Food Justice Part 2: Queering Food Justice

If you’re a person of color with a low income it’s important for you to know that conversations about your ability to access foods, yes, conversations about your very well-being are happening behind your back.  Even if you make a living wage, you might want to know that here in Austin (and in many other metropolitan and even rural cities), policy affecting your community’s food sovereignty is being shaped largely without your input or consent.

Basically, our community , considered the “target population” of many mainstream “food movement” efforts has had little say in if we’d like farmer’s markets, supermarkets, community gardens and access to the knowledge and skills that will help us sustain ourselves.

I’m not saying we’ve never been asked. I’m saying that it’s rare. There are a lot of “allies” who tend to want to take the lead in this movement. They think they have the solutions and know what we want and need. The problem with this is- the food movement operates under a few hurtful assumptions. Some are completely detrimental to the way we view ourselves as a community and as a People. Some are damaging to how we see our identity.

So why is this important to us as QPOC? Because a large percentage of us have a lower socioeconomic status and are therefore more likely to be food insecure. Where we sit at the intersections of race, gender, class and sexuality makes us highly vulnerable and subject to the policing of our food and economic system. Our lack of resources, especially TIME, allows for outsiders (and sometimes even well-meaning allies) to come in and make decisions FOR us- maybe even AS us- based on their assumptions and their own personal beliefs about what will make our community better. Many of these solutions are not culturally appropriate or relevant. Since colonization those in power have been operating under a “one size fits all” model complete with assumed assimilation.  We are being recolonized.

It’s hard to stay on top of decolonizing the various systems that wreak havoc on our communities. How are we supposed to do this when we’re barely surviving? We have to get back to the old ways- the ways of our ancestors. We have to support each other in ways that are sustainable to our own families and communities. It’s time to get back to community kitchens where neighborhoods come together and cook for/eat with each other. It’s time to pay ourselves for growing our own food. It’s time to establish our own black and brown-owned cooperatives where we decide what goods belong in those stores while creating our own jobs and opportunities. No, this isn’t new- it was taken from us. Then denied and withheld from us.

In the colonizer’s model and their capitalism we POC are to continue to have less and less resources yet devote more and more time to supporting these very broken systems that don’t benefit us. All the while we assimilate, losing ties to our cultures while decimating the environment and surrendering our emotional, social and spiritual well-being.

So how do we resist? No..how do we do *more than resist?

Depending on our skills and resources- this may look like you as a single parent feeding healthy food to your children. Yes, this is radical! This may look like participating in healthy potlucks with a group of friends. It’s bartering your services. It’s establishing collectives and co-operatives and therefore creating an alternative economy in which money continues to circulate within our community.  It’s demanding policy change that deters development that displaces our community and exacerbates food deserts. It’s demanding fair wages and supporting black and brown business owners. There are so many ways we can resist and co-create change.

Transformation is occurring as you read this. The revolution is already under way. There are people like Toni Tipton-Martin, founding member of Foodways Texas and author of The Jemima Code, who are committed to reclaiming our foodways and celebrating our cultural and culinary heritage. There are organizations like Food for Black Thought who are committed to supporting local grassroots efforts in black and brown communities in organizing around food related issues in East Austin. There are also alliances forming in East Austin and in Dove Springs to co-create solutions for the lack of access to healthy and affordable foods.

There are also efforts happening across the nation. (And across the world for that matter). Check out efforts in the East Bay like People's Grocery, the Mandela Food Cooperative, Phat Beets Produce, the Oakland Food Connection. There are efforts in Detroit like the Black Community Food Security Network, D-town Farms, and the Ujamaa cooperative food buying club. Will Allen's Growing Power, Inc. urban farms are located in Madison, Milwaukee, and Chicago. In NYC there are Just Food, Farming Concrete, La Familia Verde Garden Coalition, and Black Urban Growers. These are just a small number of the community efforts for food justice led by people of color.

As QPOC living at the intersections we should be aware of what is happening to address access to food because issues of food insecurity affect everyone, whether we want to believe it or not. What can we do as a community to assist in the transformation of our food system? What can we do as a community to better our economic situation? Let’s share some food and exchange some dialogue. We already have the answers.

