Feeding the Generations to Come - Carleton Turner
Co-founder, co-director, and lead artist of the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production, Carlton Turner works at the intersection of arts, culture, and agriculture. Carlton comes from a long lineage of workers of the land and believes in the power of storytelling through food. In this episode, Carlton tells his food story—a deeply compelling tale that tells the socio-political and economic history of Utica, Mississippi as it connects to the current day. Through the unfolding interconnected history between power and agency, Carlton makes the case for community investment, empowerment, and access to food and our story as we journey back towards regenerative food practices for the generations to come.
This episode of In Praxis is a part of Season 3: Food Justice.
The information, opinions, views, and conclusions proposed in this episode are those of our podcast guests.
You can also tune into this episode on Anchor, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Stitcher. Below is a transcript of the episode, edited for readability. You can also watch this episode on YouTube with subtitles for accessibility.
Carleton Turner
Podcast Transcription
Carlton Turner 00:00
You're asking the community, what do you want to do together? And you realize that they've never been asked that question before. So that question requires a level of creativity and imagination that has not been a part of their community design for as long as they can remember.
Podcast Intro 00:17
You're now listening to In Praxis, a podcast from The Praxis Project created to support hear from an uplift of stories coming out of the ecosystem of base building organizing. An ecosystem that includes frontline groups building community power, and the folks who help support their important work. In season three, our host Blair Franklin is exploring community driven strategies for food justice. Our guest are incredible community organizers working to advance fair farming practices, community led urban farming, and equitable food procurement and retail. These are their stories about how we feed our communities with healthy, culturally appropriate, fair, and affordable food and build community power to advance health equity through food justice.
Blair Franklin 01:41
Carlton, thank you so much for, yeah, just being a part of the In Praxis podcast really appreciate having your voice and perspective as part of a conversation around food and health justice. And so just would love for you to just start off by telling us a little about who you are and what you do.
Carlton Turner 01:58
Great. Well, thank you for the invitation. I'm really excited about this conversation. My name is Carlton Turner. I live in work in Utica, Mississippi, which is on the land of the Quapaw people, the Choctaw, the Natchez and the Yazoo. My family has been in this particular community for eight generations. And the work that I do is I am the co- founder and co-director, lead artists, there's a lot of titles with the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production. Mississippi Center for Cultural Production is an organization that was founded in 2017. And the organization was organized to support groups and individuals that are creating both social, economic and cultural transformation, looking towards long term sustainability through the research, creation, and presentation of arts, culture and agriculture. So to put it short, we're into improving the conditions of our community, using food story as leverage points.
Blair Franklin 03:02
Thank you so much. It's beautiful. And yeah, the connection to food and story as leverage points. Can you talk a little about what led you to start doing food justice work? What led you to this space?
Carlton Turner 03:14
Well, at the start with a story, my family, as I said, has been in this particular community for eight generations, I consider the history of the town of Utica to be to run concurrently with the history of my family, being in the state of Mississippi. So my family parts of my family are from came up from the south, from Louisiana into Tylertown and into places north as this area of Utica, Lebanon burning area of Mississippi, other parts of my family came over from Albany, Georgia, by way of South Carolina Charleston, into the same area of Learned coming with plantation owners that were running cotton and doing that work. So my family has a history of agriculture that is synonymous with the history of the town of Utica. When I grew up, I grew up with my mother and father, my mother's from this community grew up here started chopping cotton at the age of five, my father's from Harlem. His family came to New York by way of North Carolina, Hendersonville and Charleston, South Carolina. So tracing both sides of my family, both my mother and my father, go back to Charleston, South Carolina, and into Mississippi, by the way, around about ways of Harland and coming across in the mid 1800s.
Carlton Turner 04:36
So I grew up on a farm grew up between my mother's house, my parents house and my grandparents house. My grandfather was a farmer. And you know, when I grew up as a young boy, he operated a small farm he grew acres of peanuts, sweet potatoes, watermelon, corn, peas, he also had cows that he would milk daily. He had pigs that he would slaughter and and cure hams and bacon in his smokehouse. He had chickens that my grandmother would kill on a regular basis and cook chicken, or use the eggs daily, he had a host of other turkeys. And you know, it was just a small farm. So most of the food that we ate came from the land that came from either the immediate two acres that they lived on, or the acreage that my mother and father lived on. So basically, everything I ate came from the land that I lived on.
