Let's Do Something

I’m writing this to encourage white people in my home town of St. Louis to engage in fixing messed up systems fraught with racial bias and systemic inequality. I’m writing to recommend they attend an awesome event that will help change St. Louis systems so that racial equality actually has a chance here.  I’m also writing to challenge any white folks who don’t already see that our society is structured so that more advantage is conferred to light-skinned people than dark-skinned. I challenge these folks to open their eyes and see the truth, then move forward and help do something about it.

First of all, to my white brothers and sisters who don’t see that there’s a problem that’s all that bad. I’ve been avoiding you for awhile. I haven’t wanted to wade into the murky water of trying to convince you of systemic or institutional racism. Or talk about white privilege or white blindness. I didn’t want to have to spend time digging around for facts to support my position. I didn’t want to alienate anyone either. But my conscience has been nagging me to speak up. So I’ll tell you a few things I’ve noticed with my own eyes and some I’ve learned from others’ research.

For me, one of the most striking things about St. Louis is how segregated we are. This summer I got to work on an organic farm, located in Ferguson, about 25 minutes north of my home in Kirkwood. A couple times I commuted via a North-South artery instead of the freeway. Kirkwood is a predominately white suburb, and Ferguson, well, everybody’s heard of it. About halfway to Ferguson, I would drive through a famously diverse municipality, where the pedestrians and drivers were a variety of hues. Then, I’d cross the unofficial redline and I’d be the only white person I saw again until I arrived at the farm. From my house to the farm, the shift from white to black was pretty dramatic. And it wasn’t just skin color that shifted from one part of town to the other. You’d have to be blind not to notice where signs of affluence fell away, and how this correlates with the skin color of the neighborhood. Goodbye well-maintained turn of the century farmhouses and fancy restaurants, hello liquor stores, pawn shops, and payday loans.

A lot of people who come here from other cities talk about how shocking it is, the degree to which blacks and whites are cut off from each other in St. Louis. The implications of de facto segregation (which is what we’ve got here in St. Louis) are so depressing. Segregated housing is like an enzyme in a body that causes a cascade reaction, with one negative effect becoming the cause for another and another. Long commutes by bus to low wage jobs for so many African Americans--that’s a negative effect of segregation. The ability of whites to not pay attention to black people’s reality--that’s another negative effect. So many negative effects compound over time, and we get entire neighborhoods that are poor, entire school districts that are struggling, and prisons that are chock full of black people. And so many people that would prefer not to think about it.

I’ve spent a lot of time volunteering in a lot of different St. Louis schools over the years. Some in Saint Louis City and some in the county. I’ve been in schools where teachers struggle to keep enough paper and pencils in stock for their students, where textbooks are old, and half the kids might go hungry on the weekends. These schools are full of black kids. I’ve been in private schools that have campuses to rival universities and whose students pay more for elementary school than I did for college. These schools are not full of black kids. And in the schools where my kids go, there there are smartboards in every classroom and school-issued iPads in every backpack. These public schools are not full of black kids.

And what about the statistics showing how well we as a community are caring for our black youth? Starting from birth, there’s a sharp divide. Infant mortality--black babies are 3.3 times as likely to die as white babies in the St. Louis area. And when black kids enter the school system in Missouri, they are 7 times as likely to be suspended in elementary school than white kids, and twice as likely than whites to end up dropping out before graduation. And to top that off, the federal Justice Department just released a scathing report about St. Louis Family Court’s disparate treatment of black and white youth who end up in the judicial system. Put all these things together and tell me that black lives really truly matter in this culture. Doesn’t this break your heart? And don’t you see how this situation is hurting all of us in the long run?

It’s time we stopped looking away from the burdens that disproportionately impact our black brothers and sisters. It’s time to roll up our sleeves and fix our society, which was founded on overt racism interwoven with very lofty ideals. I don’t expect us all to have the same ideas on how to fix things, that’s crazy. But I do think it’s a moral imperative and a civic duty to open our eyes to the truth and engage in repairing our society. I know it’s difficult work, both emotionally and practically. It takes time and energy to learn about the systems that shape our culture, and the work to make change can be slow and sometimes painful. But I also know that to walk through the guilt that comes from seeing one’s own culpability in perpetuating unjust systems and come out the other side ready to take action is so good. Won’t you join me?

