Finding Freedom in Food - Emanuel Brown
Space Curator, Facilitator and conjuror of spaces for freedom, Emanuel H. Brown (he/him), Executive Director and Steward of Acorn Center for Restoration and Freedom, life's work centers around the question of How can people get free? How can people feel free? In this episode, Emanuel explores ideas of freedom through our ability to access healthy and health promoting food and our connection to the land. Food is a story. Food is restoring. Food is a mechanism for our healing. Our collective relationship to food and its source can transform not only our bodies but our world as we strive for liberation.
This episode of In Praxis is a part of Season 3: Community-Driven Strategies for 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.
Finding Freedom in Food - Emanuel Brown
Podcast Transcription
SPEAKERS
Host, Blair Franklin, Emanuel Brown
Emanuel Brown 00:00
When people feel like they have access to food that is good to their bodies that promotes their own health that feels like it's an alignment with who they are as people, then their imaginations even about what justice can be gets activated and fueled in a completely different way.
[Podcast intro tunes]
[In Praxis Intro] 00:17
You're now listening to In Praxis, a podcast from The Praxis Project created to support, hear from, and 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 guests 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 01:40
So thanks so much for taking the time today. I am super excited! I'm gonna start with the first question here. And we'll get into the interview. So would you mind just telling us a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Emanuel Brown 01:52
Great, I'm so glad to be a part of the In Praxis podcast. First off, I really excited that this opportunity came to me through the National Black Food and Justice Alliance, which is great. My name is Emanuel H. Brown, and my pronouns are he and him. And I'm currently the Executive Director and steward of Acorn Center for Restoration and Freedom. Beyond that I am a space curator, facilitator, and really someone who is all about conjuring spaces where people can experience freedom as an everyday reality. Not as just a distant vision future thing, but as something that we can have right now, whether it be for 30 seconds, or 30 days. And much about what I do is about doing that, right. So the evolution of my work to becoming a landed project out here in occupied Muscogee Creek territory in Georgia has been the evolution of being able to be like how can people get free? How can people feel free? How can people get free? How can people feel free, and that's what I do. It's looked differently.
Emanuel Brown 03:02
We're celebrating our fifth year anniversary this year, and every year it is looked differently, because I'm so driven by the question. and the compulsory nature of freedom being possible in our bodies right now, even inside of this work began inside of a Trump era space as a means of my own survival. Quite frankly, I was like, if this is what's about to happen, I need to do everything differently. And I believe that my people need something different. And so our basic work is that we host wellness, artistic, and spiritual spaces for BIPOC folks, queer and trans folks who are interested in being in the curiosity of freedom. We do that through four main initiatives. We do it through Black Love Convergence, which is a gathering of Black people, annually that happens in which we try to practice the freedom we want to experience in ourselves and in our relationships with each other. And try to deeply listen for what's coming ahead so that we can be prepared from one generation to the next to keep the momentum of Black freedom moving forward. Our second initiative was called The Well which is mostly and has mostly been virtual programming or pop up programming that we've done locally to provide people with access to wellness services and care root medicine and traditional practice largely for free or donation based. And then we also have Trans Visible which is our leadership development and spiritual development program that is centered around transgender gender non-conforming, non binary, two spirited artists and creatives. And then finally, which is our newest baby, which is our retreat center, which is a landed project that is almost equal distance from Atlanta, Macon, and Athens in Georgia, where we provide restorative retreats for groups and individuals, couples and families here on the land. And we see the first initiative of that restorative retreat is to restore Black folks, Indigenous folks and other people of color queer trans folks back to their connection with the land by providing them a space where they can just be. We do a DIY experiences, we also do cultivated experiences with folks. And we try to just create a place where people can really see themselves connected to some piece of land, as we find that to be a huge component of how people can imagine freedom in this time and age.
Blair Franklin 05:43
Whew! Wow, that was incredible. And soul stirring. So thank you so much for again, just that rich description of all the ways that you show up in the world. And yeah, in the work that you do, and congratulations on your fifth year anniversary. Awesome. You're welcome. You're welcome. So exciting, again, to many more years of helping folks get free and feel free. And so curious about you doing like a land stewardship work, a lot of bonus work with black, queer and trans folks in particular, can you just talked about food justice, actually, and how food justice intersects with the work that you do.
