‘Stepping Out of Oppressive Systems’
I’m Brenda Gonzalez. We had always dreamed about a farm, like a sunset career thing. We realized during lockdown we needed to accelerate that plan pretty significantly because we were feeling really called to support our community in that way.
We chose to do a market-style CSA, where folks are packing their own box, because this was first and foremost going to be a community building project. We already were deeply familiar with the very diverse community we were serving so we wanted to build in choice.
Check-in is a really important relationship-building moment that matters a lot to us. That is the first touch point with community members, talking about what’s going on in their lives, and where we’re able to make introductions. We know a tenant is struggling with their landlord, and we also know a lawyer who can support and help them find resources for organizing the rest of the tenants in the building. That’s been one of the most powerful things we’ve seen.
We have to figure out a way to reinvent the food system that gets people the food they desire with the highest nutritional value and the most respect we can offer the ecosystem that we’re a part of.
We introduced a mutual aid network last year on WhatsApp to give people the space to do the support for each other. It started with a lot of recipe sharing and runs itself now. It’s a really powerful way to see this community continue to build deeper roots without us having to do the legwork and labor. Our SNAP member attendance skyrocketed from 40 percent to 70 percent.
There is something really, really powerful to building something that is supporting stepping out of oppressive systems.
We also want to build a cooperative at Seremos where members can make a living wage and have benefits so they can prioritize their relationship to the land that they’re working and the people they’re growing for.
I’m Chris Nickell. Food is a means to an end to help bring people together in this deep way and also an end unto itself. We grew up in families of cooks and eaters, and food has always been meaningful to us.
People spend time in the tent at CSA. They bump into each other and strike up conversations. Maybe that expands into a friendship or relationship that didn’t exist before. It’s that exact kind of knitting of people together who wouldn’t otherwise bump shoulders that the CSA is designed to do and it does that very well.
The WhatsApp chat has also become a space for explicitly political organizing, for educational advocacy going on among parents, immigrant defense trainings and resources that have been shared. It’s really active.
Seremos, we will be, comes from the last line of a Pablo Neruda sonnet we used in our vows, which in English translates as “and through love I will be, you will be, we will be.” It is the ever forward looking and the sense of mutuality and power of the emerging we that the project is hopefully ever building.