Season 3 Episode 1
Ben Binversie (00:07):
There has never been a fair, just, or healthy food system in the United States of America, so how do we get there? (singing). This is All Things Grinnell. I’m Ben Binversie, welcome back to the podcast. It’s been a few months and wow, it has been a few months. The world is moving fast, especially at the college and it’s been hard to keep up, but I want to do my part from where I’m at to create some digital community and keep having conversations and telling stories that move us a little further towards a better world.
Ben Binversie (01:03):
So on today’s show, we’ll hear from LaDonna Redmond, a food justice activist, whose quest to find food for her son led her to planting urban gardens and radically altering the food landscape of her communities. She’s a national leader in food justice and the problems she’s fighting against they go back a long way, all the way to the beginnings of chattel slavery in this country stolen black labor used to grow food and other crops. Fast forward to 2020 and we’re in the midst of a pandemic. People working in food industries have been recognized as essential and rightfully so, but who are those workers in restaurants, in fields, in food processing plants? Black people, immigrants, other vulnerable people suffering extremely low wages and unsafe working conditions so we can eat. We might deem them essential, but our society and certainly our economy does not value their work, which is pretty messed up. But it’s not news to people who have been working on these issues for decades like LaDonna. Evidence has been accumulating for years and years that this country’s industrial food and agricultural system is deeply flawed, potentially irredeemably so.
Ben Binversie (02:16):
Food, poverty, labor, the environment, community, they’re all so deeply interconnected, something LaDonna understands well. She’s been an activist for a long time in reproductive justice, violence prevention and sustainability, but the issue of food justice didn’t come into focus for her until her son Wade developed serious food allergies. Then the personal became political.
LaDonna Redmond (02:43):
I never noticed that we didn’t have a grocery store because as a single adult, I was either out on a date and I ate, or I got a can of soup and I ate, or I went to my mother’s house and I ate. So I wasn’t cooking at home for family, so I didn’t know that this piece of the infrastructure was missing. And I had heard my mentor and some of the other women who were community always talk about the lack of grocery stores in the neighborhood, but it was just really kind of in passing, it wasn’t an issue.
LaDonna Redmond (03:18):
So when I figured out that Wade had food allergies, I was talking to people about his allergies and his food access, and so one of the executive directors from Westside Health Authority called me and she said, “I got this call, they’re interested in setting up food sustainability circles. I don’t know what that is and so maybe that’s something you might be interested in? Would you staff that for me?” So I had never heard food and sustainability in the same sentence, and I started going to those meetings and we did form a circle in our neighborhood and it took off from there. So that’s when I started to learn that it was just a little bit more than just my family, not being able to get the food.
LaDonna Redmond (04:11):
And I kind of want to have a caveat to that because I was able to buy the food. I had a car and at that time the internet wasn’t something that everybody had, but we had access to the internet and I could find stuff and I was having difficulty with it. But there were many more people in my neighborhood who didn’t have the education. Didn’t have the partner who had the job. Didn’t have a job and a nice contract to move around the city to get food-
Ben Binversie (04:41):
Or a car.
LaDonna Redmond (04:42):
Or a car for that matter, exactly. So I had a lot of things going for me already, and I just really began to realize that maybe this is bigger than just me not being able to give food, maybe it’s really about a community not being able to get food.
Ben Binversie (04:57):
Yeah, so you looked around where you lived in Chicago and there was not a lot of grocery stores, not a lot of fresh produce, but there were a lot of vacant lots, so you started turning them into gardens. How did you get started with that transformational process?
LaDonna Redmond (05:13):
I worked for a community group called the Northwest Austin Council. And one of their biggest groups of folks were folks who like to garden, and many of these people were women who had moved from the South to the North. And they had their own little backyard vegetable gardens, but one of them had decided that she didn’t like the way that a building looked on her block, it was a vacant building and it was just kind of raggedy. And she basically came to us and was like, “Hey, we need to do something about this vacant building.” And we were like, “Sure, let’s do it.” So we organized and got the building boarded up. And then she came back and was like, “Well, that doesn’t look good either —
Ben Binversie (06:04):
“Not what I wanted.”
