Innovative Healing Popsicles combine traditional herbal remedies with modern food preparation, creating accessible wellness products like lemon balm and mint popsicles made from apple pulp and fresh herbs. These creations serve as both healing tools and social connectors, fostering community through shared experiences in gardening, harvesting, and post-harvest processing.
Gardening and food production are proven tools for healing, community building, and social change, offering tangible ways to address systemic inequities. Organizations like LA Can demonstrate how food-based initiatives can bridge gaps in power dynamics while empowering marginalized communities to advocate for food equity and policy change.
This post explores how hands-on gardening programs create healing spaces, the role of food in activism, and practical steps for starting community garden projects. We’ll examine the multi-step organizing process, the importance of art and culture in advocacy, and how to build sustainable, people-centered initiatives that promote food justice.
Readers will gain actionable strategies for launching community garden projects, fostering inclusive organizing, and leveraging food as a tool for empowerment and social change.
By Matthew Enloe and Todd Cunningham | Cerca Cultivation
TL;DR – Quick Summary
Gardening and food production are powerful tools for healing, community building, and social change.
Unique Healing Products: The organization creates unique products like tinctures, teas, and herbal popsicles, combining traditional healing methods with innovative food preparation techniques.
Monthly Healing Circles: Monthly women’s healing circles and community garden days provide hands-on experiences that foster connection and personal growth, with activities like planting, harvesting, and making herbal remedies.
Activist Organizing Process: Organizing in the activist world involves a multi-step process, including building rapport, identifying issues, and developing strategies, with a strong emphasis on art and culture to amplify the message.
Community Food Empowerment: LA Can’s Fresh Roots from the Row program brings popular plants to the community, teaching people how to grow their own food and developing leaders who can advocate for food equity and policy change.
Garden Healing Space: The garden serves as a healing space, where individuals can reconnect with nature, find peace, and empower themselves, as seen in the personal journeys of unhoused participants who found solace and purpose through gardening.
Pro tip: Start small with a community garden project by focusing on listening and building relationships first, then gradually develop a structured plan that empowers everyone involved.
Creating Healing Foods and Products from the Garden
Matthew: And when you learn that there’s it just opens up a whole new canvas for for us to be able to create new products and things like that. And of course, we’ve had, you know, there’s longstanding tradition making tinctures or droplets of things that you can put in your mouth to actually heal you, to help you calm down, help you sleep, deal with stress and whatnot. But we’ve also created a tease for some of our committee meetings. And there are members of our committees who basically come up and create. So we’ve created and popsicles. We’ve created a lemon balm and mint popsicles, which are basically, you know, to pick a popsicle, silicone popsicle maker and mix like we’ve mixed apple juice. We’ve done it with apple. Even if you juice an apple, you know, there’s the pulp that’s left over. That makes a great.
Organizing for Community Empowerment and Healing
Todd: Extra. Great kind of medium to actually insert and put in the kind of herbs also to feature them and it’s all together makes for a experience but also a healing one and you know it’s it’s I can’t speak enough about how that food is a is such a great kind of tool for. Socializing obviously, I think we all know that the kitchen often is the most popular place in people’s homes when people gather for parties and whatnot. But it’s also a place that people, we all share it in common because we have to eat to survive. And so the making of these products is also a healing process and one that is quite meaningful. And people of course look forward to getting those popsicles or getting the teas and things like that as well. Matthew Enloe: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Todd Cunningham: We’ve used it in programming like our healing circle for women’s healing circle once a month. It happens from our downtown women’s action coalition committee. Every month, a new one, they’re looking for new things each time, and they’re making them. Matthew Enloe: Yeah, yeah, I’ve so when Todd and I see each other every week and I’m we’re always talking about the the production and the planning and execution and making the time that we spend in the garden with the folks who are coming to participate in that program. It’s very hands on gardening focus. But what I actually I’m so. I can imagine how much fun it is to make the tinctures with a group of people and participate in what in the gardening world or the farming world we’d call it post-harvest practice. But how everyone can come together and the garden or the farm. extends for other opportunities.
