Oral History Archive

Interviews

as part of Free the Land! Free the People!

a study of the abolitionist pod

Social Justice

LearnING INSTITUTE

Interview with Nicole Steele

June 2023 | Inglewood, CA

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Makayla Howard [MH]: What year was the Social Justice Learning Institute founded?

Nicole Steele [NS]: The Social Justice Learning Institute was founded technically in 2008. Our founder is Dr. D’artagnan Scorza. He's an Inglewood son, went to Morningside High School, and this program actually started because he wanted to provide for young Black men, something that he wished he had when he was a student. So, the Black Male Youth Academy was the first program at Morningside [High school] with a group of students, who were actually one of those first students I just hired to be our urban [agricultural] coordinator. But they learned about critical thinking and community research, and their first project was about food justice. So, that's how I met them back then.

ali reza [ar]: What year did you get involved?

Nicole Steele [NS]: I got involved in 2010 as he was working with that first cohort of students. I am actually not from Inglewood. I'm from Baltimore, Maryland. But, you know, different hood, same issues, right? We see a lot of things mirrored across the country as folks deal with living in urban environments. I needed access to healthy food. The man that I loved, that we moved here together after college, was 25 with hypertension. And we're like, what, why? As we learned about the connection between food and your health, which you would think is intuitive, but oftentimes it's just not. The doctors are like, you gotta eat better, and we're trying to do that in Inglewood, and it was difficult. So, I approached our mayor at that time about using some of the land available to maybe grow food, because I knew if I was experiencing this then my community was experiencing it. And through, just him being open to listening to me, I met Dr. Scorza, and as his students were working on their first community garden at Morningside [High  School], they pulled me in and said, “we want to support what you have going on,” and that's how I got involved.

MH: Under what condition or circumstances was this organization founded?

NS: I really love the way this organization was founded because it was a person in their community that wanted to see change in their community and was relentless about making it happen. So Dr. Scorza worked with the youth at Morningside [High School], and had an in, because that was his alma mater - like what better way to really give back to the place where you came from. Being an academic, he was in the military, traveled the world, was going to UCLA to get his doctorate in education, and his focus was on young Black men, because that's what he knew best, that's what he was. He knew his experience growing up in Inglewood, and being able to share with these young black men who often are cast off as, “We don't need to worry about them like that. They're gonna end up in either one of two places.” Really helping them understand that the things that they want to do in the world matter, and that their circumstances that surround them do not have to define them. And encouraging them to look into their community to find their passion for what they want to change in the world, and how they can change it. As they were studying food justice, I happened to be studying food justice. This is not necessarily a food justice organization. It's a research organization for youth and community. But, those two things just kind of happened to come together. I guess the universe said, all right, here we go. As I was pursuing health in the built environment for my family, I was able to tap into this and say, “This is something that [I’d] like to see in this community.” And we were able to work together to start building gardens and feeding each other, feeding people.

ar: Can you describe the community where the organization was founded and the present-day community?

NS: Inglewood is a really special city. It's one of the few areas where you still see a significant Black population together. It is a city where 60% of the people that live here rent. It is a city that has its own municipality. We have our own mayor, our own police department, our own school district. So when it comes to trying out these things and scalability, it's really ideal for that. It's about nine miles wide. I'll be honest,  I don't know what the population is right now; but what we have been watching happen in Inglewood over the past ten or so years is this boom of development - as the Clippers are building their stadium, So-Fi just built a stadium, we had the Super Bowl here last year, the Olympics are coming. The Forum has been regenerated, and is one of the greatest, as they say, greatest concert venues in the state. So, we're watching all of these really wonderful economic opportunities come into this city, but also watching them affect the residents of this city in an adverse way. So, as we're doing our work of trying to help folks with education, health folks with food access, they're saying to us, “This is all well and good, but I don't know how I'm going to pay my rent. I don't know if I'm going to be able to stay in this city. I'm facing eviction. Then the pandemic hit, and then inflation hit.” So, we have all of these different things happening that are affecting people's ability just to be stable in Inglewood. So we've had to work through making sure that we are listening to the voice of the people, we can't just keep trying to push something on them when they're saying that they need something else. We've had to shift what we do, and how we function, and the things that we are involved in as the city is changing. It's been really wonderful to watch Inglewood residents and community members get behind policy, and learn about advocacy and fight for themselves. That's been just a really wonderful process to be a part of. Inglewood is a great city, the culture is beautiful. We've got a large Latinx population, like I said a still pretty large Black population here that shares culture with each other. There's the paleteras man that's always out, and we've got Juneteenth celebrations happening. It's just a really great place to be.