Overworked and Underpaid...what else is New?

It is no coincidence that many of the QPOC you know might have 2 or 3 jobs (paid or unpaid) and don’t have a lot of free time. I’ve been thinking about this as the first production/reading of my play, GenderqueerFiles: La Qolectiv@, is coming to a close. With an all QPOC cast and crew, practices were difficult to have since all of us were on the grind and had very little time for run-throughs. I’ve thought about this "time situation" throughout my life. I thought that my mom, aunts and friends’ mothers who were all women of color working themselves into the ground was normal. Everyone’s parents didn’t have time to kiss them goodnight, take them to a park, or put them in girl or boy scouts, right? Wrong.

Time is one of those resources that folks living in poverty can never afford. We pay and pay and pay for it. What’s a little time worth to our community?

Queer folks of color at the intersections of race, gender and sexuality are up against multiple layers of discrimination based on appearance and something as small (or large) as other’s perceptions. Like many POC, we work extremely hard and get paid astronomically less. Many times we are expected (consciously or unconsciously) to work 10X harder by our white (and sometimes even brown) supervisors. Many times we are seen as mere work horses. This is all tied to perceptions of people of color as lazy, underachievers. People (maybe not even people) to bear the brunt of hard labor like we've done for centuries. Sometimes these perceptions are even tied to beliefs that we should be grateful that they’ve hired us or let us work there instead of a white person. And essentially they’re doing us a favor by working us into the ground. We should definitely thank them.

A lot of times we internalize this. We carry these toxic beliefs within ourselves. These beliefs that we have a horrible work ethic and that we must work like a dog and be underpaid and be appreciative for whatever scraps we can get. Sometimes we even feel that it’s normal to be constantly depressed with chronic pain. As a person with lupus, I must say that I know what this is like firsthand. As a person who has worked in a number of predominantly white corporate and non-profit environments, I can vouch for many of these sentiments. 

Even at 16 working at this ice cream place, I remember how my supervisor remarked to my mom “Oh, Toi is such a hard worker.” Back then I was proud. Who wouldn’t be proud of being called that? Later in my adulthood I began to understand the implications of that sentence. Was she saying this because she had a belief that as a brown person that I wouldn’t work as hard and she had been pleasantly surprised? As I saw how hard I was expected to work as compared to my white or male co-workers, the meaning began to dawn on me.

Basically, in the eyes of the “dominant”, we’re still chattel. No matter how far we pretend or wish we have progressed…we’re still in the fields with the cotton and the overseer in many ways. Many of us still don’t own land. Either we never did or we’ve been displaced. We’re having to go back to “folk remedies” because the health care system is not only broken but many times we opt out of much needed care so we don't have to deal with racism, classism and homophobia among other –isms and –phobias. As our country slinks into more and more of an economic depression- we are egregiously backsliding with civil rights.

This false Ameritocracy kills. Do people really get what they deserve? Earn their keep? Are folks living in poverty in that situation because they haven't worked hard enough?People of color are working themselves into early graves. A lot of us are not emotionally, physically, mentally, or spiritually well because we don’t have time to take care of ourselves and many of us are also putting others needs before our own. Many of us live our lives on the grind til we’re in the ground. People are not meant to live their lives this way. Our nervous systems are blown out before middle age because of all that we’re up against. Our bodies give out on us a decade before those living the good life, with resources and power.

Yea, maybe it’s hard to hear- but many of us already knew this…

If you don't believe me or need more facts about the inequity- or just want cold, hard facts for those in disbelief, here’s more:

Important facts to note from Queers for Economic Justice's report “Tidal Wave: LGBT Poverty and Hardship in a time of Economic Crisis:

• White gay men in same-sex couples have poverty rates of 2.7%, compared to 4.5% of Asian or Pacific Islander, 14.4% of black and 19.1% of Native American gay men. While just under 6% (5.7%) of non-Hispanic lesbians are poor, that rate is more than tripled (19.1%) for Hispanic lesbians in couples.

• African Americans in same sex couples have significantly higher poverty rates than black heterosexual couples and are roughly three times higher than those of white people in same-sex couples. Poverty in LGB communities is raced.

