best by Detroiter Minehaha Forman (2015, 2), “if it’s
done right, urban farming is an act of social justice and community building more than
anything else: In the city, the moment you tear up even a patch of grass and put in kale,
it’s an act of defiance. It’s a powerful thing to do”.

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As deindustrialization and economic abandonment reached peak levels in Detroit,
residents lost their homes and jobs at alarming rates. Many people left the city, but for
those who remained, urban agriculture became an increasingly popular strategy to
reclaim space and reoccupy the land. Beautiful gardens sprouted up in dilapidated
abandoned lots, and the community organized efforts to create a healthy, autonomous
local food system. By 2011, Detroit had come to represent survival and possibility in
deindustrialized cities everywhere. In a striking parallel to South L.A., I noticed that the
Detroit farmers at Feedom Freedom Urban Farm, and D-Town Farm embodied citified
sovereignty through urban agriculture like the South Central Farmers, and, like CSU,
they applied a radical Black Freedom ideology derived from the Black Panther Party.
44

Both Detroiters and Angelenos also use subsistence farming to disrupt exploitive systems
of wage labor and to circumvent formal economies. Additionally, like South L.A., food
justice in Detroit is intrinsically linked to environmental justice, health justice, and racial
justice. It goes beyond better food access in areas abandoned by supermarkets; rather, it
evokes deeper traditions of resistance and liberation, and stakes a claim in communities
that are under siege.
Green Capitalism and Land Grabbing
As the network of urban farms and autonomous communities in Detroit expanded,
so, too, did the appropriation of residents’ efforts by privately funded enterprises. Like
the South Central Farmers versus Ralph Horowitz, Detroit’s urban farmers soon found
themselves struggling to maintain stewardship over the land that they had so meticulously
cultivated. In January of 2013, the Detroit City council finalized the sale of 140 acres of

44
See the Sankofa Project outlined in Chapter 2, “Nurturing the Revolution”, for more on this connection.

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land on the city’s east side to the Hantz Group, a wealthy financial services company, for
half a million dollars—about one third of the market value. The project has been heralded
as a positive economic and social development that will address urban blight in the city
by planting trees and ornamental plants, which will ostensibly improve water quality and
decrease storm drain pressure. However, critics worry that planting so many trees will
actually damage Detroit’s water system and introduce unnecessary pesticides (Sands
2012). There are also fears that privatization of the city’s land parcels is a dangerous
precedent that will lead to gentrification and displacement by increasing land prices and
costs of living. Needless to say, the Hantz land purchase has provoked the ire of urban
farmers, community food justice activists, and local residents who do not see the value in
growing trees instead of food in a city where food access is paltry at best. These groups
argue that the Hantz Woodlands Urban Forestry Project is in fact nothing more than a
sophisticated land grab.
“Land grabbing” is the large-scale acquisition of large tracts of land by private
companies, governments, and affluent individuals looking to acquire space for housing,
tourist resorts, or other business ventures. “Land grabs” happen constantly, on a global
scale from Haiti to Palestine, and in countries throughout the African continent. Often,
places that have been destabilized by a natural disaster (such as Haiti after the 2010
earthquake, or Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina) experience rapid redevelopment and
redistribution (Klein 2007, 6). The Hantz undertaking can also be described as “green
grabbing” –a particular kind of land grabbing that centers an environmental agenda and
advances a global green economy. Green grabbing and green capitalism involve the
appropriation and commodification of the dwindling natural environment for economic

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ends. In what Harvey (2003) refers to as accumulation by dispossession, green capitalism
generates and perpetuates a sense of crisis under a convenient environmental pretense –in
the Hantz case, urban blight in Detroit—to displace people from their homes and
appropriate their land (Fairhead et al 2012).
While the term is generally used with regard to rural areas, urban land grabs are
just as common. Urban land grabbing is the process by which public space is privatized
and redistributed to serve private interests. Here in the U.S., urban land grabbing
frequently manifests as gentrification: the process by which wealthy entities purchase
homes and shops at low rates in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods, then
refurbish these properties for profit. Because gentrification raises property values, it also
regularly displaces low-income families and small businesses that cannot afford elevated
rents and costs of living. In L.A., the seizure of the South Central farm was a land grab
(as well as a modern day enclosure of the commons) because the land that many people
depended on for their livelihood was expropriated and destroyed by private interests
(Wood 2002). As peasant’s rights group La Via Campesina argues,
Land grabbing – even where there are no related forced evictions - denies
land for local communities, destroys livelihoods, reduces the political
space for peasant oriented agricultural policies and distorts markets
towards increasingly concentrated agribusiness interests and global trade,
rather than sustainable peasant agriculture for local and national markets
and for future generations (La Via Campesina, 2010).

Activists in Detroit and South L.A. use food to reclaim health and resist
displacement, and both face threats of co-optation by private industry. Where Detroit
food justice work differs from South L.A. is in the extensive resurrection of good old-
fashioned hands-in-the-soil farming. While visiting Detroit in 2011 and again in 2012, I
saw a significant number of abandoned lots that had been turned into gardens whose

154

intricacy ranged from a few sparse bunches of collard greens to a variety of herbs, greens,
peppers, beans and berries. Some even had elaborate bee keeping operations, hoop
houses and murals.
45

“Feedom Freedom Detroit Urban Farm, Hoop House in Progress” (Hassberg 2011).

Here in Los Angeles, the cruel irony of our sprawling landscape is that privatization and
oppressive land use policies render most of it unavailable to the public. Traditional farm
plots also require constant upkeep, and even a small lapse in weeding or watering could
be detrimental to the entire project. Additionally, the impact and efficacy of traditional
soil farming is questionable as weather conditions become increasingly extreme. At
present (2015), California is suffering from a severe drought, the likes of which have not
been seen for several centuries (Griffin and Anchukaitis 2014). NASA scientists have

45
“hoop houses”, also known as “polytunnels” are similar to greenhouses as they help regulate
temperature, and protect crops from extreme heat and cold.

