On Monday night, Pursuers in New York City will participate in the second installment of our Chewing on Food Justice series, Got Access?, an evening with Melissa Extein of AJWS, Mara Gittleman of Farming Concrete, and Steven Deheeger of the South Bronx CSA. As a preview, we’ve asked Steven some questions about his work and what he’s excited about for Monday night, below. To learn more about Steven or this event, click here. We hope to see you there!
How did you get involved with the South Bronx CSA?
I got involved with the South Bronx CSA (SBCSA) around a year ago when my good friend from Nepal, who I studied with at the New School, became an intern with Friends of Brook Park as site coordinator for the SBCSA. He invited me up to the South Bronx to visit one Wednesday and I helped run the stand, sat around a picnic table enjoying incredible tacos, and met fantastic people. I wasn’t an intern myself but continued returning every week, until one day I found myself at the helm of a ship full of opportunity. The rest is history.
How do you think CSAs fit into the broader food justice/food sovereignty movement?
The bottom line is that all CSAs have the potential to play a large role in food sovereignty and food justice movements, addressing more immediate as well as overarching challenges. Though community supported agriculture is inherently about food sovereignty since we’re dealing with local food systems as alternatives to agribusiness, I think many CSAs don’t explicitly put food justice on the table. Since the South Bronx CSA happens to be in the poorest and hungriest Congressional District in the United States, ignoring that food justice “white elephant” on the table becomes more difficult.
CSAs with sliding scale payment structures in which the price of food is based on people’s incomes effectively make healthy food affordable for all, effectively transforming it from a privileged commodity into a basic right. There’s something very exciting and socialist about all this – I think we’re really onto something.
To that end, CSAs in mixed-income neighborhoods with high levels of income inequality like Chelsea, where some of the most expensive real estate sits next to the NYC Housing Authority Chelsea Houses, operate in the most ideal context in which to create access. Alternatively, CSAs in wealthier neighborhoods with lower levels of food hardship like the Upper West Side could easily partner with and subsidize CSAs in surrounding areas. The relationship we have with the Brooklyn Bridge CSA is a beautiful working example of exactly that. We need to present this model to other CSAs and encourage them to pursue similar relationships.
But creating affordable access is only half the story – food provision alone doesn’t bring about the lasting and systematic changes our food system needs. The most important thing to realize is that food isn’t just about food. Food is about the people that work so hard on our farms, in our meatpacking, and in our restaurants and kitchens around the country. Since most of those people are immigrants, food is also about immigration. Since many of those people (and our communities) are working poor, food is also about poverty and workers’ rights. That’s why we need to act as a unified force and pressure institutions that exploit our communities and our environment, like the refusal of Trader Joe’s to negotiate with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Florida or decades of systematic private and public disinvestment in the South Bronx and other low-income neighborhoods of color around the city.
Lastly, we can’t just be against something – we need to be for something. That’s where CSAs and innovative food systems really come in. But that’s a whole other conversation.
How does your Jewish identity relate to your work?
Growing up Jewish, in my experience, meant growing up with certain mantra-like narratives that were impressed upon my brothers and I from an early age: the immigrant worker experience, our history of oppression, our discussions around the seder table about slavery, starvation, justice, etc. These are tenets that were close to my experience being raised Jewish and that should be remembered but also actively translated into contemporary life.
In any case, food is certainly an integral part of our identity – from charoset (representing the mortar used by slaves in Egypt) to gefilte fish; our food reeks (sometimes literally) of history and symbolism.
Though we grew up in France, after moving to Chicago my three brothers and I worked in soup kitchens with members our synagogue. Even though many of my soup kitchen memories include running around the church with other kids my age, I know that work influenced my outlook. But it wasn’t until our rabbi invited me to an immigrant day laborer protest in Albany Park that I really started to understand the different but equally important roles that social service and organizing play in affecting both immediate and systematic change. That initial exposure led me down a path that would include working with unions, immigrant worker centers, community organizations, and more. Maybe Judaism’s emphasis on community (and expanding our notions of community) also has something to do with it.
What are you looking forward to about Chewing on Food Justice & Rolling Up Our Sleeves?
Definitely looking forward to meeting everyone! Also, really excited to collaborate and develop the very innovative and relevant work everyone is involved in. We’re gonna have a great time!
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