Embracing Community Gardens in Milwaukee
Mutual aid is vital to the revolutionary politics we need to oppose fascism.
You’ve probably heard, read, or even said something like that in the past year (and if not you might want to expand your radical reading list!) I do not doubt the sincerity of these types of statements, but what I think radical thinkers sometimes miss is just how much of a paradigm shift true mutual aid is to those of us who have only ever lived under neoliberalism. Many of us are still decolonizing our minds, and we are not all at the same place in our ability to imagine a world radically different from our own.
Existing structures like food pantries are good things. I use one! But food pantries are not a long term solution to combat food insecurity because they do not break completely with profit-driven infrastructure that causes the need for a food pantry. They are possible to engage with while retaining our capitalism-informed ways of thinking because they are charity, because only the most depraved among us believe anyone deserves to die of hunger. These measures are good because they provide food to people who need it! However they are susceptible to things like cuts to federal spending, and rely on corporate donations to sustain themselves. These corporations play a part in causing the problem in the first place.
Self-determination in food sustainability is a radical action! This radical action without the ability to imagine non-capitalist alternatives fuels hyper-individualistic fantasies of purchasing land before being able to grow our own gardens. I suspect many reading this do not own their own home, nor have access to capital required to purchase land that make massive food projects possible. Even if we believed that one day we would all “make it” under our current economic system, commitment to these sorts of actions delay our ability to make change, and assumes that we can take care of others only after we have taken care of ourselves.
Mutual aid offers us the ability to create collective power, and to gain it now with the help of others around us. Community gardens present the perfect opportunity to exercise mutual aid, but to do so we need to unlearn some nasty things from our neoliberal frameworks. As an aside I HATED the term “neoliberalism” since a bad experience I had at an old International Socialist Organization meeting, and assume at least a few other people don’t care for it, or fully understand it. Primarily it is the promotion of the public good through limited government, and free enterprise, sometimes I use it interchangeably with “capitalism,” they aren’t exactly the same thing but I think they work together to create the ideology dominant in the United States of America.
Food is Politics
Food apartheid is on the agenda in both Milwaukee County and City thanks in part to the efforts of activists from neighborhood groups like Metcalfe Park Community Bridges, Rooted and Rising, ECCHO, and African American Roundtable. The term “food apartheid” originates from activist Karen Washington describing the intentional creation of food deserts in non-white neighborhoods. Using this term she says “brings us to the more important question: What are some of the social inequalities that you see, and what are you doing to erase some of the injustices?”
Conservatives like meme/country singer Lee Brice may not appreciate that something they engage with presumably every day such as food could be political. Without getting into a discussion about “what is politics?” it is easy to point out that political action shapes food access on every level. Tariffs from different countries affect prices of imports, farm subsidies make up a large part of the national budget, and migrant workers make up the majority of the people involved in farm production.
When a right wing demagogue assumes the highest office in the land and they decide to make the wrong choice on all three of these issues we have effects on our food. We could just as easily get into the FDA and the regulations on food that might not quite be safe. Remember last year when eggs were super expensive? That shit was hella political! With that baseline understanding that you all already had, we can further explore all of the other ways that food apartheid happens.
And we will, but not today because I want to actually talk about community gardens! If you can’t wait you can read some of the sources that will inform that article here, and here. I will reiterate though that food is political, and therefore community gardens are a political action. They are at their core a response to neoliberalism, and their revolutionary potential lies in the ability to create sovereign food sources. We need to grasp at every opportunity to operate beyond our capitalist structure and recognize the power we have to affect our current reality.
Food Networks That Exist In Milwaukee
Did you know that there are over 100 community gardens in Milwaukee already? Thanks to the autonomous nature of a community garden it is difficult to put together an official count, but the number is large and with opportunities to grow if you are someone interested in starting your own. Organizations like Ground Work MKE operate land trusts in the city that use land that was previously occupied by industrialization that have since been reclaimed as land trusts, but are now used to feed people. Their mission is “to bring about the sustained regeneration, improvement and management of the physical environment by developing community-based partnerships that empower people, businesses and organizations to promote environmental, economic and social well-being.”
An organization you may already be familiar with from their signs around neighborhoods is the Victory Garden initiative. They aim to assist residents with an interest in gardening at all levels. If you want a garden of your own they can put you on a waiting list. If you just want to be a part of the gardening process you can sign up to volunteer on their website. Even if you already have the supplies but need education, or additional resources then this organization wants you to have the tools you need to grow the garden of your dreams. The Victory Garden initiative is available to all residents of Milwaukee County.
If you live in the city and think that your community is ready to take the next step towards creating a community garden, then you can register for a free permit with the city. Victory Garden Initiative may be able to help you get started. If you and your new cohort come to a grander vision as for what your garden should look like, know that the cost drops dramatically when everyone pitches in. It is an opportunity to meet your neighbors, and collaborate on a project that everyone can contribute something to according to their own ability.
Exercising Anti-Capitalism Muscles
Participation in community gardens challenge assumptions that many of us living under capitalism are prone to make. The first and most obvious is the notion that they are a waste of land that could be put to “better use.” I use air quotes because the neoliberal assumption is that every resource should be utilized to make the greatest returns on investment, and this is thinking like a capitalist. Similarly false assumptions are that “community gardens do not meaningfully contribute to reducing food insecurity,” and “the effort would be better focused on attracting a business solution such as a farmers market or grocery store.”
Another ingrained capitalist reflex is to be concerned about communalism (not communism) which is based on the collective ownership of something. (Editors Note: this concern about communalism is often referred to as "The Tragedy of the Commons." Basically this BS theory says if no one owns something, no one will bother to take care of it and everyone will just take without giving back. It makes a lot of false assumptions.) If you approach community gardens with any of this skepticism, I don’t think that this makes you any less of a good person. I do think that participation in these sorts of structures gives us the opportunity to meet that discomfort and to challenge this sort of thinking.
Expending effort into the care of food you or your neighbor eats will transform your appreciation for what food at the grocery store costs. On this Karen Washington says “The conversation around actual food value is a conversation that we don’t have in low-income neighborhoods, regardless if they’re black or white, rural or urban.” This conversation is vital in educating the public on why the richest country in the world has over 40 million hungry people, towards reckoning with food apartheid, and on to an understanding of why a grocery store is not a solution to this problem.
This is not the only step we need, and communities in Milwaukee are doing the labor necessary towards ending oppression from lack of access to food. I encourage our readers to consciously engage with gardens and food growing initiatives this summer, and to do so intentionally and while realizing the power we have as a group of people. We will continue the good work towards overturning the systems that harm us like ICE, but it is okay to start someplace small.
