while the waters may look idyllic, a century-old sewage system and dangerously high levels of bacteria have made the urban national park unswimmable for decades. now, a team of volunteers is working to change that, one water sample at a time.

no-swim zone

d.c. residents know that swimming in the city’s waterways is not the best idea — in fact, it’s been illegal since 1971. lorde shocked concert goers and made national news last year when she claimed to float in the potomac before her show. there’s a stigma around the cleanliness of these rivers from decades of pollution, but in recent years, the waterways have been slowly improving.

the environmental protection agency has been trying to make the city’s waterways swimmable and fishable since the clean water act of 1972. while the original ten-year timeline for that goal passed forty years ago, the act set in motion a clean water agenda the city is hoping to reach in the next few years.

in 2019, city officials began floating the idea of relaxing or lifting the swim ban. but even after decades of cleaning up the waterways, environmentalists question whether the water is safe enough to open to public swimming. data from the d.c. volunteer water quality monitoring project is helping shed light on the state of the city’s rivers and streams.

watching the waterways

on a cool day in early may, the ground is damp and the water is high in rock creek park. it’s the first day of the 2023 water monitoring season, an overcast morning after several days of on-and-off rain.

landrum beard, community engagement coordinator at rock creek conservancy, sits under a picnic pavilion at a table lined with small red coolers for volunteers to pick up with their water testing kits. they’ll head out toward their assigned sites, marked with ribbons, along the creek and return with the coolers filled with water samples, which are taken to anacostia riverkeeper’s lab for testing.

anacostia riverkeeper launched the d.c. volunteer water quality monitoring project in 2018 to measure and track contamination levels in d.c.’s main waterways: the anacostia river, the potomac river, and rock creek.

with a $140,000 grant from the d.c. department of energy and environment, the project has grown into a collaboration between anacostia riverkeeper, alliance for the chesapeake bay, rock creek conservancy, and nature forward. the groups have trained almost 400 volunteers from all eight wards of the city, collecting more than 2,000 water samples from 2019 to 2022.

each wednesday morning from may to september — considered the outdoor recreational season — teams of volunteers take water samples at two dozen sites across the city and test for ph balance, e. coli levels, water temperature, air temperature, and turbidity, a measure of water clarity. they also note if they see anyone in the water, as many people and their pets still wade in the creek despite park signs warning against it. the results are posted each friday and updated in the swim guide app, which lets users check the water quality of nearby beaches.

most of the volunteers are consistent, beard says. there are some newcomers on this first day of the new season, but others have been a part of the program for years.

benita veskimets is one of those veteran volunteers. veskimets, who used to work in fundraising for rock creek conservancy, is in her fourth year of water sampling. “i’m really curious to see what happens this year,” she says. “last year, i feel like it was worse than the year before.”

only a few of the rock creek sites passed with safe bacteria levels last year, beard confirms. those were mostly on dry weeks, when there was little or no rainfall impacting the stormwater sewage overflow. this morning is not one of those times. after a rainy week, the creek is likely swimming with bacteria from runoff. not the best way to kick off the season, he admits.

rock creek park’s sewage problem

the root of this problem lies with infrastructure, and if you’ve ever walked through rock creek park after a rainstorm, you can smell why. 

after just half an inch of rainfall, hazardous waste and sewage flood into the creek from the city’s old combined sewer infrastructure. in this system, stormwater and sewage flow through the same pipes — and when it rains, they quickly fill up and overflow into the rivers. rock creek is considered dangerously contaminated when that happens, and recreators are advised to avoid the waterway for up to three days afterward.

volunteers have tracked that trend at the sampling areas. “all these sites, for the most part, have a storm drain a few hundred feet or so upstream from where the sampling site is,” beard said. “so after big rain events, we always see that the sites have extremely high bacteria.”

d.c. water is now working on a $2.6 billion overhaul to the city’s sewage system with the goal of redirecting some of these sewage lines away from the city’s waterways and back toward treatment plants. this plan, the clean river project, is set to be completed in 2030. 

in the current phase of the project, the national park service is teaming up with d.c. water to take on piney branch creek, one of rock creek’s main tributaries and victims of contamination. an estimated 39 million gallons of sewage and stormwater pour into the creek each year.

“the way to do it is to build bigger pipes under the ground that can handle all the sewage and the stormwater and keep it in the pipes and get it down to the treatment plant,” said steve dryden, a local conservationist who has worked in the piney branch area for years.

the city is expanding these pipes, aiming to reduce the amount of sewage flowing into the three waterways by 96 percent. it’s part of a hybrid plan for rock creek that includes both traditional “grey infrastructure” — like basins, drains, and pipes — and new “green infrastructure,” such as rain gardens and permeable pavers in 365 acres of the surrounding urban areas. a pilot program for this green infrastructure plan reduced runoff into the creek by nearly one fifth, surpassing d.c. water’s goals.

but sewage overflow and runoff after rainfall is not the only contamination source in rock creek. the water quality monitoring project reports that some sites have had persistently high levels of bacteria even during dry weather, which may be caused by “outdated infrastructure, leaking sewer pipes, or uninvestigated point-source pollution.”

jeanne braha, executive director of rock creek conservancy, said this may also come from pet waste and houses or businesses with sewer pipes that are accidentally hooked up to storm drain pipes that flow into the creek. construction in the urban area is another contributor, veskimets adds. while the potomac and anacostia bacteria levels are a direct result of combined sewer overflows, rock creek’s contamination comes from several sources — making solutions harder to find.

one sample at a time

while solving rock creek’s water contamination problem is a long process, participants in the d.c. volunteer water quality monitoring project are ensuring that city officials and environmentalists have the data to help. 

the potomac and anacostia rivers have been slowly improving in water quality since the anacostia was once dubbed “one of the most polluted waterways in the nation.” people debate whether the rivers have recovered enough to be swimmable.

