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North Oakland Restorative Justice Alliance (Yurie Iwako) The North Oakland Restorative Justice Alliance or council is made up of many different community organizations such as Bethany Baptist Church, the Bay Area Youth empowerment project and Phat Beets Produce. Phat Beets Produce and others suggest that the fight for food justice is beyond just giving access to fresh fruits and vegetables for folks who would not otherwise have it. That this access to food is just a part of the problem of the community, that it is important to focus on the intersectionality of all of the communities problems. This North Oakland Restorative justice council was founded to help the community deal and challenge both institutional and interpersonal violence. Their main goals are to promote urban gardening and greening, anti-displacement projects, campaigning, and promoting community safety with economic development, through the process of restorative justice. Some specific actions they are taking to meet these goals are creating programs for youth in which they can practice art and food production in public spaces and hosting restorative justice circles to help mitigate neighborhood crime and help colored communities who face displacement and racial profiling. It is important to understand that these problems are cyclical, how food issues affect housing through structural racism or gentrification. Dealing with community safety for phat beets produce also means making sure that police are not racially profiling their members and their community. Maurice, one of the founders of the organization had this to say about the interconnectedness of food justice issues to much larger issues. Phat Beets Produce suggests that looking at one issue is not enough because they are all interconnected. “We’re not about just food justice. Food justice is our platform because we’re passionate about food. But anti-violence and restorative justice are just as important as food justice. As is racial, economic, and housing justice. Without an intersectional analysis, the organization cannot adequately address the intersectional nature of food injustice.” Ken Shandy (Yurie Iwako) The leading cause of death for men in Oakland is heart disease and for African American men like Ken Shandy, they are 20 times more likely to suffer from heart disease than white males. That is because African American men are more vulnerable to social conditions that lead to heart disease such as lack of access to health food, lack of safe green space to exercise, and hypertension, among other environmental factors. This inadequate access to healthy food, is one of the main causes for diet related diseases in low income communities of color, some of these conditions include type II diabetes, heart disease, various forms of cancers and other preventable diseases. One of the ways communities are combating these diet related disease is through food justice work, for example by coordinating the creation of produce stands and farmers markets to make fresh fruits and vegetables more easily accessible to historically marginalized groups. Ken Shandy, a long time North Oakland resident if the perfect example of how Phat Beets Produce is changing lives. Ken Shandy suffers from heart disease and is working with SOS juice, farms to grow, and phat beets produce to gain access to knowledge about food, how to live a healthy life, and gain access to fresh fruits and vegetables. His goal is to lose 250 pounds to better his life and the life of his son. To achieve his goal he is boycotting fast foods, juicing daily, and installing a 5,000 sq ft organic produce garden in an empty lot next to his house. With the help of phat beets produce he is also receiving a weekly produce beet box each week for the next year to supplement his juicing from the garden. Ken is an example of a person in the community that would otherwise not be able to afford or have access to a health lifestyle if it weren’t for Phat Beets Produce. Ken not only seeks to change his life and his family’s through this project but also wishes to set an example to help prevent diet related illness in his community. Without an organization like Phat Beets, most community members cannot afford organic produce and must resort to dangerous diets that include high fructose corn syrup and soy. Phat Beets helps member deal and change lifestyles to help get rid of high diet related illness in the community, through urban organic gardening.

Decolonize your Diet Phat Beets Produce has made an impact on the community through the program, Decolonize your diet. This program liberates folks and helps people claim back their culture through food. This program kicked off on indigenous day, which is on the same day as Columbus day and counters the narrative of Christopher Colombus. It encourages people in the community to go back to their roots and learn about what has happened throughout the history of colonization and how it has been manifested in their diets. Decolonizing your diet is important to phat beets because it addresses the issue of food justice in how poor people and people of color are poisoned by the foods that are accessible to them. Furthermore, Phat Beets calls for a further analysis of food justice overall that in order to understand such phenomena as “food deserts,” and unequal health outcomes in low income communities of color their needs to be a focus and understanding of how and why this came to be. Phat Beets believes this can be achieved through studying histories of institutionalized racism and disinvestment from low income communities of color. According to Phat Beets, this is where other food justice organizations, because they are not understanding exactly why there is such unequal distribution of resources, as it has been an issue throughout time and can only be explained by history.

