In Chicago, Groups Gather to Address Food Justice

CHICAGO — Islamic doctrine says the holy month of Ramadan was when God revealed verses of the Quran, the holy text of Islam, for the first time. During Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, Muslims abstain from food, fasting during daylight hours.

At sunset, Muslims gathered in homes, Islamic centers or a masjid (mosque) for Iftar, the breaking of the daily fast during Ramadan, and shared faith, love and food.

“Usually during Ramadan, 30 days, the mosque provides free food to the people who come to the mosque at night,” said Caroline Williams, the executive director of Chicago Muslims Green Team. “They provide the food usually using Styrofoam and plastic bottles, and, in the end of it, we produce a lot of waste.”

The Chicago Muslims Green Team (CMGT) has promoted Green Ramadan, sustainability and an environmentally friendly lifestyle since 2018. The group started with an emphasis on Ramadan, reducing food waste at their masjid during Iftar. They raised awareness of recycling and the use of reusable or biodegradable serving materials, and reduced water usage for cleaning dishes used inside Chicago mosques. Williams said that the Quran taught waste reduction and that sustainability was an important practice in Islam.

“Our mission is to connect Chicago Muslims and the greater community to issues of environmental justice,” Williams said.  “And spread awareness about an eco-friendly lifestyle based on Islamic teachings.”

Williams said Islam promoted global stewardship for environmental justice and eco-friendly communities, and Green Ramadan was part of a nationwide effort to build a more sustainable Ramadan. The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) published the ISNA Green Initiative, an environmental advocacy framework with educational information, workbooks and resources that encouraged Green Ramadan and sustainability action.

Chicago Community Action to Build a Better Public Food System

At the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) during the Chicago Food Policy Action Council (CFPAC) 18^th annual Chicago Food Justice Summit, food sovereignty was a primary topic for attendees, sponsors and even City of Chicago mayoral candidates. However, waste reduction was equally important, as was composting, mushroom growing, worm bins and soil health.

CFPAC gathered people at the food justice summit with the theme of “future proofing the food system,” and organized people to discuss public land access, government policy and collectively address food apartheid, communities engineered without grocery stores or healthy food access points.

Marlie Wilson, good food purchasing senior program manager with the Chicago Food Policy Action Council, worked with the Metro Chicago Good Food Purchasing Initiative (GFPI) to ensure food supply chains were racially equitable, and that places feeding communities provided nutrient-dense, local and sustainable food. She said the GFPI started in the City of Chicago in 2017 and was adopted by Cook County in 2018 to collectively support people that were structurally excluded from control of the food supply chain.

The GFPI supporters recognized that food growers, distributors and grocery store owners were disproportionately cisgender white men in the confines of a systemically racist class-based food system. Wilson said the policy committed to shifting Chicago and Cook County public meal spending toward healthy, humane and fair food products, and built transparency into the community food supply.

“We are working to support community food access sites and community meal providers with investing their food purchasing dollars in a more equitable, sustainable and fair food system,” Wilson said. “(It’s) really leveraging the purchasing power that large community anchor institutions and food purchasers have to reinvest in community-based food systems that are building racial equity, sustainability and a more resilient local economy.”

Institutional public food spending included, among others, Chicago Public Schools, city colleges, Cook County Jail, Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center and Cook County Health. Wilson said the policy worked with a lot of different agencies that ran food environments or purchased food for community-based meal programs.

Food purchasing and distribution at the public institutional level generated a lot of commerce. The GFPI wants that capital invested into Chicago communities. Wilson said that a legacy of racist and institutionalized practices created food inequalities in Chicago and all over the country.

“Through irresponsible policy at the federal and state level, we’ve turned our food system over to these giant corporations that don’t care about public health, they care about profit, all first and foremost,” Wilson said. “One of the biggest tenets of food sovereignty is how do we build ownership over our food system again, where people can really dictate who has control over food production and access points. And so how do we rebuild that?”

The Chicago Food Policy Action Council’s 18th annual Chicago Food Justice Summit was the first in-person food justice summit hosted since 2019. Wilson said that it was meaningful to bring people together again because social networking and collective action was a challenge to recreate online.

“There is no way we can sit on a Zoom call and decide what that looks like,” Wilson said. “It just means more effective work and more possibility, a lot of really exciting ideas and projects have come out of these gatherings.”

Chicago Growers Produce Food and Future Generations Learn Sustainability

Owner of a Chicago Heights 6.5-acre suburban farm, Bonnie Claudia-Harrison, third-generation farmer, said the theme of the summit, “future-proofing our food system,” was appropriate for a place where like-minded individuals shared and connected.

“I see a lot of people here that I’ve spent time working on projects with, it’s a chance for us to share our specialties, our knowledge and come together to believe and understand,” Claudia-Harrison said. “Thinking differently about food and recognizing our past and present food, and thinking about the future of food.”

Tom Knapp, education manager for Plant Chicago, a not-for-profit organization located in the Back of the Yards community just south of downtown, attended the summit and raised awareness for food education programs, farmers market programs and indoor growing programs. Knapp said that he taught youth groups, university groups and corporate groups about growing food, regeneration practices and how to cultivate a local circular economy.

