Gardens Feed and Fuel Grassroot Organization

The Greening of Detroit

In 1989, The Greening of Detroit (TGOD) was established as a non-profit organization with the mission of “re-foresting” Detroit, following decades of damage caused by tree diseases, depopulation and disinvestment. Since then, TGOD has planted more than 60,000 trees and annually plants between 6,000-7,000 new trees from a variety of species. In addition, TGOD is at the forefront of the impressive Urban Agriculture movement in Detroit and the US. In 2012, TGOD supported nearly 1,500 urban gardens and reached 15,000 local participants through seed distribution, educational classes and market development.

Our Workforce Development department, where I am housed, collaborates with community residents, organizations and funders to train local residents to enter the “green” industry job market and provide viable opportunities for job placement. In addition, we attempt to address one of the most problematic issues in Detroit right now: vacant land. Recent estimates indicate that more than 70,000 house lots sit vacant in Detroit. These properties are a burden on the city’s already thinly-stretched resources, creating a space for various illegal activities (eg, trash dumping, drug use and sales), and devalue the surrounding properties.

My role at The Greening has primarily been in the area of community organizing. I have been tasked with bringing residents together to determine the future of local parks and greenways; working collectively to map out a desired future that will not only beautify parks, but invest power into the grassroots and give voice to an often neglected underclass. At times, the process of collective visioning leads down unexpected paths. At one of the parks where we worked in 2012, local residents proposed nominating a relic of racial segregation as a designated historical site. Built in 1940, the “Birwood Wall” was constructed by a white developer seeking Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) funding as an actual physical barrier between the black and white neighborhoods of Northwest Detroit. Still standing, the Birwood Wall runs through the back of one of the parks where TGOD works. The decision to seek historical status for the wall—which would prevent any development or other project from altering or tearing down the wall without approval from the Detroit City Council—demonstrates the potential significance of the efforts we endeavor to undertake.

More often than not, though, food figures prominently in the process. We use food to bring people together at community meetings and give thanks for their participation. At each park where we work, we host small barbeques coinciding with community meetings where we collectively discuss future work. At the first one of these I put together in 2012, I inadvertently forgot several items—like a knife and spatula—which provided an opportunity for attendees to hustle back to their house to get the items. Not only did my error give several people a chance to contribute to the event, and therefore distribute ownership over the process, it opened a small window into food practices. People returned with their own blend of spices for seasoning the hamburgers we were grilling, in addition to the spatula we needed; chopped onions and relish appeared with the person who went to get the knife I had neglected to bring; aluminum foil and lighter fluid that I forgot, arrived with a pitcher of red, sugar-sweetened beverage. Suddenly, the assembled group was bustling around the grill and picnic table, sharing tips about cooking and filling plates with food.

Community groups frequently request help with either existing urban gardening programs or starting new projects that produce food where they live. On the Eastside of Detroit, adjacent to the city airport, a group of local residents and concerned citizens have embarked on an effort to address the vast blight plaguing their neighborhood following the expansion of the airport in the 1960s. Urban agriculture figures prominently in this endeavor, as local residents have built a large hoophouse and adopted about a half block of vacant lots for food production. At Fletcher Field, a revitalized six-acre park in the neighborhood, a large airplane-shaped garden was built by a Community Development Corporation (CDC) and is used by local residents. This space has become a safe haven for youth and adults to interact, share time working in the gardens and learn about alternative food system possibilities. TGOD has been actively assisting their efforts by helping mow and maintain the park and by clearing large areas of overgrown grass and weeds.

We also provide opportunities for cross-generational transmission of knowledge. Our youth employment program—which annually provides jobs for 120 high school students in Detroit—provides participants with opportunities to work in the gardens alongside community leaders with diverse experiences and training. I recently organized a trip for six youth to a farm outside Detroit, where participants could ride horses, harvest eggs from a chicken coop, and pull carrots out of the garden, wash them off, and eat them—a first for most of them.

In a setting like Detroit, beset with complex social and economic problems, prioritizing development projects to meet needs is challenging, at best, and can dampen successful project implementation if community members have more pressing needs. Detroit’s decline as an important manufacturing center and driver of the U.S. economy continues to take it’s toll on local residents. Official unemployment figures in Detroit are double the national average, with unofficial numbers running as high as 25%; population levels continue to slide, with a 25% population loss occurring between 2000 and 2010; and the local education system is in disarray, creating a population where 47% of adults are functionally illiterate. In this context, rallying community support for improving park space can be difficult. However, combining green development with programs addressing community needs—such as building community gardens, or removing blight—has been a win-win in Detroit.

Benjamin McShane-Jewell is a PhD candidate in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University and program manager of workforce development at the Greening of Detroit.

For comments or questions, please contact Meredith Gartin, SAFN contributing editor, at meredith.gartin@asu.edu.

via Anthropology-News http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2013/04/01/gardens-feed-and-fuel-grassroot-organization-2/