155

even warned that another Dust Bowl may be imminent as California has less than a year’s
worth of water left in its reserves (Famiglietti 2014, Famiglietti 2015).
In the United States, agriculture is the leading cause (and potential cure) for
environmental ills. As a global leader in agricultural production, California is at the fore
of environmental degradation. Over 80% of the state’s water consumption goes to
industrial scale farming (Waldie 2014). It takes anywhere from 2,500 to 12,000 gallons of
water to produce one pound of boneless beef,
46
and even one pound of potatoes takes 30
gallons of water (Pimentel 2004). Furthermore, conventional agriculture practices have
been linked to soil erosion, habitat loss, species extinction, pollution, and climate change.
It is clear that California agricultural producers must begin to transform their relationship
to the land, and begin to plant in a way that takes care not to waste precious natural
resources. Future world building, then, is about resurrecting old ways that still work, and
also adapting to the unique needs of the present moment. In Los Angeles, the scarcity of
water and accessible land requires a different kind of food production–one that does not
put a strain on our scarce natural resources. What follows is an exploration of ways to
shift from conventional agriculture to more sustainable practices.
Permaculture: The Farming of the Future
Permaculture is a sustainable systems theory and design principle based on
working with (rather than against) nature’s patterns. A term coined by environmentalists
David Holmgren and Bill Mollison in the 1970s, permaculture mimics natural
ecosystems, where all the different parts work together harmoniously in a self-contained
and self-generative unit. Because there are no bugs (at least for indoor systems), there is

46 This figure considers the water the animal drinks, the water used to irrigate the pastures that the animal
grazes on and the crops that it is fed, and the water used to process the beef into a finished food product.

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no need for pesticides. Hence, permaculture systems are inherently organic and chemical
free.
Aquaponics is an ancient permaculture technique practiced for generations by
civilizations from Central America to South East Asia that has resurfaced as an efficient,
sustainable method to increase food production while minimizing resource consumption
(McCollow 2014). Aquaponics connects aquaculture systems (fish tanks, in most cases)
to hydroponics systems (plants growing in water) in a closed-loop, symbiotic process.
The fish waste filters down and fertilizes the soil, keeping it nutrient rich, and the soil in
turn filters the fish water, which always remains clean.

“The Aquaponics Cycle” (The Aquaponics Source 2015).

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Aquaponics systems are able to sustain a variety of edible crops with a fraction of
the physical space or water use that standard farming requires, and almost no byproducts.
Plants grow at the same rate or faster than soil-based plants, and they can be cultivated
year round, even in winter (McCollow 2014). This creative design principle is relatively
simple to enact, affordable to maintain, and it can operate at any scale—from one’s front
porch to an entire warehouse. Because aquaponics is a self-sustaining system that yields
maximum crop output with minimal input and waste, it is an optimal solution here in
South L.A. where accessible land, water, and energy are limited. Moreover, food justice
is already a principle that brings multiple stakeholders together, and cutting edge
aquaponics design makes these alliances even more attractive. For instance, local
nonprofit Community Services Unlimited has partnered with the University of Southern
California’s Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies to implement new sustainable
systems for the Mini Urban Expo Farm. In 2015, USC students spent three days during
Spring Break building a small aquaponics unit for CSU. At present it is a small unit that
produces only one crop at a time, but CSU plans to scale up so that eventually they can
source greens, herbs, and fruits directly from their hydroponic garden to the South L.A.
community.

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“CSU Aquaponics Unit” (Kim 2015).

Not only is permaculture a beneficial alternative to 21
st
century agricultural
practices, it is also an effective teaching tool that promotes experiential, intergenerational,
hands-on learning. Participating in the development and maintenance of an aquaponics
unit is an interdisciplinary learning experience that teaches students about biology,
chemistry, engineering, technology, mathematics, systems theory, art, and of course, food
and health. In this way, permaculture systems address modern problems beyond food
access and quality. Not only do they make up for some of the failures of the U.S. public
school system, but they can also potentially alleviate un/underemployment, as human
energy is required to create them. By its very definition, permaculture promotes
teamwork and collaboration between the various elements in an ecosystem. As Ron
Finley (2013) has said, “the people are the soil of the community”. If we change the

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composition of the soil to work symbiotically within community, incredible things might
grow.
Aquaponics operations can range in size and complexity from single-tanks and
grow beds to ten thousand square foot industrial warehouses. In Chicago for instance, the
Sweet Water Foundation built a massive aquaponics system in conjunction with Chicago
State University. Housed in an abandoned industrial building on 95
th
and Cottage Grove,
the Sweet Water Urban Farm produced up to 150 lbs per week at its peak, which it then
sourced to local businesses and restaurants. Sadly, Sweet Water eventually struggled to
operate efficiently at such a large scale, and by the time the foundation went under in
2014, the fish were dying and employees were disgruntled (Timm 2012). However,
Sweet Water remains an important example of the possibilities that exist in cities where
land has been gobbled up by industry and is covered in concrete; where warehouses of
yesterday’s industrial productivity are now indoor urban agriculture projects that grow
and distribute food for entire neighborhoods. In Los Angeles, a city with a history of
local manufacturing, indoor food production is not so far fetched. Moreover, a
community based food source that provides fresh, plant-based foods to local businesses
would be an economic boon for a neighborhood still struggling to recover from uprisings,
disinvestment, and a host of chronic health problems.
Another potentially transformational form of permaculture that can operate on any
scale is composting: the creation of living soil. In the summer of 2013, CSU helped to
organize the Rooted in Community Youth Food Justice Conference, and we recruited
Will Allen, 2008 MacArthur Genius Grant recipient and founder of Milwaukee’s
Growing Power Urban Farm to give the keynote address. The son of a sharecropper,

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Allen was once a professional basketball player and corporate executive. Allen became
an urban farmer after he retired, and in 1993 he created Growing Power (GP): a non-
profit organization and land trust that helps transform the local Milwaukee foodscape
through local food production and distribution, and nutrition education. In addition to
giving our conference keynote, Allen was also in town to meet with L.A. policymakers
and city planners to brainstorm ways to help L.A. become a “compost city”. Allen
explained to me that the year-round warmth and the multiple “green” enterprises make
Los Angeles prime real estate to sustain large-scale compost operations. Not to mention
that our compostable waste is in the hundreds of thousands of pounds every week.
It all starts with the soil. Imagine, the food and plant waste that this city
produces becoming rich, new soil that can go to community gardens and
small farms… how the quality of the food here would vastly improve!
Imagine if the empty industrial buildings became large-scale aquaponics
facilities, where we could grow tilapia and microgreens symbiotically…
imagine what that could mean for food access and nutrition for the people
most in need (Allen 2013).