Community Action: As mentioned earlier the organization does most of its urban gardening at Dover Park Garden, which is known as one of the country’s first and only city parks that have been transformed into an edible garden. This garden is especially important as it is connected to the Healthy Hearts Clinic 7. This is because at the children’s hospital or Arlington Medical center, where the clinic is located doctors often prescribe diets of fruits and vegetables for patients with diet related illnesses but either can’t afford it, or do not have physical access to it. To make sure that at risk youth can have access to fresh produce, Phat Beets produce has a program called “Beet Bux,” that provides free vouchers for these patients. The “Beet Bux,” are subsidized by the communities’ purchases of CSA boxes. In addition, Phat Beets Produce provides other folks in the community access to free produce for those who cannot afford it. However, it’s not just about giving food away, Phat Beets produce makes it a point that along with giving away free food they also much achieve economic empowerment to the community so they can afford their own produce or learn how to grow their own produce themselves. Using the Black Panther Party’s free breakfast for school children program as a model, Phat Beets produce gives away produce at the medical center once a week. Using one of the Black Panther Party’s principles, Phat Beets gives away this produce with the understanding that individuals in the community, “cannot achieve their fullest potential for self determination and revolution without first eating a healthy meal.” Difficulties

Problems within the organization One of the biggest problems for Phat Beets, as with any small non profit organization is funding. Many of its programs are underfunded and under resourced from the very beginning, but somehow they are able to work with the cards that they are dealt with 7. Another major issue is Phat Beets Produce’s rhetoric and how they talk about certain issues that can sometimes make their neighbors uncomfortable. This is because Phat Beets addresses some serious and controversial issues in our country that most people tend to ignore such as talking about racial issues. While speaking of these types of issues has brought trust with organizations combating issues of race, their critique on the state of the country and its race relations has turned away some of its liberal supporters, as it is often politically charged. This has led to upsetting and alienating some of its original supporters which has the potential to limit their financial base and stunt their relationships with their neighbors. Phat Beets produce has received many angry emails and letters, and even cancellations of their CSA boxes due to their controversial stance on some issues such as gentrification. Some of the complaints mentioned that Phat Beets was becoming divisive when it came to issues on gentrification and was accusing rather than uniting the community, due to its extremely politically charged rhetoric 8. However, Phat Beets still believes that although they could be threatening their financial support not speaking about these controversial issues that low income communities of colors face everyday would be even more dangerous 8. They believe that even if the organization loses its funding, what’s more important to them is that they opened up the conversation in another direction and made people see another side of the issue.

Problems and threats outside of the organization (Yurie Iwako) Phat Beet’s Stance on Gentrification: One of the biggest platforms that Phat Beets Produce works on is gentrification as it relates to food justice. In fact, Phat Beets is one of the first organizations in the country to connect issues of food justice with gentrification, creating a model for other organizations around the country. Maurice, one of the founders had this to say about making those connections“A lot of organizations that have a lot more push and power are really interested by what we’re saying and they contact us from around the country. We’re influencing the way they do their work. We’re also pushing other organizations to start talking about these issues. We get to be the bad guys, we get to get shit on. But at the same time everyone else in the movement and in other movement have to move along with our rhetoric 8.” According to Phat Beets gentrification is defined as, “When long time residents in low-income communities due to the migration of new more affluent residents and the rising housing costs associated with developments and businesses that cater to them 8.” Phat Beets Produce believes that gentrification has a huge potential to undermine their food justice work because it is displacing the low income colored communities that they are trying to give access to healthy foods. Phat Beets Produce also fears that gentrification could price their own organization out of the neighborhood because the rent prices in North Oakland where they operate from continue to increase 8. Phat Beets also highlights that gentrification is a structural rather than individual process and do not intend criminalize their new neighbors. Although, gentrification has the potential to also help the organization, because new more affluent residents are moving into the area and giving them financial support, Phat Beets continues to fight gentrification in any way they can. One way they do so is by challenging the structures that are encourages the movement of new more affluent families, such as certain economic and investment models 9.