Emanuel Brown 06:20
Yeah, you know, when I think about the story of food of my work, I don't even know how they could be separate. Really this edge of the work this idea about like cultivating spaces where freedom is possible, started Friday nights at my mom's house, when she would often have a fish fried dinner. My mother for a good chunk of my childhood ran a daycare center that cater to largely Caribbean families, who were second and first generation immigrant families. And her tradition of inviting people inviting the parents to stay to linger to stay a while, during the Friday nights is really where I at 9-10 years old was able to see, oh, this is possible. My mom has created a new world over fried whiting and shrimp and crab limbs. You know, I didn't think or you know, at the time, I didn't understand what I was looking at. But over time, I come back to that place time and time again. You know, it was over those dinners that close exchanged hands from the older to the younger children. That advice was given on how to how to navigate the immigration system, where heartbreak was shared, and joys were shared and celebrated and birthdays happen. And so to me, my entire life has food has been an integral part of the freedom journey.
Emanuel Brown 07:52
And over time, you know, I feel really privileged to have had through the academic successes in my life access to a lot of spaces that many of my peers growing up in Queens, New York did not have access to right. Like I grew up on buildings on top of buildings on top of concrete with next to more building. Right so, we were not this was before the age of the farmers market. I didn't know nothing about it. And you know, where my vegetable intake was mostly like broccoli and cabbage, like I don't know why. Every now and again, a carrot would cross the plate, greens, collard greens would come through but like really... my basic vegetable intake was broccoli and cabbage. So the idea that food like where food began, wasn't something that I grew up with, right, I grew up with grocery stores and bodegas. I didn't grow up with people who had even trees in their backyard that were producing food. And so through my academic journey, I was able to get into community where I could start to look and think differently about food because I was being schooled in more affluent communities or places that were closer to the farm industry. Right. And so therefore had farmers markets like I went to school right out of Philadelphia. So the, the Pennsylvania Dutch farmers market was like the thing, you know, and I remember walking into that space and being like these people grow this food? and bring it here and sell it to you? and almost a little skeptical, like almost like but what happens to it in the meantime, you know?
Emanuel Brown 09:40
You know, not being from a place where I saw people with gardens or backyard gardens like my mother loved plants, but she never really grew food. So being exposed to that in early college made me initially very curious. Also let me know that the food that I was getting in the grocery store was not actually food Blair. What was that?
Blair Franklin 10:09
Yeah, yeah.
Emanuel Brown 10:11
You know, like tasting a peach for the first time or tasting some green beans for the first time or seeing like fresh grits, things like that, or having like fresh milk when I used to drink milk and being like, what? That's not milk? Milk from the cow, that I don't know what I've been drinking out of that carton box. Because this is a different texture, it smells different tastes different, right. So I think that really sparked me to get very curious about food into my early adulthood. Again, having the opportunity to travel abroad so I lived in Korea for a short period of time. And then really, the cementing of the food journey came when I moved to Oakland, California. Now I was in an urban environment. So a place that I was much more familiar with. I'm like, Okay, this looks urban, but you had your backyard growers, plus you had your small urban farms, plus you had the farmers market that you could go to every day. And so it really allowed me a place to integrate this idea of food access, and the quality of food as food justice and to take advantage of being in a space where you are so close to the source and production of most of the food in this country, and to be able to get the freshest resources to meet and greet with farmers to learn about the migrant farmer and indigenous farmer journey around being able to access food. And so from that my love of cooking, just continue to fuel my love and my idea of what food justice would be. So I would say that the thing that led me to the first action inside of food justice was really recreating a lot of the food that I ate as a kid with fresher, organic, more healthful health promoting ingredients. Right? So, you know, replacing corn oil with olive oil and sunflower oil, but still frying delicious chicken recipe for two things and being like, oh, peanut oil. I'm sorry, we used to fly everything and peanut oil despite peanut allergies being a thing. This is such a better oil. How do we lose access to that? Why is it all of a sudden $9 A bottle?