Imagine indeed.
What Allen asked me to contemplate was a different kind of production and
manufacturing—one that nourishes the people and creates sustainable infrastructure in
urban cities. His rolling hills of “brown gold” represent a resurgence of the soil that
modernity has paved over to build its concrete cities. In conjunction with the city of
Milwaukee, Growing Power has created a massive compost system made up of grass,
leaves, hay, coffee grounds, and waste from the beer breweries. Growing Power also
composts over 40 million pounds of food waste annually (60,000 pounds per week),
which, according to the Environmental Protection Agency is the second largest
component of the waste stream after paper products (U.S. Environmental Protection

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Agency 2015). The result of all this composting is incredibly fertile soil that goes to
farms and gardens all over the city.

“Milwaukee ‘genius’ farmer Will Allen atop one of Growing Power’s compost piles”
(Philpott 2010).

Here in Los Angeles, Community Services Unlimited is working with Normandie
Avenue Elementary School to create a self-sustaining food production and consumption
unit in which the youth grow their own food, eat their own food, and compost it back into
mulch all at the same site. Urban agriculture is a powerful way to reclaim health and
space in marginalized communities, however, it is often regarded as provincial and
backward, and “…carries the added stigmas of sharecropping and slavery”, particularly
for African American youth (Allen 2012, 156).
47
When young people are involved in

47
A similar stigma applies to Latin@ youth whose family histories include agricultural labor or farmwork.

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planting, harvesting, and preparing their food, they are more likely to develop healthy
habits and practices. In other words, “if kids grow kale, kids eat kale” (Finley 2013), and
the likelihood increases when kids see their friends getting dirty in the garden, and eating
fresh vegetables.
48

The beauty of aquaponics and compost systems in particular is their relative
simplicity, self-sufficiency, and scalability. Three days is all it took for students to build
CSU’s aquaponics system from scratch, and it got going, it kept going. Although more
time and care is needed for large systems, they, too, can function independently.
Similarly, composting can be as simple as saving food scraps for a private garden patch,
or as intricate as a citywide system like the one Growing Power has created. Closed loop
systems reduce individual carbon footprints and water usage, and they also help people
divest from a corporate food system that wastes an unthinkable amount of water and
energy, and pollutes the natural environment. Furthermore, because these systems are
relatively inexpensive to create, organizations and individuals can easily own the means
of production for their own food production—citified sovereignty at its best.
Subsistence is subversive, particularly at the small scale. Small projects allow for
adaptability to changing situations, such as an eviction or foreclosure. A small
aquaponics system or composting unit can more easily be transported to a new location,
whereas for big operations like Sweet Water and the South Central Farm, recovery and
relocation was much more difficult. Permaculture allows us to effectively change the
world by changing our immediate environment, and setting a reproducible example.

48
The Rooted in Community Youth Food Justice Network is designed to redeem urban agriculture and
farm work and create the next generation of leaders in the food movement.

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Symbiotic systems are about creating the world we want to see as an alternative to the
one we are critiquing.
Towards Livable, Sustainable Housing in the Urban Core
Although the term permaculture generally refers to agriculture (“permanent +
agriculture”), there are a number of other practices that fall under the permaculture
banner. For instance, natural or “green” buildings are a form of permaculture as they are
designed to work with the patterns of the planet, and they use sustainable or recycled
materials in their design. In November 2013, while researching ways to make South L.A.
more sustainable, I had the good fortune to visit my dear friend Angelica Tonatzin who
was renting a property at the Earthship Biotecture headquarters in Taos, New Mexico.
For three surreal days, I ate peppers and kale from an indoor garden, used compost
toilets, and lounged in spacious rooms that maintained a toasty 75-degree temperature
while snow fell outside.
Developed by architect Michael Reynolds in the 1970s, Earthship Biotecture is a
form of off-grid housing that runs completely on solar power, and collects and filters rain
water for all human uses, including indoor food production.
49
Earthships are closed-loop
permaculture systems that are largely self-sustaining and extremely efficient.
50
The
Earthship I visited was built with an entire wall of south-facing windows angled to collect
sunlight for power and heat. Some models have a built-in greenhouse with solar panels to
maximize growing. Ours also had enormous cisterns that collected rainwater and snow,
which went through a powerful filtration system to supply the kitchen and bathroom
fixtures with water. Not a drop was wasted. We used biodegradable soaps because the

49
The term “off-grid” refers to autonomous housing that is not connected to any municipal water, sewer, or
electricity grid.
50
See Hodge (2007) “Garbage Warrior” for the story of Michael Reynolds and his Earthships.

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grey water was used to irrigate the indoor garden and help the toilet to flush. The toilet’s
black water was also filtered, disinfected, and siphoned out to the outdoor garden.
51

Beyond its sustainable functionality, our Earthship was also incredibly beautiful, with
stained glass mosaics made from recycled beer cans and soda bottles. It was futuristic and
prehistoric all at once.

“South-facing Windows and Solar Roofing” (Tonatzin 2013a).

51
“Grey water” refers to water that has been gently used for washing dishes or hands or clothes. “Black
water” describes wastewater from toilets.

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“Indoor Garden” (Salcedo 2013).

“Recycled Mosaic” (Tonatzin 2013b).

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“Earthship Foundation” (Tonatzin 2013c).
Needless to say, it pained me to return home to my own poorly designed duplex
that holds stifling heat in the summer and is frigid even in the mildest of L.A. winters.
My home has an embarrassing lack of windows, and the few that exist are blocked on
either side by adjacent buildings preventing any cooling breeze or warming rays of sun.
Whereas Earthships are built down into the ground with old tires packed with dirt and
garbage, and clay walls to keep them temperate year round, I am completely reliant on
gas, electricity, and municipal water: all of which I pay an exorbitant amount for each
month. When I flew back from Taos into LAX, I was immediately assaulted by noise and
air pollution. With new eyes, I noticed every unsustainable design feature of the airport
and all the buildings I passed on my way home. As I walked into my freezing house and
cranked on the gas powered heat, all I could think was “L.A. needs Earthships.”