Carlton Turner 05:29
That wasn't a rare occurrence in our community, our community was an agricultural community. So you know, fast forward 40 years, and I'm taking a long time to tell the story. But fast forward 40 years, and my community that were creating their own food was a regular occurrence now doesn't have a grocery store, and has to travel 40 miles round trip to get access to fresh and healthy food. So for me, as we were thinking about this center in about creating a place of community development, we knew that the food system was the center of our issues. Mississippi has both a wealth of amazing fertile ground and has the worst health statistics in the entire country. You know, obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, infant mortality, Mississippi leads the country in all of these vital, terrible statistics. And we also have some of the most vital agricultural land in the country. So I saw this as a personal issue and as a community issue, to both change the dynamics of our local community. How we access food, how we think about cultural production, and have that as a leverage point to think about our over all community health and wellness.
Blair Franklin 06:42
Yes, thank you so much and for starting with a story. You know, stories are critical, and to help to paint such a important detailed picture of what led you to where you are now and what food access food justice look like in your community more broadly. You talked about Utica not have in a grocery store, and that food access is primary issue, right? primary concern. How are how were folks accessing food? You know, without a grocery store in Utica, what did that look like for folks?
Carlton Turner 07:10
Well, when we first started this work, we were working with some working assumptions. So we had some thoughts about what was going on in our community that we were experiencing ourselves, we wanted to make sure that our experience wasn't just a singular experience, that it was an experience that was something that the community was sharing. So we began working with a group called Gulf Coast Community Design Studio. And their job as architects and designers, was to help translate community conversations into programmatic and physical structures. We were the organization by which that work was happening. And and so we asked our community in our first series of gatherings, to look at a map of our kind of like larger community, the Utica community, like the Tri-County area that includes Hinds County, Coppia County, and Claiborne County, and to do a mapping exercise with us. We ask them to map four things on that map, to map where they live, where they work, where they shop, and where they worship. And so, what they found out and what we were kind of like, what acknowledged, what validated our thoughts was that these maps show a center point. Basically, these lines drawn out to all of these other points outside of our community. So what we came to the conclusion with our community about is that our community which which used to be a hub of activity, a hub of production, a hub of agriculture, and of learning and education, has now become a bedroom community.
Carlton Turner 08:49
That the thing that most people do, from Utica, in Utica, is sleep. That the things that other parts of their lives, the place where they work, the place where they shop, the place where they worship, all outside of our community. So what was important about that, was to begin to understand that people are basically doing the same thing they were doing when I was going up, which is shopping, where they work, they get food where they work. So if you're, if you're working in Jackson, you shop and Jackson, if you work in Crystal Springs, you shop in Crystal Springs, the same thing for Byram or for for Gibson, or for Clinton or Vicksburg.
Carlton Turner 09:28
People don't work in Utica. So there is very little shopping in Utica. And it's part of the reason why the grocery store left, but the grocery store could have stayed. It just found itself to be more profitable if it moved to another location. So that's, in a sense, our community is getting food where they work. So if they're working outside of the community, that's what they're accessing their food, but we're trying to shift the community identity. One of the questions we asked them was we now have assumed the role of a bedroom community. Is that a role that you're content with holding? And most of the community said no. And so we asked them, what role do you want to play as a community? And then how do we, backwards engineer from that, to building a plan from where we are today to get to that place?
Blair Franklin 10:20
Wow. Yeah. And so I love just that process is so rich and just like, yeah, the mapping exercise where you live, work, shop, worship, and again, kind of come back a story, right? I think like, it tells the story of like, who a person is, where they're going for their basic needs to get fed to get healed. All the ways what you mentioned, shifting community identity, and part of the conversation was shifting community identity, from bedroom community, to a new identity, what was the ability folks were hoping to gain or to move toward?
Carlton Turner 10:56
I think that's we're still in that discovery process. I think the community is still in that discovery process. One of the challenges that we've acknowledged very early on in the process is that a lot of the issues that I just laid out, you know, not having a grocery store, the grocery store left in 2014. So we're now seven years into almost seven, the grocery store left in November, right before Thanksgiving. And we have some really interesting stories about people talking about trying to put together that Thanksgiving dinner, the year that the grocery store left, because it changed their relationship to food. But going back a second, we're in this process of discovery. So we're trying to figure this out with the community where we're still trying to just map how the community wants to identify itself. But one of the challenges that we face is that the grocery store left in 2014. But what really preceded the grocery store leaving was the closing of the shirt factory, which employed 100 women that was directly across the street from the grocery store, those women made the decisions about what will be eaten, what will be purchased, what will be used in that household.