MH: What spaces and organizations have done similar work in the past that have inspired the conception of SJLI?

NS: So, like I mentioned, this work didn't even start with a food justice focus. So as far as education work, I think Community Coalition to a certain extent was [an organization] he looked to, as well as just academia for Dr. Scorza, because he is coming from UCLA - and, to be honest, just his lived experience, watching his friends go to jail, or not make it, or just not have what they needed to thrive in this community. Everybody's trying to survive. But what does it look like for a thriving, healthy community, and thriving, healthy men of color? When it comes to the food justice work, which I could talk a little bit more about, Community Services Unlimited has been a long time friend and partner of ours. We love the work that they've done with the Expo farm, and the Paul Robeson Center.

Hank’s Mini Market is someone that we are really, really inspired by,  and the way that Kelly provides a safe space and food options for people in our community. I think those are some of the organizations that we were really inspired by, especially CSU (Community Services Unlimited) in the beginning. They’re somebody that we really were looking to as a partner and a peer in this work. Then over the years we've just made lots of friends. Crenshaw Dairy Mart, and the work that you do around food and art, and community access - I'm drawing some blanks right now. We work with maybe about 26 organizations that come every Friday, and pick up food in bulk for their communities. So these are churches, these are organizations that serve our houseless population. Just to see people galvanize around this work in mutual aid is really, really, - it's like magic.

ar: Can you describe how the Covid-19 pandemic impacted organizational programming?

NS: When we first started with the health equity program in food access work, we were gardening. The idea was that we would build enough gardens with our community that iCan t would become a food network. So we would volunteer, we would gather homeowners, and have them go through a gardening program, and then spend a Saturday getting a whole bunch of volunteers, and building ten little gardens, and ten houses all at one time. And, we have a garden with the city of Inglewood at Queen Park, and we have had school gardens that are essentially like mini farms in Lennox. So, we've been able to build over a hundred gardens. That was a goal We had to help pass legislation to allow renters to be able to grow on their property if the landlord deemed that it was safe. So, doing that work and encouraging people to grow food on their own was really important to us, because we wanted folks to be able to be self-sufficient. We wanted this community to be able to take care of itself as we, forward broadcast into a point where big agribusiness is not sustainable for the environment and people are going to need to be able to grow their own food as the world changes. But when the pandemic came, that went out the window to a certain extent, because people were too afraid to gather together in the garden spaces, and people needed emergency assistance immediately. So, we shifted to a model of food rescue and distribution. We partner with Food Forward. We're able to rescue produce from the produce district. This is produce that grocery stores and restaurants buy in bulk, and a large percentage of it gets thrown away and we bring that into our communities. We sort through it, we glean, and then we're able to give it to people for free. Before the pandemic, we were doing that maybe about once a month at Morningside High School, and it was a big festival. There's music and community resources, and people dancing and having a good time, and just being able to shop, farmer's market style, through the produce. When the pandemic hit, we shifted to doing it once a week. So, since March of 2019, we haven't missed a Friday. We've been giving out food every single Friday since that day, save for a vacation or two here that folks need. At this point, I think maybe about 2.7 million pounds of produce that we've been able to get out into the community, and people know that it is a place that they can rely on to come and get food. You know, the pandemic did not create that issue, it just exacerbated it significantly. So, it's an issue that we were already dealing with, and trying to continue to create access for folks, but that just made it so much more urgent to be able to do so. We shifted in that way during the pandemic, and now as we kind of get further and further away from the tipping point of COVID, we're getting back into our community education, and our wellness education. We used to run programming where folks would come to classes, and we cooked together and learned about information that just can really help you make healthier decisions, and learn about advocacy and how to be a part of making change in your community - zumba classes, garden days, and art days. So, we're able to start really delving back into that now, and I'm excited for what that will bring.