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Granted, citified Earthships would look considerably different than the massive
structures at the headquarters in Taos, and they would have to operate at a much smaller
scale. However, staple features such as composting toilets, water catchment/preservation
systems, solar powered energy systems, and indoor gardens could all potentially function
the same way. Earthships also use recycled and discarded materials, providing the dual
benefit of reducing the waste stream. Just as aquaponics systems are a sustainable,
scalable form of agriculture that could revolutionize the way we grow food, Earthships
are a sustainable, scalable form of housing that could drastically improve living
conditions for Angelenos. Furthermore, sustainable housing that integrates food justice
into its design really brings citified sovereignty within reach.
Creating completely off-grid housing in the metropolis of Los Angeles is unlikely
to become a reality, save in the case of a major disaster that compromises the city’s
municipalities. A more tangible and similarly exciting architectural possibility is the use
of industrial hemp to build modern homes. Although the mention of hemp and cannabis
evoke images of the U.S. government’s War on Drugs, hemp was once the largest
domestic cash crop in the country. Before industrial and technological breakthroughs
such as the cotton gin and wood-based paper, hemp was the leading fabric and fiber of
choice, used for everything from ropes and paint to diapers and food products. Even the
United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) extolled the virtues of hemp as a
sustainable alternative to trees (One acre of hemp produces as much cellulose fiber pulp
as 4.1 acres of trees), and urged farmers to plant hemp in support of the war effort
(Dewey and Merrill 1916, USDA 1942).

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At present, “hempcrete” (think, concrete) is positioned to become an efficient and
eco-friendly alternative to concrete in building construction. Hempcrete is a mixture of
cannabis stems and a lime –or clay-based binder, which makes it carbon negative (Head
2012).
52
Furthermore, hemp does not require herbicides or pesticides, it grows
abundantly, helps control topsoil erosion, and it converts carbon dioxide to oxygen even
better than trees (Hemp Technologies 2015). When used to build homes, hempcrete
provides high thermal insulation, which leads to significant energy savings, and it is
naturally mold and termite resistant (ibid).
Developing domestic hemp production could potentially offset rising greenhouse
gases, revitalize the United States’ production economy, and help facilitate a collective
shift toward healthier more sustainable communities. There are a number of hemp
construction projects currently underway in cities around the world, and Los Angeles
could benefit from becoming one of them. Although L.A. enjoys temperate weather most
of the time, a draft in winter can still be brutal, especially for children, elderly, and
disabled people. In South L.A., a disproportionate number of residents suffer from leaks
and infestations in sub-standard housing units, as well as mold and even asbestos
exposure, which is known to cause mesothelioma: a malignancy of the lungs, abdomen,
and heart (Dannenberg et all 2011).
Los Angeles is known for its affluence and excess, particularly with regard to
luxury housing. Television shows like “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” and “Cribs”
laud the unused extra rooms, private tennis courts, and multiple bathrooms commonly
found in L.A.’s celebrity dwellings. Meanwhile, Los Angeles also has more homeless

52
“carbon negative” means that the structure actually absorbs carbon from the atmosphere.

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people than any other U.S. city (Camp 2012): a contradiction that highlights the need for
new housing strategies. Anson (2014, 289) argues that although the movement for
sustainability in the housing market stems from “…a desire to consume less and
contribute to community more”, it has become part of the commodification of
sustainability. In other words, self-sustaining structures have become trendy and
mainstream ways to save space, energy, and money, but for people without dependable
shelter, they could be the difference between life and death.
In 2015, L.A. resident Elvis Summers started a GoFundMe campaign called “Tiny
House Huge Purpose” to raise funds to construct mobile “tiny houses” on wheels for
homeless people in the San Pedro community of Los Angeles. In six months, Summers
raised over $85,000 to build the tiny homes, which cost less than $500 each. The average
American home is over 2000 square feet. Conversely, “tiny homes range from 90 [square
feet]—think a little smaller than a standard parallel parking spot— to as large as 300
[square feet]” (Mingoya 2015).

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“Tiny, Mobile Houses for the Homeless Raise Ire in San Pedro” (KTLA 2015).

While 90 square feet may not even be enough closet space for some, for those
experiencing homelessness, even a tiny structure provides a level of privacy and safety, a
space for basic needs (washing, sleeping, shelter), and also spatial mobility for homeless
people. Geographer Neil Smith (1992, 58) theorizes the intervention of what he calls
“Homeless Vehicles”, arguing “the Homeless Vehicle…is simultaneously a means of
production and reproduction allowing evictees to make and remake space in a way that
enhances their means of survival. It is a means to carve a more sympathetic geographical
politics in a city of exclusionary spaces”. In addition to humanizing the city’s homeless
residents and preserving their lives and livelihoods, a (2014) report from the Department
of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte also found that providing
housing for the homeless can potentially save millions of city dollars in the form of
hospital stays and jail stays (Thomas et al 2014).

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Despite their many benefits, the growing number of tiny houses rapidly appearing
along the streets of San Pedro caused heated emotional and political tensions among L.A.
residents and councilmen. In an August 2015 meeting of the Los Angeles’ Public Works
and Gang Reduction Committee, L.A. City Councilman Joe Buscaino stated, “These
wooden shacks are not the real estate I’m looking for in my district…The only legal use
for these is for dogs. This is not the way we treat people who are homeless in our city”
(Dwyer 2015). In September of 2015, the Los Angeles City Attorney declared the
structures illegal, citing building code violations, obstruction of public walkways, and
visual blight. Some of the units were rolled off of the public sidewalks to an undisclosed
private location, and the Department of Sanitation came to remove the rest. Even with the
funds raised, the outpouring of community support, and the deep gratitude of homeless
tiny house recipients, the mobile encampments were not allowed to stay. Building
sustainable housing is relatively simple, assuming one has an architectural skill set.
However, obtaining consent from the city to build autonomous structures in the urban
core is another story altogether.
Utopian Dystopias
As a concept and theory, citified sovereignty appeals to the consciousness of
those who believe that everyone should have access to the basic needs for a healthy and
comfortable life. However, in practice, citified sovereignty generates fear and backlash
from governments, private industries, and others invested in maintaining economic and
social control. Personally, I have future world fantasies of South L.A.’s empty trash-filled
lots becoming kale forests, or fruit orchards, or medicinal plant gardens. I would be