Carlton Turner 12:02
So in closing the shirt factory, the grocery store lost 100 families that have served. And even preceding the closing of the textile factory, that shirt factory was the consolidation of high schools, which closed the high school that was in the town center, and relocated those children, those teachers to other other jobs in schools, but the children now have to go to school 20 miles away. So you now have a group of teachers of staff, workers, children, parents coming to pick their children up that were coming right past the grocery store to go to engage in this high school that no longer do that. So you lost those customers. So the closing of the grocery store in 2014, actually started with the consolidation of the high schools in 1993. So having conversations with our community about what that means, has shifted and change the way that they understand the narrative of what the predicament is that we're currently in.
Carlton Turner 13:02
So we're still trying to figure out what the identity is. But the most important thing that we can do is, as we're trying to figure out the identity, that we shift the ideas about how we engage from being a consumer to being a producer first. And that's what we talk about we unpack that story with the community of the closing of the shirt factory, where we were producing garments, and actively participating in a larger economy that extended beyond Utica, or the production of educators and the education institution, as we produce students, and we produce teachers, that those activities put us in a different relationship to the world than we are now as we're just consuming. We're purchasing and we're bringing back instead of developing and designing and producing from our community. And so that's the primary identity shift that we're looking to advance is from consumer first to producer first.
Blair Franklin 14:06
The interconnectedness that you named right of connecting food and the loss of the grocery store back to closing of schools and closing of the factory where folks were able to work it's the same income and just how infrastructure like those infrastructure pieces are deeply connected. And what it might mean to, yeah, just like believe and invest in. I think you mentioned earlier, just like the fertile ground that's already there. Underneath folks feet and being a producer being a producer first. That's yeah, just like beautiful context. You talked about some of this work, right and addressing community needs building community power, looking like being engaged in these conversations, engaging and being a producer first. There are other ways that you've seen community power built through these conversations and through the work of the center?
Carlton Turner 15:01
Yeah, well, you know, I would like to see and understand what role we've played. I would say that since we've started these conversations in 2017, there have been a number of businesses started in the town, mostly food related, there's been stores for food, restaurants, mostly not the healthiest of choices. But then there's also been a nutrition space that has opened up providing healthy shakes, and meal substitutes. All this has happened since we began doing our work. But I don't want to take responsibility and say, "oh, yeah, we did this, because we were doing this that those things happen". I think there's always a synergy that is happening, people are people are thinking similar thoughts. Even if they're not interconnected to each other, if they're not thinking these thoughts together, that, you know, people are like, "Yeah, I've been thinking about that, too". So I'm gonna go ahead and act on this idea, because I see that other people are also acting on it. So I think just the action of us gathering of us organizing, even if people aren't directly engaged in that organizing, also still sparks other people to get active and do their thing. Or we're tapping into a larger synergy of ideas that are already, you know, in the community, that people get motivated by seeing others in action. We've seen kind of the resurgence of farmers markets, coming back to the community, of community street festivals, and, and First Friday events, again, not taking responsibility for making those things happen. But we've seen a level of action happen in the community that is different from what it was before we started. And we have seen a much larger interest in our community from the outside as people see that we're trying to engage in some form of self determination within our community.
Blair Franklin 16:50
Yeah, thank you. And again, I think that interconnectedness comes up again, right, and just recognizing that there are so many people and organizing efforts happening. And it's a fabric and a web of this work that's happening and Utica you're a part of and communities with the naming and uplifting. What are some of the greatest barriers you experienced in this work? And how do you overcome some of those barriers?
Carlton Turner 17:13
Oh, barriers. So I'll go back to the previous conversation that we were talking about the closing of the spaces and how they connect to the healthy food options. So when the textile factory closed, and I think it was 1998, there were three or four of those factories that were owned by the same company. And they closed around the same time. And all of that was related to the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, where cheaper labor was found, the ability to get the same garments made at non union spaces, or in places that were not in the US or by, you know, much cheaper labor. Whatever those reasons. The women who worked in that factory had no engagement in the decision making process that led to the closing of the factories. Subsequently, or you know similarly so, the closing of the high school the decision to close Utica High School and merge those children into the Raymond High School was not a decision that the parents or the teachers of Raymond of Utica High School had a stake in. They didn't— their voices were not heard. It was a financial decision. It was a decision that was made at a board level of the school board. It had to do with politics, it had to do with, you know, the development and building up of one particular community versus investments being made in all communities.
