Food Justice In West Oakland

One of a Kind: The Mandela Foods Cooperative

local organic veggies

I was so excited that I called three friends and my mother as I walked through the new Mandela Foods Cooperative on 7th Street in West Oakland. I had been eyeing the developing grocery store for months during my daily commute to San Francisco. After work I would peer into the windows and watch the co-op workers fill up bulk item containers and place gloriously bright yellow bell peppers in produce baskets. I felt like a kid in front of a toy store: I could not wait for the store to open so I could enjoy locally grown, pesticide-free produce everyday without spending most of my paycheck, or having to travel to another neighborhood, or having to wait until Saturday morning to visit a farmer’s market. Then, one afternoon in early June, I de-boarded the train to find a couple of people shopping in the co-op. I picked up a hand-basket and cruised through the store, grabbing organic strawberries, raspberries, apricots, bananas, red cabbage, kale, collard greens, spinach, lettuce, tomatoes, free-range organic eggs, and apple juice. Imagine my delight when I carried all of my goodies out of the door for less than twenty-five bucks.

While the Mandela Foods Cooperative is certainly one of a kind in West Oakland, it is also accompanied by a handful of community gardens, urban homesteading programs, and backyard farms developed by West Oaklanders to counteract food insecurity in the neighborhood. Before the Mandela Foods Cooperative opened, one could travel from the northwest tip of West Oakland to the “lower bottoms,” and find plenty of convenience stores, even a few fast food restaurants, but not one full-service grocery store. Some legislators and academics use the term “food deserts” to describe areas like West Oakland, by which they mean predominately low-income neighborhoods with little to no access to healthy, affordable and “culturally appropriate” food in the immediate area. According to a study commissioned by the USDA meant to discover the extent of such “food deserts” in the U.S., minimal access to food translates into a higher likelihood of chronic hunger and greater incidences of diet-related illnesses. While these conclusions are important to state, the study’s popularization of the term, and under-investigation of its sources, threatens to obscure some of the bigger issues at stake.

For people living and working in West Oakland the term “food deserts” only names a symptom, or effect of the systemic social inequities that make it difficult to find healthy food. Brahm Ahmadi, Executive Director of the West Oakland community-based organization Peoples Grocery, argues that the term “food apartheid” or “food injustice” better describes the situation confronting people in poor urban areas. In an exchange with other food activists, Ahmadi maintained that “the term food desert has emerged as a safe and neutral way to avoid rocking the boat with an analysis of inequity, racism and oppression…. No one in our neighborhood has heard of, or uses, the term food desert,” he notes, “but folks do talk about racism, [and] exclusion all the time…. We may live in food deserts, but we live under food apartheid.” The distinction is an important one that pivots on the latter term’s ability to surface the structural and systemic inequities that give rise to “food deserts” – a distinction enabling us to formulate better solutions to the problem of food insecurity, economic disparities, and diet-related illnesses in poor communities.

The Mandela Foods Cooperative really understands the distinction to which Ahmadi refers. The Co-op is part of a multifaceted food and economic security effort mounted by the Mandela Marketplace, a West Oakland based “community leadership incubator that provides civic engagement, economic and entrepreneurial opportunity to low-income residents and minority farmers.” According to Dennis Terry, who has worked on the development of the Co-op for three years, “the co-op is seen as part of a larger effort to develop food security in Oakland, provide income opportunities, and provide nutrition education to Oaklanders.” This integrated approach is meant to reinvigorate local food cultures and the transmission of knowledge about whole foods cultivation and preparation, develop greater self-sufficiency in the community, and support local economic circuits.

Moreover, this three-prong approach tackles some of the root causes of food injustice thereby marking a qualitative shift in how the problem of food insecurity is addressed. By moving away from a owner/worker business model to a cooperative business model, Mandela Marketplace addresses issues of worker’s rights and most notably, the right to democratically determine one’s working conditions and wages. Through their nutrition education classes, which will begin once the market completes the construction of its onsite kitchen, the Co-op provides practical ways for West Oaklanders to take control of their health by learning how proper nutrition can prevent a range of chronic illnesses. It is a low-tech, “do-it-yourself” approach to healthcare in the midst of a healthcare reform debate that consistently fails to connect the dots (at least at the policy level) between real food and healthy people. Finally, the Co-op sources their produce from small to medium sized local farms within a 120-mile radius from Oakland. Consumers can learn about these farms from well-placed informational placards in the store as they shop. It is a gesture that reminds consumers of the reciprocal relationship between food growers and food eaters: the farms support our wellbeing, and we support the health of small farms.

In all of this, what may be one of the most important things about the Co-op is that, as Dennis Terry told me, “it’s the kind of store West Oaklanders want. People can walk to the Co-op” and it is open everyday. In short, it is a neighborhood market that has really taken into consideration what matters to the community it serves. It is a one of a kind food retailer in Oakland: run by the people, for the people.