Emanuel Brown 12:29
What's going on there? So really allowing my passion for food like for cooking to say, Okay, how do I create food that reminds me of home, but I know is promoting more health. And then the final thing starting a corn five years ago, I wasn't thinking about nobody's land, city kid, I said, I am a city kid. So I wasn't thinking about anybody's land, but people kept asking for it. And we kept seeing the connection between what we were holding the spaces of healing. These gatherings were 85-100 people were coming together for one common purpose to heal and to feel free. How important food being a part of that how important touching the dirt that somebody had cultivated that somebody had loosed of its spines inside of slavery or plantations or whatever. How important those things were to the journey, how it resource people gave people much more capacity, right. So when people felt nourished, they felt like they had more capacity to go deeper to be more vulnerable to allow things to release things to actually let things go. I remember when we did Black Love Convergence, and we were two years ago, three years ago now. And we were at the Penn Center, which is Gullah Geechee lands of the coast of South Carolina. We had invited some kindred that were from Jamaica, the islands. And I had done some special work because I lived there for a period of time to make sure we got snacks that they often have there. The brand of snacks that they often have there. And the people who were there from that place like coming up to me and being like, like almost in tears to see those cassava chips that they could get home be on the table as their everyday offering. Right, and so for me that really cemented food is storing. Fogod is a mechanism absolutely for healing. And when people feel like they have access to food that is good to their bodies that promotes their own health that feels like it's an alignment with who they are as people, their imaginations even about what justice can be get activated and fueled in a completely different way.
Blair Franklin 14:48
Okay, there are so many incredible things moments that you uplifted and everything that you named and just continue to be both deeply appreciative and deeply inspired by— Yeah, just by that reflection, and what I'd like uplift a couple of things that I heard that I feel like they're repeating, right. So I think the way that you talked about your mom creating a new world through whitening and fried fish, and just like the food she brought to the table, hearing about that journey of tasting food for the first time, and realizing the food you were sold in grocery stores was not food, it was just that first tasting of actual real food grown from the earth, how it transformed you. Yeah, how access and quality of food is food justice, it's story. It's a mechanism for healing. All of that is so powerful, so profound. And then I wonder then as you're doing this land stewardship work, and this food justice working, bringing folks home for themselves and getting them to like imagine, right, justice, what are some of the greatest barriers you experience to your work? How do you overcome some of them?
Emanuel Brown 15:57
Yeah, I would definitely say the first greatest barrier was definitely the racism of black food being treated as deadly and unhealthy. And the reason why that was such an intense barrier, for me growing up, like, again, as a city kid, it's like, once the health movement started to take hold in the 90s, and the early 2000s, we were bombarded with commercials about the dangers of our own food. When people used to watch regular TV, you didn't have a choice about what was happening in between, we were bombarded with your food is unhealthy, your food is unhealthy, you are unhealthy, your body is unhealthy, everything is about you is unhealthy. And so you should change. And the change wasn't necessarily talked about is like change to more traditional versions of these foods that you don't even have access to anymore. So we're going to no longer have that peanut oil be $9 a bottle, we're going to drop it down to $3, so that you can actually access the way you used to fry food, instead of having to be in our capitalistic driven corn oil markets. So that wasn't the change that was being reported. Right? It was changed to a white palette, and a white way of eating. And so that I think was such a huge barrier. Because it created this odd relationship between health promoting foods and whiteness.
Emanuel Brown 17:27
That Black people were in holistic rejection of, that if you ate certain things like now, you know, even though Michelle Obama was like the, the face of the My Plate, I don't think anybody even knows how much she had to do with all of that. Because people saw that as giving up a piece of Blackness, right? They saw it as stepping outside of their cultural norms. And so therefore, and I saw it as that, right, like, oh, you eat like a white person, you know, like, what? What does that even mean? We don't even know. But I don't want to be the person who's caught out there without my fried chicken on my plate, right? I don't want to be the person who's asking for like, oh, do these greens have pork or not? Right? I don't want to be that person. And I see that happening culturally within Black community for so long, that it was a huge barrier to be like, actually, our food, in its traditional forms, in the ways that we, you know, people were talking about, like we were making do with things, but I'm like, the things that we were making do with were so much more health promoting, than the things that they offer us now. Right? And the ways of preparation and the slowness of food, right, and not moving into fast food and things like that. Those are not our traditions. McDonald's is not Black culture.
Emanuel Brown 18:52
You couldn't even go into McDonald's for so long. Like, that's not us. So how do we separate those things? I think another big barrier is people's access to food that is health actually promoted, not just subsistence food, not just having, you know, why would you go to the store if the potatoes are $1 if the white rustic potatoes are $1 a pound and the kale is $2 a pound you know, somebody on a budget is going to be like listen, I'm gonna feel more full, you know, more what I need with these potatoes in this kale. So being able to financially access the foods or locally access the foods, right? Like where grocery stores are put up in a way, like living in different urban environments across my adulthood life. I never ran across an urban environment was at least some portion of that city was completely cut off from food where people had to go 20-30, sometimes even 40 minutes away, just to get to an actual grocery store. And so being able to access good nutritious food is a whole thing.