• Home ownership rate of black individuals in same-sex couples raising children is 20 percent compared to 63 percent of those in different-sex marriages raising children.

• 12 percent of Black LGBT people in the survey had a household income of less than $15,000.

• In San Francisco, about 10% of Asian same-sex households earned less than $25,000; there was not a large difference between what lesbian and gay male households earned

• Large percentages of the transgender population are unemployed and have incomes far below the national average. While no detailed wage and income analyses of the transgender population have been conducted to date, convenience samples of the transgender population find that 6%-60% of respondents report being unemployed, and 22-64% of the employed population earnsless than $25,000 per year.

• 59% of transgender survey respondents were clearly living in poverty, with the actual number estimated at closer to 65%.When the official unemployment rate in San Francisco stood at 4.7%, more than 35% of the trans community in the city was unemployed.

• Nearly 60% of respondents to a Good Jobs NOW! survey earned under $15,300 annually and only 8% earned over $45,900. 40% did not have a bank account of any kind. Only 25% were working full-time. 16% were working part-time, and nearly 9% had no source of income. Over 57% reported experiencing employment discrimination.

• In a survey of 165 low-income LGBT adults in New York, 35% reported living in homeless shelters, 7% on the street/subways, 3% in SROs (Single Room Occupancies) and 26% with friends/relatives or in temporary living situations

     For the full report you can go here.

Sometimes queer folks of color, in order to feel we can be ourselves or to feel comfortable in a work environment, have to accept less pay. Maybe because we’re at a non-profit or just starting out working for ourselves. If we are doing anything in the arts and expecting support from our community- that’s tough to get sometimes because 

a) our community doesn’t necessarily have the most capital and b) there’s are a lot of internalized -isms that go on (i.e. “shade”) that might keep our projects from getting off the ground for some time. Newcomers usually lack an extensive network of support that queer "veterans" have established. 

If we're going to thrive and not just survive we've got to support each other and continue to build sustainable communities. We've got to create our own jobs and employ ourselves and our community members. We've got to call out these dynamics and hold folks with positional power accountable for their erroneous expectations, ideas, and actions. We've got to address our own internalized oppression and support each other as a community in doing this healing work. We have to continue to wake up and not continue to expect this broken system to be fixed solely by the government. Though it'd be great if they'd acknowledge (and actually do something about the fact) that a lot of us don't earn a living wage and have a poor quality of life because of it. Working ourselves into the ground for less and less pay is obviously not the answer. We've got to continue to be creative with our solutions and we can't let people continue to pretend as if the system is going to change with the "usual" people using the same ineffective tactics and promoting the interests and working for the interests of a very privileged few.

Food. Justice. Part 1: The Color of Food Justice

People's Grocery- West Oakland, CA

Working as a food justice organizer, one of the first actions I took was to scour the internet, libraries, bookstores and organizations for faces like mine. I knew there had to be brown faces in the food justice movement somewhere and it was vital to my survival as a person dedicated to food, health, and economic justice to find people of color who “got” it. Folks who didn't overuse “vote with your fork” and think that everyone has “time” and resources. Folks who saw the reality and spoke to systemic issues that made it all the more difficult to be “green” and “sustainable” and a “locavore.”

Which systemic issues, you ask? Not having enough money for some organic food. Not having access to healthy foods because you live in a neighborhood with only convenience stores and fast food restaurants and no grocery stores. Not having a backyard to grow food in or a community garden in your neighborhood. Not having time to buy and cook healthy food let alone grow your own food. Not being told that your ancestors diet was healthy and not being told the truth behind our behaviors today and the way that capitalism has bred our community's sickness and contributed to an obscene amount of preventable deaths....genocide.

The narrative that we frequently hear obviously comes from mostly privileged white folks who seem to omit race and class from their conversations. It's convenient and comfortable for them. All the work our ancestors did devoid of labels such as “local” and “organic” seems to also get left behind. Which predecessors? Great black agriculturalists such as George Washington Carver who may have been one of the first to have been concerned with sustainable agriculture. Great brown farmers and activists like Cesar Chavez who saw firsthand the toxic affects of what was being put on the crops farmworkers harvested (and continue to harvest).

