Rooted in Hope, Growing into 2025

Dear Growing Hope Family,

The turning of the year invites us to pause, reflect, and envision what lies ahead. As we step into 2025, we celebrate the seeds of change we nurtured together in 2024. Each garden tended, meal shared, and bond forged has been an act of resistance and renewal, drawing us closer to a future of food sovereignty for Ypsilanti.

Last year, we witnessed profound moments of transformation: community gardens blossoming into sanctuaries of nourishment, teens learning the ancient wisdom of cultivation and care, and neighbors standing shoulder to shoulder to reclaim agency over their food systems. Each step, no matter how small, was a declaration that food is a human right, not a privilege.

This year, we grow deeper, stronger, and bolder.

We root ourselves firmly in equity, acknowledging the injustices that have shaped our food landscape and committing to uprooting them together. We strengthen the networks of care that cradle our community, ensuring no one is left behind. And we cultivate abundance—not just in the produce that sustains our bodies but in the joy, dignity, and solidarity that sustain our spirits.

Here’s our vision for 2025:

Planting seeds of justice: Expanding initiatives that center the voices and leadership of those most impacted by food inequity.
Cultivating sustainable connections: Deepening partnerships with local organizations and neighbors to create a web of support that nourishes all.
Harvesting the power of community: Celebrating our shared successes and embracing the collective wisdom that drives us forward.

This work is not easy, but it is sacred. Together, we will grow boldly, rest deeply, and dream expansively. Let us nurture the hope that lives within each of us and transform it into action that ripples across our city.

To a year of abundance, justice, and unwavering solidarity,

With love and gratitude,

Julius Buzzard

P.S. Keep an eye out for specifics and updates on how your solidarity is making a tangible difference in Ypsilanti.

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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.

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 .

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