addressing the many issues faced by bangladeshi women 

the bangladeshi diaspora is the fastest-growing immigrant population in new york city. according to the asian american federation, it is estimated that 74% (48,985) of bangladeshis living in new york city were foreign-born, as of 2015, of which 53% were naturalized citizens.

being a non-u.s.-born immigrant comes with many limitations, such as language barriers, the inability to vote in federal elections or work governmental jobs, lack of legal protection and access to healthcare or quality housing, plus trouble finding employment and educational opportunities. being a woman can exacerbate these challenges. with little to no support, many bangladeshi women also are often left to deal with problems of intergenerational trauma, immigration, and colonization, coupled with the stress of poverty, depression, and cycles of abuse. 

new york city resident sahreen quadir, has noticed this toxic cycle throughout her life. quadir saw her mother struggle when moving to the u.s. reflecting on how her mother faced the same challenges that many bangladeshis experience, quadir said, “my mother was an immigrant to this country. i saw firsthand growing up what the lack of resources can do to someone’s livelihood and how it can affect their children.” 

quadir saw the degree to which women were underserved in her community and wanted to make a change. she now works for a nonprofit company in the bronx called, “laal.” in bangla, “laal” means “red,” and symbolizes many important attributes for bangladeshi women. bangladeshi women are famously known for cooking with red bhindi (a kind of okra), women wear a red saree on their wedding day, and the red sun on the center of the bangladesh flag symbolizes independence.

laal was founded by a bangladeshi woman, sanjana khan, and is the epitome of a “for women, led by women” organization. this nonprofit provides resources for women to live healthy and engaged lives. laal provides several programs to give bangladeshi women resources, including a community garden.

a healing garden

another member, shahela begum, founded the laal bhagan initiative, which is a community garden led by bangladeshi women in norwood, the bronx. laal bhagan means “red garden” in bangla. the initiative merges bangladeshi indigenous gardening practices and adapts them to an urban environment. it also promotes community building among bangladeshi women, while giving them space to grow essential foods, including fresh spinach, habanero peppers, parsley, bitter melon, squash, beans, and more.

the women are reclaiming traditional and indigenous agricultural practices from bangladesh. according to a survey conducted by laal, 71% of laal members have immigrated straight from rural bangladesh. many had never been to a major city in bangladesh like dhaka, sylhet, or chittagong. they come from villages where farming and growing their own food was a common practice, and immigrated straight to the bronx neighborhood in new york city.

through laal bhagan, they were taught new environmental concepts, such as sustainable gardening, composting, and how to pest control plants, while still being taken back to their roots. laal bhagan is especially important to have in the bronx, since the area has no public gardening space.  

laal bhagan was directly formed due to the epidemic of isolation and the mental health crisis that many women were experiencing, which was further exacerbated by the covid-19 pandemic. but by participating in laal bhagan, many of these women have made great improvements to their lives through their connection to the soil. this connection also has a scientific basis, as contact with soil releases serotonin. according to a study by bristol university and university college london, contact with a soil bacteria called mycobacterium vaccae triggers the release of serotonin in our brains, and which can act as an antidepressant.

this isn’t just about growing food, it’s about creating a safe space for bangladeshi women. all vegetables grown at laal bhagan are authentically native to bangladesh. combining physical activity with social interaction and exposure to nature and sunlight is very beneficial to human health. all goods grown at laal bhagan will go into their laal ranna program, which is about preserving traditional bengali cooking methods and recipes. 

looking toward the future

when asked, “so, what’s next for laal?” quadir describes laal bhagan’s future and remarks that the garden is undergoing an assessment at the time. she is hoping to create a larger garden within their organization’s own space, anticipated to launch in summer 2023. laal also recently launched a health initiative program in 2022, the reproductive justice initiative in partnership with the midwifery clinic at north central bronx hospital.

this is the first curriculum in the united states that goes deeply into educating women about sexual and reproductive health in bangla. laal has been doing incredible work in trying to change lives, by giving these bangladeshi women the skills to improve their lives and well-being while leveling the playing field. big strides are being made by this nonprofit in the bronx. as sanjana khan, the founder of laal once said, “if we don’t, who will?”

