Building a Food Justice Future: Transforming South Oak Cliff

Join host George Mason as he visits For Oak Cliff to discuss food security, access, and justice in Southern Dallas. Meet Julianna YeeFoon and Raven Shankle, leaders in the community's fight against food apartheid, and explore For Oak Cliff's innovative approaches to creating a sustainable and equitable food system. Discover how partnerships, education, and a vision for food sovereignty are transforming lives and neighborhoods.

For Oak Cliff's mission is to provide culturally responsive initiatives in South Oak Cliff to liberate the community from systemic oppression, create a culture of education, and increase social mobility and social capital.

Watch the video, here.

George (00:42):

Welcome to Good God, conversations that Matter about faith and Public Life. I'm your host, George Mason, and today we are continuing our on location series in Southern Dallas about food security, or is it food access or is it food justice? It's all of those things. Really. It's getting good healthy food to people to build strong bodies, spirits and neighborhoods. And that we are here at For Oak Cliff, a partner in this larger conversation about food security in Southern Dallas. I'm pleased to be joined by two of their employees. This is Julianna YeeFoon. Sorry. It's okay. Uh, director of Food Justice and Assistant Director of Food Justice Raven Shankle. Yes. And we're gonna be touring their campus and looking at what their program is and how they are engaged in this process, not only with us on a larger basis with other organizations, but specifically how they're doing this work in this neighborhood and in this community.

George (01:48):

So, Juliana, we're here in front of For Oak Cliff. And as we look around, we see that this is a former YMCA that your organization has been able to purchase and you retrofitted it for your work as a community center, but part of that is food. Yeah. And, uh, and yet before we get to the food, we should acknowledge that we, we have all sorts of resources for the community, especially for children and youth it looks like. But you have programs for adults, also GED programs and other kinds of programs. Uh, but looking out on this area, I see trees. Tell us about the trees and the, and, and how this fits into, uh, the larger program.

Julianna (02:32):

Absolutely. So social determinants of health of course, include food, but they include lots of other lifestyle factors. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Um, our ability to have parks to be out outside and enjoy green spaces, um, can be limited in an area that has been historically oppressed, like South Oak Cliff. So we are really lucky that we're now on this 10 acre property and we have some amazing partners who've supported us. So Texas Trees has been a major partner, uh, for not just this last year, but really for years now. And they've planted multiple trees that you'll see around here. We have some magnolias, some willow trees, um, as well as another partner called the Giving Grove,

Raven (03:06):

Which The Giving Grove helped us start our orchard. Um, and so they donated a total of eight trees for us. So we have eight trees right here, and that's apple, pear, peach, and plum. And then closer to our kids playground. They also donated eight blackberry, thornless, blackberry bushes, and two fig trees to kind of help us get our production going. And The Giving Grove is an entity or affiliate of the Grow North Texas, who is also one of our major partners for the Farmer's Market.

Julianna (03:36):

One of the factors that we really wanted to address was with being in a, what's considered a food desert. We like to say it's food apartheid because most deserts are naturally occurring. But yes, food apartheid is a, a structural system, but that's was put in place that is still being, um, uh, reified today, in which there's largely class and race related, uh, disparities. Um, and we, it being in a food desert a couple years ago I heard a term called a food forest. And as soon as I heard that word, I just kind of lit up 'cause I didn't exactly know what it was. But it sounded like a great antidote to the concept of a food desert. I started really digging in looking at food forests in different parts of the country. There's one in Austin, there's some in Seattle, the North, uh, um, Pacific Northwest.

Julianna (04:23):

And I realized that with this 10 acres that we have, we have an opportunity to provide edible plants at different levels of food. Forest is where you might have some bushes, some trees, different layers of edible, uh, things that you could just forage and walk around. And so our vision long term and begin beginning with this new orchard of baby orchard trees we have is that ultimately, you know, 5, 10, 20 years from now when when children are on this space, they have a lot of shade. They can walk around and pick fruit off the trees, um, and that there's a sense of abundance rather than scarcity. What we're walking up to here, um, are really two features of our food program. One is that we have been working with this wonderful partner. She's an artist named Marissa Cagiano, and she is a forger as well as a muralist.