MH: Can you describe the impact of the 2020 Uprisings on organizational programming?

NS: That -  Oh, yeah. I think the Uprisings of 2020 put a sense of purpose in our students. To be honest with you, they knew what they were experiencing, and our students, even in their youth participatory action research, were able to present their research to police officers. They turned this whole space into a community gathering, tents and tables and beautiful things, and brought police officers into the space to talk to them about what they experience in the community. And, they were discouraged by that meeting, because they were not met with empathy. They were not met with understanding, but I think that when they started to see what they've already been seeing in their communities, amplified on a national scale, and saw other youth and other people,so passionate about protesting and changing policy and watching people grieve together as a nation. It really encouraged them to keep going, to keep making sure that their voices were heard, to keep participating in policy change, and learning about how they can really be change agents around these actions. So, I think that it was a necessary amplification of the experiences of our people, because it put a battery in a lot of people's backs about changes that need to be made. We can say what we want about where we have come since Then, but I think that our folks are still encouraged to continue, and be as bullish about what we desire, what we deserve when all of this started. I know it really did that for our students, and brought them together in a way that, you know, tragedies sometimes do for folks, and then as far as our access to work for people, it really allowed our spaces to become a place for compassion for a community. Food is not just food, it's much more than that, it's a way that we celebrate and share and grieve sometimes. When people were coming into our space to gather food, it gave us an opportunity to just talk and listen, the best that we could, because we were still dealing with pandemic era times and just comfort. I think that, that is the way that it affected our work, and it still is an underpinning of the way that we serve our community. We're very, very - like we're not minting words anymore, if that makes sense. Sometimes you try to be politically correct with your decision makers about what we feel and what we need and what we want. But at this point, it's like, no, let's be very clear about the death, and the genocide that we see happening in our communities, the divestment that we see happening in our communities that leads to outcomes for people that are leading them into these types of situations. And, here's what you need to do about it, and if you're not with it, are you against it? Let's examine that. 

ar: What programmatic shifts were introduced to SJLI in response to both the Covid-19 Pandemic and 2020 Uprisings?

NS: That - so programmatically, for our education work that happens on school campuses with students on a regular basis. So, I know one of the things that we started to focus on was not dialing back, but making space not just for academics, but also for checking in. Right.For grieving, for mental health checks, for opportunities for students to just talk through what they're going through with this. Right. Oftentimes, at least the adults know, okay, “let's get behind it. Let's step out into the streets. Let's galvanize.” But it's like, these are still kids that we're dealing with that have to question how safe they are on the streets? How safe are they, when they're supposed to call someone that's supposed to be helpful to them? So what do you need? What do we need to talk about? What do we need to hold space for? I think that that is a really important component of this as well, so we saw a lot of that happening with our students, having to happen online. We were able to get laptops for our students, so that we didn't have to disconnect from them, and look into ways to get them access to the internet, so that we didn't have to disconnect from them, and we could stay connected with them. Being able to make sure that we could check in with them, and being able to support them as they came up with ideas for how to participate in this. Are you going to a protest? Do we need to come with you? Do we need to get a van together? Do we need to, you know, get things together for you? Then providing direct support through that with - because again, this is happening right around when the pandemic was happening, what are your parents able to pay the bills? Are your parents able to get food? How can we merge our food access programs with our student programs, so that we're serving folks the best that we could? So, those were some of the - I don't even want to call them shifts, because our work already deals with these issues in the first place.But, just being very intentional about making space for folks, and our students to express what they're seeing, what they're feeling, and how it's affecting them, and getting them the support that they need, if they needed it. Even with our community, we started doing community check-ins, where we just go on Instagram live and be like, here's what we're going through. You know, what are you feeling? What are you seeing? What are you needing? And those are really wonderful spaces as well. So through our food distribution work, we are happy and honored to provide produce to as many people as we can, wherever we can. I know that we partnered to get you guys and produce that you could distribute to your community, and let us know when we can do it again. We'd love to do it again.