LaDonna Redmond (06:04):
I don’t like it, not quite what I had in mind.” And so everybody’s like, “Well, what do you want to do?” And she was like, “Well, maybe we should tear it down.” So that created this whole piece of legislation that’s now called nuisance abatement where the city can come in and take over, I’m talking about the city of Chicago, can come in and take over a property if a landlord has let their building fall into disrepair. And once they do that, then they have the title and they can do what they want to do with it.
LaDonna Redmond (06:37):
And so under nuisance abatement, we were able to get the city to tear down the building. Now there’s a lot of other little details in it, I’m just leaving those out, we tore down the building. And so we’re like, “Yay. We did it.” And then she comes back and she’s like, “That doesn’t look good, I like that either. Maybe we should put a garden there.” And so the community then organized and they put up one of the first flower gardens on a vacant lot in the city of Chicago. And so these were all the women, they were in their sixties, seventies, they had retired. And it was the prettiest little thing you’d ever seen in your life, and they put their blood, sweat and tears into it.
LaDonna Redmond (07:19):
So the idea of converting vacant lots to urban farm sites really came from Mary Perry who really wanted the building torn down because it didn’t look right in her neighborhood and then just didn’t stop with, “Oh, it doesn’t look right, I’m done.” She’s like, “No, we should really put something there.” And yeah, so that’s where I got it from.
Ben Binversie (07:40):
Nice. But part of the difficulty with that process, that transition is the quality of soil, which a lot of people discouraged you when you were doing that around in different communities that, “You can’t have gardens in Chicago. The soil quality is just not good enough.” But you insisted and you still had to improve and work with the soil, especially in cases where there were buildings torn down there, but you made it work. What’s the connection that you see between healthy soil and healthy communities?
LaDonna Redmond (08:12):
You have to have a healthy environment. I mean, air, water, soil, these are just, I think the foundations of life. I don’t know how we’ve gotten, well, I do know how we’ve gotten the way that we are, because we’re not really connected to land stewardship the way we have been in the past, let’s put it that way. And I think that goes for everybody, I think there’s just a real disconnect between the labor that it takes to create soil that produces something and the labor that it takes to just drive your car to an office and be done with the thing, but there’s a different fulfillment.
LaDonna Redmond (08:52):
So for me, it really was an opportunity to reintroduce the community to land stewardship. And there were gardens around there, two flower gardens, there were two that bordered the urban farm site. So this idea of growing wasn’t that far away from what we wanted to do, it’s just that it was new. And so when we introduced the idea, people thought I had like an extra head or something, but I really didn’t, I was just continuing to work that they had already done. So it’s not that... I mean, food is a plant, and so pretty plants are... roses are plants too. So conditions of soil help us all grow, so that’s my connection to it.
Ben Binversie (09:38):
And so your farmer’s market, the Austin Farmer’s Market in West Chicago was the first to accept EBT, food stamps?
LaDonna Redmond (09:45):
Yep.
Ben Binversie (09:48):
A lot of people also discouraged you from that and said it couldn’t be done. How often do you accept no for an answer? Because it seems like you’re not the type of person that takes kindly to no.
LaDonna Redmond (09:56):
Never, no, I just don’t. I mean, it’s not that I get mad about it, it just doesn’t matter to me. I mean, to me, someone else’s opinion of what I want to do for myself, my children and my community, isn’t of a great concern to me. It’s really not my business what do you think of me. So I focus my attention on what I believe to be the right thing, and I do the best that I can with it and most of the time I’m pretty successful with it.
Ben Binversie (10:22):
Yeah. So I know you told us yesterday in your convocation talk that that would be the last time that we could use the words’ food desert-
LaDonna Redmond (10:30):
Here you go.
Ben Binversie (10:31):
... but here I go, I’m breaking that solemn oath, but I want you to tell our listeners for the podcast exactly why you have such scorn for that phrase?
LaDonna Redmond (10:41):
The main reason is that it came from a research project that I worked on. We had a very open relationship with researchers because we didn’t really understand the issue of food access at that point. And we were asking a question, basically, what does food access mean? And when we say we don’t have any access to food, or there is no grocery store, how do you quantify that when you see that people are walking to something that looks like a store and coming out with a bag with stuff in it?
