“The Garden Is Life and the Garden Is Death”: Radical Growers and the Struggle for Liberation

Abstract

The weight of state-sanctioned racial violence sits heavily upon communities that have been harmed by decades of disinvestment. The inequities of which are only exacerbated in today's climate of brazen white supremacy, environmental racism, and COVID-19-related health disparities and food apartheid. Although protests have been a visual representation of a collective cry for racial justice, resistance has also been rising in urban growing spaces. However, there is little understanding of how radical growing spaces contribute to intersecting issues of justice and how this work can be supported and celebrated in the struggle for black liberation. Through a study of growing spaces in Camden, NJ, and Philadelphia, PA, I utilize Critical Environmental Justice (CEJ) to identify two important findings: (1) growers create space that confronts and rectifies the violence of antiblack racism and (2) redevelopment and white space act as a form of violence that undercuts the work of black liberation. By connecting Urban Agriculture and CEJ, this study elevates and celebrates the wisdom of radical growers, making the connection between movements for land, food, environmental, and racial justice to actively work for liberation.