Gentrification and Linette Edwards (Yurie Iwako) In 2011, the foreclosure rate in Oakland was 1 out of 241 homes foreclosed, making Oakland’s foreclosure rates, one of the highest in California. These foreclosure rates and gentrification drive long time residents out of their homes, an issue Phat Beets Produce makes a huge effort to fight. According to Phat Beets, “Gentrification is a dynamic that emerges in poor urban areas when renovation, restoration, and residential shifts drives people out of the neighborhood.” One of the tactics used by Phat Beets is to address this issue of gentrification in Oakland with local realtors such as Linette Edwards. Realtors like Linette promote areas like Oakland through the term NOBE (North Oakland, Berkeley, and Emeryville) as an up and coming community, with new restaurants, walkability, and easy access to San Francisco. However, these new businesses according to Phat Beets are only increasing the appeal of higher income migrants and decreasing accessibility of those same resources to the poor. While promoting the development of the community may be seemingly good, Phat Beets understands this as a threat to the long time members of the community. For example, new businesses can afford increased commercial rent and can cater to a more affluent base of consumers, displacing old businesses, and decreasing accessibility to those who can’t afford these new businesses. Thus, this new revitalization of the area, with new bars and cafe’s is not always seen as friendly to long time residents as new high income residents are actually pushing them out through foreclosure. Even more problematic, to Phat Beets Produce, realtors like Linette are using their gardens and markets as well as other neighborhood gardens to flip homes and further gentrify the neighborhood.

Gentrification and Grease Box (Yurie) One of the most recent challenges has been displacement from other organizations, ironically, a cause that the organization fights to prevent. The once abandoned North Oakland building was supposed to open a healthy foods cafe to provide access to fresh food options to a community who otherwise did not have access to it. Phat Beets had also just opened up a Kitchen Incubator program that allowed low income Oakland residents to open up their own food business at a low price. However, when a new tenant arrived in 2013, Grease Box (A gluten free restaurant) things became problematic for the program. What was supposed to be a harmonious relationship, with Phat Beets Produce’s farmers market operating in the parking lot turned out to be very problematic according to Phat Beets. Just months after Grease Box moved into the building Phat Beets accused the owner of displacing not only its own programs but also low income Oakland residents in the process of gentrification. In a statement describing the situation Phat Beets commented that Grease Box is “part of the ongoing process of gentrification — where historic Oakland residents lose houses, jobs, and opportunities to newer, wealthier incoming residents with greater access to resources.” According to Phat beets for these reasons, GreaseBox has shut down the Kitchen Incubator Program and has forced them to move locations to the Arlington Health Center.

According to Phat Beets Produce the problem is that Grease Box is not just a threat to them, but it is a threat to the community overall. Phat Beets Produce has complained that many of the vendors in the Kitchen Incubator program have not been able to use the kitchen because of Grease Box’s owner’s Lizzy’s demand for a gluten free kitchen and health permits only allowing Grease Box employees to use the kitchen. Other vendors such as the one owned by Naimah Matthews have been displaced and were forced to pack their stuff and leave once grease box moved in, even though they had been cooking and selling food out of the cafe before Grease Box had even arrived. Phat beets thinks this is also problematic for the community because historic residents are now being forced to move because their housing costs and property values are rising with new residents and businesses like Grease Box moving in. Not only are their homes being targeted so are their jobs and economic opportunities because this has caused Phat beets to spend their time, money, and resources to fight displacement instead of moving forward with their food justice programs.