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.

right around the corner from the apartment i moved into happened to be a small cooperative grocery store where i applied for a part-time job, mostly for the sake of paying for rent and food. i started at the tail end of september that year, and just over three years later to date, i’ve moved up from part-time cashier to full-time produce manager.

while a community may crop up out of any situation where a group of people are inherently intertwined, there is something particularly special, potentially revolutionary, about adding a co-op to a community. it brings with it awareness and advocacy, and it acts as a needle weaving the threads of the community together.

the first co-op was started in 1844 by a working class group in england dissatisfied with hazardous working conditions and inadequate pay. they had little access to food and household essentials as individual families, but they realized banding together could afford them more communally than they could afford separately. in the 1960s, similar plans for food access along the west coast of the united states were known as food conspiracies. the strategy continued to metamorphosize, but always remained primarily focused on community support.

nowadays, co-ops remain a counterattack against inequality and social injustice. a modern day cooperative, or co-op for short, is a member-owned business. no one entity owns the building or any of the rest of its assets: the co-op members own it all, cooperatively. there is also a list of 7 co-op principles guiding co-op creation and operation:

1. open and voluntary membership: anyone is allowed to become a member.
2. democratic member control: decisions regarding how the co-op operates are made taking all members’ input into equal consideration.
3. members’ economic participation: capital of the co-op comes from but also belongs to the members, who decide how it is reallocated (store renovations, patronage dividends, donations, etc.).
4. autonomy and independence: co-ops are controlled solely by their members; any collaboration with other entities is approved by members and allowed continued autonomy.
5. education, training, and information: co-ops spread information and make it accessible to the general public.
6. cooperation among cooperatives: co-ops work together with and help sustain other co-ops.
7. concern for community: co-ops support their communities by listening to local members’ needs and desires and working alongside local residents to satisfy them.

all co-ops have their different methods for exercising these principles. some have a board of directors elected by members who make decisions for the store on behalf of the members. some require volunteer work hours as a condition of membership. some have guidelines for the percent of locally-made products they carry.

at syracuse cooperative market, we put all of these co-op principles into practice in a way our members have agreed upon and signed up for. sustainability, buying local, and supporting the community help us fulfill our role. 

as a community resource dedicated to fostering a healthy society, we practice sustainability throughout the store, from food waste management to supporting the community. our food waste management system keeps edible and compostable food out of landfills. expired and damaged grocery and produce goods are donated weekly to assumption church food pantry on the northside of syracuse. any non-edible food, excluding meat and dairy, is thrown into compost bins, which are picked up by a local farmer who uses them to feed her animals. we throw out as little food as we can, so as to waste as little as possible of resources that can be salvaged and made use of.

our selection of bulk food provides opportunities for customers to use minimal disposable plastic when shopping and instead reuse containers they’ve brought from home. we have sections for dry and liquid goods, as well as a separate spice and herbs section.  customers have gotten creative and reused plastic bread bags and plastic yogurt containers, influencing each other to follow suit.

buying local is a function of sustainability at the co-op, as well. by sourcing products from local businesses, we keep money within the community and cut down on co2 emissions from food transport, supporting small-scale farmers over industrial farms and avoiding contributing to air pollution. 

community support is another part of our co-op’s mission. we table at events to reach out to people who may not know they have a local grocery store within walking or biking distance. we make donations to local non-profits, businesses, and other projects contributing to the same mission of sustainable community reformation. we also buy local products as much as possible. gabe, the grocery manager, places local orders through distributors such as regional access, headwater, and fingerlakes farms, which source products from businesses in central new york, the finger lakes, and sometimes other regions of new york. as the produce manager, i place local produce orders through regional access and headwater, too, as well as several other individual farms that deliver directly like gillie brook, wyllie fox farm, and frosty morning farm.

our previous produce manager, stephanie, is in charge of the co-op share, which is another way we support local farmers. from mid spring to late fall, steph puts together boxes of local produce every friday. the share operates like a community supported agriculture program, but instead of coming directly from one farm, the variety of fruits and vegetables we put in the boxes are sourced from a selection of farms every week. the system allows us to put together a diverse assortment of produce, which encourages more hesitant customers to get on board with supporting local farmers.

in march of 2020, our co-op’s mission was tested by the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. the food system was dealt a blow, along with a threat to the stability of community resources. in grocery and department stores, entire paper product aisles were empty from panicked toilet-paper purchases, canned food was wiped out from fear of not being able to shop for weeks or months. even perishable and produce coolers were full of empty spots of out-of-stocks.

at our co-op, keeping the shelves stocked was a feat. our distributors were low on product, due to other clients over-ordering. for a couple weeks, entire sections of our shelves were cleaned out almost every other day, if not daily. members and non-members worried, asking questions we couldn’t provide definitive answers for. the choice was either to give up and let our community down, or work hard and fast to bring stability back. as if there wasn’t a choice at all, we did the latter.

while big grocery stores panicked, with employees being harassed by scared customers and customers feeling uncomfortable in crowded shopping areas, the co-op remained calm and acted with swift precautionary measures to assure the safety of our staff and customers before state or federal guidelines and systems were put into place or demonstrated elsewhere. we started providing curbside pick-up orders, for which we’d take shopping lists and payment from people over the phone and allow them to pick up their groceries contact-free. jen, our social media manager, streamlined this service, creating an organized process for how to take and shop orders, as well as formatting tags to label grocery bags. customers asked regularly showed concern and gratitude toward employees, and employees reciprocated it. a board member and a few other residents within the syracuse community made masks for us. later on, hazard pay was added to payroll for all staff. the sudden disorder was challenging, but we sorted through it with teamwork and dedication.