MH: What motivated the 100 Seeds of Change Initiative? Can you share more about food justice initiatives and their relationship to social justice?

NS: That - 100 Seeds of Change was an idea that came about on my couch in my little tiny Inglewood apartment.Who is now my husband was diagnosed with hypertension, at a really young age. He's a black man, and unfortunately, in our community, hypertension is not rare, but it's rare at that age, so when we started to learn about the fact that the foods that we were providing in our community is a direct link to why he's hypertensive,we had to make some significant changes. We both grew up in the hood.There's fast food on every corner, you can spin around in a circle, and find chips, and sodas, and candies, and things like that. But a farmer's market is rare, an affordable grocery store where the produce is affordable is not [a] common place, and it was no different in Inglewood.Our closest grocery store was a mile away,  and for folks like us that did not have a car, and we had a little person, our daughter was one at that time.It was really difficult just trying to make a decision between, this $5 that I have to get us all burgers and fries, or it could get me a pepper and maybe some green onions. And then, what am I supposed to do with that? At that time I was working at a group home, my degree - I did not study food. I'm not a farmer by trade. I am a my psych major, and so I was working at a group home with students, as a recreational and residential counselor, and just trying to find ways to connect with them, and give them something different than what they were getting, which was origami, which is nice, just finger paints, and so we started gardening just kind of by happenstance. We've got this dirt here, let's grow some food, let's do some cooking. They were eating foods that were bad for them. These are 12 year old kids that had high cholesterol, and had to take medicine that was affecting their psych meds. I was watching this system do these kids wrong, and then experiencing some health crises in my own house, and looking around my community, and I'm like, everybody I know knows somebody with diabetes.Everybody I know knows somebody with high blood pressure. It's kind of one of those things you expect in the black community as you get older. I just, I didn't want that for my daughter, and for the kids that I was serving.As we again, started to learn about health,and things like that, I was like, you know what, what if we can garden here, there's a lot of vacant land in Inglewood at that time. What if they'll give me some land, and we can get our community some of these fresh fruits and veggies? So, I checked in with the mayor, he was an interim mayor at the time, so I think maybe that worked in my favor. And again, like I said the universe kind of put stuff in place for this to work. He was like, “no, I'm not going give you the land,” because I think he even back then knew about the development that was coming to Inglewood, those are long term plans that people have. But, he was kind enough to be like, but I believe in what you're doing right, and when somebody believes in what you're doing, just enough to be able to get behind you, that can really propel people forward, so I met through him, I was put in touch with the Inglewood Department of Parks and Rec, with Dr. Scorza, Tree people, other organizations that were doing similar work. Dr. Scorza I was like, I got a little nonprofit, with not a lot of resources, but if you want to come and rock with us, let's see what we can make happen.That's how 100 Seeds of Change came about, where I was like, okay, well, you're not going to give me one big farm, but what if we grow a hundred little farms, and then see, you know, how that catches on. That was about growing food with homeowners and having them be a part of our network, and giving away fruit trees with Tree People, and encouraging folks to share their overload with us, so we could give it back to the community. We started the CSA with those gardens, so our bigger gardens at the schools, we were able to glean all that produce, give it back to folks they can use EBT, and we had a market match for that program. That dream has not died, like I said, we had to shift because of the pandemic and just capacity issues. But, the ultimate goal here is still a farm, I'm hearing some folks get some money for land acquisition and things like that. So we're still trying to see what it feels like, what it looks like to feed a community like Inglewood. What does it look like if everyone in the city is entitled to a certain amount of produce every week, that's coming from a farm right here where the people in their community are growing that food, and chickens and goats and all that stuff. So we're on our way.

ar: What is your future of this initiative and food justice initiatives in Inglewood and beyond?