“i think we’re getting there,” said louis eby, a longtime water quality volunteer and former attorney advisor in the epa’s office of water. he’s seen a lot of progress in the two rivers, but remains cautious about rock creek.

“i wouldn’t swim in rock creek,” he said. “we’ll get there some day for rock creek, but not soon.”

sure enough, the rain in early may was a forecast of remaining challenges. both upper and lower rock creek sites reported unsafe e. coli and ph levels in the first week of monitoring.

still, citizen scientists will continue to keep tabs on the water quality each week. as soon as rock creek is finally swimmable, they’ll be the first to know. 

as the summer recreation season kicks off, people flock to d.c.’s waterways for kayaking, paddleboarding, and sightseeing — and one day soon, they might be able to safely swim in them.

1. in children, heat-related health problems are easy to miss

children are particularly vulnerable to extreme heat, but the effects often appear in subtle ways. according to pediatrician dr. perry sheffield at the icahn school of medicine at mount sinai hospital, as many as 11% of emergency room visits in warmer months are related to heat, but most instances of heat damage to young bodies fly under the radar.

short-term issues like stomach aches and trouble focusing at school can seem fairly run-of-the-mill, but according to dr. sheffield these symptoms can be caused by exposure to heat, so they’ll appear more frequently as extreme heat becomes the norm.  more long term problems like kidney damage from regular dehydration and in-utero issues that arise from heat exposure are harder to trace back to heat. as periods of extreme heat become more frequent, it’s more important than ever to monitor the health of infants and children and keep them cool in the summer months. 

“we’re slowly coming to understand that heat has these insidious effects,” dr. sheffield said.  “we have a long way to go, but there’s many areas in which heat is potentially playing a role in child health.” 

2. underlying health problems can become exacerbated 

many physical effects of heat in adults already seem familiar – many people have experienced heat rash, heat stress and heat stroke, or know someone who has. but heat also has indirect effects on underlying health problems that are harder to track. sickle-cell disease is one such underlying problem that becomes a serious risk during heat waves. 

“up to three million people living with sickle cell trait are at a higher risk of sudden death during exercise in hot weather,” dr. sheffield said.  

other underlying health problems like cardiovascular diseases and poor kidney function become much worse when extreme heat comes into play as well. according to amruta nori-sarma, ph.d. at the boston university school of public health, the interactions between heat and underlying health conditions are still being explored.  

“i’m sure there’s a whole spectrum of other chronic health conditions with adverse events that are associated with extreme heat exposure,” nori-sarma said. 

3. black and brown communities are disproportionately affected

minority communities have historically fallen victim to race-based housing designations, and those policies have placed black and brown communities into areas that will be vulnerable to extreme heat and the health problems that come out of it. 

“less shade, fewer green plants, more pavement, all of these things are higher in the areas that were negatively impacted by these policies,” dr. sheffield said. “couple those things with conditions like lower car ownership, greater reliance on public transportation, and less access to transportation. that’s a dangerous combination.” 

4. mental health crises rise during heat waves 

a study recently conducted by the department of environmental health at boston university found a relationship between high temperatures in the summer and mental health-related emergency room visits. the study looked at a wide variety of mental health issues, including substance abuse, mood disorders, behavior disorders, self-harm, anxiety, and schizophrenia.

“as temperature increases, the rates of emergency department visits for mental health across all of the mental health causes that we’re interested in correspondingly saw an increase,” nori-sarma said. 

experts are not sure exactly why this is happening. “one of the things that we could hypothesize would be disrupted sleep periods that are happening because people are experiencing high temperatures, or even daytime discomfort or irritation,” nori-sarma said. 

other experts hypothesize that when temperatures rise, bodily resilience drops. earlier this year, neuropsychologist c. munro cullum told the new york times that agitation, irritation, and pain become less bearable when the body is struggling to cool down. “when we’re not comfortable, we’re not at our best,” said cullum. 

there’s still much research being done on the effects of extreme heat on mental health, but the correlation has been identified and city planners are responding. 

5. the path forward lies in infrastructure

experts are looking at new modes of city design to explore how heat-related health emergencies can be countered. the city of boston is leading the charge in building infrastructure to help beat the heat. their plan for adapting to higher temperatures includes adding more green spaces and shadier infrastructure. when boston mayor michelle wu declares a heat emergency, boston centers for youth and family are converted into cooling centers where anyone can come in to cool off. the future of climate preparedness in city design could look like something like boston. 