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delighted to see sustainable encampments in Skid Row,
53
where the legions of people
who have lost their homes could enjoy a level of shelter and even mobility without the
threat of police violence. However, as countless efforts and groups have demonstrated,
this work is fraught with challenges. It takes many hands, much hard work, and success is
often short-lived. In the constant tug-of-war between public and private interests, the
balance can easily slip one way or the other, making the struggle for citified sovereignty
just that: a struggle.
Where community groups have created oases, there is a constant lurking threat of
appropriation by green capitalists, state agencies, and other entities seeking to redistribute
and profit from the innovative ideas and liberated spaces. In South Los Angeles, the
Panther Breakfast Programs and the South Central Farm were two examples of historical
efforts to build new futures in the urban core. Each exhibited the struggle for citified
sovereignty differently, yet both faced threats of attack and co-optation. The Panthers
suffered repression by state and federal agencies, and their own breakfast program model
ultimately became a standard feature of state and federally funded school breakfast
programs. In the case of the South Central Farmers, the attack by private industry was
bolstered by state support, and came in the form of the seizure of the land itself –only to
let it lay fallow and unused instead of feeding hungry people.
Although backlash and repression is inevitable, I remain hopeful that citified
sovereignty becomes more than a struggle and utopian dream. Cities like Los Angeles are
unsustainable by design (Orsi 2003, Martínez-Alier 2003, Davis 2014), and as
speculative fiction author Octavia Butler reminds us, urban areas are only ever one

53
“Skid Row” is a neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles, notorious for its high concentration of
unsheltered homeless people. (See: Camp 2012).

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natural or societal disaster away from chaotic catastrophe (Butler 1993). In a capitalist
society where everything has been reduced to a commodity, the people most in need have
the least access—to quality teachers, quality food, quality health care, and so forth, and
are affected first and worst by environmental ills. Regardless of race or class, all of us
essentially want a comfortable, safe, and healthy life for our families and ourselves.
However, contemporary capitalism produces conditions in which “…some countries,
social groups and peoples, are deprived of the basic necessities while others are
accumulating surplus wealth” (Spitz 1984, cited in Alston and Tomaševski 1984). As
Tupac Shakur said best, “they got money for wars but can’t feed the poor” (Shakur
1993), and indeed, the United States government has spent trillions of dollars to sustain
and instigate never-ending global war while criminalizing sustainable, cost-effective
practices like seed saving, edible lawns, and rainwater catchment.
54

This moment is a critical juncture where the failures of modernity have become
painfully clear, especially in metropolitan cities where local and sustainable food
production has become a revitalized means of survival in the face of unemployment and
industry abandonment. There have already been important material and ideological shifts
toward a sustainable global food system, where culturally appropriate, healthy food is a
basic human right, and bountiful harvests are available to all. As we move forward into
new sustainable futures, old and new technologies are helping us to reclaim urban space,
public health, land, and healthy food. Farmers all over the world from Africa to Haiti,
Russia to Australia, China to the UK, are refusing genetically modified organisms and
monocultures in favor of indigenous seeds and crop diversity (Kingsnorth 1999). Here in

54 According to the Borgen Project, a nonprofit that works to address issues of global hunger and poverty,
the US military defense budget was $737 billion in 2012 alone (see: Borgen Project 2013).

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U.S. cities like Los Angeles, bucolic farms and gardens are appearing in urban
neighborhoods, and liquor stores and convenience markets are being transformed into
healthy produce providers. As João Costa Vargas (2006, 30) explains,
Up against daunting adversaries and on the brink of extinction, many
persons and groups of the inner city fight back. Their imaginings provide
fundamental lessons for all of us concerned with and working toward a
more just and egalitarian world. They resist their genocide and along the
way provide lessons for the remaking of our necessarily fascist selves and
the pursuit of freedom.

Future world building requires that people work collectively toward solutions
across the varying spectrum of privilege and oppression; however, as Vargas suggests,
the most oppressed among us are uniquely positioned to generate new realities for
everyone. Necessity breeds creativity and innovation, and people in need know how to
make the most of what few resources they have. As my mentor Ruth Wilson Gilmore
often says, power is valueless on its own: rather, the holder of power imbues it with value
(Gilmore 2009). When marginalized communities are empowered, they can potentially
transform the abandoned and unutilized warehouses and empty lots in the inner city into
compost farms or permaculture warehouses, building pathways out of our dependency on
industrial food. The seeds of a different future world have already been planted, and they
are sprouting in the form of non-violent agriculture, and rapidly developing food justice
and food sovereignty movements that aim to restore health and land by changing
relationships to food and the way that it is produced. Furthermore, these movements are
most effective at the local, grassroots level, because as the Movement Generation Justice
& Ecology Project affirms, “…while the scale of the crisis…is global, the solutions must
fundamentally be local and regional. Scale is achieved not by creating a single big
approach but rather by aggregating defining solutions appropriate to place” (Movement

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Generation 2015, 25-26). In other words, although the revolution is not easily scaled up,
small-scale solutions can indeed address large-scale problems.
55

It may appear that small-scale efforts to implement food justice and citified
sovereignty are futile. However, our seeds, rivers, and daily food are sites for reclaiming
our economic, political, and cultural freedoms (Shiva 2005), so projects that improve
food access and preserve culture and tradition are incredibly significant. Because the
corporate food regime is so wasteful of resources and energy, small scale, local producers
are actually more efficient at making sure that the immediate community is fed. The scale
of the problem is vast and global, but the scale of the solution is inherently local and
small. As (Boggs and Kurashige 2011, 178) have argued,
…the movement today, in this period and this country, is being created not
by the cadres of a vanguard party with a common ideology, but by
individuals and groups responding creatively with passion and imagination
to the real problems and challenges that the face where they live and work.
…They/we are the leaders we are looking for.