In the dominant narrative it seems like black and brown folks are ignorant about health and healthy food. Perhaps we're “too lazy” to start a garden and grow our own food. We don't want to just spend the extra money on the “front end” instead of on hospital bills due to our eating “habits” on the back end. It seems much easier for food activists to focus on our behaviors and glaze over issues of time and employment (working two and three jobs), space (maybe we don't own land or don't have access to community gardens or live in food deserts full of fast food restaurants and corner stores with unfresh and processed foods). There's an overall assumption that we just don't want to be healthy and that we don't care about our family's health. Very little is said about discrimination within the health care system, decreased access to health care, limited access to healthy foods and land, and other issues that communities of color haven't had a lot of control over.

It's easier to play the blame game. It's easier not to check detrimental and erroneous assumptions and to be guided by stereotypes and biases. It's easier to be exclusive and not include brown folks into the food movement. Race talk just ruins things. There are tokens to report back about what's going on in the community. Even though the reports aren't needed because it's all the community's fault. Obviously they like to eat that food, live that way. Quick get together a brigade to get them all to Vote with their Fork...

even if they can't afford one.

Environmental Racism- A Journal Throwback but Forever Relevant

I stumbled across a blog/journal a few students and I had from March and April 2010. It documented our journey into learning more about environmental justice and environmental racism. A group of us worked throughout our time at school toward supporting an environmental justice group called MEAN (Mossville Environmental Action Now) in Mossville, Louisiana. Environmental racism is something occurring all over this country and world, actually. Many people don't really stop to think about why refineries, power plants and other types of factories set up shop in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. Or why these communities may have toxic dumps, brown fields and wastelands and other wonderful biproducts of capitalism that end up in our backyard and doorstep so many times. There are many stories of people (a lot of times women) who have come together to fight against places like Conoco-Phillips who pollute their water, air, and soil. These chemicals lead to chronic asthma, birth differences/deformation, cancer, and all kinds of health issues for generations down the line. The majority of folks affected are low-income communities and communities of color.

Mossville is a community that began with freed formerly enslaved people. You may know a similar story. They were doing ok for generations and then the greedy (white) capitalists showed up. The land was/is "unincorporated" and not owned "legally." These businesses/entrepreneurs (gluttons?) began to build their factories (14 right now in Mossville to be exact) and dump their sludge into their water and their chemicals into the air and ground. People started getting really sick but there wasn't a lot that could be done. Have you ever tried to take on a million dollar industry?

The state government is in "cohoots"- collaborating with these factories. Many people work at these factories and when we talked with them, we found they had a strong allegiance to the companies who gave them such great health care. (??) It is a really complicated situation and the federal government paid lip service for some time before CNN did a story and colleges, outside organizations, and the United Nations started listening and demanding action.

Unfortunately this is a common story for communities of color and many communities don't have the media or government's ear. You may be living in one right now or have family living in a community like this. A toxic town. Maybe a part of cancer alley?
Mossville Video

You can read my reflection on our community organizing and "participatory action research" here.
**Participatory Action Research or "PAR" is a way of collecting information for organizing that honors, centers, and reflects the experiences of people most directly affected by issues in our communities.For more about Participatory Action Research:
http://www.incite-national.org/index.php?s=129

The 17 Principles of Environmental Justice- written by People of Color at the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, 20+ years ago:
http://www.ejnet.org/ej/principles.html

Environmental Justice Movement Background:

"Up to the late 1960s, racism was defined as a doctrine, dogma, ideology, or set of beliefs. The central theme of this doctrine was that race determined culture. Some cultures were deemed superior to others; therefore, some races were superior and others inferior. During the 1960s the definition of racism was expanded to include the practices, attitudes, and beliefs that supported the notion of racial superiority and inferiority. Such beliefs and practices produced racial discrimination.

However, researchers argue that to limit the understanding of racism to behavior misses important aspects of racism. Racism is also a system of advantages or privileges based on race. Racism is thus more fully understood if one sees it as the execution of prejudice and discrimination coupled with power, privilege, and institutional support. It is aided and maintained by legal, penal, educational, religious, and business institutions, to name a few.

Environmental racism is an important concept that provided a label for some of the environmental activism occurring in minority and low-income communities. In particular, it links racism with environmental actions, experiences, and outcomes.