“city planning officials have already started the process of making communities more resilient in the face of extreme heat exposure,” said nori-sarma. “this is one of the great ways that we can start to prepare for and respond to extreme heat events that we anticipate happening into the future.”

audio story by joshua rosenstein

nestled in the eastern suburbs of sydney, australia, jesmond (jes) sammut lectures his students on topics in coastal resource management. sammut is an associate professor at the university of new south wales, and also leads the unsw aquaculture research group. aquaculture, which is the farming of aquatic organisms, is seldom discussed by most people around the world, yet it can lead to enormous benefits.

sammut’s research has taken him to vietnam and indonesia to study shrimp farming, india to train local veterinarian scientists, and the philippines for fish farming. yet, some of his most impactful work has occurred in papua new guinea, where he trained a research team that subsequently worked with the national fisheries authority of papua new guinea to improve tilapia production and fish farming practices.

according to sammut, the work conducted by his team and partner groups has led to drops in crime, tribal war, and antisocial behavior, while also boosting self-esteem, cooperation, and financial and food security. his experiences have also come with challenges and lessons learned.

this podcast intends to introduce you to jes sammut and the power of his aquaculture research in papua new guinea.

chanel la sat at the front of the nanomaterials class ready for the first day of her ph.d. studies six years ago. she brought four pencils, several pens and a water bottle for exam day. she read her answers over and over again. 

chris tonge sat all the way in the back of the classroom and seemed more “chill.” he showed up to class with one pencil for an exam and was one of the first to finish, la said. 

they both were attending the university of british columbia pursuing doctorate degrees in chemistry. then one night, la needed to get into the nuclear magnetic resonance room, a lab with a giant magnet that allows for visualization of molecular structure. there’s only one room like it that all the graduate students shared and la needed to drop off her sample. la forgot her keys in her lab so she texted the group chat seeking help from another first-year student. 

she asked if anybody could let her into this room. everyone responded they were already home, since it was 10 o’clock, except tonge. so, tonge let her in and they had their first real conversation. 

“i was surprised that he worked so hard,” la said, considering he was the only one who was still working in the lab. after that conversation, they planned to go on a date to the aquarium and to get ramen. 

“the rest is history,” tonge said. 

la’s mom is from malaysia and her dad is from vietnam. tonge’s dad is from england and his mom is from spain. la sat in the front of the class and tonge in the back.

but the chemistry is there. “we just mesh really well,” tonge said. 

and chemistry is taking their research in innovative directions. during their ph.d. program, they both focused on making polymers, organic compounds with a sequence of units repeated. la focused on protons as a building block. and tonge? electrons. a proton is a positively charged subatomic particle and an electron is negatively charged. it’s as if their differences and the natural pull of negative charge to positive charge drew them together.  

they also made discoveries within their own research during their studies. la created a library of drug molecules and one of them is promising for helping dissolve blood clots without the problematic side effect of promoting bleeding. tonge helped create experimental emitters for oleds, or organic light-emitting diodes, that could make televisions more efficient with capabilities to last longer, save energy and create purer color.

focusing on protons and the discovery of a new drug molecule to help with thrombosis

la’s high-school science teacher piqued her interest in chemistry, which led her to continue studying chemistry in graduate school and focus on molecules to help decrease blood clots.

depending on where they move in the bloodstream, blood clots can lead to strokes, heart attacks and breathing problems. surgery and several physical conditions increase the risk of blood clots from forming. while current antithrombotic agents are available such as heparin, they can increase the risk of bleeding, said jayachandran kizhakkedathu, la’s professor at ubc and principal investigator of the research. 

the goal of la’s research was to create a drug molecule that can prevent thrombosis, or clotting of the blood inside a blood vessel, without the side effects of bleeding. 

to reach this goal, la worked with experts who focused on enzymes and proteins within the clotting cascade. the clotting cascade is “the series of enzymatic events that occur for a blood clot to form,” la said. 

previous research from james morrissey, a biological chemistry professor at the university of michigan, discovered that polyphosphate, a naturally occurring, negatively charged biopolymer, plays multiple roles within the clotting cascade, and primarily speeds up the clotting process. 

la explains how many current anticoagulants target key factors within the clotting cascade such as thrombin. other drugs can inhibit different key enzymes within the clotting cascade, kizhakkedathu said. la was looking to design polymers that inhibit and target polyphosphate. 

“if you can inhibit polyphosphate, you’re not inhibiting one of the key factors like thrombin, and you may have reduced bleeding as a side effect,” la said.  

previous studies show positive polymers like polyethyleneimine do bind to polyphosphate. however, because these polymers are extremely positively charged, they not only bind to polyphosphate but other essential negative polymers in the body. this can be toxic and ultimately lead to other side effects. 

so, la designed and synthesized a library of polymers. the core of the polymer is globular and she functionalized it with “positive partners that would bind to the polyphosphate.”

the goal was to have enough positive charge on the molecule that it can bind to polyphosphate without binding to the other essential negative ions within the blood that can lead to toxic side effects. 

