All across the country, urban neighborhood communities are taking over abandoned school grounds, church grounds and other public spaces to repurpose them as food hubs, community gardens, food justice training centers and safe places for their children to play and work with plants.
The latest of these efforts is the Flower and Bullets collective in Mid-Town Tucson repurposing the Julia Keene School for Barrio Centro community gardens, but there are similar projects to inspire us in Cleveland, Detroit, Albuquerque, Las Cruces, Sacramento, Milwaukee, and elsewhere.
Some are adding food microenterprises to the mix; others are adding Feed According to Your Means cafes. The communities themselves are taking back control not just of land for producing food, but their own health, well-being and pursuit of livelihoods with livable wages.
A shout out to Dora and Tito and the many others of La Raza in Tucson who are leading the efforts to strengthen their own community through restoring abandoned places to their full food-producing capacity!
-Brother Coyote