LaDonna Redmond (11:15):
So we really needed to be more specific. And so researchers came from all of the major universities to sit at a table that we had called the Chicago Food Systems Collaborative, and we began to just kind of parse out the work. Some people were sociologist and they did research around eating habits and other people were geographers and they use their mapping skills to pinpoint where these particular kinds of stores were and then divide them up into different categories, what made a store a supermarket versus a bodega or something like that. And then we had a anthropology majors and some, some of them were students who did some ethnographic studies of the owners of the grocery stores or smaller bodegas in the community.
LaDonna Redmond (12:09):
And this one particular researcher was not affiliated with a university, but came to just kind of learn and be around and gain some access to data that they took back and just created this food desert methodology. And I was really appalled because none of us owned the data, the data belongs to the community. And to take something and put your name on it when I’ve just named at least six different people who are sitting around the table, who scrubbed that data, who walked the streets and check those addresses in the dataset, who are writing their papers also and building their careers on the work that we were doing. For someone to just take that, and I would say steal that and use it for their own purposes. And name it something, and then take it to banks and pitch it as, this is a market opportunity and so what you can do to help the food desert is build a grocery store.
LaDonna Redmond (13:12):
Which wipes out all of the work that we’ve been talking about, converting vacant lots to urban farm sites, having community owned grocery stores, cooperative enterprises, community kitchens, all of that just kind of got swept away and in came, oh, SuperValu or Save-A-Lot, and Walgreens is now going to sell you apples and oranges. And it’s not just about the apples and oranges, we just talked about the soil. So that’s mainly the reason why I have such disdain for it, and it also makes absolutely no sense why we make up metaphors that indicate lack. It’s sort of, I guess, part of my no philosophy. We don’t describe our communities with lack.
Ben Binversie (13:57):
And you talked about yesterday, the idea of a desert, people live in deserts and they are places that have a lot of life.
LaDonna Redmond (14:03):
Oh, there’s a few native communities that were really upset about the phrase food desert. And so part of my work has been connecting with different communities and hearing that loud and clear and I wholeheartedly agree with it, so that’s why I talk about it that way as well.
Ben Binversie (14:22):
So you did find a little more fitting descriptor food mirage, which I liked because it doesn’t maybe capture the complexity of our food system, it does describe well that we think we have a food system that produces healthy, fair, safe food but we don’t.
LaDonna Redmond (14:41):
Not really, right? So none of these words really, none of these phrases really get at the heart of what is going on in our food and agriculture system. And desert certainly didn’t pick it up for me because it’s describing the community and it’s like there’s nothing there. And I’m like, “Well, that’s not true.” But I think it is accurate to say that we think we see something in our food system that’s really not there, and that we could stand to take a deeper look, a closer look.
LaDonna Redmond (15:11):
I think I use the example of driving on a pavement and you think that the pavement is wet but when you get closer then you realize, oh, it’s not wet. But if you thought it was wet, you might slow down. You might veer into other traffic, whatever to avoid what you thought was a hazard. Same thing with our food system, sometimes we just need to slow down and take a closer look.
Ben Binversie (15:36):
Yeah. I mean, we can try to come up with cute metaphors, but the real crux of the issue is food poverty, but it seems like people might be hesitant to use those words, why?
LaDonna Redmond (15:46):
I wouldn’t put... The slide that I had said food poverty, I would just say poverty, poverty is part of the issue. And I say poverty, because it’s a systemic issue. It’s an issue of lack of the resources being shared with people who don’t have enough resources. And so when we talk about hunger and the issue of moving enough food to people who don’t have it, that’s when we find out that it’s really about the political will to move food around as opposed to not having enough food to get to people. So I just think we have to start talking about ending poverty. We have to start talking about ending oppression, and then we can see how we can get exploitation out of our food and agriculture system.
Ben Binversie (16:31):
Uh-huh (affirmative). So oftentimes the story of our currently unsustainable food production system starts with pesticides and fertilizers and maybe... the beginning of the 20th century, into the 1930s. But you insist that we have to start the story much earlier than that, that it’s really a story about land and labor control going back to Indian removal, going back to slavery really. Why do you think it’s important to start the story back then?
