December 2023 Sprouts

Most dligent changemakers,

We often talk about our work at Growing Hope as it relates to creating systemic change. But what is systemic change? How does one organization in Ypsilanti enact meaningful, systemic change?

On November 5th, I was honored to join more than 50 BIPOC organizers, advocates, community leaders, and allies who gathered virtually with the UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Ms. Ashwini K.P. A small group of us were asked to provide a brief oral testimony of our experiences of racial injustice as we work towards food sovereignty and face chronic food insecurity and food apartheid.

Our collective voice moves mountains.

Collaborating with folks around the country is awe-inspiring. I’m proud to be a part of this community alongside every one of you and have the opportunity to amplify our collective voice to enact systemic change. Online, you can find a summary of recommendations and Ms. Ashwini’s end-of-visit report, and I’ve included a snippet of my testimony below.

Land access is consistently the number one barrier to business development or ensuring a right to food for growers across our country. For growers of color, this disparity is magnified. I’m sure many of us know the national statistics that begin with stripping Black farmers of over 13 million acres of land and restricting them from federal resources for decades. This is a history that has led to redlining and apartheid that impacts every black grower today.

This week, I spoke with a Black farmer who has been farming on what has traditionally been Black land in a rural part of our community for the better part of a decade. He shared that it’s not uncommon for him to experience no warrant raids from police and threats of armed violence from nearby White residents. Because of this, many land-insecure Black farmers are being all but forced out of rural, resource-rich areas and closer to urban spaces where access to land is even more sparse.

Race uniquely affects urban growers. In cities where black and brown residents congregate, most with the most significant population, local governments use zoning and ordinances to control further how the already limited land can be used. In Ypsilanti, nearly two-thirds of all residential land is owned by just a few White property owners, and much of the remaining land is zoned in ways in which growing for production is unlawful.

In urban systems like these, I know of numerous landless farmers growing in parks and backyards spread across the region. For most growers who want to grow for themselves and their neighbors or families, there are limited ways to access any land to grow food. We work towards solutions to these barriers, such as community gardens, updated zoning and ordinances to support a right to garden, basing our food policy on the right to food, building growing commons, resource and skill sharing, and building home gardens.

There is an intrinsic connection between a right to garden and the right to food. If we can equip our community with the tools, resources, and land to grow for themselves and one another, we’ll collectively ensure fresh, local, and culturally appropriate produce for all.

Thank you for being a part of this movement.

In solidarity,

Julius

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Georgia Gilmore & The Club From Nowhere

By Julius Buzzard • February 18, 2026

During the Montgomery Bus Boycott, when formal fundraising was surveilled and criminalized, Georgia Gilmore organized something deceptively simple: a kitchen network . Known as The Club From Nowhere , Gilmore and other Black women sold pies, cakes, and home-cooked meals to quietly raise money for the movement. Their anonymity was protection. Their food was infrastructure. For over a year, as the boycott stretched on, these funds paid for carpools, gas, and daily survival. While history often centers on speeches and marches, Gilmore reminds us that revolutions are sustained behind the scenes by those who feed people, organize logistics, and keep the lights on. Her kitchen was a site of resistance. Her recipes were tools of liberation. At Growing Hope, we honor this lineage every time we invest in food entrepreneurs, incubator kitchens, and cooperative models. When food businesses are community-rooted, they do more than generate income; they fuel movements . Never underestimate what food can do. And never forget who has always been doing the work.

Fannie Lou Hamer & the Freedom Farm Cooperative

By Julius Buzzard • February 11, 2026

“If you have 400 quarts of greens and gumbo soup canned for the winter, nobody can push you around.” Fannie Lou Hamer said this not as a metaphor, but as a lived experience. In 1969, after being evicted from her plantation home for registering to vote, Hamer founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative in Sunflower County, Mississippi. The goal was simple and radical: Black families deserved land, food, housing, and economic independence, without having to ask permission. Freedom Farm grew vegetables, raised livestock, built homes, and supported cooperative ownership. It addressed hunger and poverty at their roots, refusing the lie that liberation could come without material security. Hamer understood what we still grapple with today: political rights mean little without food sovereignty . Voting doesn’t protect you from hunger. Legislation doesn’t replace land. Dignity requires access to the means of survival. This is why Growing Hope centers farming, education, and entrepreneurship together. Food sovereignty is not just about what’s on your plate; it’s about who controls the systems that decide who eats .

The Black Panther Party & Free Breakfast

By Julius Buzzard • February 4, 2026

In 1969, the Black Panther Party launched the Free Breakfast for Children Program , serving tens of thousands of children across the United States every single school day. Not as an act of charity, but as a declaration. The Panthers understood something the dominant systems refused to acknowledge: a hungry child cannot learn, organize, or imagine a future . Feeding children was a political act. It was protection. It was strategy. Volunteers cooked before dawn in church basements and community centers. Children were served breakfast while learning about Black history, self-determination, and collective responsibility. The state noticed and felt threatened. The FBI labeled the program “the greatest threat” to internal security, not because it was violent, but because it worked. And it worked so well that the U.S. government was forced to expand public school breakfast programs nationwide . Mutual aid didn’t just meet immediate needs; it reshaped public policy . This is food sovereignty in action: communities identifying harm, meeting their own needs with dignity, and building power in the process. At Growing Hope, we carry this legacy forward. When we insist on dignified access to food, when we support farmers markets as sites of connection and not extraction, when we center youth and Black leadership, we are walking a well-worn path. When communities feed themselves, systems change.

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