Reclaiming our Connection to the Land

Greetings,

In the heart of Ypsilanti, a small, vibrant, diverse community, we are reimagining the food system and building a reality where everyone can access fresh, local, and nutritious food.

We are reclaiming our connection to the land.

If you’ve ever heard me talk about the Growing Hope Urban Farm, you’ve heard me talk about its dual purpose as both a production farm and an educational space. Our farm and its proven methods could be (and are) replicated throughout our community. In these ways, we equip our community members with the tools, resources, and knowledge to equitably interact with food and the food system.

Everyone deserves a chance to grow.

Community gardens empower communities to reclaim control over their food sources, reducing reliance on external, industrial food systems. We continue to invest in spaces for our community to grow for themselves and one another. We are excited to announce our first-ever Community Garden Grants (if you lead or work in a garden that benefits our community, please apply today)!

These grants empower local initiatives that enhance neighborhood vitality and promote sustainable urban agriculture. Within our neighborhoods, we can deepen from a foundation of food justice and ensure that food sovereignty is more than an ideal but a lived reality. Community gardens do so much more than provide food; they demonstrate that with unity and dedication, a sustainable, self-sufficient future is within reach.

When we grow together, we foster belonging and empowerment.

Thank you for growing with us,

Julius

P.S. We are invested in the entire food system cycle, so we are piloting our community compost program! Food waste is the most common item sent to landfills, where it breaks down and creates methane, a greenhouse gas 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide. By composting and recycling, we could reach net-negative waste-sector emissions by 2030! Learn more and join today!

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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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