NS: Yes, I think that was the major thing with this. I'm not interested in hoarding resources. I'm not interested in it, SJLI has got to be the one to do it all, and we collect all the funds and we have been really, really honored to watch partner organizations like the Community Services Unlimited, Food Forward, I mentioned Hanks Mini market, Hollywood Food Coalition. Folks that are able to meet the needs of their community, because every community is different. What works for Inglewood may not work for Watts in the same way, may not work for Long Beach in the same way. But, how can what we're doing here inspire you to tap in with your community, to meet the needs and the ways that they say they need their needs met? So, that's been a pleasure to watch, and partner with people, and lend ideas to each other, and figure out how we can work together to make this happen. Yes, my hope is and always has been for this to serve as a model. When we get this farm going, and we are feeding people in an equitable way, how can this work in Lawndale? How can this work in Reseda or whatever?

I don't think that we'll be able to completely divest from large agribusiness, at least not in the immediate, but how are we stewarding our earth in a way that we're helping to repair it as opposed to continuing to damage it? How are we making people whole and creating jobs, meaningful jobs for them, and places for people to gather and be in community, and have access to something that they have a right to. Of course you have a right to choose whatever kind of food you're going to eat, but I think that everyone has a right to access to the foods that are going to give you your best health outcomes, and are culturally relevant, that are affordable, and that are easy to acquire. Capacity Is always the thing because the need is there. The need has always been there for people to - when you have to tighten your purse strings, one of the first things to go is healthy food, right? Package ramen is 25 cent, maybe $0.36 still at the grocery store, and it lasts a long time.You can toss a couple of things in there to fattened up a little bit, and we talked about the prices of fruits and vegetables, they rot quickly and it's just finding the time to cook. Those are things that people deal with on a real basis.

So, we want to be able to meet the needs of as many people as we can, but we're only one organization. My team is five - just five people. That's all that we are, plus our amazing network of volunteers, let me not forget about those folks. But you know, capacity is a thing. Do we have enough funding for people to have meaningful salaries? We don't want people to be struggling to be able to do this work. Do we have enough funding for refrigeration? Can we get a truck? Bags? Just those things, and I hate to always bring it back to money, but it's a real issue. That's been an issue at times. We are always in the idea of abundance, so we do our best and we make do with what we have, and our community is always available to lift us up, and that's really beautiful. We pour into them, and they pour into us. They're the ones coming to volunteer, the same people that are coming to pick up produce are the ones that come and help us sort through it to feed their neighbors. So, that's been a really beautiful thing to see our alumni. So, the same students I've been talking about that are in the classroom, like I said, I just hired one of our alumni to be our urban coordinator. They come by and help us do this work, so they really are doing the work of putting back into the community that they come from. Those are some of the ways that we deal with that challenge. Other challenges that we've run into, aside from funding, is the red tape that there is around trying to feed people sometimes. You got to get - if we want this farm, what the zoning looks like. We were not zoned for a farmers market in Inglewood, and we had - it took us six years working with our community to get zoning just to start a farmers market. What's it going to look like? I appreciate politicians in Inglewood. They're doing what they need to do the best way that they know how to do it, but what is the political landscape going to look like? It's been challenging for us in the past. What's it going to look like as we continue to be community centered, while money is on the table, because development is coming in. What does that field look like? We've dealt with that through this housing crisis, and having to sue them and fight with them. But again, our community always rises to the occasion to make things happen. So yeah, I think funding is a challenge, and the discomfort that career bureaucrats sit in when it comes to community led, and community first programming. But you know, it is what it is. We're going to do it, so it's fine

ar: Can you share your thoughts on what is currently happening with the Compton Community Garden, through a history or garden initiatives being pushed out by landlords such as South Central Farm, in context of SJLI’s community-centered work?