“you’re trying to find that balance. positive enough, but not too positive,” la said. 

the next step was to conduct research with in vitro studies, studies within the lab, and in vivo studies, or studies using living animals. three of the drug molecules did well in vitro and moved on to in vivo studies with mice. 

la traveled to michigan where she worked with morrissey to look at the drug molecule more closely. she looked at whether the drug by itself would induce bleeding by administering the drug to a mouse and letting it circulate for five minutes. then she cut the tail and measured the bleeding time and quantity of blood loss. this is compared to a control using saline and heparin.

based on this work, la’s university and university of michigan have since applied for a provisional patent on these set of drug molecules and researchers are studying the effects in large animal models. after getting the patent, the next steps are to build a body of evidence to show the efficacy and safety of the drug, la said. then the drug molecule will hopefully be tested with humans.

“the holy grail for thrombosis treatment is to develop a drug molecule which could prevent thrombosis, but also won’t have any side effects such as bleeding,” kizhakkedathu said. “we are close to that, but we don’t know,” considering more evaluation needs to be done on larger animals and then humans. this process can take years.

“the basis of the technology is to adapt beyond polyphosphate and is a valuable platform to design more positive polymer therapeutics,” la said.

focusing on electrons and making emitters and complex polymer structures 

tonge’s love for chemistry started when he was in middle school. he loved doing experiments where significant visual changes were observed, such as foaming and color changes. this love of chemistry led him to pursue a ph.d. in organic chemistry, where he focused on developing and producing emissive compounds of many different colors.

besides making multicolored fluorescent compounds, he also worked closely developing “complex polymeric structures” using these emitters to simulate multilayer organic electronic devices such as an organic solar cell or an organic led.

a typical led television can be simplified to two key layers. one layer is a light emitting layer that functions as a backlight and the other layer is a color filter, which changes the color of the light to give you a pixel. basically, these led televisions have a part that makes “white” light across the color spectrum and another that selectively removes or tunes the color from that light to leave the color you see, tonge said. 

on the other hand, an organic led, or oled, makes light by specifically designing fluorescent emitters to address the colors that are being emitted by the screen. this creates very vibrant colors as well as deep black colors that are desirable to consumers. these emitters generate light by generating an excited state on an emitter using electricity followed by quenching of that excited state to emit light. 

with these oleds, manufacturers design panels with very small, emissive pixels, the smallest subunit of the panel that “can make all the colors that you’re trying to display.”  when electricity enters a pixel, it glows a specific color based on the emissive properties of the dyes used and the specific energy levels of the emitters to create the image seen on the screen. so, when you want the pixel to be red, just the red lights up. this also allows for very deep black colors because when it’s black, it just turns off. this is different than a normal televisions where the light is still on behind the color filter, leading to a slight glow even when the pixel is turned off, tonge said. 

the experimental emitters he made throughout his doctorate started off with simple electron transport and hole transport polymers for emissive devices. when working with these compounds, he found several highly emissive donor-acceptor intermediates that drew his interest. these emissive compounds emit light as electrons fall “from an excited state to a non-excited state,” tonge said. “the color that’s emitted is defined by the energy gap from the excited state to the ground state.”

to generate high energy blue light, a high energy gap from excited state to ground state is needed. tonge explained it’s harder to make blue pixels that last for a long time because it’s a very high energy emission. the high energy excited states required are unstable leading to emitters decomposing. when it comes to red light, it’s a “very small energy drop,” so small that the excited states can quench without emitting light. “sometimes, instead of emitting light, your excited electron just dissipates as heat,” tonge said. the easiest color to make with high efficiency is green as these emitters are less likely to decompose because of high energy states.

one of the highlights of tonge’s work included designing and synthesizing a super high-efficiency red emitter. what tonge was doing in the lab was “proof-of-concept work and not focused on making something commercially viable.” the emitter is more stable, more efficient and has higher color purity than many emitters on the market. despite these advantages, the low-yielding synthesis makes the cost of this emitter to be very high, about “$10,000 a gram, and they need about a gram per tv,” tonge said. 

“when things break down inside an oled, it’s because of undesired side reactivity happening that was not anticipated,” tonge said. this usually means something in a high energy state reacts with something else instead of emitting light or even undergoes a spontaneous rearrangement that results in decomposition of the emitters. tonge’s contributions focused on developing emitters were more “rigid” and less likely to undergo side reactions. he did this by bridging adjacent groups and by blocking the positions of the molecules where side reactions happen most frequently.

besides simple emitters, he also worked on some more complex polymers, specifically focusing on large macromolecules called a bottlebrush polymer. picture a pipe cleaner where there is a wire in the middle and many hairs or brushes perpendicular to that wire along its length. for his project he made a bottlebrush polymer by connecting norbornene, or a specific “handle people use to build polymers, building blocks to generate the wire in the middle of the brush. these norbornenes were modified with short, polymeric semiconductors to simulate a multilayer electronic device in a single polymer chain. in this way, he would attach a series of polymers tuned to glow specific colors or have specific properties.