The term environmental racism, or environmental discrimination, is used to describe racial disparities in a range of actions and processes, including but not limited to the:

• increased likelihood of being exposed to environmental hazards
• disproportionate negative impacts of environmental processes
• disproportionate negative impacts of environmental policies, for example, the differential rate of cleanup of environmental contaminants in communities composed of different racial groups
• deliberate targeting and siting of noxious facilities in particular communities
• environmental blackmail that arises when workers are coerced or forced to choose between hazardous jobs and environmental standards
• segregation of ethnic minority workers in dangerous and dirty jobs
• lack of access to or inadequate maintenance of environmental amenities such as parks and playgrounds
• inequality in environmental services such as garbage removal and transportation

During the 1980s people of color began organizing environmental campaigns to prevent the poisoning of farm workers with pesticides; lead poisoning in inner-city children; the siting of noxious facilities—landfills, polluting industrial complexes, and incinerators—in communities like Warren County, North Carolina; Altgeld Gardens (the "toxic doughnut" on Chicago's South-side); Convent, Louisiana's "cancer alley;" and Kettleman City, California. Activists also demanded the cleanup of communities like Triana, Alabama that had been contaminated with DDT (dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane), and the monitoring or closure of facilities like Emelle, Alabama's commercial hazardous landfill (the largest of its kind in the United States). In addition, they questioned the placement of large numbers of nuclear waste dumps on Native-American reservations.

Meanwhile, activists, scholars, and policymakers began investigating the link between race and exposure to environmental hazards. Two influential studies exploring this relationship—one by the U.S. General Accounting Office (USGAO) and the other by the United Church of Christ (UCC)—found that African-Americans and other people of color were more likely to live close to hazardous waste sites and facilities than whites. The study by the UCC was particularly important because it made an explicit connection between race and the increased likelihood of being exposed to hazardous wastes. The studies also made the issue of race and the environment more salient in communities of color."

From: http://www.dosomething.org/tipsandtools/background-environmental-racism#

You can read more here:

Mossville is Like a Toxic Town
http://articles.cnn.com/2010-02-26/health/toxic.town.mossville.epa_1_superfund-site-environmental-justice-cancer?_s=PM:HEALTH
A paper on Environmental Justice
http://ecojusticenow.org/resources/Eco-Justice-Ethics/Environmental-Racism-and-Environmental-Justice.pdf

Environmental Justice groups:
National
Cali

Health is a serious issue for QPOC and POC. With all this energy and focus on just surviving it can be the first to be overlooked. While some of our health is affected by the individual choices we make, you can see that there are some huge determining factors that are involuntary. Do we control what's in our air and soil and therefore our food? Are diabetes and cancer actually  genetic? Do we as POC have a "predisposition" to these chronic dis-eases or is it tied to pollution of our environment and food sources? How can we gain more autonomy- more control over our environment and bodies?

I'll return to environmental justice, sustainability and intersections with food and economic justice in the future.

As always- giving you food for thought.

-AGQ

Shades of Masculinity: On Masculinity, Strength, Perceptions of Power and Desirability

What does strength look like to you? Many are caught up in the ways that we've been socialized to believe what strength looks like, especially as it pertains to masculine presenting folks. A lot of times I see “strength” being tied to the performance of male roles and traits...especially aggression, cockiness, etc. I see it tied to a specific kind of power that has been relegated to males and that is connected to the outward expression of dominance in all its ways of being portrayed.

Inner strength is often overlooked. A masculine of center person with an enormous reserve of inner strength who is “holding it down” but who does not express an aggressive attitude or what we've come to label as “masculine” or “male” energy is sometimes seen as weaker or not compatible in the ever-perpetuated butch/femme dichotomy.

I think we need to re-examine maleness and masculinity in a way that doesn't carry the assumptions of what “masculine energy” looks like. Is it so far entrenched in our psyche or queer collective consciousness that we must tie masculine to stereotypical “maleness” and oppose it to stereotypical "femaleness" and femininity in this cyclical way that is neither definitive or serving to us?