LaDonna Redmond (17:01):
I think it’s important, we have to understand the nature of exploitation that’s baked into our system. And we know that exploitation exists in the food and agriculture system. I mean, many of the workers are exploited, whether they’re picking our food or whether they’re working in factories or in plants, farmers are exploited by corporations. And we don’t like to talk in those kinds of terms, but that’s what it is, it’s exploitation. But exploitation has always been a part of our land and agricultural system unfortunately, the founding of the United States and probably the North America and South America can be characterized by the nature of oppression and then exploitation.
Ben Binversie (17:43):
One of the big things I took away from, from your talk is that food justice is not just about the food. And it’s really about the dignity, the ability to choose, not just what you want to eat, but other choices in your life, and to have those choices be healthy and really the right to be looked upon and treated as a human being. You said that in some places it’s easier to find guns than in organic tomato. And that’s still the case in some places, but what kind of effects have you seen from your work in the communities where you’ve been?
LaDonna Redmond (18:16):
I see many more young people in our work. And so we had this conversation briefly yesterday during lunch. It was really about people who are doing urban agriculture getting the opportunity to partner with people who are in rural communities who have land and want to continue to grow. And one of the things that I’m finding is that young people are coming into urban agriculture and they have a passion for growing, they understand the soil and the mechanics of growing, but you can’t really make a living on an urban lot, it’s much too small. You need acreage in order to grow the kind of food that will basically give you an income and it’s still tough work.
LaDonna Redmond (19:04):
So that’s one of the things that I see is so many more young people. When I first started, I could go in a room and I would be sometimes the only Black person, and most times the only woman talking about food production. And now I can go to a whole conference of Black and Brown people who are growing in all kinds of ways. I mean, they’re doing hydroponics, they’re messing around with worms, they’ve got chickens, I mean, just doing it. And so to me, that’s the biggest change is that people aren’t looking at this like it’s some one-off, they see it as a part of our food system that community people are taking a hold of.
Ben Binversie (19:46):
No, no, that’s great. The title of your talk yesterday was, Food and Justice, The Commitment To End All Oppression. So food justice, as you see it as is an all encompassing kind of framework, it’s involved with many other types of justice. So how does the work that you’ve been involved in, whether it’s working to reduce gun violence or securing reproductive rights, how do those fit in with food justice?
LaDonna Redmond (20:10):
So I would say that everything that we do that’s special to us as humans has food involved in some way. So when a child is born, there’s a baby shower and it’s got food at it.
Ben Binversie (20:28):
Food is always there.
LaDonna Redmond (20:29):
It’s always there. Somebody’s getting married, you got some food. Somebody dies, there’s lots of food. You can have a graduation party, lots of food. All of our celebrations are, when you think about the holidays, all have food attached to them. And it’s one of the ways that I think people can express themselves. I think what was so important to me about Wade was that when he was born, one of the things that a mom likes to do is feed their child. And being able to feed him I looked forward to, but I had to figure it out and so I had a little extra step in there. And so it gave me nothing but joy to feed him. When I found something good for him that he really liked, I would just buy tons of it or cook it all the time, and so that gave me pleasure.
LaDonna Redmond (21:28):
So food is more than nutrition, and a lot of times in these conversations about food justice or food security, it becomes about calories in, calories out or you just got to get somebody something to eat, and it misses the idea that food conveys culture. So in all of these different ways, when we talk about justice, in it we’re just really talking about being a human being. So a woman’s right to choose is also coupled with a woman’s right to have food. A person’s right to live free of violence is also a person’s right to live free from food used as a weapon against them. So there’s a lot of similarities, but those are the ones that I would draw.
Ben Binversie (22:15):
So you ran for political office for the first time this year, county commissioner, right?
LaDonna Redmond (22:20):
Yes.
Ben Binversie (22:21):
Go ahead. I was going to ask [crosstalk 00:22:24] but it sounds like you-
LaDonna Redmond (22:24):
One of the craziest idea that I ever had in my entire life, but it was because of Donald Trump so what can I say.
Ben Binversie (22:30):
Yeah, there you go. And you did receive, you said what? About 25,000 votes?
LaDonna Redmond (22:34):
I got 25,000 votes, it was 36% of the vote total.
Ben Binversie (22:41):
Not too shabby for your first run.
LaDonna Redmond (22:43):
Not too shabby at all. And one of the things that happened in August, my son... My son died in September and he was in a coma on from August 15th to September 10th. And during that time should have been the time where I was really ramping up my campaign and I just couldn’t do it, so I had to pull back. And so that wasn’t bad for-
Ben Binversie (23:09):
All things considered.