Julianna (05:09):

And so she has been offering classes on our campus for foraging. And foraging is where folks learn to identify medicinal edible plants so that we, you can eat them for the health benefits. And then she designed this gorgeous mural that actually shows you an image of a medicinal plant. And then there's, um, the name of it below. And each of these are cancer fighting. They are so beneficial to your enzymes and your cells. Wow. And then below that, this 10 by 20 foot unit was paid for by a company called Shipped. They offer grocery delivery services. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And they gave us this last year so that we can amp up our cold storage and our produce distribution. Good. So right now we're working on getting the, the electricity hooked up, but once it is, we'll have a 10 by 20 walk-in unit that's refrigerated.

Julianna (06:00):

Good. So that we can get even more produce and we can be part of that food recovery network. So whenever there's like an extra pallet of cantalopes or whatever, and people are looking for a place to take it, we now have a space. Right. Right. Um, but that's been a big barrier in the past was like the amount of cold storage that it requires to really hold that much produce. And then when we have our major events, we'll be able to bring produce out from here too. So this is just really the next level for us of making sure that we're part of that food rescue, food recovery and food distribution network.

George (06:27):

So you have a really long-term vision for foraging, essentially as part of a community's, uh, access to food. But I think it's really important to say for people who are watching this, you use the language of food apartheid. And so that takes us really into the question of why you are both, uh, titled Food Justice People. I think charity is something we all understand. Um, people are generous and when they see a need, they want to give to it. And you do provide charitable opportunities for people because you provide food from other vendors, uh, and other places. But the supply chain is not full and local yet. And that seems to be what you're really working on. Explain the difference in food access between food, charity and food justice.

Julianna (07:32):

Great. So I'll say, I'll tell a story. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, um, and I'll preface that story with a statistic, which is if you pull up Parkland's Community Health Needs assessment, which is available online, it shows, uh, the overall health of the zip codes that encompass Dallas County. Right. The zip code that we're in right now, 7 5 2 1 6 has some of the most extreme health disparities across the city. Life expectancy in this area code is about 20 years less than it is in 7 5 2 0 6, a few miles up the street. Yes. And about 40% of people are walking around with a chronic disease, a diagnosed chronic disease. Yeah. Which also tells me that there's a lot more folks that are probably pre-diabetic and undiagnosed as well. Yeah. Right. So, and that largely are black and brown folks. Right. So it, food justice is not just about filling up bellies Mm-Hmm.

Julianna (08:23):

<affirmative>, um, and ending hunger. It's also about making sure that that food is nutritious. When the story I wanted to share is that when I officially came on board to work at Four Oak Cliff, I'd always been like a volunteer and a helper. Um, and I was really passionate about healthy food access. Um, I had been working at a local grocery store, a health, uh, health food store. And, and Covid happened and I wasn't able to go to work. My child didn't have childcare. Um, and I was kind of trying to figure out what role I was going to play. And I got lucky in that my friend Taylor Tos, who started For Oak Cliff, gave me a call and he said, we need to start doing Covid emergency food distributions. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they had done a survey and saw that 93% of the community that was served was struggling with basic food and basic needs.

Julianna (09:08):

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Um, and so having, because I had a food manager's license and a background in healthy food access, I came on board and we started doing weekly food distributions. We were giving away boxes of food. We gave away 2 million pounds of food out of our parking lot with the help of lots of volunteers and partners. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> while that was really important. And while hunger is still a problem now, what that didn't solve were those health disparities that I mentioned because a lot of that food, uh, were, was not fresh. We got a lot of dairy. Most 70% of the world is lactose intolerant. So that's not always a great source of calories for folks. Um, it, a lot of the food was coming from other parts of the country or even the world. Um, in fact, there were multiple times an entire semi-truck of food just didn't make it to us for one reason or another because of what you mentioned, which is that the supply chains are not reliable.

Julianna (09:52):

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Whether that's because of global politics or climate. There are things that this, the, the, the system that we've put in place, unfortunately, is really based on a history of colonization, history of enslavement. And it doesn't value the human beings that are working in the food system. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And it doesn't value the, the end users Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> that ultimately need the food. And that, especially from an equity lens of who needs it most. Right. So that's why we really highly focus on food sovereignty. On food justice. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Which is that we aren't gonna rely on these vulnerable systems to feed us in the face of the next crisis. 'cause it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. Right. The next either climate crisis or global social political crisis is going to ultimately impact us. Right. Um, and so the farmers' markets, after two years of just only doing food distribution, you know, we kind of we're coming to the end of 2021 and we were saying, how do we take next steps?