“like a tree of christmas tree lights,” tonge said. 

he gives this example of an application of bottlebrush polymers. he was able to demonstrate that if the “brush” side arms of these polymers were segregated by electronic properties, it was possible to directly allow or prevent charge transfer between adjacent arms in the solid state. this can be observed by choosing two polymers that emit one color when they are prepared in a film, but form a complex when mixed together in a film that emits a different color. by making bottlebrushes that are separated into two distinct regions, it prevents the two polymers from mixing. simply put, this means a mixed film can be forced to glow as if the polymers were not mixed at all. 

the ability to control how components of organic semiconductors mix in the solid state is important for designing devices with long life spans and consistent performance over the life of the device. 

the benefits of tonge’s emitters include longer lifespans for the device, higher efficiencies and improved color purity. his creations aren’t used commercially, but the lab continues to explore the use of these emitters and polymer architectures for additional applications. 

while certain devices may not last forever, the future for la and tonge looks bright. they live together with their dog chuckles in chicago and their bond continues to get stronger with each year that passes. 

the next step? picking out a ring to solidify their bond and the magnetic force that drew them together. 

the black panther party was founded in oakland, calif., in 1966. they preached a message of radical black power throughout disinvested in, low-income urban areas until the early 1980s. part of their message was policing the police — often remembered as violence — but their commitment to community safety went further.

the panthers’ goal was to address and mitigate the injustices caused by national, endemically racist policies and programs that have systemically undermined black communities since their inception. policies such as the requirement for public housing to be segregated, often segregating previously desegregated neighborhoods when initially built, and processes like redlining.

while the black panther party’s overall goal was to bring about systemic change for black communities, with an end to police brutality and economic subjugation, they provided important resources as a stopgap measure to sustain urban communities until radical change or revolution came. the panthers’ “ten point program,” detailed their mission — both what they wanted, and what they believed. it makes explicit calls for institutional change, and reaffirms the rights of all people to the basic necessities to live a healthy life.

10. we want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, and peace.” 

— the black panthers ten point program 

the panthers designed a series of survival programs, which targeted a wide range of needs, including food, clothing, jobs, education, health, and more — items highlighted in their mission. four are particularly relevant to the ways we conceptualize food movements today. 

the first two, free breakfast for school children and the free food programs most explicitly provided communities with food security. 

the free breakfast for school children program provided hot, nutritious food, free of charge, to any child who attended the program. by the panthers’ own admission, the purpose of the program was threefold — to feed children, to bring attention to the pervasive issue of childhood hunger, and to provide a positive introduction to the panthers and their message for children, their parents, and the broader public. it is sometimes credited with inspiring the expansion of federally sponsored free breakfast programs, the government’s response to its wild popularity and the way it palatably introduced the panthers’ beliefs and message. 

the free food program addressed hunger beyond just the school day. the panthers accomplished this through ongoing food deliveries to program participants, and periodic widespread food distribution to a wider swath of the community. a third program, the seniors against a fearful environment (safe) program, aimed to meet the variety of needs of elders in the communities, and included food distributions to seniors.

the exploited and oppressed people’s needs are land, bread, housing, education, freedom, clothing, justice, and peace, and the black panther party shall not for a day alienate ourselves from the masses and forget their needs for survival. … when people call in to say they need food we do not spout a lot of superficial rhetoric, but see that they are fed.” 

— a bpp member named marsha in an april 1969 issue of the black panther 

all of these programs relied heavily on community assistance to run. donations of food, funds, space, and time were necessary. while many of these donations were made by community members on their own volition, the panthers also took a more active role in securing donations. this included calling grocery stores to ask for food donations, requesting that program participants occasionally volunteer, or asking churches and community centers to lend them space for organizing and distribution. this was often an effective strategy for the panthers, but if an entity refused to provide the requested assistance, a more aggressive tone was often adopted, including boycotts or protests of offending businesses, according to the book “black against empire: the history and politics of the black panther party,” by joshua bloom and waldo e. martin.

these three survival programs are clearly understood within the framework of food security movements, ensuring that all in the community had access to affordable, healthy food. but when coupled with the panther’s demands for just and equal living conditions, it elevated the food movements the panthers were a part of to a class of food justice activism. 

there is another survival program of the panthers — and the fourth on our list — that is worth mentioning in its relation to food movements. although it was never realized due to a lack of funds, the panthers designed a land banking program, which would have given the community the power to make land use determinations. these decisions could have created a space for a food sovereignty movement to flourish, as community members would have been able to create jobs and access to healthy, affordable produce growth within their community. the panthers imagined a system that would see the “merger of land conservation and ‘human conservation’ — the interconnection between the preservation of our natural and human resources, recognizing that each have little without the other,” according to the book “the black panther party: service to the people programs” by the dr. huey p. newton foundation and edited by david hilliard. this could have been used for urban farms and gardens, where the means of production would have been put back into the hands of the community, but without the means of purchasing land, the land banking program was unfortunately never actualized. 

the panthers imagined a radical equality, never before seen in america, and were willing to take active measures to secure this reality. at the same time, they realized the immediate needs of their communities. 

the creation of the survival programs was a hallmark of their approach, integrating the practical needs of the community with broader radical ideological struggle. the survival programs ingrained mutual aid and community care and were creative in adopting strategies from other movements to best fit their needs. 

racial and environmental injustice has many effects, and the survival programs were designed to address them all. food was just one facet of their programming to right injustices. part of the panthers’ downfall lay in the ways managing this multitude of programs strained resources. predicated on substantial systematic change, the programs were never designed to provide for communities indefinitely. 

across the country, urban farming organizations continue to provide mutual aid, access to healthy and affordable food, and educational opportunities to advance food security in the same spirit as the panthers. 