There are different shades of masculinity, but only one of those shades or sides of the spectrum receives precedence: the butch, the AG, the aggressive, the dom, the macha. They are usually seen as more “legit”and also more desirable. This plays out similarly in transmasculine and transmen circles a lot of times.This outward display, the way a person “holds themselves” or projects a certain image of this particular brand of masculinity, and essentially the way they interact and participate in this world as this very specific portrayal of masculinity is often validated while other forms of masculinity are invalidated.

Masculine energy. Should this always be tied to white patriarchal notions? Let's define that...the colonizers had very specific ideas about the place of a man and woman and what the behaviors of a man and woman should look like. A woman was responsible for the private sphere (the home) and the man was responsible for interactions in the public sphere. The man had a whole list of traits and characteristics tied to what we think of today as "masculine" and "manly" while the woman took on the polar opposite of all these "manly-man traits." She was to be soft-spoken, demure, docile, loving, the caregiver, etc. This "balance" was stifling to women and in many ways against the ways gender roles played out in the pre-colonial societies of our ancestors. I won't "go in" on this..as I've talked about this in a previous post.

Should the butch/femme dynamic always take its cues from this type of “balancing” of male and female roles and behaviors? Why does masculine and feminine have to look so static and replicate hetero relationships and a patriarchal model?

Are QPOC subversive in their relationships? Do we sometimes appear to be replicating this model but our relationships are more complementary like those relationships of our ancestors? I can't say I've seen much of this in the very visible relationships in some of our circles. But maybe the folks in these relationships aren't part of any "scenes". Maybe they've been alienated like us masculine folks who don't adhere to the assumptions of how we should act and be. I don't have the answer.

And if we are subversive- in our attempted subversion do queers, feminists, womanists, and radicals still accidentally recreate the ever so problematic patriarchy by unconsciously being committed to concepts of masculine and feminine being tied to these entrenched societal notions of male and female? 

At the end of the day, I guess I'm just confused about why strength looks like an aggressive male or female. Why is it tied to the traits of a "man"? Why is this "more desirable" in our communities a lot of times? And what is masculinity and femininity really if we take away these assumptions and the characteristics we're socialized to believe are male and female? What is masculine and feminine energy when not tied to perceptions of strength and roles we've been assigned? And why is this energy in people so polarized? Why is the polarization of this energy valued so much in this society? Is it because it makes it easier to know who should have power and who shouldn't? Seems to work pretty well in a male-dominated society. But with the Amazons, were the "less aggressive" women deemed weaker? Did they have less power? How does this work in matrilineal and matriarchal societies (that people swear don't exist...but I personally know of at least 2). 

So many questions. Plenty of time.

btw-
¹male noun
a : a male person : a man or a boy

b : an individual that produces small usually motile gametes (as spermatozoa or spermatozoids) which fertilize the eggs of a female
alright...hmm...scientific

²male

adjective
of, relating to, or characteristic of the male sex 
of, relating to, or being the sex that produces gametes which fertilize the eggs of a female 
ok more science...

Origin of MALE 

Middle English, from Anglo-French masle, male, adjective & noun, from Latin masculus 

First Known Use: 14th century <<<<uh...

mas·cu·line- 
a:male

b : having qualities appropriate to or usually associated with a man <<??

Masculinity is possessing qualities or characteristics considered typical of or appropriate to a 

man.

^^^What does that even meeean?^^^



Just some food for thought.

-AGQ

Not interested in sitting at your table OR No, thank you to your "table"

We've all heard of the table that's sitting and waiting for us people of color to join. It's had place mats and a glass of water, and maybe even a (culturally irrelevant) salad and appetizer waiting for us for some time some say. Those in lucrative positions and positions of power and privilege keep telling us that they want us to take a load off, break bread with them and let them know what's on our community's mind. They are all ears. We NEED to be at this table that they've created. This table with the nice linens of conveniently, already-made ideology, the polished silverware of entrenched models and old paradigms, the rolled napkins of  (pseudo-) peace talks and (our) compromise.

You see, a lot of the folks I know don't want a seat at someone else's table. The very table that is built on assumptions that the marginalized must be taught, can't organize themselves, and need only buy into pre-made models. Na, no thanks.

We want our own table *and not the kiddie table, thanks.