Emanuel Brown 20:03
And finally, I'll say, the last barrier is just behavior change, you know, which is a barrier to anything freedom, right? Like any justice that we seek in the world, we should try it out on ourselves first. And that requires us to change behavior. So if I'm talking about food justice, that means that what's in my cabinet needs to look different, right? How I treat food, where I choose to put my food dollars, right? That might mean, you know, inconveniencing me a little bit more, but it's worth it. If I know I'm supporting more local farmers or Black farmers or whatever. So we that piece around behavior change how we can actually adapt our behaviors, to be able to reflect the intentions and the justices that we actually seek is a whole thing. You know, it's both, I think a lot of times when we think about justice work, we just think about the external things that are acting on us that don't give us access or the quality that we would like. But we also have to think about, okay, well, what are the internal things, right, so I had to really come to grips with that when I was living in Oakland, and there was a grocery store everywhere, you know, in the part of the city that I live, plus a daily farmers market. Plus, even at the times when I needed to be like on EBT, you could use your EBT at the farmers market and get twice as much like they had it all set up. So you're still eating those cup of noodles, like you're still eating this ramen, right? Not to judge myself, but to be like, ah, what are the slow and measured ways that I can change my behavior, so that my access to good food is not only dependent on what I have access to, but it's also dependent on how I choose to use what I have access to.
Emanuel Brown 21:49
Which I think really shifted, you know, being able to have conversations with folks about the food that they're providing, or what kind of food it is, and things like that all really shifted the way I was able to come to food justice for myself, and even within my personal family, right, like, that's where it just really takes hold, you know, then bringing that stuff home and being like, "Alright, if I'm gonna cook, I'm gonna cook what I'm gonna cook, but I would cook at home." Even though my food behaviors and patterns are different, bearing and grunting down and like people be like, "Well, what's this? And what's that? What's this? I never had that". Right? Because at the end of the day, it was delicious. And on the plate and they ate. It was able to be like, okay, like, it was worth it for me to be able to prepare this meal for my family, which I'd love to do. And even to go through what might feel like some cultural ridicule or something like that to be able to say, except now I'm also introducing them to new things, things that feel like us still, but they have a different way of accessing it.
Blair Franklin 22:58
Hmm, yes, yes. Yes. Yes. Again, you talking really so clearly about food access, kind of talking about our ancestral traditions, right of like really moving back to recognizing how healthful Black food is, and when and what it means to actually like, deny or reject kind of the capitalist food that brought it to us every single day, we're going to kind of going back and doing more of our cultural truth. And then yeah, what it looks like to live that out. What is it like in practice? How do you measure success? What does that look like for you? I think, in the context of the work and the context of, yeah, Acorn, what does success look like for you?
Emanuel Brown 23:37
So here at Acorn, our food project is that we are growing a herbalist and chef's kitchen farm. And what that means is we are primarily interested in growing things that serve as medicinal herbs, and then herbs for cooking, which could be the same thing. Yeah, but sometimes people think about them very differently. And we do a little bit of like vegetable growing, we would like to get good at a few good vegetables. So we're trying to get good at lettuces, because we find that those, especially being here in the south, sometimes that's the limiting factor for food businesses, is you go and get that salad. And that salad is got a bunch of iceberg lettuce in it. And you're like "Why am I eating this? I don't, I don't want this". But we know that our Black owned, especially Black owned and BIPOC own food businesses, the difference in cost, right? We able to get that iceberg lettuce or that green mix, or that spring mix or whatever is so different. And so we want to be able to partner with local food businesses, to be able to provide them with some of those extra things right like that you don't think about edible flowers, lettuces, herbs, fresh herbs, parsley, sage, rosemary, purple basil and Thai basil, things that actually on a large scale would cost them a lot to try to get access to that we could be offering them even in small batches that could really enhance what they're providing to the people already.
Emanuel Brown 25:16
So that's the end of that. And so here we think success is, first off the partnerships that we develop with herbalists so we are becoming an herb processing space, essentially, so that people could source herbs from us for their herbal medicines, whether it be teas, tinctures, cordials, salves, we're developing that end of things, and then also developing the relationship with our local Black own food businesses to be able to say, like, do you even have to pay us for this stuff? Or is it an offering, right? Is it an offering that will enhance what you're providing, so building relationships with those who have Black owned food businesses here, and because we're outside of the city, to that even matters, even so much more about what food businesses get access to, and how they can and shift and change and enhance whatever their menu is, is so different when you're outside of the perimeter. To be able to be that purveyor of like, actually, here's this bundle of this delicious sweet green mix lettuce and this fresh basil that you could be using for any parts of your food business. So I think first success is the relationships, the relationships that we are building and continue and will continue to build over the next, you know, 30 years that really creates an infrastructure around growing food and providing herbs to folks who really are doing it for the sake of the people.