in oakland, the black panther party’s birthplace, organizations like spiral gardens, city slicker farms, and phat beets produce, all work with the local community to provide fresh produce for free or at affordable rates, or supplies for community members to grow their own. 

similar organizations exist in major cities across the country, such as the urban growers collective in chicago, and revision urban farm in boston. they also exist in smaller cities, suburban, and rural areas, like soul fire farm in petersburg, new york; the natwani coalition in northern arizona; and liberation farms in androscoggin county in maine.

in today’s movements, taking a narrow focus has led to longer-term success for organizations.  this is unlike the panthers multifaceted approach, which when combined with pressure, white supremacist systems, and the forces that uphold them caused strain on their resources. with this narrower approach, in order to effectively challenge the systems that produce and maintain inequality, an intersectional, multi movement coalition will be necessary. to do this, many food sovereignty and justice groups partner with groups addressing other symptoms of oppression to challenge the larger system. 

in this struggle, by remembering the panthers’ approach — by utilizing mutual aid networks and uplifting urban communities from within — organizations can address the current realities or low-income communities while striving as a collective for systemic change.

almost exactly a year ago, i made the decision to switch to clean beauty products. on a random september morning, i quite literally stumbled into the cosmetics crisis and my soon-to-be favorite store, take care, for the first time. i liked the lip gloss. i went back again when i ran out of my favorite mascara. then again and again and again. the more time i invested, the more inspired i became to learn more about the impact of my most beloved brands. it didn’t take much digging to learn that the beauty industry is bigger — and badder — than i had ever imagined. from 2018 to 2019, the beauty industry grew nearly 6%, generating around $320 billion in retail sales. 

i sat down with take care founder becky waddell to talk about our shared love of makeup, her inspiration for the shop and my quest to makeover my beauty routine for the better. i was most curious to get her expert opinion on what the term “clean beauty” really entails, as its use is diverse and debated. in waddell’s eyes, clean beauty is the creation of affective cosmetics without causing harm. the product selection she curates in her shop exemplifies this, as she strives to help customers new and old choose cosmetics that can “transform something that is aesthetic into something that supports our wellbeing.” 

defining clean beauty also meant confronting one of the biggest obstacles i came across in my journey: greenwashing, or attempts by companies to convince buyers that they are doing more to protect the earth than they are. large makeup brands have hopped on clean beauty as a trend; but often call products “clean” or “natural” when they have floral packaging… as opposed to actually being eco-friendly. this practice is more than just misleading. 

as it turns out, huge consequences come in really small cute packages. zero waste europe reports that the global cosmetics industry produces more than 120 billion units of packaging every year.. most of which cannot be recycled. this means that even the most innocent of plastic shampoo bottles is likely to end up in landfills or the ocean where it will take 400+ years to decompose. environmentalist ellen macarthur claims that if we do not make a change, there will be more pounds of plastic than fish in the ocean by the year 2050. pretty scary right? 

there is some good news too. these scary problems have emerging solutions. brands like rms are innovating to reduce harm throughout their products’ lifecycles by using packaging made from 80% post-consumer recycled fibre and manufacturing using 100% wind power. another leading company, kjaer weis, has created packaging that can be refilled and reused. although such undertakings can be costly for companies — which in turn drives up prices — waddell offered me a new approach: a change in the way we think about how we consume. she calls for a more intentional approach to shopping, encouraging people to buy less things that means more. the industry still needs to make massive strides in terms of accessibility: it is my hope that one day it will be expected that all products do more good than harm. in the meantime, don’t toss your plastic moisturizer bottle just yet! however, when you are looking for a replacement i’d encourage you to invest some time into learning about more sustainable options… in trying something new, you might just find something really beautiful.

i arrive at my boat, and drift down one of the river’s many anaconda-infested tributaries, noting channel-billed toucans and royal flycatchers flying overhead. in the amazon rainforest, riverbanks form into large, muddy slopes known as clay-licks. at these sites, thousands of birds gather together to feed on the clay, which aids in the digestion of their typical diets of fruit, berries, nuts, and seeds. it is at these clay-licks where one of the most incredible feats of nature can be witnessed: a mass gathering of parrots and macaws. 

as the sun rises higher and higher, i could hear the grating calls of hyacinth and scarlet macaws in the treetops above the river. the tributary widens, revealing clay cliffs of spectacular proportions. the knot in my chest loosens, and there are macaws everywhere. the stress that often grips me melts away; i am free as a bird.   

it was in these impenetrable hectares of rainforest where i discovered what it meant to be truly “present.” i was nearly 3,500 miles away from the city, yet a giant mahogany tree on the riverbank reminded me of the chrysler building. i could not deduce why i felt so oddly at home in the peruvian rainforest, even with its 16 species of highly venomous coral snakes and pit-vipers. this sensation was defined by a persistent sense-of calm bliss that i could only recall experiencing in fleeting bursts. i first assumed that my tranquil condition resulted from being so far-removed from my familiar new york city life. there was nothing to plan, no deadlines to catch, and most of all, there were no other people around, aside from my family and the boatman. all at once, i could at last pin-point the origins of this tranquil state as a sensation that i temporarily experience while playing the piano, journaling, and most especially while bird-watching.

