Sowing Equity: Stories of Food Justice in the US

Interview with Cat Jaffee, Re:Vision International, Denver

Photograph by Jess Elysse Kornacki: ArtOfHer

As part of launching our Indiegogo campaign, we wanted to interview community partners about their program and perspectives on the Food Justice movement, as well ask them about to share stories of how this movement is transforming individuals within their community.  

Our first interview is with Catherine “Cat” Jaffee, the Director of Communications and Public Affairs for Re:Vision International in Denver Colorado. Catherine spent her first 25 years living in Ecuador, Japan, Australia, France, the US, and Eastern Turkey. She was a National Geographic Young Explorer, a Fulbright Scholar, a Luce Fellow, and the Founder of Balyolu: the Honey Road, in Turkey’s Northeast.  She worked in many countries with Ashoka, before joining Re:Vision.  You can view the digital story Cat created with StoryCenter online.

Joe Lambert spoke with Catherine by phone earlier in November.

Joe: Cat, a pleasure to speak with you, and to be working with you on our project to gather stories about Food Justice.  Let’s start with you giving us an overview of Re:Vision's role in the Denver community.

Cat: Growing up in Boulder, I remember seeing healthy grocery stores in every part of town. There’s the largest Whole Foods in the country there, and plenty of organic, holistic living health stores. The prices were high, and the products very health-consciousBoulder was the kind of place that was setting the trend in natural, and organic, really healthy food choices. But healthy food also felt very much like a privilege. These health stores weren't very inclusive environments. Healthy food didn’t feel like a right.

When you went to the lower income parts of the front range, you would never see all those healthy grocery stores. You would see a lot of fast food places.

Recognizing this disparity, back in 2007, Re:Vision was founded by Eric and Joseph because they saw this. And then when they visited Westwood in 2009 and heard the local community explaining the same thing, they thought, "Wow, this isn't fair," and, “wow we can do something about this.” Starting a grocery store wasn’t exactly in everyone’s budget, but working with the community to start growing their own food in their backyards was.

Joe: It sounds like a classic organizing model, but how did you deal with the dynamic of well meaning outsiders trying to organize a low income community where they did not have history or shared cultural experience?

Cat: You’re right.  At the end of the day, while Eric moved to the neighborhood, he is not a Hispanic mother from a community where 81% of the residents are also Hispanics. And as he was visiting homes to help train families in growing their own food, he found that while people were passionate about food, and interested in the backyard garden approach, food was actually an avenue into so much more than just food. And as other issues would came up, Eric knew he was not the best person to address them.

So Eric and Re:Vision started a Promotores (Promoter/Organizer) Program, hiring local women to go door to door and help families both grow their own food but also connect with each other and learn about how to solve bigger problems in the community.

Joe: What were some of the issues?

Cat: Things like, "I want to know where my nearest hospital is." Or, "Hey, I grew all of these peppers, but I don't actually know how to cook a solid chili rellano without lots of cream or butter, how could I adapt these recipes to be healthier?”

So as more of the Promotores engaged their neighbors, we collected more and more information, and using that information, we began to see other issues and problems that Re:Vision could help the community solve. For example, Re:Vision applied for funding and got a fully stocked kitchen to train community members how to teach nutrition classes for the community.   

Joe: Recently you completed a campaign to create a market, to finally make the grocery store.  How did that come about?

Cat:    So in the last six years, Re:Vision has become one of the largest community-driven urban gardening programs in the country with over 400 backyard gardens, Promotores who teach backyard gardening and healthier cooking, and they also visit homes as trained community health workers. But the community has voiced that even though they know how to grow their own food, and prepare it healthier, they still need an affordable accessible grocery store in the neighborhood. And now that they are organized and connected, they are ready to do it.

Re:Vision received funding to purchase an old 1.7 acre junk yard and they have worked over the past year to clean up the site to break ground and build the Westwood Food Co-op (WFC), the community’s very own grocery store. But the building site will be so much more than a food coop.  It will include a larger incubation model for a local grocery store that engages other neighborhood partners to come and start their own businesses on site.

One of Re:Vision’s partners on the site is Westwood Unidos, who are starting a fitness and health training center for the community. Another is the Colorado Rocky Mountain Micro Ranch, which is growing crickets to be consumed and ground into an organic, protein rich flour.

More and more community partners are emerging, and participating in the site with their own ideas. While Re:Vision is leading the site redevelopment with a whole lot of community feedback and involvement, the members of the Westwood Food Co-op and the board are in charge of building and running the company. It's going to be a grocery store owned by the community where the profits go back to the community. Re:Vision just ran this really successful Kickstarter campaign to develop the site, and basically make it so the site will be ready as the community becomes ready to launch the store.