our co-op community’s response to the pandemic provides a perfect example of co-ops’ influence on communities. we were unified and supported, and there was a sense of social responsibility to maintain that. not only did i find a sense of purpose in my community by being classified as an essential worker during a crisis, but the additional responsibility of being in charge of ordering produce at a co-op made me feel all the more connected. i felt so grateful to go to work every day with a team of people who weren’t just going to work to pay their bills; all of us felt some level of commitment to each other and the community.

now — months deep into the same crisis we’re still living with and supporting our community through — sitting at my computer in the office putting together orders, prepping lettuce and cilantro in the kitchen, stocking local apples and squash on the sales floor, talking with regular customers in the aisles, i never cease to feel a deep-rooted connection to a community i have a place in.

our general manager, jeremy, told me that once, in a coaching session, he was asked: “what do you do to celebrate a job well done?” a little thrown off, he responded: “do more work.” it’s become a joke amongst the staff at the co-op, but in all seriousness, it feels like a summary of our co-op’s and other co-ops’ mission statements. improvement may be a cause for celebration, but improvement doesn’t have a ceiling. that’s the whole point of working toward a better and more just society. there’s always more work to do — and co-ops help rally their communities together and encourage participation in that work. co-ops don’t stop at enough food security, enough community resources, enough education; we continue to expand and improve without bound, tirelessly working for social betterment.

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works cited:

co-op cathy. (2016, november 30). how cooperative grocery stores are bringing food access to low-income neighborhoods. retrieved september 10, 2020, from https://cdi.coop/food-coops-food-deserts-low-income-communities/ 
cotterill, r. (1983). retail food cooperatives: testing the “small is beautiful” hypothesis. american journal of agricultural economics, 65(1), 125-130. doi:10.2307/1240347
hudspeth, b. & josephy, m. (2013, august). building on a legacy of food security. retrieved september 10, 2020, from https://www.grocer.coop/articles/building-legacy-food-security 
jochnowitz, e. (2001). edible activism: food, commerce, and the moral order at the park slope food coop. gastronomica, 1(4), 56-63. doi:10.1525/gfc.2001.1.4.5
lacapra, v. (2010, august 12). expanding inner city food co-ops. retrieved september 10, 2020, from https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyid=129160847 
marc d. brown. (2011). building an alternative: people’s food cooperative in southeast portland. oregon historical quarterly, 112(3), 298-321. doi:10.5403/oregonhistq.112.3.0298
matthiessen, c., & hamersky, a. (2006, november). produce to the people. sierra, 41-45. (https://vault.sierraclub.org/sierra/200611/produce.asp)
nargi, l. (2020, may 15). community food co-ops are thriving during the pandemic. retrieved september 10, 2020, from https://civileats.com/2020/05/15/community-food-co-ops-are-thriving-during-the-pandemic/
severson, k. (2020, september 8). 7 ways the pandemic has changed how we shop for food. new york times. retrieved september 9, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/08/dining/grocery-shopping-coronavirus.html?referringsource=articleshare 
syracuse cooperative market. (n.d.). retrieved september 13, 2020, from https://syracuse.coop/

hosted by frank sesno, healthy you: surviving a pandemic is a co-production of the george washington university milken institute school of public health and the school of media and public affairs.

that night, the student organization hosted their “2018 environmental justice keynote speaker,” jade mazon. mazon is an optimistic and endearing latina woman and lifelong resident of south deering, a resilient, southeast neighborhood of chicago. she is also the co-founder of the rebel bells collective, which came to fruition to educate southeast side girls of color about empowerment and social justice.

she returned to loyola university chicago’s lakeshore campus that evening—after graduating from the university herself years ago—to talk about her community, the environmental injustice happening there, and what it is she has done and is doing about it.

south deering lies just a few blocks west of the indiana border and just southwest of lake michigan. lake michigan creeps inland through the calumet river, collecting in lake calumet, the largest body of water within chicago, not even 10 miles inland on the southwest side of the neighborhood. the river continues on past lake calumet meandering its way both westward through several chicago suburbs—eventually reaching the mississippi river many miles later—and eastward into northwest indiana.

once home to a plethora of wildlife within its marshes, lake calumet, due to its historical connection to lake michigan, is a huge industrial corridor for numerous hazardous industries. “during the 1880s, there was no such thing as regulation. in fact, we didn’t even have the u.s. epa until (1970),” adds cheryl johnson, executive director of people for community recovery. people for community recovery (pcr) is a chicago-based organization, founded by johnson’s late mother hazel m. johnson—known as the “mother of the environmental justice movement”—and turns 40 in 2019.