as the journey continued, i became pleasantly detached from the racing thoughts and restlessness i had grown so accustomed to. was this a feeling that i could only hope to experience in near-isolation, or was it something i could recreate wherever i was, even in the middle of the bustling city i call home?        

let me begin by saying that i love new york, even when my anxiety makes me feel otherwise. i have been a resident of new york city for 21 years, and a bird-watcher for about half of that time. there is something magical about being able to grab an onion bagel with extra cream-cheese at zabar’s, and upon exiting, to observe a migrating magnolia warbler on broadway in rush hour.

the day before leaving for peru, i remember crossing central park and arriving on the east side, shuffling through jarringly loud groups of tourists, beanie-clad hipsters, fashion junkies, and craft-beer snobs. it is not easy to stay still in the wake of the caffeine-fueled machine, and my chest began to tighten, but the passing silhouette of a bird of prey over park avenue suddenly made me pause. it was pale male, the city’s beloved resident red-tailed hawk hunting for mice like an nyc divorcee looking for a husband.

with my restlessness temporarily relinquished, i walked east along 5th avenue where the park borders the street, and giant elms as old as the city itself cast their shadows on the cobblestone. i felt safer in the shadows. on the ground, european starlings, the winged-rats of nyc, flocked together amongst house sparrows and pigeons, voraciously gobbling down food-scraps. the pugnacious european starling was first introduced to the city in 1890 in the delacorte theater as a prop for a production of shakespeare in the park. soon after, their numbers boomed, and the european starling is currently considered one of the most widespread and abundant birds in the new world. hated by bird-watchers, this species isn’t classified under the latin name sturnus vulgaris for nothing!

overhead was a sight less familiar to bird-naïve new yorkers, as blackpoll and bay-breasted warblers made their annual migratory rounds, gleaning insects from branches and remaining hidden in the foliage. occasionally, someone will ask me what i’m observing. i don’t typically talk to strangers, but people get curious when they see a young man with a jerry garcia shirt and a pair of swarovski binoculars standing in the middle of a bustling city block and staring up into the trees. 

in my experience, anxiety compels a person to become an observer. the senses are constantly deluged by information, and the world can take on the appearance of a strange and hyper-real dreamland. walking into a crowded supermarket is akin to entering a packed stadium. the white walls are too bright, the colors of the food too saturated and plastic-looking. the sounds of people laughing and conversing assault the senses, as if someone were screaming into my ears with a loudspeaker. i am ever-alert, and distract myself by observing objects in the room, taking note of their colors, sizes, and dimensions. observing what is around me, be it a bird, a train, or the color of someone’s shoes, allows for me to slow-down the pace of my thoughts, making me feel calm and centered. 

bird-watching transforms this nervous energy into something productive and of implicit emotional-value to me. seeing a rare bird grips my mind, forcing it to hone in on a particular set of details, rather than reel in response to a tsunami of sensory information. one could say that the act of bird-watching is analogous with refereeing a soccer game. the bird-watcher and the referee are both keen observers, and their targets are both constantly on the move. it only takes a matter of seconds and one small mistake for the entire course of the game to be thrown off, or for the bird to fly away unidentified.

seeing a rare bird is always a rush, however, it is not my primary goal when i set out into the field. i am chasing a feeling, a sort of fleeting-high. the objective is to experience the beauty and tranquility of being in the moment, and seeing a rare bird is like the icing on the cake. as a warbler comes into view, my attention shifts to the bird’s shape and plumage, and slowly strays away from any nagging introspection and negativity. in that moment, i’m no longer hyper-focusing on the tightness in my chest, nor am i replaying awkward conversations i had months prior in my head. the warbler in my binoculars is the only thing that exists, and its features are like a puzzle i must piece together in the fleeting seconds before it flies away. in this way, bird-watching allows for me to feel calm and present, while simultaneously eliciting the joy that comes from following my passion.

before i was born, my parents bought a small, stone house in the catskills in upstate new york, just around two hours outside of the city. i spent almost every weekend growing up at my catskill home, and would lose myself for hours in the woods adjacent to my house. on june nights, i would hunt for gray tree frogs which perched along the edges of our small koi pond, catching insects in mid-air with their long, sticky tongues. in the fall and winter, i would set up camera traps around the property and monitor the mammal species that passed through. i routinely terrorized my mother by catching milk snakes in her garden, and flipping every stone in the rock wall she worked so hard to build in search of salamanders. my parents were strong hikers, and my father proposed to my mother on the summit of the grand teton, later taking her to kenya to climb to mt. kilimanjaro for their honeymoon. hiking was an immensely important part of my childhood, and i loved watching what i now know were red-tailed hawks and turkey vultures lazily circling over mountain summits.

my love of birds was cemented in this place upon first observing the rare and highly sought-after connecticut warbler. at the time, i knew very little about birds, but this odd little warbler caught my eye with its strange habit of walking, rather than hopping on the ground as it ran into the cover of the dense shrubs that lined my driveway. upon discovering that i had stumbled upon something so rare, it was as if an entirely new world had opened up for me. i began to conceptualize bird-watching like a game, as there are a given number of species found within a particular area, some common, others very rare, and all entirely unpredictable. finding a rare bird gave me the same satisfaction that i imagine i would experience if scarlet johansson gave me a deep-tissue massage.