On November 1, 2015, Metropolitan Congregations United (MCU), an interfaith community organizing group, and two other community organizations will bring 1,000-1500 St. Louisans together with key St. Louis leaders to help give teeth to recommendations in the Ferguson Commission Report. This report was mandated by Governor Nixon after the shooting of Michael Brown forced the governor to confront the St. Louis region’s racist reality. The writing of the report was required, but there is no mandate to actually do anything with the Commission’s 12 months’ of research and subsequent report. That is where we, the citizens, come in. We have to make sure that the research, the documenting of our current reality, wasn’t done in vain. We have to help our political leaders develop the political will to work to bring about racial equality in our city.

I’ve decided to help by plugging in with MCU, and this may be the organization for you as well. I had the privilege of first working with MCU a decade ago, and it is really an incredible organization. Today, I’m reconnected with them, engaged in work to bring us closer to the vision of a community where black lives really do matter, not just on yard signs but especially in our school systems and our judicial systems. I love MCU, and I’m confident that it’s a good use of my time to work on change-making with them. MCU gets things done, and has a tried-and-true method for doing so. This organization sees a problem and researches the heck out of it. They examine the power structures that underlie the problem, build relationships with the folks who have the ability to make changes related to the problem, and then publicly ask these decision makers for very specific actions in front of a very large, racially diverse crowd. Because they’ve laid a ton of groundwork, developed many relationships, and  packed the house, more often than not the leaders decide to do what’s right. It’s awesome, and empowering, and fun to see that ordinary people do have great collective power.

MCU and their partners are busy preparing for a big gathering like the one described above, on Nov. 1. Leaders like Mayor Slay, superintendents of various schools, city and county council folks, police chiefs, and state legislators will be in attendance. MCU will ask these leaders to commit to specific actions that support racial equity in our city, using the priorities laid out in the Ferguson Commission Report. Hopefully these leaders will feel the pressure of more than 1000 St. Louisans of all skin tones asking for change, and say yes to making our city better for the black citizens, which will actually make it better for us all.  Then, after some well-deserved celebrating, we can begin the hard work of holding folks accountable:) So, if you know that there is much work to be done to make St. Louis a great place to live for everyone--maybe you’ve wanted to help but haven’t known how--come to the meeting on November 1st. There is power in numbers and you are making a difference just by showing up. But fair warning, you might just get hooked and want to do more than attend a meeting.

November 1 Public Meeting

Place: Busch Student Center-St. Louis University

          20 North Grand, St. Louis, MO 63103

          Free parking: Laclede parking garage across the street

Time: 3:00-4:30 pm (doors open at 2 pm)

Gardens, Systems, and the Sustainability Stool

"From the garden, and the kitchen, and the table, you learn empathy--for each other and for all of creation; you learn compassion; and you learn patience and self-discipline. A curriculum that teaches these lessons gives children an orientation to the future--it can give them hope."

-Alice Waters

I haven't visited that quote in awhile. But it speaks so beautifully to what I believe our children need with them when they enter adulthood: empathy and hope.  And it outlines a way to offer those things to our kids while challenging them with rigorous academics.  It's been a decade since I began studying sustainability education and got hooked on school gardens. It seems about time to go back to the basics: What is so great about school gardens anyway? Why is the garden, the kitchen, and the table important in education? I write this post for those unfamiliar with school gardens and all their merits, and for those (like me) who've been doing this school garden thing awhile and could benefit from re-articulating the rationale for our work.

When thinking about the why's of school gardening, if you go at it long enough, you'll probably get back to the most basic education question of all--what is education for? The answers are myriad. Some want to reform the system to empower oppressed peoples, some see the preservation of nature as paramount, some want to make sure our country can compete in the global economy. I'd say all three can be justified. Of course race, class, and gender issues must be addressed in order to ensure equality in education. But what good are we doing if we do not also address the environmental legacy students will inherit? And every last one of us wants our children to be able to make a decent living  when they're grown and share this planet with 8 or 9 billion other humans. 

I've been school gardening long enough that I can say without doubt, that a good garden program can integrate these most basic why's of education. Today, when people talk about sustainability education (of which school gardens are part), many folks include all 3 "legs of the sustainability stool": social systems, ecosystems, and economic systems. School gardens can be a model of sustainability education when they integrate social, ecological, and economic concerns; teach systems thinking; promote dialogue and build community; and empower students to believe in their ability to make changes in the world.

