Memo to Mrs. Obama from Prof. Whitman

Dear Mrs. Obama,

To spur my students to reflect on our field trip to Common Good City Farm, I asked them to write you a memo. Imagine that you work as an adviser for Michelle Obama.  Common Good City Farm has contacted you because it wants Mrs. Obama to visit the farm as part of her Let's Move campaign for healthier kids.  You visited the farm on Saturday, 9/11.  Now you must write a memo to Mrs. Obama.  Should this busy first lady put Common Good City Farm on her crowded schedule?  Why or why not? 

Let me add my voice to theirs.  Do shine a spotlight on the farm.  We need places like CGCF for both the food it produces and its food for thought.

I wanted my first-year college students to experience sustainability issues firsthand.  What did they come away with?  I won’t know until we debrief today—and even then I may not know because ideas may percolate all semester and beyond.  Also, students are hard to read; they meet questions so impassively that I can’t tell if I’m boring them or challenging them.  But as I saw Ysabelle sifting compost, Ley staking raspberries, and Jose pruning tomatoes, I felt encouraged: at least the class was experiencing something.  (Probably Andrew is never going to forget being stung on the palm of his hand.)

I learned a lot.  As we rode into DC in our Reston limousine van, we passed a panhandler at an intersection with a hand-lettered cardboard sign:

     Why lie?

     I really would like an ice cold beer. 

     Homeless.

What did I expect, white lady from wealthy Arlington?  A poor neighborhood, mostly African American.  The block seemed to fit the bill, with decrepit apartments with boarded up windows across the street.  Yet almost everyone working on the farm was white, “hip, urban, we-ride-our-bikes-and-recycle” types, according to the resident herbalist.  She and many of the other volunteers on the farm were not just do-gooders, however; many belonged to a wave of young professionals gentrifying LeDroit Park and other inner-city DC neighborhoods.  The picture was getting complicated.

We were there to learn how CGCF was trying to improve the eating habits of people living in the LeDroit “food desert” (meaning it’s a long way to market): 1 in 5 is overweight, 1 in 3 has hypertension, and in 1 in 10 suffers from diabetes.  Yet during the introductions I learned that a fair number of my students hadn’t eaten breakfast (because I’d rousted them out of bed for a 9:45 pickup).  The mom in me said, Haven’t they heard of the Iowa breakfast study?  The picture stayed complicated.

Before our visit we had split into two groups: those who preferred physical work and those who wanted to do interviews.  The Laborers got right to work, directed by director Pertula, one of CGCF’s two paid staff.  Although sweaty, they seemed satisfied, their mission clear: water those logs to make them mushroom friends, dump those wheelbarrel-fuls of clay mud to improve the drainage, be of service.  We sociologists had a murkier mission: discover.  We had talked about interviewing the neighbors, but even two-year-old CGCF is still in the early stages of outreach, so we stuck to the volunteers on site.  I saw some students strike up conversations, but I also found a small group interviewing each other under the sunflowers.  It reminded me that knowledge building is also very hard work.

I was very interested in the race/class issues surrounding the farm and food issues in general.  CGCF has a farm-share program for low-income neighbors, who can receive harvest in return for modest labor.  According the director, about 10 local residents have taken advantage of “Green Tomorrows” while a couple of dozen more have expressed interest.  Local “buy-in” is high among the farm’s priorities.  Although the city, not CGCF, tore down the elementary school, not all residents note the distinction.  One volunteer told me that a resident had hissed at her in passing, Education is more important than food. She and other volunteers also appreciate that they have fenced in an open social space, the ball field.  The farm is still a social space, but more so at the moment for yuppie volunteers, some local, some not.  An interesting, complicated picture.


(l. to r.) Bobbie, Asia, Ysabelle, and Hannah turn compost.