identifying birds soon became a passion and a labor of love. a few species, like the empidonax flycatchers, a small family of identical drab-green birds, are impossible to distinguish by plumage alone, even in the hand. this makes things especially challenging, or fun depending on how you look at it, as the five species found in eastern north america can only be distinguished by their vocalizations. by this point, i was head-over-heels in love with birding and all of the challenges that came with it.

bird-watching became an interactive, real-life version of “where’s waldo,” and when i couldn’t identify my waldo bird by plumage, i quickly learned the calls, anatomy, and behavior of all the birds in my local region. i began collecting field guides. first, guides that covered the species found in eastern north america, and later graduating to books encompassing borneo, japan, the philippines, and other exotic regions of the world. reading about these unfamiliar and alluring species made me feel as though i was traveling to the very remote lands in which these birds resided. when i was anxious, flipping through a guide to the birds of borneo or thailand propelled me into a positive mindset, and i made it my mission to one-day travel to these far-away places.

there were times when anxiety left me house-bound, and bird-watching gave me an excuse to get outside and out of my comfort-zone. i was commonly drained of energy, and making the daily commute to the ramble in central park brought me out of my periodic fatigue. i would find myself losing track of time and walking for miles, often beginning my excursions at the 67th st. park entrance and finishing at the reservoir near 93rd st. when i couldn’t see friends, bird-watching allowed me to become a part of an entirely new community of people who shared my passion, and simultaneously helped me to become a better birder and naturalist in general.

my infatuation with birds led me to meet some of the most influential people in the natural world, including neil degrasse tyson, whose office was directly next to mine in the museum of natural history during a summer internship. above all, bird-watching has allowed for me to develop techniques to quell my anxiety by being present, which eventually translated into my personal discovery of the incredible healing-powers of mindfulness-meditation. i currently have more field guides than shelf-space, and my collection has now grown into the thousands.

upon seeing that lifer connecticut warbler in my driveway, i have since traveled to peru, costa rica (four times), kenya (six times), the galápagos, russia, and other remote parts of the world in search of my feathered friends. my travels have taken me to some of the very places that seemed so far out-of-reach when flipping through my regional field guides as a young boy in new york city. for a long time, i would fantasize about outrunning my anxiety, half-expecting that my next trip to peru, costa rica, or even the ramble in central park would “cure me” at last. today, i smile knowing that there is nothing to run from, and i remember the old adage, “wherever you go, there you are.” 

president of the united nations food and agriculture organization (unfao),  josé graziano da silva, challenged delegates in the plenary to stay grounded in this question as they would spend the next week discussing and devising solutions to end global hunger by 2030.

interestingly enough, this was not the first time i found myself facing this powerful question. in my medical school training, we often are asked to take pause on similar questions: “did i think of every possible diagnosis?” “did i ask every relevant question?” “did i evaluate all possible outcomes?” all these questions ultimately boil down to, “did i do everything i could for this patient when there was still a chance?”

at these united nations’ meetings, the “patient” is the world and the outcomes to prepare for range from decreased crop diversity to increased strain on resources. throughout the week, delegates worked to create plans so we could do “everything” we can to keep perhaps our most important patient healthy.

medicine and health played a notable role in these meetings. the united nations 2nd sustainable development goal outlines, “a profound change of the global food and agriculture system is needed to nourish today’s 795 million hungry + the additional 2 billion increase in global population expected by 2050.” queen letizia of spain noted a critical element in devising solutions for this goal: “it is not just about feeding, it is about nourishing.”

throughout the week, it was highlighted that diet is the no. 1 risk factor globally for disease. as the world prepares to reshape our food systems, this statistic and the important health consequences from food cannot be ignored.

from a medical viewpoint, malnutrition is understood to be, a “dysfunction resulting from a failure to consume or to metabolize sufficient nutrients to support the body’s structural and functional integrity,” according to the sabiston textbook of surgery (2017). malnutrition can be caused by starvation, metabolic disorders, or even obesity due to intake of inappropriate and nutrient poor foods. prolonged malnutrition can impair organ systems, leading to respiratory insufficiency, delayed wound healing, skeletal muscle wasting, renal atrophy, immunosuppression, or cardiac dysfunction.

while hunger can have devastating impacts on individuals and communities, malnutrition extends beyond hunger. the meetings importantly pointed out that 8 of the 20 countries with the fastest rising obesity rates are in developing parts of africa and just under 40% of adults in the united states are obese. malnutrition is a disease of both poverty and wealth. with an increasing trend in non-communicable diseases, like cardiovascular disease or non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, it is imperative to recognize how food trends are influencing the global health landscape.

given the close interplay between health and food, it is clear that policies to end malnutrition will require a close collaboration with the healthcare sector. clinicians need a seat at the table to advocate for patients around the world and to offer insight on the downstream health consequences of shifting diets. in order to “do everything we could when there was still a chance,” we need to involve everyone we can while there is still a chance. from tackling problems as far-reaching as the interplay of climate change and global food security to overcoming microscopic obstacles in a clinical setting, solutions are made stronger when diverse perspectives are involved.

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editor’s note: this series, a zero hunger future, is generously sponsored by the un-fao. all editorial content is created independently. to discover more experiential learning opportunities, email editor@planetforward.org.