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GOT SOME GOURMET ISHT
RIGHT HERE
ABOUT FROM THE ROW
This is a story about one the most comforting necessities enjoyed by humans. Food! How we use it to sustain, express and communicate so many things.
This is also a story about Skid Row, LAs densely populated 25-30 square block area that runs Main to Alameda, 7th to 3rd. On a map it almost looks like a child's simplistic drawing of a house, square body with a triangular roof, cut in half., It home to 15,000 people, predominantly low-income and unhoused.
Skid Row is an embracing, bustling community. Fascinating, once you get over the initial shock of witnessing an informal settlement (encampment) on a scale unrivaled anywhere else in western society. Tents and bodies everywhere. Creature comforts, nowhere. Yet cooking, serving and sharing miraculously manages to happen. A rich blend of southern, BBQ, creole, indigenous, S. American, Caribbean and African cuisines scent certain corners. Another fact, you’ll notice immediately, is, it’s predominantly Black.
A 2020 Homeless count undertaken by LAHSA showed that 59% of unhoused people living in Skid Row were African American. African Americans are 8% of LA’s residents yet represent 34% of people experiencing homelessness.
How did this group of people get here and how are they cooking mouthwatering meals with little to nothing? Well, the journey began in the early 1500’s when European immigrants got the idea to take and enslave Africans and bring them to Northern America.
It didn’t work out too well for them initially but it marked the beginning of what would become a sustained legalized system of full-blown chattel slavery that has defined the African American experience. More than 12 million (recorded) people were taken. In 1863, slaves were proclaimed to be free but were not treated or accepted as human. A little later Europeans were carving out Africa and had colonized most of the continent. Africans throughout the western world were seen as second class citizens and denied access to land ownership, housing, education, gainful employment, voting and much more. In America, segregation laws were crafted and Black people were denied loans, confined to and contained in certain areas, a strategy known as redlining. Surviving people of African descent were designated to the poorest, most deprived areas, which is true still today! Hence, Skid Row.
African Americans have a rich history. Many of whom came from regions in West Africa. Movement, music, rituals, cooking, sayings and phonetics, clothing and hairstyles all bear the markings of a sacred culture, unbreakable and resilient. In their place of origin, Africans cherished and cultivated land which rewarded them with bountiful crops and ensured their survival.
Their relationship to food was healthy, it was not addictive, ungrateful, frantic, or ignorant. It was informed, appreciative and profoundly understood food being the roots within a community, the lifeline that grounded, connected and nourished entire villages. They prayed and sang over seeds, called to the weather, celebrated and shared harvest.
Sustainable farming practices stem from African and indigenous roots - yet their descendants find themselves removed and unable to access land throughout North America. The connection they previously had with land was forcibly broken and intentionally blocked. In America today Black people make up 1% of rural land owners and only 2% of farmers, a result of discriminatory laws and funding, redlining and racism which has led to the stark racial disparities in health.
When we think of ghettos, deprived areas, where poor people live, where Black and Brown communities are disproportionately represented, growth does not come to mind. We don't imagine farms or green spaces. We don’t think of ownership, development or prosperity. That is because it’s hard to imagine advancement in an environment where everything that promotes health and life, has been stripped, removed or arrested.
Disparities when it comes to how food is grown, distributed and accessed reveal just how much people of African descent are left out of the way food is managed, processed and sold. But many of the meals we enjoy most were introduced by African cooks and much of the superfoods we see splashed over countless publications, feeds and advertisements come from Africa and Asia. Yet people of those cultures receive little recognition or compensation for the use of their culinary creations and native foods.
From the Row, lifts stories of resilience, creativity and unimaginable resourcefulness! It tells a story of decolonizing our relationship to food, the imposition of power, control, and norms over our food systems.
From the Row presents a juxtaposition of meals cooked on a budget in a homeless community and taking pride in stigmatized meals, while offering community solutions to weaponized food practices, inequitable distribution, and provides resources to healthy recipes, food as medicine, nutritional facts, urban farms and farming tips. Demonstrating how we survive and how we can thrive, using ancestral traditions and community organizing!
Owning our stories and accessing the land is not only the basis for material health but our capacity to resist and make ourselves free.
FOOD IS
POWER
MEDICINE
PEACE
JOY
CULTURE
COMMUNITY
HISTORY
MORE INFO COMING SOON!
Great Food | Special Guests | Amazing Prizes | More Info Coming Soon!
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Big D is a grandfather, self-described mama's boy, and LA native. Growing up surrounded by strong, supportive women, Big D came to love cooking and conversation. An incredible storyteller with a sly sense of humor, he has a lot to say about the state of the world and life on Skid Row. Thoughtful, informed, and honest, Big D is a one-of-a-kind presence in the Skid Row community and on first-name terms with all his Ceres Avenue neighbors.
FEATURED
CHEF
BIG D
© 2022 LA CAN & From The Row