NS: Yeah, I think it's again, our work has to be community centered. That's what - that's the purpose of it. The purpose of this work is to make sure that the people that we're serving have what they need, period, and that should be the purpose of the government, that should be the purpose of your neighborhood councils, your city council people. But, that gets mired in money sometimes, and you can't fault people. Everybody's trying to live, everyone's trying to survive. Everyone has been told that the American dream is this, and that's the way that we're supposed to go, and people are doing the best they can to get there. There are those of us that recognize that the American dream does not fit for the people, that the American dream is not built for. So, our purpose as people is to uplift each other. Just because we are people has a natural right to the things that will help us be our best selves, and we want people to be able to do that. So, I know that Compton Community Garden and South Central Farms and other gardens, community farms that we've seen not just here around the country, took advantage of the systems that were given to them. Use this space. We're going to let you use it. It gives tax breaks to the landlords, but unfortunately, in this system, we're going to have to own these spaces in order to be able to serve our people in a radical way. So, what does it look like now to take advantage of the systems that are available to us now, to figure out what ownership looks like? How do we help each other do that? So we, where we're able to lend each other the institutional knowledge that we have gathered over these years. I think to a certain extent we've all been kind of practicing for the moments that are coming up for us now.

Who's your best grant writer in these systems? What organization has been gathering funds to do this work? What organizations have somebody that knows what the EPA has, coming down and knows about land acquisition, and knows funders that are interested in this. And again, as the universe brings all this stuff together, I hope that it does not wane, but social justice is like a buzz word at this point, especially after the uprisings. So, how are we able to, in a positive way, take advantage of this moment, so that we can build some things right now that are sustainable and long lasting? And, I'm not afraid to say, these folks over here are really interested in this. Let's talk to them. Let's gather what they're offering, along with, while you're gathering what folks that you're talking to are offering, let's bring it together and really, like, use those resources to create something that maybe those folks weren't even thinking about. We don't gotta tell everybody everything, but we know what's up. So, how are we working together to take advantage of - and take advantage sometimes can sound very, conniving. But that's not the spirit that this is in. We got to get in where we fit in, because the system is not working for us in its current way. So, let's build our own systems with what they're offering.

Gallery Open

Thursdays - Sundays

11:30 AM - 3:30 PM

On view September 21, 2024 through February 15, 2025

Free the Land! Free the People! a study of the abolitionist pod is organized as a survey and studio of the Crenshaw Dairy Mart artist collective’s ongoing research for the abolitionist pod, autonomously irrigated, solar-powered gardens within modular geodesic domes built with communities impacted by food insecurity, housing insecurity, and the prison industrial complex. The exhibition falls in conjunction with the artist collective’s year of programmed study and research, entitled Imagination Year, collating ongoing illustrations, archival documentation, architectural renderings, sketches, and drawings of the collective’s many configurations of the geodesic structure during its prototype phases as the year-long curriculum engages with a history of collectives and cooperatives at the interstices of food justice, land sovereignty, and the Black Liberation Movement.

The exhibition coincides with a concurrent resource and larger oral history archive indexing the networked Black farmers, gardeners, and Black-led organizations across Los Angeles county with whom Crenshaw Dairy Mart has collaborated with on the abolitionist pod, traversing contemporary movements towards alternative permacultures, which include localized, small-scale farming and micro-farming as models for community care, community safety, and economic autonomy within the larger contemporary abolitionist movement.

Free the Land! Free the People! a study of the abolitionist pod is among more than 60 exhibitions and programs presented as part of PST ART. Returning in September 2024 with its latest edition, PST ART: Art & Science Collide, this landmark regional event explores the intersections of art and science, both past and present. PST ART is presented by Getty. For more information about PST ART: Art & Science Collide, please visit pst.art