Press

from “Graffiti & Grub: The Hip-Hop Generation Gets Its

Grocery Store”

Written by: Natalie Doss for Chicago Weekly (the Independent Voice of the

University of Chicago)

True wealth lies in a healthy spirit and body…The idea that healthy living is for the wealthy only is a marketing

ploy, a tool used effectively by chains such as Whole Foods, according to Redmond. She believes that, in reality,

food is cheaper when it’s locally grown. Despite its current character as a status symbol, she says, there

is no reason that healthy food should be limited to the rich…

 

from “Graffiti and Grub Takes on Food Deserts”

 Produced by: Natalie Moore for WBEZ-FM (Chicago Public Radio)

REDMOND: Fresh foods, fresh produce, locally grown, sustainable, organic. But we won’t necessarily

use those words in that way. We’ll use those words in the way that we would organize them and

they would spell S.O.U.L. – sustainable, organic, urban and local.

In her decade of food justice activism, Redmond has found that people don’t like being told what

their food is. And food and language become intertwined. She says awareness around getting people

to eat healthy can take on a tone of condescension.

REDMOND: They don’t want to be social serviced into healthy food. They want to be treated with respect

and dignity when they go into a store. They don’t want to be treated like they’re going into the free clinic.

Redmond says that approach doesn’t work…

 

 

from “Organic Oasis in a Food Desert”

Edited by: Curtis Black, Community Media Workshop
Newstip Date: 06-17-2009

Englewood residents and food justice activists will celebrate “the death of a food desert”

 when a new food market featuring local and organic produce opens for a community

dinner and fundraiser Friday.

Graffiti and Grub, a project of urban farm pioneer LaDonna Redmond and “hip-hop educator” Wil Seegars,

will open on June 19 for a healthy soul food dinner and a program of performances to celebrate

Juneteenth. They’re raising funds to complete renovations of the store, with a full-scale opening planned

for later this summer.

The store has been ten years in the making for Redmond. In 1999, after her son was diagnosed with

severe food allergies and she couldn’t find organic produce in her own neighborhood, she and

her husband Tracey began their own food garden.

…Today six farm sites in Austin and West Garfield are part of her legacy, along with a program in

which 175 teens will be learning about green technology and installing urban farm sites and individual

home gardens this summer. But her longterm goal was always to open a year-round grocery store.