LaDonna Redmond (23:10):
... suspending a campaign and coming out with 36% of the votes, so I think we ran a good campaign. My opponent is a really wonderful woman and she was really challenged, I think she learned a lot about all the things that I’m concerned about. So I pushed the issues around eliminating cash bail and not criminalizing poor people because they can’t get out of jail, but just simply writing tickets. We talked about racial equity and I suggested a civilian council on racial equity. So those things got picked up in the campaign by her and by other candidates, so I feel really good that my campaign brung these things out and the other candidates picked them up. And so I’m excited to watch them do their work, and I’m also excited not to be campaigning anymore. I miss my son tremendously, but I needed the time to heal.
Ben Binversie (24:13):
Yeah, yeah. Thank you, LaDonna, for coming to Grinnell and taking the time to talk with me today and continuing to work for a healthier future for all of our communities.
LaDonna Redmond (24:23):
Thank you for having me, I appreciate it.
Ben Binversie (24:28):
LaDonna Redmond is a food justice activist among many other roles. Who launched the campaign for Food Justice Now, founded the Institute for Community Resource Development and now lives and works in Minneapolis. She came to Grinnell in the fall of 2018 for Scholars’ Convocation, it was important back then, and it’s just as important now. Check out links to LaDonna’s work on the episode webpage, where you’ll also find some links to other podcasts and resources to learn about the intersection of food justice and racial justice and why all of it matters. There’s so much out there, and when you’ve done some learning, go out and do something with it, even just a tiny little action and then grow it from there.
Ben Binversie (25:11):
Especially during the pandemic, people have been coming back to food and the land, whether it’s simply starting your own little garden as many have, or the beginnings of land reparations, giving it back to black and indigenous people whose land was stolen. From protests at lunch counters to free lunch programs by the Black Panther Party, people have known for a long time that food can be a locus of change and also of healing. So much healing and love can be found through food, there’s real power in it. Speaking of power, many people in Grinnell have been without it for some time now, we’re finally getting it back now, but the Derecho windstorm that swept through did some serious damage. Whether it’s the pandemic, climate change or one of the countless forms of injustice wreaking havoc throughout the world, everyone is being affected by something right now, and it’s more apparent than ever.
Ben Binversie (26:04):
So what do we do with that? That’s the question, but I certainly don’t have all the answers. So I’ll keep interviewing people and trying to get a little closer to those answers and share them with you. On this season of the podcast I hope to tell some stories that are a little closer to home at Grinnell, but I know that the issues we touch on here in the podcast are present everywhere in the world, they just show up in different ways. So what do these issues of food justice look like in Grinnell? Well, we’re surrounded by corn and soy fields that tout themselves as feeding the world, but food insecurity remains a problem in Grinnell. Something’s amiss and it’s not just in Grinnell, it’s everywhere. And that means if you’re trying to make the world a better place, you can start wherever you are with the soil beneath your feet.
Ben Binversie (26:49):
It’s easy to talk about issues of justice around the country and around the world, but we also have to engage with justice closer to home, and I’ve taken that to heart with the work I do on this podcast. Doing this podcast by myself is oftentimes a lonely endeavor, and that’s why it’s been three months since the last episode. It’s hard to find community right now, but the Grinnell community, the town and the college, as dispersed as the alums are, is the community I’ve called home for quite a while. And I hope in some small way these podcasts can facilitate some connection and learning for anyone who listens. (singing)
Ben Binversie (27:43):
Taking us out with this beautiful song is Pink Neighbor, our Grinnell, friends and musical alums. It’s called Meet Me Somewhere and it’s been playing in my head since the pandemic started longing for the day when I can meet all of you somewhere. But for now, this is what we have, and I hope the saxophone solo gives you goosebumps like it did for me.
Ben Binversie (28:04):
Until then, if you want to get in touch email me at podcast@grinnell.edu. Make sure you subscribe to the show to get new episodes when they come out or follow the college’s Twitter, Instagram, Facebook page to keep up with the podcast. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the show, pass it along to a friend and take care. I’m your host, Ben Binversie. (singing)
Ben Binversie (28:29):
Stay weird and keep working towards a better world, people. (singing)