“We are all Oscar Grant”

I mourn not only the loss of Oscar Grant’s life,

I mourn the killing of love as it withers under the force of violence swelling up around us;

Violence that is at its core pervasive sadness, pain, suffering and a deep longing to be seen, loved and held as we hold our beloveds.

Yes, we are all Oscar Grant.

Oakland, California – January 6, 2009

It is said that violence begets more violence. As I read news reports of turbulent protests, police officers outfitted in full riot-gear, and a city on the brink of tearing itself apart, I am convinced that the old saying is true. The question I’d like to address here is why violence tends to trigger more of the same and, more importantly, what methods can we use, right now, to replace violence and aggression with love, compassion and understanding.

For those unfamiliar with the events leading to last night’s civil unrest, here’s the short version:

Following a confrontation on BART on January 1st (that’s, Bay Area Rapid Transit, our version of the subway), Oscar Grant and several of his friends were detained by BART police. Handcuffed and on his stomach, Oscar sustained a bullet wound to his back that ricocheted off the concrete and re-entered his torso. It was the second wound that killed him.

Last night, not far away from my loft in West Oakland, protesters took to the streets to voice their anger and outrage over Oscar Grant’s death. Some sat on turnstiles at the Fruitvale BART station where Oscar Grant died, while others marched in the streets. The street protests turned into attacks on police cars, private businesses and private property. The image above is of a car set ablaze in downtown Oakland. After smashing in the window of a small business one protester was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle saying the owner of the business “…should be glad she just lost her business and not her life.”

The protester’s sentiment, the violence of the protests and the killing itself are all heart breaking. While I too feel Oscar Grant died unjustly, I also believe that the anger and frustration motivating the riotous social unrest that coursed through Oakland originates from the same place as the feelings and thoughts that led Johannes Mehserle to shoot an unarmed man in the back.

Now, I don’t claim to be a mind reader, nor do I claim to know exactly what Johannes Merserle was thinking in the moments leading up to Grant’s death, but I do know that fear, anxiety, resentment, agitation and dissociation lead us to consider ourselves wholly separate from other people. That feeling of separation generates an “us versus them” and a “me versus you” mentality, which disables compassion, kindness and love, all of which cultivate connection and kinship.

It seems to me that the kind of policing we have come to know in the United States is founded on this incorrect view, this sense of fundamental and qualitative difference between police officers and those who are policed. (Never mind the “protect and serve motto.” Police patrols in the U.S. were established to protect property, not people. In fact, the first patrols were slave patrols: men on horseback patrolling the countryside for runaway slaves. The continuity should not be lost on you.) Policing agencies of all sorts (and here I also have military forces in mind) are trained to search out “criminals/enemies” and prevent them from doing “harm” to the larger group. However, histories of racism, political repression and antipathy toward poor people, have created a situation in which policing is infected by these deep-rooted animosities, and leads police to presume they know (consciously or unconsciously) who the criminal/enemies are in advance. Those of us who grew up in, and or, currently live in, heavily surveilled neighborhoods know quite well that we are seen as pariahs, seen as embodied blight, or simply seen as “the problem.” We are not, in short, seen as human beings who feel the same joys and sorrows as those sent to watch over us.

This knowledge has effects.

It breaks hearts, spirits and the will to be anything other than what one is socially expected, or assumed, to be. Of course, this is not true for everyone, but it certainly helps to explain how masses of people, namely, the impoverished and people of color (which is often one and the same), come to tautologically confirm the popular and scholarly analyses of their so called pathological lifestyles. With little genuine love directed at these communities from those who are ostensibly nothing like them, it follows that little love is returned. Consider the confusion young children feel when they are the targets of anti-black racism, or, in another context, anti-Palestinian violence. How are they to process such hatred, such anger and violence when they have done nothing wrong; when they have done nothing besides exist? Consider the suffering one feels when being subjected to homophobic violence. In each case, we have seen that those who suffer from violence often respond in kind: “Well, I hate Israelis; or, I hate white people; or, straight people are homophobic assholes!” Often we think these responses are justified, but it seems to me that another response is possible and necessary.

Another response to systemic hatred and violence is necessary because riotous protests only increase hate and fear-based policing, which in turn triggers more outrage and social unrest. Last night shows us that social unrest is read as mass criminality to be stamped out with tear gas, rubber, then metal bullets, mass incarceration and wholesale repression.

We must all take the anger we feel and transform it into love for those who commit acts of violence. We must reconceive the source of violence so we see it as the outcome of unaddressed pain and suffering, and the outcome of a misconception about the interconnectedness between self and other.  In so doing, we can begin to understand that addressing the root pain is more effective than meeting violence with more violence. Indeed, we can begin to see that the “other” is not so different from ourselves.