Carlton Turner 18:40
So there's a level of access, agency, and equity that were not a part of those decisions that have had generational impact on our community. So I think part of the work that we're trying to accomplish is about engaging our community in a practice of, we're involved in deciding the future for our community. So getting back to this idea that we're standing on our legacy, this the soil that we stand on, is our inheritance. It is the thing that we know how to do is the ancestral connection to the fertility of the ground and its ability to produce for us with us, that can lead to a level of both economic empowerment and economic development, but also financial freedom that is different from working for a factory that's owned by a corporation. Or leaning into or away from the decisions that are made by a board that are not a part of your community that may either decimate or enhance your community. And these are some of the questions that we're faced with. These are some of the barriers is that access that agency, that ability to be a part of a conversation that ultimately impacts the quality of life that you're able to live and the quality of life that you're able to provide for the community that you're part of. So that's one barrier that we are in constant address of.
Carlton Turner 20:03
I think the other barrier is our ability to recognize our power. You know, and so when you come into a community, when you're working with community, and you're asking the community, what do you want to do together? And you realize that they've never been asked that question before. So that question requires a level of creativity and imagination, that has not been a part of their community design. For as long as they can remember, nobody's asked them whether or not they want to build a factory, or ask them whether or not they want to have this particular amenity or another, what they usually in is response mode to whatever someone else's decisions has provided or taken away. And we see this access to the center of creativity and imagination as being a place where our community needs support. Right now, imagination is a barrier. And so I work in food goes alongside, our work in telling stories. Because in our stories, we hold both our ability to access what has already been possible, we hold the ability to access our own dreams and aspirations, and harness that into a community development model that has space for everyone to contribute. And so that I don't want to name that as a barrier necessarily. But the barrier is to get people to be able to be in a place of regenerative and imagine that space and this ability to dream together, or even dream on their own, like to create that as a community practice.
Carlton Turner 21:47
What has been the barrier is that we have not been in that mode, and that our communities have not been set up to support and enhance, you know, community generation and imagination. And so that's a barrier. I think the the final barrier is one that, you know, is a very across the board for small rural communities, and that's access to capital, you know, the ability to have access to the, to the money that it takes to power a locally designed economy, to where people can have their bills paid, people can have purposeful work, not just jobs, but purposeful work. Work that is advancing values, and ideas that are central to the identity of the community. And that's where, you know, a lot of these projects and ideas fall short is that we kind of know what we need to change the material conditions of our communities, but we don't have the capital to actually see those things to fruition. And that becomes a barrier.
Blair Franklin 22:52
Yeah, so if you had that capital, right, if you had like unlimited resources, think, framing just all abundance here, right? What would what would you do to increase your impact?
Carlton Turner 23:03
I think the capital is one thing. The other part is personnel. You know, it's like people, you know, you know, it's a lot of work. And it's time, you know, the most valuable resources time, it took 40 years for our community to get in the shape that it's in now from what I remember, as a child, in which there was just a plethora of opportunities, of resources of places for food and agricultural wealth to being a place that is, you know, kind of devoid of all those things. It's going to take 40 years, or at least a generation to transition our community from where it is now to a place of wealth and abundance. And not saying that it will, that there's a destination that we're trying to get to that we can't reach in 20 years, but that the incremental development of our community is an everyday practice. It's not a you know, money won't fix it, we can get $10 billion tomorrow, and it would divide our community 17,000 ways.
Carlton Turner 23:59
But the most important part is that we're building a practice that is generative is working from the imagination is building in the type of structures that allow us to grow and expand, not just for the sake of expansion, but for the sake of including and being able to touch and impact the lives of more and more of our community every day. So I would say, for us, it's making an investment in education so that young people. We're building a generation the same way that I was built not duplicating my upbringing the same. Just me acknowledging that the fact that I was able to witness my grandfather and my grandmother live a life that is wholly influenced by the land that they're working, you know, in an infrastructure that was sustainable, that was as much generative as it was extractive that it wasn't out of balance. It was, you know, we're raising these chickens, we're able to take these eggs, but we're also making sure that we leave so many eggs behind the hatch so that there's another generation Chickens, that the same thing with the pigs, the same thing with a turkey, same thing with the cows and same thing with the plants.
Carlton Turner 25:06
That we're going to, you know, plant these potatoes, we're going to harvest them, but we're going to hold so many potatoes back to make sure that we can plant again next season and that we're investing in soil generation, we're investing in the water table, we're making sure that we're not wasting, like, that's the practice. And how do we reinvest in that type of community wide framework that allows young people to grow up in a system that is not extractive, but as it is generative. And that's where I would if I had a billion dollars, that's the type of infrastructure I will be working to help build with our community is a practice of generative structures and infrastructure for our entire community. And that is the way that we approach community development.
