Community Gardens as the Roots of Resistance
In Evanston, Illinois, where the legacies of redlining and segregation remain sewn into the fabric of the community, environmental injustice is deeply linked with the racial demographics of the city. The predominantly Black 5th Ward of Evanston experiences significantly higher temperatures and lower air quality than wealthier and whiter neighborhoods in the rest of the city and remains the only ward in Evanston that lacks a grocery store, straining access to nourishing and healthy food.
Just south of Evanston, predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods across the south and west sides of the City of Chicago face the most detrimental effects of the food system through air and water pollution from industrial agriculture. Beyond the places I call home in Chicago, legacies of colonialism overlap with a reliance on animal agriculture to perpetuate inequalities across the Global South. Meat production and industrial farming are the root causes of deforestation and displacement that devastate Indigenous communities and their ancestral practices of land stewardship.
I am constantly inspired by these communities, whose resilience through community organizing and mutual aid drives my passion to honor and sustain the legacies of the Black, Brown, and Indigenous women who have come before me. Community gardens in places like Evanston are a form of grassroots organizing that can lead to the transformative future that our ancestors once envisioned.
A community garden is a piece of land that is gardened collectively by a group of people to produce fruits, vegetables, and other plants. Each individual in the community contributes a small amount of time to work on the farm and enjoys the fruits of their labor through the food and plants that are produced. Across the United States and around the world, community gardens are addressing disparities in food access, particularly for the people of the Global Majority. For example, I have been fortunate to engage with projects like Evanston’s pilot Participatory Budgeting process that aims to do just that. As a Budget Delegate for the program, I worked with local organizations and Evanston community members to address racial disparities across the city of Evanston by co-authoring a $350,000 policy proposal for a community garden in the 5th Ward that is being implemented this year. When carried out with care and intentionality, initiatives like community gardens can push back against industrialized food production while encouraging frontline communities to heal their relationship with land and food.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, food insecurity rates in densely populated urban areas have only increased and continue to impact Black and Brown communities disproportionately. Compared to before COVID-19, there has been a 32.3% increase in household food insecurity, with 35.5% of food insecure households classified as newly food insecure. In 2022, food insecurity for households that were American Indian or Alaska Native, Black, Hispanic, or multiracial (23.0 percent, 22.4 percent, 20.8 percent, and 22.7 percent, respectively) was more than double the rate for white households (9.3 percent). Given these racialized differences in food access, the term “food apartheid” – first coined by food justice advocate, organizer, and author Karen Washington – accurately reflects the root causes of food insecurity based on factors like race, class, and geography which make fresh, healthy food inaccessible in poor, predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods. Community agriculture is a way to source nutrient-dense food locally and provide a higher level of food security to these areas. In doing so, we can support the maintenance of green urban landscapes that not only protect against high temperatures and pollution, but can also cultivate native plants, urban orchards, pollinator gardeners, and more.
Additionally, agricultural workers have for centuries been exploited for their physical labor in an industry that is marked by generational trauma, racism, class struggle, and revolution. Even today, over half of all farm workers are undocumented, and it is estimated only 40% of farm workers have true agency and rights. Reclaiming agricultural traditions from harmful capitalist culture means moving agriculture away from large-scale, industrial exploitation that has long characterized food production towards local systems of collective care, such as community gardens. With a focus on challenging dominant narratives of racism, classism, and sexism, these gardens can be spaces for people of color and gender non-conforming folks to create a community that has no barriers to access and use.
Community gardens are one of the strongest forms of mutual aid we can engage with at a local level. Mutual aid is a collaborative model whereby members of a community work together to understand and meet their collective needs. The concept recognizes that public systems like welfare programs often cannot meet people’s needs or do so fast enough. Mutual aid can look like distributing food, water, or medical protective equipment free of cost or providing monetary support through abortion funds, jail support and bail funds, and housing assistance. In contrast to charity and donations, mutual aid is based on reciprocal relations of solidarity, where poor people not only receive aid but are also empowered to lead and provide aid in their communities. In a garden that is intentionally organized, the creation and sharing of food meet the needs of communities while building relationships of interdependence that break down the hierarchies of traditional charity models. In Atlanta, Georgia, the queer and Latine-led community garden Mariposas Rebeldes grows food and medicine, prioritizing distribution to trans and gender-nonconforming Black and Indigenous people of color. Similarly, In Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, Sistas in the Village, a Black and Indigenous-led urban farm, provides fresh, locally grown produce to the predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods on the south side of Chicago. Each garden centers the voices of the Global Majority and builds a vision of food sovereignty that challenges exploitative food systems.
As I continue my journey as an environmental advocate in Evanston and beyond, I do so with hope in the power of collective action that can emerge from grassroots movements. In the face of food apartheid, the climate crisis, and deep economic inequality, community gardens honor the wisdom of our ancestors while drawing on the strength of those who hold marginalized identities. Transformative change rooted in solidarity and resilience is not only possible but is being cultivated each day in spaces of radical joy and community connection.
RCC National Environment Leadership Fellow — Anusha Kumar – Northwestern University
Anusha Kumar is a junior at Northwestern University, majoring in Social Policy and Environmental Policy and Culture. Central to her identity is the recognition that her experiences as a queer South Asian woman guide her perspectives. An environmental organizer at heart, Anusha aims to understand the impacts of policing and surveillance on environmental racism.