If there is truth to Florence Nishida’s (2013) assertion that one community garden can
feed an entire city block and more, then the natural world is enough, and produces
enough abundance for every living being. If local models were scaled up, human beings
could conceivably abate hunger and poverty and restore the natural environment. It may
seem pointless to go up against multinational corporations with their global economic and
lobbying power, but we are their audience. If we don’t buy it, they cannot sell it. In the
words of Bob Marley (1973), we mustn’t underestimate the power of being a small axe
against a big tree.

55
21st century social justice movements such as the Occupy Movement, the Arab Spring, and Black Lives
Matter have increasingly relied upon technology and social media to link disparate people and places to a
larger goal and political ideology. This is an example of organizing at the small scale to produce large scale
effects.

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Our land, neighborhoods, and our health must be measured in terms besides
capitalist use value. “What we need instead is a paradigm shift toward a solidarity
economy whose foundation is the production and exchange of goods and services that our
communities really need” (Boggs and Kurashige (2011, 169). Even when we are
physically removed from our land and our traditions, we are only ever one heirloom seed
away from reconnecting with what runs deep in us and defines us as people. Food is at
the root of cultural identity, expression, and how we make sense of ourselves in the
world. Food is how we know our kin, our place, and our truth. Instances of citified
sovereignty remind us that despite processes of modernity, industrialization, and
displacement, the Earth is always still down there below the concrete, and all the
potential for abundance remains. Just as we do not plant seeds for immediate harvest,
we may not see the fruits of our labor in this lifetime. Building utopias within dystopias
requires us to “…transform ourselves into active planetary and global citizens who, as
Martin Luther King Jr. put it, ‘develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in
order to preserve the best in their individual societies’” (Boggs and Kurashige 2011, 32).
The grassroots reclamation of food, land, living bodies, and ideologies is challenging in
the face of global capitalism, but it is undeniably already taking root.
Where I enter this work is not to introduce or solve or resolve the problems laid
out in this project; rather, I am part of a continuum, a lineage, and a movement. I am at
times a conduit for change, connecting disparate groups who are unconsciously aligned.
At others I am a small player in a larger story –one additional pair of hands in a garden
project, for instance. I am here to make suggestions for revolutionary transformations in
communities like the ones from whence I have come, and I draw from my ancestors and

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predecessors to do so. As I welcome the arrival of my first child, my personal investment
and stake in this work is more important than ever. I do this now not just for my
community and myself, but also for my child, and my grandchildren and their children,
because I want them to live in a sustainable world with animals, fresh water, clean air and
healthy food. This work is my small contribution to the creation of that world, and I hope
it provides even a small opening for new strategies to transform historically racist and
toxic spaces, and to create healthy futures and new realities for all of us.

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Appendix: Declaration of the Forum for Food Sovereignty
DECLARATION OF NYÉLÉNI
Nyéléni Village, Selingue, Mali
February 27, 2007

We, more than 500 representatives from more than 80 countries, of organizations of
peasants/family farmers, artisanal fisher-folk, indigenous peoples, landless peoples, rural
workers, migrants, pastoralists, forest communities, women, youth, consumers,
environmental and urban movements have gathered together in the village of Nyéléni in
Sélingué, Mali to strengthen a global movement for food sovereignty. We are doing this,
brick by brick, have been living in huts constructed by hand in the local tradition, and
eating food that is being produced and prepared by the Sélingué community. We give our
collective endeavour the name “Nyéléni” as a tribute to and inspiration from a legendary
Malian peasant woman who farmed and fed her peoples well.

Most of us are food producers and are ready, able and willing to feed all the world’s
peoples. Our heritage as food producers is critical to the future of humanity. This is
specially so in the case of women and indigenous peoples who are historical creators of
knowledge about food and agriculture and are devalued. But this heritage and our
capacities to produce healthy, good and abundant food are being threatened and
undermined by neo-liberalism and global capitalism. Food sovereignty gives us the hope
and power to preserve, recover and build on our food producing knowledge and capacity.

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Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food
produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define
their own food and agriculture systems. It puts those who produce, distribute and
consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of
markets and corporations. It defends the interests and inclusion of the next generation. It
offers a strategy to resist and dismantle the current corporate trade and food regime, and
directions for food, farming, pastoral and fisheries systems determined by local
producers. Food sovereignty prioritises local and national economies and markets and
empowers peasant and family farmer-driven agriculture, artisanal - fishing, pastoralist-led
grazing, and food production, distribution and consumption based on environmental,
social and economic sustainability. Food sovereignty promotes transparent trade that
guarantees just income to all peoples and the rights of consumers to control their food
and nutrition. It ensures that the rights to use and manage our lands, territories, waters,
seeds, livestock and biodiversity are in the hands of those of us who produce food. Food
sovereignty implies new social relations free of oppression and inequality between men
and women, peoples, racial groups, social classes and generations.

In Nyéléni, through numerous debates and interactions, we are deepening our collective
understanding of food sovereignty and learned about the reality of the struggles of our
respective movements to retain autonomy and regain our powers. We now understand
better the tools we need to build our movement and advance our collective vision.

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What are we fighting for?
A world where…

…all peoples, nations and states are able to determine their own food producing systems
and policies that provide every one of us with good quality, adequate, affordable, healthy,
and culturally appropriate food;

...recognition and respect of women’s roles and rights in food production, and
representation of women in all decision making bodies;

…all peoples in each of our countries are able to live with dignity, earn a living wage for
their labour and have the opportunity to remain in their homes;

...where food sovereignty is considered a basic human right, recognised and implemented
by communities, peoples, states and international bodies;

…we are able to conserve and rehabilitate rural environments, fish stocks, landscapes and
food traditions based on ecologically sustainable management of land, soils, water, seas,
seeds, livestock and other biodiversity;

…we value, recognize and respect our diversity of traditional knowledge, food, language
and culture, and the way we organise and express ourselves;

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…there is genuine and integral agrarian reform that guarantees peasants full rights to
land, defends and recovers the territories of indigenous peoples, ensures fishing
communities’ access and control over their fishing areas and eco-systems, honours access
and control over pastoral lands and migratory routes, assures decent jobs with fair
remuneration and labour rights for all, and a future for young people in the countryside;
...where agrarian reform revitalises inter-dependence between producers and consumers,
ensures community survival, social and economic justice and ecological sustainability,
and respect for local autonomy and governance with equal rights for women and
men...where it guarantees the right to territory and self-determination for our peoples;