with johnson at its reigns, pcr works on a gamut of issues regarding the environment, housing, health, safety, and education that all encompass equity, hoping to affect policy and curate change. johnson adds, “when regulation came into play, many industries did not know how to come into compliance. the industries only care about profit at the expense of the poor or communities that don’t know any better.”

within south deering, there are dozens of industries in the area, including landfills and recycling facilities. in addition to the factories that reside within the borders of south deering, there are also outside threats, like the bp oil refinery just across the border in whiting, indiana. looking at a map of whiting, the refinery is so extensive it is twice the size of the residential area—it’s basically its own city. according to bp’s website, this refinery is “bp’s largest refinery anywhere in the world.”

with lots of production in indiana comes lots of waste—but where does it go? right across the border to illinois. up until 2015, the rebel bells collective’s mazon explained, the infamous waste product of the oil refining process called petcoke, which according to the environmental protection agency is highly hazardous, was stored out in the open for years along calumet river, right in the heart of her community. due to lack of zoning regulations, hazardous waste was permitted to be stored within the ward that includes south deering.

growing up, mazon said, no one knew just how toxic this material was. the neighborhood just thought of the industry as an inconvenience: having to stop for constant trains, which hauled petcoke; being forced inside to play with neighborhood kids during windy days; and not being able to have anything white on the exterior or interior of the house as it would eventually be turned black from particulate debris.

the saturday after mazon was at loyola, she headed to under the bridge art studio to be one of the featured guests on a live recording of “the hoodoisie,” a live and live-streamed show and web series about local news happening within gentrified neighborhoods across chicago. other guests included kate koval and olga bautista, both founding members of the southeast side coalition to ban petcoke, and 19-year-old rebel bells alum kat west. together, they spoke of the mistreatment of their community through its history.

it wasn’t until recently that members of this community began to educate themselves on the reality of these industries. after the community rallied together to halt the establishment of a coal gasification plant along the river — and across from the local high school — a handful of years ago, residents began to come together, bautista says, who is also a board member of the southeast environmental task force and the director of community leadership of our city our voice. after realizing how harmful petcoke truly was, bautista, koval, and other residents formed the southeast side coalition to ban petcoke, joined later with supporting community members, like mazon.

other speakers throughout the night gave their insight as well. angela tovar, who grew up within the community and is now the director of community development at the point community development corporation in the bronx borough of new york city, explained that “environmental justice is part of your daily life” when growing up in areas with so much industry and injustice.

south deering isn’t alone. other parts of the city have faced similar situations, such as pilsen, also known as chicago’s lower west side. historically, pilsen, like south deering, has been an industrial hub for the city of chicago. the neighborhood lies on the north side of the south chicago river branch, just east of little village. after battling against these industries for more than a decade, little village and pilsen shut down the coal-fired plants in their neighborhoods, the crawford and fisk generating stations, respectively, in 2012.

still, these communities continue to face injustice. “the fisk generating station is currently in the process of being reopened,” jose requena, a community organizer at pilsen alliance explained. pilsen alliance is monitoring the situation closely, however, requena reassured me. “little village environmental justice organization was able to completely shut down the crawford generating station,” requena said, “but now, hilco redevelopment partners is currently in the process of getting a contract to demolish the building and repurpose the space for a trucking and logistics complex, which could be just as detrimental to the neighboring communities.”

unfortunately, like pilsen, south deering is now fighting a new injustice: manganese. air monitors originally installed because of petcoke have now unveiled the presence of this heavy metal. s.h. bell, another industrial facility along the calumet river, processes, handles, processes, packages, and stores metal. high concentrations of manganese have been recorded in the air and have leached into the nearby community’s yards, prompting the u.s. epa to get involved. unfortunately, the search for a solution is still ongoing, but these communities are resilient in their efforts toward justice.

from an industrial standpoint, more can be done. “it speaks to the greater systemic conversation that needs to be held. do we want to keep operating in this way that puts lives in harm?” said kyra woods, the clean energy organizing apprentice for the illinois sierra club chapter, currently working on a ready for 100 campaign in chicago. woods adds that it’s not a responsible choice to continue to use harmful methods when there may be better alternatives.

but still, woods is hopeful. “by addressing these environmental issues, we can solve other issues, too,” she said. “by switching to a 100% clean energy future, we can actually empower communities, do some fantastic job training, and get people employed, especially in a city like chicago.”

these communities—south deering, pilsen, and little village—all keep fighting back. the support of groups like the sierra club and pilsen alliance, standing in solidarity with them, makes them even stronger. as cheryl johnson said to me, it is important to “follow what you believe is wrong to try and make it right.” and that’s just what these communities are doing.

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(editor’s note: story updated jan. 8, 2019, with current broadcast medium for the hoodoisie.)