This work explores food justice as it relates to and is informed by racial justice. As a Black woman living in the Washington DC metro area, these issues are consistently overlapping in day to day life, but often have separate plans and policies to address them. Although the purpose of this project is not to propose a solution, I hope that it will encourage viewers to witness and understand the connectedness of food and racial justice in a new light.
On May 25th, 2020 George Floyd was killed by the Minneapolis Police Department. A knee on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. Cause of death: asphyxia due to neck and back compression -- he could not breathe. This sentiment reverberates over time and space for Black Americans. From the claustrophobic hull of the slave ships that brought us to American shores, to the knees of police officers on our necks, The Movement for Black Lives calls out “I can’t breathe”.
This short video is a meditative reflection on my experiences during summer 2020. Under the auspices of the COVID-19 stay at home orders and anti-black police violence disrupting daily life, I turned to the earth for healing. Seemingly the only thing to bring me peace and stability through the chaos, I began a vegetable garden for the first time that summer and the lessons I learned were insurmountable. Over the course of the summer, my garden faced many trials and tribulations. As a first time gardener I ran into many unexpected challenges: learning a proper watering schedule for the plants, protecting my crops from animals, and discerning which bugs were beneficial or threatening. But as the garden grew, so too did social unrest around the country.
I explore the synchronicity of food justice and racial justice by placing the journeys side-by-side with one another. I parse out lessons from gardening to the movement and from the protests to the garden to explore the interconnectedness of both forms of justice. The clips from the garden cover a span of about three months from the growth of the seedlings to abundant harvests. The protest clips are comprised of about three days worth of footage from Black Lives Matter protests in Washington DC in June. Notice that as the garden grows, the protest clips become more positive and liberatory in nature. Although I faced many challenges in the garden by the end of the summer I had an abundance of food that I was able to share with my community. We were fed both physically and spiritually as our connections to the earth grew deeper.
When it feels as though the world is crashing down around us. As a respiratory virus ravages through the population rendering hundreds of thousands of people breathless. As state violence cuts short the sanctity of Black life. When the world around me could not, the garden offered me a space of escape -- a place to breathe.
Camille is a 4th year undergraduate student at Haverford College pursuing an independent major in Health, Science, Societies with double minors in Environmental and Africana studies. She is a proud DMV native from Silver Spring, MD, the ancestral lands of the Nacotchtank peoples. She is currently writing a senior thesis on the intersections of health, justice, and the environment through exploring the relationship between urban agriculture and social justice among Black residents of Washington, DC. An amateur food connoisseur, she enjoys eating and preparing foods from the African diaspora. In her free time, she enjoys tending to a small vegetable garden and sharing vegetables with family and friends!