...where we share our lands and territories peacefully and fairly among our peoples, be we
peasants, indigenous peoples, artisanal fishers, pastoralists, or others;

…in the case of natural and human-created disasters and conflict-recovery situations,
food sovereignty acts as a kind of “insurance” that strengthens local recovery efforts and
mitigates negative impacts... where we remember that affected communities are not
helpless, and where strong local organization for self-help is the key to recovery;

...where peoples’ power to make decisions about their material, natural and spiritual
heritage are defended; ...where all peoples have the right to defend their territories from
the actions of transnational corporations;

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What are we fighting against?
Imperialism, neo-liberalism, neo-colonialism and patriarchy, and all systems that
impoverish life, resources and eco-systems, and the agents that promote the above such
as international financial institutions, the World Trade Organisation, free trade
agreements, transnational corporations,and governments that are antagonistic to their
peoples;

The dumping of food at prices below the cost of production in the global economy;

The domination of our food and food producing systems by corporations that place
profits before people, health and the environment;

Technologies and practices that undercut our future food producing capacities, damage
the environment and put our health at risk. Those include transgenic crops and animals,
terminator technology, industrial aquaculture and destructive fishing practices, the so-
called white revolution of industrial dairy practices, the so-called ‘old’ and ‘new’ Green
Revolutions, and the “Green Deserts” of industrial bio-fuel monocultures and other
plantations;

The privatisation and commodification of food, basic and public services, knowledge,
land, water, seeds, livestock and our natural heritage;

183

Development projects/models and extractive industry that displace people and destroy
our environments and natural heritage;

Wars, conflicts, occupations, economic blockades, famines, forced displacement of
people and confiscation of their land, and all forces and governments that cause and
support them; post disaster and conflict reconstruction programmes that destroy our
environments and capacities;

The criminalization of all those who struggle to protect and defend our rights;

Food aid that disguises dumping, introduces GMOs into local environments and food
systems and creates new colonialism patterns;

The internationalisation and globalisation of paternalistic and patriarchal values that
marginalise women, diverse agricultural, indigenous, pastoral and fisher communities
around the world;

What can and will we do about it?
Just as we are working with the local community in Sélingué to create a meeting space at
Nyéléni, we are committed to building our collective movement for food sovereignty by
forging alliances, supporting each others’ struggles and extending our solidarity,
strengths, and creativity to peoples all over the world who are committed to food
sovereignty. Every struggle, in any part of the world for food sovereignty, is our struggle.

184

We have arrived at a number of collective actions to share our vision of food sovereignty
with all peoples of this world, which are elaborated in our synthesis document. We will
implement these actions in our respective local areas and regions, in our own movements
and jointly in solidarity with other movements. We will share our vision and action
agenda for food sovereignty with others who are not able to be with us here in Nyéléni so
that the spirit of Nyéléni permeates across the world and becomes a powerful force to
make food sovereignty a reality for peoples all over the world.

Finally, we give our unconditional and unwavering support to the peasant movements of
Mali and ROPPA in their demands that food sovereignty become a reality in Mali and by
extension in all of Africa.
Now is the time for food sovereignty!

185

Table 1. South Los Angeles Grocery Retail Stores by Address and Type
Name Address
Grocery Retail
Type
Advance Market 5469 W Adams Blvd Supermarket
Numero Uno Market 701 E Jefferson Blvd Supermarket
Numero Uno Market 4373 S Vermont Ave Supermarket
Numero Uno Market 4710 S Broadway Supermarket
Numero Uno Market 310 E Manchester Ave Supermarket
Numero Uno Market 2214 S San Pedro St Supermarket
Payless Foods 620 E El Segundo Blvd Supermarket
Bodega R Ranch Market 5212 W Adams Blvd Supermarket
Bodega R Ranch Market 8601 Hooper Ave Supermarket
El Tapatio Market 310 E Florence Ave Supermarket
Numero Uno Market 9127 S Figueroa St Supermarket
Family Farm Market 4322 S Central Ave Supermarket
Mi Rancho Market 4881 Compton Ave Supermarket
Super Buy Warehouse Market 7224 S Vermont Ave Supermarket
Ralphs Grocery 1730 W Manchester Ave Supermarket
Ralphs Grocery 3300 W Slauson Ave Supermarket
Superior Super Warehouse 10211 Avalon Blvd Supermarket
Big Saver Foods 5829 Compton Ave Supermarket
Superior Super Warehouse 7316 Compton Ave Supermarket
Ralphs Grocery 5080 Rodeo Rd Supermarket
Albertsons Store 3901 Crenshaw Blvd Supermarket
Ralphs Grocery 2600 S Vermont Ave Supermarket
Food 4 Less 11840 Wilmington Ave Supermarket
Superior Super Warehouse 5824 S Vermont Ave Supermarket
Food 4 Less 5318 S Main St Supermarket
Superior Super Warehouse 3129 S Hoover St Supermarket
Superior Super Warehouse 8811 S Western Ave Supermarket
Food 4 Less 1820 W Slauson Ave Supermarket
Food 4 Less 1651 E 103rd St Supermarket
Food 4 Less 11407 S Western Ave Supermarket
Superior Super Warehouse 3480 S La Brea Ave Supermarket
El Super 1301 E Gage Ave Supermarket
Superior Super Warehouse 2000 S Central Ave Supermarket
Superior Super Warehouse 11202 Crenshaw Blvd Supermarket
Washington Square Market 4040 W Washington Blvd Supermarket
El Super 1100 W Slauson Ave Supermarket
Food 4 Less 1748 W Jefferson Blvd Supermarket
Ralphs Grocery 11922 S Vermont Ave Supermarket
Fresh & Easy Express 3335 S Figueroa St Ste B Limited Assortment
Smart & Final 3607 S Vermont Ave Warehouse
Smart & Final 2929 Crenshaw Blvd Warehouse