So thank you for sharing that because I’ve never been part of that. I’m part of the first step. But the fact that y’all take it and work together to make popsicles or teas or tinctures, I can imagine how fun that is. at some point, I’ll have to come to that part and hang out with y’all. Todd Cunningham: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, your ears would be burning. Because we’re, we’re often referencing you and your, your vision and all the good stuff. And what are going to get from Matthew next? ask him to get this, this, this crop, this seedling. so it’s, and of course it goes, it goes even further. This helps us to, this helps us to organize together. It’s like, you know, people, when you share things in common, you realize that much more, you have even more in common. And when you’re living in. World where there’s lots of, just where you’re displaced and dismissed and disappeared often and increasingly disappeared, just having a place to be able to organize around the issues that you’re concerned with, you realize you’re not alone. And food is a great way, and gardening and the kind of things that we’re doing in our Food and Wellness Team are great ways to actually bridge into those other areas and realize that we can work together for good. Matthew Enloe: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The when you say organizing, think within the activist world, organizing means something pretty clear. It’s but. For the folks outside of the activist community, if you could just quickly describe what is organizing? It might sound simple, but within this world, what does that mean? Organizing. Todd Cunningham: Sure.
you know, organizing is, it’s a multi step process, basically to gather people together and I’m going to bastardize this definition, but basically I’ll just tell you the steps, the steps that it takes. It includes first getting to know people, you know, establishing a rapport with groups of people and finding out what, there’s, there are issues that they’re dealing with. can’t, they’re having a hard time. Matthew Enloe: No, you’re good. It’s off the top of your head. Todd Cunningham: Breaking through or are disenchanted with like a process that is there there for them to be able to air their grievances or what have you and We come together and define like what are the things that were what are the things that are the most? Urgent the one things that were most eager to like get fixed or to address from lawmakers and so then we gather those things together we assemble and. And we determine a strategy of how we’re going to go about it. We pull together, you know, art is a huge part of this art and culture. Of course, every activist movement has includes art and culture, whether that be a protest sign or a chant or letter writing even, or going expressing public comment. Those kinds of things are gathered together. Then we look, we’ve set milestones of goals that we want to achieve. And there are different constituents, of course, with many issues around food. Matthew Enloe: There, you know, food, when we talk about food as being political, every bite that all of us have, every bite that we eat, someone else has touched it in a way, whether to determine where, when, how, and how much we’re going to get by the time it gets to us.
So because there’s a lot of stakeholders in that process. And so it’s important that we are identifying who is, who’s got the power. and how do we how do we claim our own power and and build our own power together to come because that is the that is the one thing that that can make for serious change for social change is really about you know power our kind of community power they definitely listen to that and oftentimes you know you find that they’re not listening to people who have the power. Anyway, we’re seeing it right now in our political world right now. We see it all the time. Things are out of touch. Decisions are made which seem kind of countered as a way that we live our lives. And so as we go through, we build that. That’s how we organize basically. And so food is one of those early and food and gardening in particular is an early entry point into being able to do that. Matthew Enloe: Yeah, and so as we get towards the tail end of the podcast, I want to talk about maybe ways to inspire other folks on this topic of what does organizing look like? What is setting up garden spaces that have impact into the food, meals, activities, empowerment in other vulnerable communities? I’m, the way you were describing how LA Can doesn’t jump right to the end to the problem solving. Whereas like if someone maybe from the outside is thinking about organizing, they might think about like, just making a structured plan, right? But that’s not at all what LA Can does. Working with y’all is so like,.
Personal Stories of Healing and Connection in the Garden
Matthew: It’s what I get to see every time is that we have we have. do the lights turn off for you? Todd Cunningham: Yeah, they just don’t come back on. I. Can turn I can do I can do some switching around. Where are you? Matthew Enloe: As well. As stretches too. But what y’all do is you guys intentionally put the listening first, the conversation as part as a key ingredient for the organizing. And.
Todd: Yep, yep. Matthew Enloe: Yeah, even when we’re working in the garden, when we’re doing that, we’re constantly talking, listening, planning. Before we go into making the organized plan, we take steps to make sure that people are heard, that people are empowered, that people are brought in so that it’s not just like no direction is taken just by one person marching on their own, which is… Todd Cunningham: Yeah, it’s quite really pretty good. Matthew Enloe: Someone were to do that, they wouldn’t have be building that power that exists in community. Do you have any stories or examples of times where you saw like a moment when the garden brought healing or connection or peace to someone on Skid Row? Any particular things that stand out? Todd Cunningham: So many, so, so many. It’s virtually almost every person this happens with on an individual basis. And I get to see it because it’s like, you know, I’m the point person here at LA Can for our garden work day, which happens on Thursday mornings at nine o’clock. And we get to work with you. And it’s like, you know, I can think of a couple of them in particular. One, a person who had been, who was unhoused. Matthew Enloe: Who is unhoused or was unhoused at the time. And she just came to us and wanted to, she had heard about it, but she had grown distant from her family, estranged, and but there her family’s from the south and she had planted things before but just had not really, didn’t have a place to plant them to do anything anymore. And she heard about this and she just couldn’t believe that there was a place where that she could actually do it.