We have the ability to do this right now. We can begin to see that what makes us human is far more unifying than the list of things that make us different kinds of humans. We can begin to do this with little things: the person who bumps into you during your commute; the person who cut you off on the highway; the person who was rude to you on the phone. In each case, the person on the other side of your pain is also suffering; suffering from worry (“I’m gonna be late to work!), from anxiety (“If I don’t pick up my kid in the next five minutes the daycare will charge me a $50 late fee.), or from frustration, (“I wish I had a better job.”) All of these feelings are ones we have felt before, perhaps under different circumstances, but they are not wholly foreign. In moments such as these we can be aware of the infraction and wish that the person be free from the suffering that led them to hurt us. Responding with loving-kindness may not stop them from hurting people completely, but it certainly plants the seed. More importantly, it helps you not escalate the immediate situation in which you find yourself.

We must begin to replace violence with love, and a willingness to listen and be open to that which we do not fully understand.The teachers of nonviolence like MLK, Ghandi, the Dalai Lama, and Thich Nhat Hanh, all understood this principle: violence cannot be eliminated by force, it has to be loved out of existence.

This is the lesson we should learn from the unfortunate death of Oscar Grant.

Offering to the Döns

“Practice offering to the döns* by welcoming mishaps because they wake you up.”

I always read my monthly horoscope on the first day of the month. On Dec. 1 Susan Miller told me the full moon, which reaches its apex today on the 12th, would occur in my third house: the house of other people’s money. She went on to say that I’d be writing a big, non-negotiable check, and with “Saturn in hard angle to the moon…there will be no way to avoid acknowledging one’s responsibility or alternatively, accepting a loss and moving on.”

And so it is.

Since I bought my car in August of 2006 I developed the unsavory habit of collecting parking tickets. I’d park where it was convenient because I was running late. Or, I’d fail to check the street sweeping day. Or I’d do some combination thereof. When I’d return to my ticketed car I’d place the notice of my parking violation either in my bag, or in my sun visor, or in the glove compartment, and then I’d carry on with my day. I’d tell myself I’d pay when I could.  The underlying rationale was that I simply couldn’t afford to pay the ticket at the time of the violation.

Some time in late August of this year I realized I hadn’t received the DMV notice to renew my car registration. I called the Oakland DMV and found that the change of address I thought I mailed to Sacramento never arrived and the DMV continued to mail important documents to my old address. (In retrospect, I think I printed the change of address form, filled it out, and didn’t do much more.) I also learned that I needed to have my car smogged before it could be registered and that the cost of my registration was almost tripple the usual amount. I knew I couldn’t afford it by the time the registration was due. So I resolved to pay it late, or, when I felt like it. As I was doing with the parking tickets.

On Wednesday, Dec. 10, I deboarded BART at the West Oakland station and headed to my car. As I walked up the street my intuition spoke to me:

“Your car is not there.”

Typically, I both hear my intuition and don’t hear it at the same time. On Wednesday night I heard my intuition loud and clear and I knew unequivocally I would not see my car where I parked it earlier that day.

I walked up and down Union Street twice, looking for a car I knew was already gone. I phoned my partner and asked her to pick me up.

Shortly thereafter I learned my car was impounded for excessive parking violations and for failing to renew my registration. After visiting the DMV and the Oakland Parking Violations office I had a dollar amount to attach to my carelessness: $1,686.

It’s a high price to pay for sleepwalking through life.

Here’s the lesson:

While I’d rather not scramble to find nearly seventeen hundred dollars, I am grateful for the mishap because I don’t believe I would have redirected my behavior on my own.

The violation itself is instructive.

If read allegorically, one can see the violation as a failure to move in accordance with the ongoing flow of the universe. All is change and constant movement. Parking is the opposite. Parking is the mundane act of staying put, and in some instances, being stuck. When one receives a ticket for parking, the universe is suggesting that we either stopped in the wrong place (so get going!) or we’ve overstayed our welcome (so get going!).

I was stuck in a way of being that was out of sync with the principles I purport to practice, most importantly, mindfulness.

It would take less than a minute to think about (i.e.: be mindful of) what I was doing. “I am parking the car. Can I park here? When is street sweeping day? Or, alternately, “Street sweeping happens on Thursday on this block. What is today?”

Had I asked myself these questions, I would have avoided 70% of the tickets.

Then, there’s the second register dissociation: grabbing the ticket off my window shield, telling myself I had no money to pay it, and then pretending it would disappear if I ignored it.

To simply collect the violation/message is to disavow the message. I had several warnings; small nudges to wake up. It took the large mishap to really jolt me awake. In Buddhism giving offerings to the döns means to show gratitude for the event that shocks us out of stasis and propels movement. It’s the spiritual equivalent of a blaring alarm clock with a ribbon wrapped around it.

The mishap is a gift when considered in this way. No matter how painful or uncomfortable the mishap is in the moment, it is ultimately a blessing because it helps us get back into the flow of life.

*A dön is a sudden wake-up call. Everything is going smoothly and suddenly something shocking happens.