“We are here supporting the food justice summit because this is all about teaching about food,” Knapp said. “A big part of what we do is talking about food, increasing food access and educating people about how food grows and how you can grow sustainable.” 

Plant Chicago hosts workshops to build education and awareness about topics like composting, aquaponics, hydroponics and even worm bins. The worm bins were often made by youth students and Knapp said he lets them take it back to school to actively compost and extend sustainability education beyond the workshops.

“We also do mycology classes, students can come in and actually learn how mushrooms grow. They’re natures decomposers, right?” Knapp said. “So, you can have them learn about how nature recycles things and carry that on to society and get them thinking about, how does nature do this? It’s been doing this for this for millions of years. How to we convert this to our society?”

Public Food Gardens Grow with NeighborSpace to address “food apartheid”

Urban land access issues contributed to Chicago’s food apartheid and restricted community control of food production systems that feed the public. The Chicago not-for-profit land trust NeighborSpace provided an alternative to property ownership for urban farmers that did not have the land or resources to grow food. They provided open land, water access and property insurance, while the community provided labor and additional resources to build and manage urban food-production spaces.

NeighborSpace started in 1996 with three protected urban gardens and boasts more than 130 protected NeighborSpace Gardens. Robin Cline, NeighborSpace assistant director, said that 27 years ago the organization worked with public institutions like Cook County Forest Preserve and the Chicago Park District to protect open land access for urban farmers in Chicago communities, and still organized for new grant opportunities with the City of Chicago in solidarity with urban farmers.

“One new area that we’re working in is recognizing that there (are) a lot of urban growers in the City of Chicago, in areas that have been primarily disinvested, that are looking to grow food,” Cline said. “So, there’s a new project with the City of Chicago to identify experienced growers on the South and West sides of Chicago, who would benefit from a program that includes land, water installation, soil and other types of infrastructure support that would allow for long term urban agriculture in areas that primarily don’t have as much access to healthy food.”

In March, NeighborSpace offered grants for gardens, farming assistance and water in Southwest Chicago using the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) with the City of Chicago to expand the NeighborSpace land trust footprint. The CDGB awarded $2 million dollars for the Community Growers Program to work with NeighborSpace and secure more local property and open land for food production in majority Black communities that were historically underserved by governments.

Chicago Mayoral Candidates Discuss Food Justice

Chicago mayoral candidates participated in an open forum with Anton Seals Jr., board member with the Chicago Food Policy Action Council and the lead steward with Grow Greater Englewood, a not-for-profit organization contributing toward a more sustainable local food economy in Black communities. On stage with Seals, electoral candidates discussed public food access, urban farms, local economy, Black grocery store ownership and racial equity. Seals said that corruption and systemic racism was a part of Chicago’s history and that still impacts communities.

“We are looking for the Chicago mayor to whole-heartedly fight for the rights of communities by addressing these issues,” Seals said. “It is vital the mayor creates processes and also infrastructure within city hall to center community control, transparency and equitable pathways for community wealth building.”

The Metro Chicago Good Food Purchasing Initiative (GFPI) was designed to invest public food spending dollars back into the City of Chicago. Seals questioned the mayors about how to leverage the GFPI and reduce barriers for Black and indigenous urban farmers to supply food for city-run community access sites. Brandon Johnson, now Chicago’s Mayor-Elect, said Chicago needed a friendly administration that provided technical assistance, streamlined food access and opened up opportunities to become a vendor within the public agencies. He also described his personal food revolution and how he wanted that success for everyone in Chicago.

“I made some lifestyle changes, and thank God for a more plant-based approach, making sure there were healthier options within our own home, it changed and transformed our entire home,” Johnson said. “That which I want for my family, I want for every single family throughout the City of Chicago, and so whether it is using our schools as a vehicle to help educate folks, or using all of the sister agencies within the City of Chicago to incentivize vendors to be supported and making sure that what is available to certain neighborhoods can be available to Black and brown communities.”

Beyond Green Ramadan

Working daily to support a sustainable lifestyle beyond Green Ramadan, the Chicago Muslims Green Team implemented The Plarn Project. Plarn was plastic yarn made from discarded plastic grocery bags that they cut into strips and linked together in long strands. The Plarn was used to make sleeping mats that CMGT distributed to displaced people. Rohany Nayan, former CEO of Chicago Muslims Green Team, said that the Plarn Project helped people who slept on the street, managed plastic waste and extended the reach of the CMGT into displaced communities.

“From the plastic bag, we change it into yarn, and we crochet it into a sleeping mat,” Nayan said. “Then we distribute this to the houses and neighbors in the loop area.”

The food justice summit attendees had a shared interest in food sovereignty, waste reduction and public land access. Nayan said the annual Chicago Food Justice Summit was a great place for the Chicago Muslims Green Team to discuss how a Muslim group in Chicago worked on food justice and other eco-friendly actions.

“It is very important for us to know what is going on in Chicago and join the people who are already working on this project related to food and distributing it and growing it,” Nayan said. “Coming here today, we met so many wonderful partners that have the same interests and who love their communities.”