Carlton Turner 25:52
We think of our community development as comprehensive cultural community development, meaning that we're not just looking at economics, we're not just looking at agriculture, we're not just looking at housing, or health and wellness, but recognizing that all of those pieces have to be present in order for our community to be whole and healthy and well. That comprehensiveness to community development means that we can be a space where anyone in our community can bring their thoughts, bring their aspirations, bring their dreams, and that we can be a space to help nurture that even if we don't have the solutions, even if we can't answer your problem directly. We can help you think about it, we can put some brains on that critical analysis, and put some feelers out into the networks that were tapped into, to make sure that we can connect you with resources that can be closer to the thing that you need. And that's just a different way of thinking about community development, then the institutions that we currently have in our communities, which are focused on one or other parts of your development, but not the comprehensive.
Blair Franklin 26:58
You dropped so much wisdom, and so much knowledge and so much possibility. I think in that yeah, thank you. I am deeply honored to be speaking with you today. I am curious, yeah. Just what advice would you give to someone thinking about doing similar work? Right, thinking about working at intersections of arts and food and community empowerment and decision making an agency and storytelling gadgets? What would you what advice would you give to someone thinking about doing a similar initiative.
Carlton Turner 27:27
Yeah, that's a great question. I will say, you know, the start where you are, you know, don't feel like you have to have to have this entire like thing figured out before you start doing the work. I mean, the work is 90%, listening, you know, listen, it's the folks around you, the people that are experiencing it, whatever you're experiencing, listen to that. Connect with people who are having similar experiences, this is not savior work. Like, I'm not trying to save my community, you know, my community is saving me, it's given me an understanding of what it means to be in service to be a part of a larger idea.
Carlton Turner 28:08
When we started to work, we came with a set of questions, we didn't come with a set of answers. And I think that that's the important starting point, just like you're coming to listen, ask questions for inquiry, inquiry should drive the way that organization is designed and developed. You can't design and develop a community based institution without the community. I feel like, if we move in that particular type of way, if that becomes like a value that we hold, then a lot of the institutions that exist that are supposedly serving, and providing the daily needs of a community would be out of business, because they were designed outside of a community framework.
Carlton Turner 28:53
And so they don't actually support and serve the community, they serve themselves, the institution is actually self serving. And a byproduct of this self serving is that it provides some service for the community. And for us, what we need in our community institutions that are that are wholly designed by community, and its service is about the community and in the community that it serves are at the table of decision making. They're the ones benefiting from the opportunities, and they're the ones making the decisions about the future. I would say that value, you know, listen, ask questions, and build from the answers that you get, and as long as events sequence will be alright.
Blair Franklin 29:38
Yeah, that's powerful. Thank you. Is there anything else you feel like you want to add before we close?
Carlton Turner 29:44
Oh, I don't think so. I mean, I think it's just the other part. I will just add, yes, I'll add one more thing.
Blair Franklin 29:51
Yeah.
Carlton Turner 29:52
Patience, too often our work is influenced and dictated by external data, lines and external frameworks for how change happens. And ultimately, your community is going to dictate that timeline. And that should be the guiding framework. You know, I feel like this work is generational, at least, meaning that it will take at least 20 years to begin to see long term impact in this work. And that in five years, we're just now you know, we'll be five years old next February. We're just now setting the foundation for the work. So I feel good! I feel like there's a lot left to do. Tons left to do. And sometimes that gets overwhelming. But I think recognizing that it doesn't all have to get done today, that you do what you can today. And tomorrow, you rest you give your body rest and your mind rest. And tomorrow you do what you can do it tomorrow.
Blair Franklin 30:55
Wow. Yes, that is a word, that is a word! Thank you, Carlton. You're incredible! Your work you're doing is incredible. The people are dope. I'm so honored. I'm honored. Yes.
Carlton Turner 31:09
Thank you, Blair. It's been great talking.
Podcast Outro 31:29
Thank you for listening to this episode of In Praxis. We hope you all enjoyed it. Make sure to visit our website, www.thepraxisproject.org where you can check out additional episodes with other guests, as well as learn more about our work.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
community, people, utica, food, barrier, grocery store, factory, work, decision, praxis, family, mississippi, grew, conversation, access, ability, agriculture