Schools, Gardens, and the Sustainability Stool

If a school garden program includes growing food crops, or even composting from food scraps, the idea of food systems will likely enter the classroom. To understand a food system, you really do have to think about ecosystems, economic systems, and the individual people affected by all our food choices each day. A young elementary gardener may only go as far as understanding that a garden represents an ecosystem, that people, bugs, and weather can all impact that system, and that food costs less when you grow it yourself. But that lays the foundation for a middle schooler to learn about greater complexity within their food system--for example, dialoging about the environmental, health, and economic trade-offs when choosing conventional vs. organic food, or examining the factors contributing to childhood obesity (from food marketing policy to poverty and food access). All the examples above also tie right in to the core curriculum already taught in the classroom--science, math, civics, it goes on and on. School gardens open a door for creative schools to weave the threads of sustainability into the fabric of the existing curriculum.

Systems Thinking

Growing food and creating habitat through school gardening incubates holistic thinking, the ability to examine social and environemtal systems at the same time, the ability to think systemically. Fritjof Capra, founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy, speaks to this idea:

At the Center for Ecoliteracy, we have experienced that growing a school garden and using it as a resource for cooking school meals is an ideal project for experiencing systems thinking and the principles of ecology in action, and for integrating the curriculum. Gardening reconnects children to the fundamental of food--indeed, to the fundamentals of life--while integrating and enlivening virtually every activity that takes place at a school. 

In the garden, we learn about food cycles and we integrate the natural food cycles into our cycles of planting, growing, harvesting, composting, and recycling. Through this practice, we also learn that the garden as a whole is embedded in larger systems that are again living networks with their own cycles. The food cycles intersect with these larger cycles--the water cycle, the cycle of the seasons, and son on--all of which are linked in the planetary web of life. (Creativity and Leadership in Learning Communities, 1999 p. 7). 

Our world is made up of all kinds of systems, from natural life systems to human-designed systems like communications networks or cities. By grounding students in the understanding of a concrete, defined system like a garden or a compost bin, we prepare them to understand patterns, connections, and feedback loops in increasingly complex, abstract systems they will need to be comfortable with to be good problem-solvers in a global economy. 

Dialogue and Community Building
Gardens make room for conversations. In a garden setting, students naturally talk to and collaborate with one another. They get to know one another, they develop relationships. And relationships are the core strength of a community. Gardening can also be hard work, and gardening in groups builds a sense of community through shared accomplishment. A strong classroom community is beneficial in part because it gives children a sense of belonging, it makes them feel safe--and in order for learning to occur at the optimal level, a child has to feel safe, both physically and emotionally. 

But the community-building doesn't just occur at the classroom level. A school garden brings adults together as well. School garden programs frequently host community work days, and I have seen the magic of these many times. Hands down, I'd rather work in a garden with total strangers than attend a cocktail party with them. In a garden, we are given tasks alongside which conversations naturally spring up. At a dinner party, there are awkward silences! Additionally, a community garden connects people from all walks of life (rich, poor, liberal, conservative, protestant, pagan, black, brown, or white), and helps broaden our mental picture of who's a part of our community. And that, very simply and naturally, is transformative.   

Empowerment

Sustainability. A big word, a stool that has to hold a lot of weight. A heavy burden on our children, who know a lot about the world's complex problems at a young age. How can we ease their burden a little bit? By showing them how to make positive changes in their corner of the world, and gardening can do this in spades. 

As kids develop, their understanding of and feelings of connection to the world expand outward. In elementary school, kids' concrete thinking and very localized sense of community dovetails wonderfully with a garden on the school grounds. Young children experience that their actions matter when they grow food for themselves, their school, or their community. The students in Southern Boone schools love the Learning Garden, and they feel proud of helping to maintain a space that is changing their town and school for the better. And this past spring, when the student farmers' market booth brought in over $500 that will help sustain the garden program, you bet those elementary students felt full of enthusiasm and hope. 

As kids mature, their ability to act within a larger or more complex system grows. Middle school students can start to understand the food system in which their school operates. Perhaps they grow a garden, but maybe they participate in Farm to School or learn how to advocate for healthier food options in their community. High schoolers could run a business, write grants, do significant research--so many ways connected to gardens, food systems, and schools for students to practice positive community impact. And it's through acting in the world that humans, children as well as adults, come to believe in our remarkable power to create positive change. And how wonderful that this transformative empowerment can begin with the simple act of planting a seed.