186

Smart & Final 1125 E El Segundo Blvd Warehouse
Smart & Final 8137 S Vermont Ave Warehouse
Miranda Mini Market 136 E Martin Luther King Jr Blvd
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Leon Elpidio 7922 S Central Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Alps Mini Market 7512 S Hoover St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Family Market 2500 Hooper Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Hoover Vernon Market 801 W Vernon Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
J & M Market 6103 S Hoover St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Adams Ranch Market 258 E Adams Blvd
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Supermercado Latino 1049 W Martin Luther King
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
More 4 Less 4415 S Central Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
San Pedro Discount Market 11868 S San Pedro St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Adams Market 2625 S Western Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Christinas Market 2715 S Vermont Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Kings Foodtown Market 1019 W MLK Jr Blvd
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Family Market 4267 Ascot Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Family Mini Market 10801 Compton Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Don Panchito Mini Market 6015 Avalon Blvd
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
T & T Market
1462 W Martin Luther King Jr
Blv
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
El Rey Market 1471 W Jefferson Blvd
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
BJ Community Market 8451 Avalon Blvd
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Prince Market 5400 S Hoover St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Neighborhood Grocery
Market 10227 S Broadway
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
HP Grocery 7631 S Main St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart

187

Happy Market 11810 S Figueroa St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
El Toro Market 1876 Nadeau St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Adlong Market 1550 W Adams Blvd
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Centro Mercado 4339 Dalton Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Amapola 7223 Compton Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Grace Market 5500 Compton Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Maple Liquor & Market 3000 Maple Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
El Bajio Market 4501 S Main St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Youngs Market 5421 S Hoover St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Royalty Market 6200 S San Pedro St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Durans Market 2228 Maple Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Inner City Market 1435 W 39th St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Longs Market 4876 W Adams Blvd
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Walnut Dr Market 7650 Walnut Dr
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
B & B Market 10420 S Main St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Ks Market 8277 S San Pedro St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
KS Market 8004 Avalon Blvd
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
S & S Market 1752 E 92nd St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Caribbean Market 1425 Nadeau St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
South City Market 1346 E Firestone Blvd
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Hoover Ranch Market 2301 S Hoover St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Ranch Market 5300 S Normandie Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Lees Market 4801 Avalon Blvd
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart

188

Oasis Market 4312 Wall St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
48th Street Market 2371 W 48th St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
J & J Discount Store 3555 S Western Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
A & H Market 4925 Hooper Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Hope Mini Market 5300 S Hoover St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Holmes Meat Market 6525 Holmes Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Ortiz Produce 4808 W Washington Blvd
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Pigui Mini Market 1316 Firestone Blvd
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Henrys Market 2101 Estrella Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Huns Market 6601 S Main St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Kings Market 8000 S Western Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Vernon Market 272 E Vernon Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Lims Market 10626 Weigand Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Todos Market 1801 E Florence Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Playa Azul Tortilleria Market 1901 Nadeau St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Jefferson Market 842 E Jefferson Blvd
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
K & M Market 1767 W Vernon Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
T & J Market 9025 S Main St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Hilltop Food Center 10526 S Western Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Main Street Market 3327 S Main St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Felipe Beer & Wine Market 4429 Avalon Blvd
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Latina Market 1503 E 66th St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Hooper Market 8301 Hooper Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart

189

Prince Market 6901 S Figueroa St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
C & C Market 4378 S Vermont Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Harrys Market 8751 Compton Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Family Market 5501 S Normandie Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Central Ave City Market 10213 S Central Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
John Avalon Market 12003 Avalon Blvd
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Compton Market 4187 Compton Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
San Buena Market 1915 E Gage Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Star Market 1258 E 68th St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Angelicas Market 8902 Avalon Blvd
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Corona Beer & Wine Market 1630 E Gage Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Louies Market 9136 S Budlong Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Venus Market 10117 Avalon Blvd
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
La Fuente De Oro 6740 Compton Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
El Compadre Market 128 E Martin Luther King Jr Blvd
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Leon Mini Market 7111 S Main St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Commercial Market 2300 S San Pedro St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Joses Water Mini Market 9303 S Vermont Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
El Torito Market 10804 Juniper St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Trojan Market 7919 S Central Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
La Mexicana Market 4800 Compton Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Century Market 9816 S Normandie Ave # B
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Super Bargain 10900 S Main St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart

190

La Bodega 2715 S Western Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Hums Market 5001 S Western Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Mi Ranchito Market 5400 S Central Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Hercules Market 726 W Slauson Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Cimarron Market 2679 Cimarron St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Rauls Market 11218 S Central Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
C & J Mini Market 11228 Wilmington Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Avalon Tobacco Mart 523 E Vernon Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Lisas Family Market 5155 S Vermont Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
777 Market 1900 S La Brea Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Chayo Market 2916 Maple Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Super Marketa Latina 10423 S Normandie Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
El Charrito Market 501 E 23rd St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Jones Market 9028 S Broadway
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Bell Market 1838 E 83rd St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Pancho Grande Market 1985 Firestone Blvd
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
A & W Market 1582 1/2 W Vernon Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Hoover Market 10029 S Hoover St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
J & J Market 7752 Compton Ave
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Petes Market 9141 S Hoover St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
G & J Market 2045 W MLK Jr Blvd
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Lupitas Market 2600 W Jefferson Blvd
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart
Pineros Market 2313 S Hoover St
Convenience
Store/Mini-Mart

191

Family Dollar 1955 W Slauson Ave Dollar Store
99 Cents Only Store 422 E Washington Blvd Dollar Store
Dollar Tree 3710 S La Brea Ave Ste A Dollar Store
Dollar Tree 5710 Crenshaw Blvd Dollar Store

192

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Asset Metadata

Creator Hassberg, Analena Hope (author)

Core Title To survive and thrive: food, justice, and citified sovereignty in South L.A.

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program American Studies and Ethnicity

Publication Date 11/20/2017

Defense Date 09/30/2015

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag African American,built environment,environmental justice,food justice,food sovereignty,health,Los Angeles,OAI-PMH Harvest,permaculture,sustainability

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Pulido, Laura (committee chair), Akom, Antwi (committee member), Kelley, Robin D. G. (committee member), Renteln, Alison (committee member)

Creator Email analenahope@gmail.com,hassberg@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-201857

Unique identifier UC11277806

Identifier etd-HassbergAn-4040.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-201857 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-HassbergAn-4040.pdf

Dmrecord 201857

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Hassberg, Analena Hope

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

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