{"id":458,"date":"2023-04-27T09:06:04","date_gmt":"2023-04-27T13:06:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond2023\/?p=458"},"modified":"2023-04-27T10:37:47","modified_gmt":"2023-04-27T14:37:47","slug":"thriving-in-the-desert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond2023\/2023\/04\/27\/thriving-in-the-desert\/","title":{"rendered":"Thriving in the Desert"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The junction of 2nd Street and Marshall in Jackson Ward, one of Richmond’s most historic neighborhoods. It’s also over a mile away from the nearest grocery store. (Photo by Logan Jones-Wilkins)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Logan Jones-Wilkins<\/p>\n

A food desert, as defined by the US Department of Agriculture, is an urban area in which it is difficult to buy affordable, nutritious food. Yet, even deserts are ecosystems, where life can flourish when the conditions are right.<\/p>\n

Selan Hailu, a clinical psychologist, is a co-founder of The Human Connection, a Richmond-area think tank devoted to bolstering marginalized communities. Founded in 2018, the organization is built to cultivate life in the \u201cdeserts\u201d of Richmond by fostering connection to self, connection to others, and connection to the Earth.<\/p>\n

Connectivity, she argues, will overcome self-segregation and subjugation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we are to look at the country or world as a living organism, then these issues like food deserts are the ailments,\u201d Hailu said. \u201cThose ailments are built around the dehumanization that comes from disconnection between each other and our humanity, the things we need to thrive.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are other food justice advocates in Richmond network who see <\/s>as a legacy of racism. Duron Chavis, a nationally prominent farmer and activist, rejects the semantics of food deserts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese communities did not wake up all of a sudden and not have a grocery store,\u201d Chavis said in a recent Facebook<\/span> video explaining his work. \u201cThere is a history of design flaws, or intentional discrimination and systematic racism, explicitly in communities of color across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

The historic red lining of Richmond\u2019s poorest neighborhoods was made worse by infrastructure projects that bisected communities of color and their plots for local agriculture. That created an urban environment that stratified communities, and local economies, by race.<\/p>\n

It goes beyond the city limits, Chavis says. Because racial discrimination forced Black farmers off their farms and into cities, they lost their livelihoods, leaving a higher concentration of poverty within Black communities. As \u201cred\u201d lines were drawn, grocery store economics followed those same lines and perpetuated the spatial distribution of food access, or lack thereof, in American cities.<\/p>\n

With the exception of the Market on 25th<\/span>, in Richmond grocery stores fled to the more affluent sides of the city. Yet, for those working on issues of food access and justice, plopping grocery stores in a food desert is not necessarily the solution.<\/p>\n

Hailu and her think tank and Chavis with his farms are looking inward to these communities for self-sustaining solutions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a lot of work on food justice within our ecosystem,\u201d Hailu said. \u201cIn our think tank, we have Tyronne Cherry down in Petersburg at the Petersburg Oasis Youth Farm. He has been working in education for his whole career, and his work centers around food justice through urban farming.\u201d And that is just one of the many restaurant owners, farmers, and educators who are working with The Human Connection.<\/p>\n

Hailu\u2019s organization also explores urban design and adaptive solutions, hoping to boost produce growing on a very small scale: gardens in homes, gardens on rooftops, and gardens in community spaces. The goal, she says, is to bring produce to the people in a way that not only feeds folks in food deserts\u2014but connects them to their own humanity.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s something that no grocery store can do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Logan Jones-Wilkins A food desert, as defined by the US Department of Agriculture, is an urban area in which it is difficult to buy affordable, nutritious food. Yet, even deserts are ecosystems, where life can flourish when the conditions are right. Selan Hailu, a clinical psychologist, is a co-founder of The Human Connection, a… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4472,"featured_media":400,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[247210],"class_list":["post-458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond2023\/files\/2023\/04\/IMG_6652-2-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4472"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":496,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458\/revisions\/496"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}