Maybe some liberals and progressives have missed this in fighting for their own autonomy but yes...we'd like our own autonomy. Our own sovereignty (which Merriam-Webster defines as freedom of external control). We don't just want to be heard on the fringes of your agendas. We don't just want to be heard when something we say complements your agenda. We have had our own ideas on how things should be in our communities since the beginning of time...and it wasn't until our communities were disrupted that we started to have these huge disparities. Being pushed into survival mode, priorities were shifted...but not to the point that we'd like to give up control of what happens to us, our families and communities to outliers who don't know much about our values or needs.

Envisioning and creating a shift in paradigm

We need a completely new paradigm, not the old, musty models and mentality rooted in wayward assumptions and savior mentality. For those who aren't sure what savior mentality looks like..it goes a little something like this...

"Why won't they just come to the table. They never show up. We're trying to help them but they don't want to be helped!"
"We just want to help you/your people/those people/the at-risk/minorities..."
"They just don't want/won't to do the work..."
"They just don't understand. We have to teach them all about how to...x,y,z"

Assumptions make an…

Here's a big issue: subconsciously some white activists and radicals operate under the same erroneous assumptions that our country was built on: that we’re not quite people. We're not whole and therefore to be infantalized. We’re folks to be taught the proper way to go about things: health, education, religion,etc. We need their help…but in the ways they want to give it.

If you want to help...help us to make these important decisions that have major impact on our community within our community. Don't just expect us to come and get cozy in the seat at your table. Odds are we have a different perspective on how we want to go about food and economic justice. And no matter what anyone thinks, it's not our job to fill that seat at your table. You should  come sit at ours. And don't say there isn't one- you probably haven't looked hard enough what with all the projects that are being started assuming that there aren't others out there like yours. And yes, we know, it makes you feel all kinds of uncomfortable to sit at our table. But we've been feeling that way for decades at that rickety, folding chair at your table. That's why a lot of us refuse to join your dinner party anymore. Trust us, it's for the best. It's hard to sit at a table where racist, xenophobic, and patriarchal assumptions aren't checked. Microaggressions- you really feel those in the morning (and weeks and weeks) after those meetings.


Privilege, Privilege, Privilege

It's probably no news to many that organizing tactics are affected by class and race privilege. Radicals frequently talk about these but, in my experience,I've seen few really, truly addressing them. It's always easier to talk about things, right? Or maybe to turn the issue around and say that POC should give the solution to solving this problem (which unfortunately is tied to racist assumptions of what POC should be responsible for).

Tables are tokenizing

And few appreciate being tokenized. This looks like:

Deciding you need a black or brown person on you panel or board or in your collective to represent/speak for the black/brown community.
Making the black/brown person the go to person for questions about the black/brown community
Thinking that having the black/brown person say a few things in a few meetings throughout the year is enough to understand the black/brown community
Thinking that sending the black/brown person to meetings with other black/brown folks and having them report back is enough or is "keeping your ear to the ground"

So again...

Meet us at our table

Where we rarely have a token white person but usually respect our allies if they're willing to put in the work, check their assumptions, and acknowledge that "cultural competence" and "anti-racism" are not skills that can be mastered.

Meet us at our table where we make our own decisions and come up with our own solutions within our communities- because nobody knows what is best for our community but us.

And nobody knows our community needs like we do. Period. I don’t care what school you went to, what kind of degree you've received, what kind of organizing you’ve done in the states abroad, or what kind of theory you’ve read…the Community. Knows. Best. So come join us at our table where I can almost for certain say that we've been discussing issues of social justice since they were issues- even if we didn't have fancy labels for these issues. (This is a hint for you "food movement").

Join us...we'll share a pot of greens or some arroz con pollo or somethin' with you...
Yea, we'll make you a plate...

[to definitely be continued]
-AGQ
www.afrogenderqueer.com

Why the world needs more QPOC/POC herbalists and healers

I'm a firm believer that those who live at the intersections have a deeper and better understanding of the wants/needs of a larger number of folks. As a queer person of color interested in traditional healing, I know that I'm walking this path with few others that look like me. I've seen the classrooms and websites. I know that POC aren't clamoring to get into a “profession” where there aren't any certifications and there aren't any guarantees that you'll even break even, let alone be balling out of control.