Julianna (10:52):

Yes. And how do we get deeper in our advocacy work and making sure that we are creating food sovereignty for our community? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, we have great partners like Oak Cliff Veggie Project, the MADI X folks that have been involved in food rescue for a long time. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And we worked with them and also with Dallas County Health and Human Human Services, their chronic disease prevention department, um, reached out and we basically became, um, a sub-grantee for A-U-S-D-A grant to start our own local farmers market. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And that effort has, we are now in our third year. And, um, Raven was mentioning, she actually started out as a farmer's market vendor. She's a vendor, a farmer, she has a juice business. And we realized pretty quickly in starting the farmer's markets that there just weren't a lot of people growing food or if they were, is at a very, very small scale.

Julianna (11:41):

And so we started thinking, how can we equip and, and train and fund these small growers so that they can really expand their operations, be equipped to sell at farmer's markets, not just ours, but hopefully even more broadly. And then, not only that, but how do we make this super nutritious, fresh food affordable and accessible to our community? So that's where we started doing produce distributions. Uh, specifically where we were bringing in produce from our local partners. And then with our farmer's markets, there's a couple of programs that we have in place that allow our food to be affordable. One is called, uh, a Double Up Food Bucks. And for folks who are on, who are using a Snap card, lone Star card to buy food, if they bring that Lone Star card to our farmer's market, they actually get twice as much money to spend. So if they put $30 on their Snap card, they can get up to $60 to spend at the market. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> while the farmer gets the whole amount. Right. Um, and so we accept Snap. We also accept WIC nutrition vouchers that can be per, uh, picked up in the WIC offices. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, um, as well as having, uh, like I said, just subsidized and affordable goods across the board.

George (12:49):

So you, Raven, are not only working here for four Oh Cliff, but as Juliana said, you're a vendor. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, what is your business?

Raven (12:59):

Um, so I'm a farmer. Yes. Um, and I have a juicing business. So my goal is to grow everything that I'm juicing. And I recognize very quickly that fruits take a longer time to produce than the average kale or Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know, beet. And so right now, like 50% of my production, so I'm currently growing cucumbers, beets, kale, uh, Swiss chard, uh, some squash and a plethora of other things. <laugh>, um, in my own watermelon. They haven't come up yet. And then I'm turning around and I'm juicing those items. Right. Um, and my journey started technically on my birthday. My birthday's in February, and I quit my job and I told my family, I'm becoming a farmer, and they thought I was delusional. And this is last year. And I was just like, oh my God, how is this gonna work? And that's when I got a flyer that four Oh Cliff was starting a farmer's cohort.

Raven (13:49):

And I was like, yes, this is what I need. And that allowed me to not only feel confident in learning how to become a farmer, 'cause I mean, I'm technically first generation, even though according to the census, my great-great-great grandmothers were farmers. But, you know, that encouraged me to learn. And it also helped me have more intention for what it is that I'm doing and recognizing that in the community we are not looking for fresh, fresh juices. We're looking at how expensive it is, or we're not really trying to figure out how do we cook this Swiss chard? Or where if it's not something we're used to, like a collard or a green bean, we tend to shy away from that. Yeah. Um, and that's kind of what I enjoy about brighter bites, is they're also bringing in the produce with some, um, recipes. Mm-Hmm.

Raven (14:37):

<affirmative>. And so when I'm, when I tell people all the time that when they buy their juices from me, it's more of a consultation. Okay. I'm asking them, what do you want these juices for? What are you concentrate? Are you concentrating on hydration? Are you concentrating on, you know, feeling more energized naturally? Or do you need a way to just drink your veggies? Yeah. And so from there, we kind of, you know, decide. And my church is heavily supported, so I attend the cell juices to them every Sunday. Tell me about your program that you're in. Oh, um, the, my school one. So in addition to that, I'm also a student. Um, I'm in a master's program at, it's called Maryland University of Integrated Health, but they just got a new acquisition and it is a master's program about clinical herbal health where I am going to help people learn how to heal themselves because plant is medicine Nice. And that's not just our fruits and veggies, but the herbs and everything else. And you know, the same way you can use alcohol topically, you add a couple of herbs and you'll be surprised at how like the skin will take that and help. And so that is even furthering my intention with trying to help heal our community.