The WFC now has around 250 members from across Denver.  They are holding their own board elections and will ultimately be the ones in charge of the people who are hired, the products that the store carries, and more.  

Coupling Re:Vision’s work with the WFC site, the model helps the community solve their own problems, and while Re:Vision works with food to do this, food is very much a vehicle for doing so much more. Re:Vision is about community ownership.

Joe: There's an emphasis on people finding their own solutions. In the food justice movement, there is a broad discussion about sovereignty, about people in communities building out there own perspective on what is best for themselves in terms of their food pathways, to what kinds of foods they want to emphasize and how they are made available.  This means those of us from outside the community, who have their own narratives about for what’s “best” those communities need to engage in a great deal cultural humility.  Can you talk about why you think it's important for communities to define their own cultural needs and approaches to capacity and sustainability?

Cat: Absolutely. Grocery stores are popping up all the time that are trying to target low income communities. They don't carry products that the community likes, the community isn't really consulted, there's not community ownership.

Nine Safeways closed in June across Colorado, and many of them were very close to communities that definitely need their services. They weren't making enough money, because at the end of the day, community members would rather get in their car and go to Costco or Saver's because it's cheaper. We would not be able to succeed if we hadn’t been working with the community for six years previously, educating neighbors about local food, growing strong local relationships, training powerful Promotore leaders, and then following their lead. The result is shared values and a store that they will believe in and use because they own it.  

Education is a key part of ownership. If you don't understand or know something, then what's your stake? The community has learned all about organic food, how to grow it, why it's important, and then experienced it themselves. When I grow my own tomatoes and feed them to my family, I can see the benefit.  As they learn more, then the value goes up much more, and they can see the value in putting in the effort for healthy, local food.

We have documented that 13.2 million dollars leaks out of Westwood every year, because there's no local industry. All that money that could stay in the neighborhood, that could be invested back into the community goes elsewhere. I think one of my favorite quotes came from one of our board members, who said, "The fast food companies have already made all their money here. It's our time."  

Joe: I just want you to talk about why was the process of listening first and encouraging the sharing of stories important to this particular model of engagement.

Cat: For far too long, a lot of people, myself included, Re:Vision included, have been telling this story of this community, the story of food deserts. Whether it's a business executive making the pitch to fast food companies, like this is a great neighborhood because it's full of working parents who have multiple jobs, they have no time to cook. They don't make a lot of money, they have a lot of kids, so they are a prime market for this place.

That's one story that people tell and rationalize about why it makes sense to open up and target this community as a prime location for fast food companies.

Everybody else is telling their story for them. They haven't had enough of a voice, historically. It’s time that the community has the chance to tell their story on a platform where everyone will listen.

There's never been that great of a platform, even an anonymous one, for members to really speak out and tell their story and own their truths. Storytelling is a great avenue for this work; because as members are sharing their stories, about their needs, about their issues, more and more people are listening and paying attention.

In addition, storytelling leads to a lot of pride and ownership and understanding your own work and how you fit in to things, and your meaning and your impact. That reflection is something that our community hasn’t really had enough of a chance to do. And they've done an incredible thing, so they should feel very proud about it.

Joe: You've been working there for a while, do you go out once in a while and be part of the programs that's implemented, you get to hang out with folks, I'm sure there's lots of transformation there, there's lots of people coming to an "Aha!" moment. Do you have any stories from being part of this that made you particularly proud, or made you see the value of this work in a particular way?

Cat: I think when I feel most proud is when I get to hear stories from the Promotores. They're the true stars. I have some wonderful personal relationships with community members, but nothing compares to theirs, they're the ones that are out in the neighborhoods all of the time.

There's one Promotora, Tonia and she claims, that before the program started, she would never really feel comfortable talking to people.

As a result of being in the program, time and time again people will constantly comment about her as being incredibly social, caring, collaborative, understanding… there's not even adjectives to fully describe what people say. You have to see their expresions.

For a while, it baffled me. I was like, how is it that this relatively introverted, serious looking person, has built so many amazing warm and connected relationships. I sat her down one day and asked her about it. "Can you tell me more?" She just said that the program provides her this avenue to really build relationships over time that aren't temporary, they don't go away. They're in it for the long run, and that as a result of continually going back and being part of people's lives, she has been able to come out of her shell.  She's now known as the Promotora who will stay out until 2AM at someone’s house because she's with a family, talking to them about their lives, not as an employee of some organization, but as a real friend who is vested in this community.

To see the Promotores do what they do and transform in the process has really brought a lot of meaning to me. Witnessing that has been an amazing experience.