No Fear in the Food System

Beloved community,

Many hearts, mine included, remain heavy as we enter into a new month.

Right now, immigration enforcement is being used in ways that are destabilizing people’s lives, and in the process, destabilizing the food system that all of us depend on.

Across the country, intensified immigration crackdowns are pushing workers into hiding. People are staying home rather than risk detention. Parents are weighing whether it’s safe to take their children to school. Farmworkers, food processors, delivery drivers, and food service workers are being forced to choose between survival and visibility.

Immigrants are essential to every step of how food moves in this country.

They plant and harvest crops. They process meat and produce. They transport food across regions. They cook and serve meals. When enforcement actions target farms, food facilities, or entire neighborhoods, the consequences ripple outward immediately: fields go understaffed, food rots before it’s harvested, supply chains strain, and prices rise. Families, especially those already navigating scarcity, are pushed closer to hunger.

A food system built on fear cannot feed people well.

And a just food system depends on more than abundance.

It depends on safety.

It depends on dignity.

It depends on sovereignty.

Here in Ypsilanti, this national climate is not abstract. Families are feeling it in their bodies. Schools have warned parents to take precautions amid reported ICE activity. That alone should stop us in our tracks. When fear follows children into classrooms, we are witnessing a profound failure of care.

At Growing Hope, we refuse to accept fear as the cost of feeding one another.

The Growing Hope Urban Farm and the Ypsilanti Farmers Market are built on the belief that everyone deserves a safe and welcoming place to gather, grow, and nourish one another. We affirm clearly and publicly that no person should be targeted, questioned, detained, or surveilled based on immigration status.

Over the past several months, we’ve been developing response plans for our markets, events, and shared spaces that center collective care. This includes clear protocols, staff and volunteer training, and alignment with partners who understand that food access and community safety are inseparable. Safety is not separate from justice.

If people are afraid to buy, sell, grow, or gather around food, then we are not talking about a functional food system; we are talking about harm dressed up as policy.

As we move through Black History Month, I am reminded that Black food history has always taught us this lesson: when systems fail us, we feed each other. From mutual aid kitchens to cooperative land ownership, from feeding children before school to organizing entire communities around food, our ancestors understood that food is both care and resilience.

This is the work in front of us now: to stand in solidarity across Black and immigrant communities, to reject policies that criminalize survival, and to build food systems rooted in dignity rather than disposability.

I carry this responsibility with humility.

I am here because others fed people when it was dangerous to do so.

I am here because food has always been one of our most powerful tools for care, resistance, and imagination.

And I am here because silence has never kept us safe.

In solidarity,

Julius

P.S. How you can show up right now: Stay informed. Interrupt misinformation when you hear it. Support organizations doing accompaniment, rapid response, and food access work for immigrant families. When you come to the Ypsilanti Farmers Market, help us uphold it as a space of care and protection. And if you’re able, donate or volunteer with local groups defending immigrant dignity, because a just food system requires all of us.

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Nutrition and the Right to Thrive

By Julius Buzzard • February 26, 2026

Beloved community, March is National Nutrition Month, and across the country, we’re told to read labels more closely, count nutrients more carefully, and “eat real foods.” But nutrition is not a trend cycle; it is a question of power. I invite you to join me in curiosity and ask: Who has access to what’s being recommended? Who can afford the “real” food being celebrated? Who grows it, and who gets paid? Are we treating illness, or are we transforming the conditions that produce it? Health outcomes matter, but health equity goes further. Health equity asks why certain neighborhoods have higher rates of diabetes in the first place. It asks why fresh food feels exceptional in some zip codes and ordinary in others. It asks why farmers struggle to survive while healthcare systems expand. If we do not address land access, procurement policy, and economic extraction, then “eat real” risks becoming a quiet moral judgment instead of a structural commitment. Michigan once modeled real structural commitment through 10 Cents a Meal for Michigan's Kids & Farms ; matching school dollars to buy Michigan-grown produce and making local food standard in cafeterias. It strengthened children’s health, stabilized farmers, and shifted institutional purchasing habits. This year, the program was not funded. And as a result, students miss the chance to build lifelong food memories rooted close to home. And still, we are not retreating. Together, we are building a foundation of generational health. Generational health is the long game. It is the work of ensuring that today’s third grader doesn’t just eat a fresh apple; but grows up expecting apples from Michigan orchards in their cafeteria. It is ensuring that a teen doesn’t just volunteer at the market; but understands zoning laws, farm bills, and supply chains well enough to challenge them. This is the foundation of our theory of change. We build generational health by shaping habits early and reinforcing them often; through initiatives like our Teen Leadership Program, where young people gain the skills and critical lens to navigate and influence the food system; through field trips to our urban farm and incubator kitchen, where learning is rooted in soil; through Farm to School programming that normalizes local procurement; and through Power of Produce (POP) Club, where children practice agency by choosing fresh food for themselves. This is how we shift from reactive nutrition work to regenerative nutrition culture. We do this by pairing conversations about Food as Medicine, dietary guidelines, and eating real foods, with: An insistence that farmers are part of the prescription. Guidelines that align with affordability and access. Understanding that real foods need to be reachable, culturally meaningful, and dignified. Nutrition is not simply about what’s on a plate. It is about who has the right to thrive. This National Nutrition Month, I invite you to see nutrition not as an individual burden, but as a collective project that treats fresh food not as charity, but as infrastructure. We are cultivating a community where children expect fresh produce, where farmers are stable and respected, and where health is inherited as legacy. That is generational health. And that is the future we are growing together. In solidarity, Julius P.S. Check out the FoodCorps Policy Action Map or sign up for our Farm to School Newsletter if you’re interested in building generational health.

Queen Mother Audley Moore & Reparations Through Land and Food

By Julius Buzzard • February 25, 2026

Long before reparations entered mainstream conversation, Queen Mother Audley Moore was clear: justice required land, resources, and self-determination; not symbolic gestures. A descendant of enslaved people, Moore spent decades organizing for reparations rooted in material reality. She understood that stolen labor was tied to stolen land, and that food insecurity was not accidental; it was engineered . Moore advocated for land redistribution, cooperative economics, and community-controlled food systems as necessary steps toward repair. Her vision aligns directly with modern food sovereignty movements: returning control of food, land, and labor to the people most harmed by their removal . This is not history; it is instruction. Growing Hope’s work exists within this continuum. From urban farming to food hubs, from youth leadership to market access, we are building the kinds of systems Moore demanded, systems that repair harm by restoring agency. Food sovereignty is reparations in practice. And the work is unfinished.

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.

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