Food Justice Summer 2011

This summer NY2NO has been hosting service learning brigades to New Orleans. Students engage in transformative workshops, participate in farm work, and take part in community building to obtain a critical analysis of the issues that exist in New Orleans, New York, and globally, and effective ways of combating them as youth. Below are some highlights:

Participants take in the Levee Tour as they approach the Levee along the Industrial Canal

A student reflects on the lack of development in the Lower 9th Ward

Our School at Blair Grocery (www.osbgnola.org) staff members Nathanael and Andrew make silk-screened t-shirts with a special logo for the students of their JOB1 summer program and the New York volunteers

The web created after our Food Justice workshop that defines the many issues that growing food can combat

A student selling OSBG produce at the Farmer's Market in St. Bernard's Parish

NY2NO, OSBG and SBU (www.sistasandbrothasunited.org) students cook together to make dinner.

2011 Northeastern Food and Justice Summit

On the weekend of February 25th, 5 of us traveled to Boston to represent NY2NO at the 2011 Northeastern Food and Justice Summit! While there, we facilitated two workshops, networked with other young people from across the east coast, and even gave a speech to the whole summit!

            Ways to Make Change: Examining Effective Discourse While Fostering Youth Empowerment
                 Organizers Katelyn Montalvo and Alex Goldman facilitating Ways to Make Change.

                       Choices: How Our Everyday Choices Further the Food Justice Movement
                           Organizers Adaobi Onunkwo and Max Bowens facilitating Choices.

Organizer Katelyn Montalvo sharing her experiences with the summit! 

After traveling from New Orleans to Boston, back to New York, we made a lot of potential partnerships, and plan to start working with several organizations based in New York with GYO!

NY2NO February Trip 2011!

NY2NO just had its 2011 February Trip! Over the course of the week we worked with Will Allen and the rest of the Growing Power Crew, developed our analysis of issues that exist in New Orleans and New York, and worked on the farm. Throughout the series of workshops, readings, and activities that we did, we followed one essential question: How can/will we use food as a vehicle for youth empowerment, fostering a critical political analysis, and social change? 

        Morning introduction to a day of workshops, networking, and manuel labor with Growing Power!

Building a new hoop house with Growing Power.

                                                            Compost pile at OSBG!

Learning how we can utilize social media to effectively fundraise, gain support, and network with Mud

Crystal preparing the farmer's market during Growing Power's visit. 

Guiding Questions: Levee Tour Debrief 

1) How do the inequities that exist in New Orleans connect to each other? 

2) How do systems of oppression work together? 

3) What is a system and how do we define it? 

4) How do systems disempower us as young people? 

We ended the week discussing our goals for when we return to New York. How can we effectively stay involved in service-learning and organizing around urban food justice and youth empowerment in New York City? This Sunday, we are hosting Growing Youth Organizers to begin working on a number of outreach projects, fundraising efforts, and also refining our curriculum in preparation for Food Justice Summer Part II!

February 2011 Student Meeting

Today we had our first student meeting for February Trip. We started off with a warm-up and community building activity: the human knot.

We concluded the meeting with a short discussion on the importance of fundraising, and why non-profits must fundraise so heavily. We then made the connection to NY2NO and OSBG, and came up with a few fundraisers we are going to do together as a group, including an art show, photo shoot, and flea market. 

We will hold our next meeting next weekend to follow-up on delegations, hold an introduction into the service-learning we will participate in this February. 

Growing Youth Organizers!

GYO has been gradually developing and we are now completed with the intros to organizing. Recently we looked at "what does it mean to be a good facilitator", and explored some parallels to facilitation and community organizing. Some of the points we looked at were:

-Flexibility- the willing to change
-Being constantly aware of the group
-How to steer the energy of the group
-How to encourage people to push farther with their analysis

We are now going to start the training of youth organizers in GYO to prepare for upcoming brigades in February, April, and the Summer

Reflections on December Trip 2010-2011

The last day at the airport, by Brian Gonzalez:
Reflecting back on everything that has happened. Looking back at osbg and what we have learned so far. From watching documentaries and having conversations on how oppression affects everyone to meeting the saint of sustainable farming brian gautraux i have learned more in the ten days of being here than I would ever learn in a year of school. Learning about the basic survival needs and putting the into play. These are luxuries that we have and I have gotten way too reliant on them. Meeting college students and watching them learn and have intimate group conversations with highschoolers was one of the best parts about this. We met with students from oxydental and learned alot from and qbout them. Most of them living in Los Angeles, speaking to them about the new York lifestyle was probably as exciting for them as it was for us to learn about their students. Meeting queen aphi aka sunflower was one of the most exciting parts of this trip. The first thing that we heard about her was that she lives on 10 of the 40 acres that had been inherited by freed slaves after slavery was abolished. She had an outstanding personality. We helped her put up a gate around her house so that she wouldnt have to worry people sabotaging her plan to turn her home into a community center. We had to chop away at what seemed an endless barrage of vines with thorns. But sure enough, the ny2no and adelphi volunteers got it done. Knowing that we were helping in ways the government would never even consider felt really good. The scary part about this was drilling holes into the ground for the fence post. We heard that the gas line inspectors didn't do their job and didn't mark the gas and electricity lines raised the constant fear of us hitting it. A simple job that needs to be done, delayed probably because they don't care about the people of their land and their land.


Brian gautraux has a fish farm of thousands of talapia and a few thousand catfish. All of this done without the fear of overpopulation, species invasion, and only recycled water. This grow operation is probably one of the biggest in the country. And yet he takes care of it by himself with his family. Him, his wife, and their ten adopted children. This experience was truly inspirational. Seeing his free range chickens and being able to hold them. To touching his his free range cows, and not having to fear them stabbing us with their horns. Everything was a diverse group of animals living together. Everything was reused and recycled. From the compost from a nearby horse race track, to the nutrient rich water his fish produced. I fell in love with how friendly this man was and the fact that he took time out of his day to give us a tour meant a lot. Especially because as I said before he did all of this work on his 22 acres by himself. And he also worked on cars to bring money in and pay bills. Also learning that the USDA has went to his home and have harassed him and he just finds loop holes was also amazing. His will for a better and happy life was astonishing. Although it's saddening that the government doesn't care about better and healthier living , and instead the money matters more is horrendous. The quote "America loves convenience" stuck out to me throughout this trip. And it has been proven to me time and time again in new Orleans in the last 9 days I've been here.