And she wanted to just come here every week. and she was on her own personal healing journey. She would take some time to meditate. She would, but then when she was planting things and harvesting, she was so curious. She was like a sponge. And like in terms of information, she would ask Matthew lots of lots of questions about just the origins of plants and where they came from and how to take care of the chemistry behind them as well. Matthew’s a great expert on that. so, but then we would, the conversation would turn into like,. How can she give back? How could she? She just was so grateful, I would say, for being able to, you know, kind of energize herself and empower herself in a new direction, in a direction that she had long abandoned. Another memory really quick, I don’t want to forget this person who just recently joined up with us. Was so excited. She had not been upstairs really much at all. was a member of another one of our committees and she wanted to grow. She came specifically with some things she wanted to grow and one of those was Swiss chard and she planted it and she went in a little, I mean I’m gonna say a little reluctant. I don’t know if she was really reluctant but she was she was not sure what was going to happen and she was away for a couple of weeks or three weeks maybe after we planted them. When she came back and saw what was there it’s just like.
Matthew: See.
Todd: The joy, the overwhelming kind of like calm and peace that came over her, just the excitement, the smile from ear to ear and excitement about staying, sticking with it was palpable. It was amazing. And it’s like, so those kinds of things, those are moments that we experience that each, and each person has their own journey. You know, not everyone is that way. Some people are just like all about like,. Getting to the final crop and like being able to create salads and foods out of it as well. There’s a range of different experiences that people have. But in terms of healing and connection, it’s almost always, almost everyone has that same kind of thing about connection for sure. Matthew Enloe: Yeah, yeah, and we’ve seen folks who pass through, you know, like, there’s some folks who have been there pretty much since the first day I started working with y’all. And then other folks who have spent a couple of months with us and then moved on to other things. And what we see is really reflective of all growers. You know, it’s when I’m working with talking with someone who’s growing in Connecticut or. Growing in Arizona. Everyone has their own relationship to the garden and we all get something slightly different out of it, but we’re all connected in the activity together. So we can be our full authentic selves and we see it so much on the rooftop and so much of yourself comes out. but you’re also participating in something that you’re sharing with someone else, the same activity, bringing the parts of our own personality out, our own vulnerabilities.
So yeah, I mean, that’s one of the, I mean, there’s a reason why I fell in love with gardening a long time ago, and that’s a huge part of it. Todd Cunningham: Yeah, I did want to like just for real quick before I talk about, I know you’ve mentioned like people who want to start their own kind of space, community growing space like this. Before I answer that, I was just going to say that we also have, you know, we’ve been able to have great success in directing people towards campaigns. So, you know, this is, as I said, it’s like it’s a great organizing tool. And we have one of our campaigns is really to kind of. Not even kind of, but is to dismantle the kind of the systems and the processes that are out there that do serve to harm us and continuously oppress us. And so we call that decolonizing our foodways with the notion that like our many of the decisions that are made are not made by people who are who look like us, who’ve had a background like us. And for black and brown people in Skid Row, this is especially concerning because of course it’s like what. Happens is we are more prone to health outcomes that are not positive, where there years taken off our lives in terms of life expectancy because of serious illness and chronic illnesses and things like that. in this decolonizing our foodways, we are attacking, we’re addressing all the places where we get food from, auditing those places, identifying where there are.
Where the rubber hits the road, where it’s at the moment of truth when you’re getting food, what the choices are that we’re given, how fresh the food is or not, how much we are in dire need and in a constant search for affordable, healthy food. And as we all know across every community now, it’s like finding that kind of jam, it’s like a scavenger hunt. And so… In terms of that kind of thing, it’s important. For our garden space, we have a program called Fresh Roots from the Row where we’re taking some of our most popular plants and bringing them out to the community. Not everyone can make it over to Ellicott on Thursday mornings or any other time. And they don’t actually know. They haven’t had the experience of being able to experience our rooftop farm or in fact growing their own food. And so we want to teach people. And this is a great, this is where our program also is all about leadership development, creating leaders who can actually help train other people and to lead conversations with with electeds and lawmakers from a place of experience and passion and to be able to get us to new levels of understanding and enlightenment in our society about food assistance, legislation and equity. Matthew Enloe: Yeah, and as you were talking about the intentionality of the vendors that you guys work with, the different organizations that you might partner with, I remember when we first started working together,. Because you and I had known each other before we were working together in any sort of like professional regular capacity.
There was a certain point where you were like, I know there’s a lot of steps, but we have to make sure that we have, you know, everyone who’s part of Ellicand agrees that this is the right decision to go. That working with y’all or working with another org that I might be like, hey, these guys might be cool to work with. You guys take the steps to make sure that…
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