I get it.

But, this is my path.

I was always coming up with remedies as a kid. Giving advice to family members. The little doctor that could. I went on to school to do pre-med and I became the little doctor that couldn't...or wouldn't. I just didn't understand why it had to be so grueling and was not willing to put myself through 6 more years of anxiety. When I went on to study health advocacy and was diagnosed with lupus...I began to understand why medical school wasn't for me. As “allopathic”/conventional medicine failed me, I turned to herbalism and homeopathy. I knew I needed a more holistic approach. The specialists weren't addressing the root of my problem. They were only concerned with suppressing symptoms. How does that sound right to anyone?

Through vegetarianism and trying to address symptoms for my chronic illness, I learned more about my body and maintaining balance through diet, supplements, exercise, etc. I became more and more interested in food as medicine. It seemed to me that the root of many people's illness is due to diet (not just our choices, but contaminated foods) and our environment. As I struggled to find what aggravated dis-ease in my own body, I began to see some commonalities in food allergies that I shared with other sufferers of autoimmune disorders. I experimented with raw food, gluten-free, dairy-free, low sugar....you name it. I took more vitamin D and more B-12. I took multivitamins and pro-biotics. There was so much information out there and not too many people I could trust for answers. If I had known a brown or even queer herbalist at the beginning of this journey...it might have been easier.

Why a queer brown herbalist? Because studies show (and trust me, I've studied this extensively) that brown folks and queer folks do better at helping brown folks and queer folks. No, it doesn't eliminate all the discrimination and bias...but it does lessen it quite a bit.

You know, I get tired of folks talking like brown folks are new to herbalism. This knowledge was stolen from our people. Truth. Look at most of the pharmaceuticals, they use herbs as major components and add synthetic filler. (Ex: Willow bark in aspirin). Native Americans, Africans and other Indigenous folks had it on lock. Healers worked with plants and addressed you emotionally, spiritually and physically. The colonizers were the ones who decided to split mind, spirit and body. So now we've got to go to a psychiatrist, a preacher, AND a doctor.

Ahh me duele mi codo thinking about that.

In other words, it hurts to think about paying an arm and a leg for all these separate services.

The healers I know are versed in chinese medicine, medical astrology, herbalism, Ayurveda, the chakra system...all kinds of healing modalities. Not because they are interested in the next new age craze, but because they are invested in knowing as many ways as possible to heal and know that the ways overlap and intersect.

So maybe many of our People may not trust traditional medicine. We barely want to even go in to see a doctor, right? Well, while I think that herbalism and other kinds of medicine can be potentially for everyone, I understand why some people don't want to mess with it. Especially with the mistrust we have of the medical establishment due to some flagrant atrocities like sterilization, experiments like Tuskegee, etc. But, I think that may be even more reason for our community to turn to alternative healing practices.

I love that today more and more folks of color and QPOC are becoming doulas, acupuncturists, herbalists, etc. I'm optimistic that we are going to heal our community from the core. Barriers to positive physical health due to bias and discrimination need to be eradicated. In the meantime, for those of us who are called to do this healing work, let's get the education needed through programs, community skillshares, and elders. Why wait around for “anti-racist” doctors, allies, and the medical system to make changes when we can look to our own community for wellness (culturally relevant healing!).

That said... I am fundraising for a community herbalist program. I want to be a co-creator of this vision for a queer and POC community that is physically, spiritually and emotionally well. I have some ideas for how I want to use the knowledge attained from the herbalist program. I want to:

• provide a blog detailing my journey as an herbalist
• create a quarterly zine sharing knowledge learned, dedicated to health and food justice
• Organize a collective of holistic healers whose focus will be to provide culturally appropriate, affordable care to people of color, the queer community, and low/no-income folks
• Organize a holistic health event free to the public designed to provide information on different healing modalities and promoting healthy, culturally appropriate diets.

You can read more about the vision here:

http://www.gofundme.com/communityherbalist

I hope that you'll join me in being a co-visionary and spread the word about the need for more Q/POC holistic healers in our communities.

Maybe you've even felt called to become one. Let's create this new Reality and be Whole again, individually and as a community.