Emanuel Brown 26:47
I think the other success is when people come here for retreats at Acorn, they're given two meals a day that are lovingly prepared by me or my niece, who is our in house chef. Those meals are largely vegan, gluten free and dairy free. So for me, the success in that is when people are like, "Oh, I can eat like this", nothing has been taken from in order to eat like this, this isn't about lack or not having something this is just a different way of doing it. So to see when people leave here, like, wow, I haven't had this many vegetables in six months, or a year. Right. Like since I've you served me more vegetables than I've had in the year. And people have said that to us. And I'm like, I'm so glad, right so that people can really start to connect, like, "Oh, if I can do it there, then is it something that I can take home. And then how do I take it home?" Finally, I think the measure of success is perhaps a far cry away. But really, for people to look at food and herbalism and herbs as a part of their basic needs, that we treat it with the same veracity that we treat anything else that we need to live. So this idea that having fresh, nutritious food is a luxury is gone, right? Like hopefully, in 30 years, no one thinks it's a luxury, but people can really see it as something that everyone can have access to. And my only thought about how that happens is through developing more localized to systems. I don't think it works on a big national scale. They can't if I'm getting cantaloupe from California, that cantaloupe is not going to be the best cantaloupe versus canteloupe that I can get from South Carolina, or I can get from southern Georgia or even I can get from Florida, right like so developing— really having a robust system of localized food systems where you could essentially go on any block urban or suburban or rural, and people who like yeah, we got a farmers market or Yeah, I go do direct get my CSA from this farmer, they come and bring our box once a week. And that is really what I see as success.
Emanuel Brown 29:09
And while it Acorn might not be directly a part of that system, who knows we might become a part of it. You know, I think planting the seed that that kind of system is possible is absolutely what we're able to do we source most of our food from local farmers. And we work with a Black CSA that is here local to us. And so we tell that story all the time, right like go to the farm stand, don't go to the grocery store. If you're trying to pick up veggies, go to the farm stand first and then get what you need from there first. So we want to be a part of the people who are planting that seed deeply with folks. And the best way we know how to do it is that they get connected right here on the land to where food is coming from and how it shows up on their plate.
Blair Franklin 29:50
Yeah. So the vision is so big and so real and tangible and you have people that you're supporting and community with learning from every single day, I'm curious about if you had like unlimited resources, if money wasn't an option, just have whatever you need. What would you do to increase your impact in your work?
Emanuel Brown 30:10
Yeah. Oh, man, unlimited resources!
Blair Franklin 30:13
Yeah! Dream big.
Emanuel Brown 30:14
I can live in an unlimited resource mindset.
Blair Franklin 30:16
The abundance!
Emanuel Brown 30:21
Like, oh, that doesn't matter... Oh, here's where I would put money. One would be, we already have an incubator program, I would put so much resources about incubating other either food healing businesses that are looking to use the land as a resource. Whether it's the development of herbs, whether it's using the land physically, I would just dump gobs and gobs of money into people with an idea. What we know about investment capital, and all of that kind of like innovation capital is, I don't know, it's something like 1% of the funds come to Black people, or to people of color.
Blair Franklin 31:03
Yeah.
Emanuel Brown 31:04
Like, it's not even enough. So I would start putting out money, lots and lots of money into the hands of people with ideas about how to increase the well being of our people using food, using herbal medicine, using anything that comes from the earth and is connected and trying to be in relationship to the earth. So that's the first thing that I would do. And then I think the second thing I would do is I would put more money into buying up as much land as possible. Well, not all land dreams have an agricultural component, like this one didn't. But being on the land long enough gives you the idea about where do I fit in the system? Do I want to grow just watermelon? Do I want to grow just greens to I want to grow, just herbs. So for me, purchasing land and cultivating people to be stewards of that land and then seeing! I think what we underestimate is the land will teach you about biodiversity, the agricultural system as it is pretty much shoots that in the foot. But the land will teach us about biodiversity because it has to it's how it functions.
Emanuel Brown 32:13
So then we'll start to figure out like, okay, who's in my neighborhood who's local to me? What are they growing? What am I growing? How do we make something that kind of works together? So yeah, so I think the second thing I would do is dump a bunch of money into just acquiring land and supporting stewards to steward that land, not me.
Blair Franklin 32:35
Be clear.
Emanuel Brown 32:39
Other stewards other reasons, I can snatch him up, and then I'm gonna put you on it, you know? And then finally, I think I would support even in this COVID era, like, how do we continue to learn, you know, my people are Caribbean. And so going back and forth to the Caribbean has been crucial. Even though Caribbean islands are largely barred from having their own internal farming structure, there's still so much to learn and how people do things, everybody's got a backyard garden that got something everybody's doing some sort of trade with everyone. To be in a place where people can travel, like intentionally travel, to learn about how people are using food, growing food, being with food to other diasporic places, for Black communities, or home countries, for other people who, you know, your people might be from India, but she's never been, you know, you might be 2,3,4 generations out by this point. And you've never been there to be able to go back and say, like, "How did my people do it?", and then to recapture and reclaim some of those practices and ways to bring back to the soil. Because, I think that has really helped me! The more I've gone back to the Caribbean, the more I've been invigorated to kind of be like, oh, yeah, I could totally do this, like, my people know how to do this. This whole food justice thing is not an issue if everybody has a backyard garden, you know, like, all kinds of ways that I see it. So that's what I would do. I think those three things that'll cost you know, a pretty penny unlimited!
Blair Franklin 34:16
But we're now dreaming in abundance. So you know
Emanuel Brown 34:21
We just keep doing it over and over again. I'm like you said unlimited. So this is you know, I think a generational terms. I'm like, okay, so for the next three generations, what we're going to be doing buy land, putting stewards on the plane, making sure that people can go back to their home places and be able to get some of this food knowledge back into them, and then just pouring money into people with ideas. And just repeat, rinse and repeat.
Blair Franklin 34:46
Yeah. And so and that this will be my last question before we close but, in pouring into people with ideas. What's one piece of advice for someone thinking about starting a similar initiative? and food justice and like healing arts in wellness and seating and growing and creating rest spaces. Yeah, just one—What's one piece of advice you'd give someone putting on an initiative like this?
Emanuel Brown 35:16
Yeah, I think my one piece of advice is start with you. Like everything that comes from your altar is going to be of service to your community. So begin with your own altar very physically and tangibly your own altar. Do you have an altar practice? What does an altar practice look like in your life, it's a place of honoring and remembrance, a place of gathering power, and wisdom and learning that has been crucial for me. And food was such a part of that, too, you know, everything from offering food to ancestors to bringing certain foods and their wisdom onto my altar to be like, "What can I learn from me? And how can you support me in this journey", and then to go from there. Not everybody is meant to be a large scale, agricultural subsistence farmer, not everybody is meant to have eight acres of land. But I think, when we go back to our own altars of work are the altars of like, what is helping me heal, stay connected, that help keeping my community vibrant, then we'll find food in the will find the land in there. That's what I would say to folks like, start there, and then see what you can offer from your own altar of work and of practice and of service. Because, again, the land will tell you exactly what it needs. And also what you can do to support its growth. Its evolution regeneration inside of it. But yeah, start with your own altar.
Blair Franklin 36:46
That is beautiful! Is there anything else you feel like you want to add? As we close.
Emanuel Brown 36:51
The only thing that I would add is, I think food is also a place of connection. I think our connections are everything, and our relationships are the pathway to freedom. Right? So for me, I think as much as you can share what you're learning about food with the people that you love, bringing it into your work or your organizing work, is as much as it will offer new capacity to folks to really address things that we have not even seen yet. But also new capacity for healing and dreaming and visioning. So share food as often as possible, share your story of food, what you're doing and how you're approaching food. How food inspires you with your people as often as you can.
Blair Franklin 37:38
Emanuel thank you so so much! This was I feel like just deeply healing in and of itself just listening to all that you had to share, all the lessons you'd share with us today. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for taking the time.
Emanuel Brown 37:51
Thank you so much, Blair!
[In Praxis Outro] 38:07
Thank you for listening to this episode of In Praxis. We hope you all enjoyed it. Make sure to visit our website www.thepraxisprojects.org, where you can check out additional episodes with other guests, as well as learn more about our work.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
food, people, land, justice, Black, access, growing, eating, herbs, community, freedom, farmers market, backyard garden, stewards, barrier, peanut oil, space, acorn, Praxis