George (15:42):

So what I hear you both saying, Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> is that, uh, you, you understand your community. And while you would hope that there would be resources marshaled from all sorts of other places, the truth of the matter is you have to depend upon the idea, at least beginning. Nobody's coming to save you. Right. You have to be able to dig this out of the ground to build a sense of community. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> to provide, uh, and give people the tools to be self-reliant. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Um, but in the meantime, you do have to partner with people, uh, whether it's, you know, the Department of Urban Agriculture or it's Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, uh, the city of Dallas or, uh, food banks or Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, uh, whatever the case may be. And so I think, uh, one of the questions is in the short term, uh, as you are developing this long-term process of self-reliance, what has to happen for you to be able to really meet the needs of this community so that people who want to support this organization understand they are at this place, but boy, they could get here. If they only had this, what would it be?

Raven (16:56):

I know Juliana has an answer, but I'll give a short one. Um, I think it's maintaining in building those relationships, like with the nonprofits, with the distributors, with the producers, the locals, and you know, the ones that are in other entities, like Brighter Bites and maintaining those relationships and then going forward and being like, okay, how can we have a bigger impact? You know what I mean? Because even our partner in, in there now, that's only for what, a couple of weeks. Right. And so you're right. What's our contingency to keep providing for the community after that while we continue to work on our long term? And it's definitely building and sustaining those relationships. And even more so making them understand that our intention is to help the community long term. Like, yes, we're giving them food, but also we have cooking demos to show them how to cook this food. We're giving them recipes when they give them this food so they can know how to cook it themselves. Right. Or if they, you know, are unaware or they've never had Swiss chard before, taste it, you know? Right. And these, these waves will help them, you know, maybe venture out and even eat with the seasons a bit, you know? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

Julianna (18:01):

Absolutely. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. Education is a huge component. So anybody who is a nutrition expert and wanna volunteer or support our programming, we welcome that. We always have food distribution, so volunteers coming and supporting that is, is welcomed. We also don't have a kitchen and we need one. We have, you know, this used to be the Moreland YMCA, um, which has a really beautiful history. It was the first and only African American YMCA for generations. Um, and the African Amer American community really built this space up. And so when it was passed off to four Oak Cliff, it was a big deal. We are a black led organization. Um, our executive director is from this community. And so we really wanna continue to build our capacity to feed people. So we need a kitchen, we need, you know, basics. The stove, we, right now we have a, uh, two microwaves and a and a Keurig.

Julianna (18:48):

So we need, and, and I, uh, we also, because we don't have a kitchen, we have been purchasing frozen meals from a local company, uh, excuse me, a company out of Austin actually called the Cook's Nook, who are great, but we are paying for those meals and we pay over $7 per meal, but we could make more nutritious food that hasn't been frozen. And that is more beneficial to folks health with like, with like a quarter of that, we could, we could feed more people with a lot less. Um, and also, you know, the, the idea that we can teach people to cook even more extensively with a kitchen. We can bring workforce development components in and help people learn how to run a commercial kitchen. We can bring our small businesses who are, uh, struggling to find commercial kitchens and they can rent out our, our com, our commercial kitchen so they can sell at the farmer's markets and take that next step. Right. So I think a kitchen is a huge part of it. And then also just anybody who is interested in growing in this 7 5 2, 1 6 zip code, just getting in touch with us so that we can plug them into the trainings and the partners that we are involved with. And hopefully get them to come sell at our farmer's markets. 'cause we're still looking for another five or so new farmers this year that we wanna get plugged in.

George (19:56):

So just to sort of wrap this up, uh, I, I think you are part of a larger food coalition that faith commons, uh, has, uh, brought to the table. And what has been your experience with that in terms of other people throughout the southern sector doing this kind of work? When, when, when you think about your work in conversation with, with others, what do you see as the benefit of these kind of collaborative relationships?

Raven (20:23):

I was gonna say, I've only been to one meeting. Yeah. But I found it inspirational. Um, and not even that I found it supportive. Yeah. Because everybody at that table had the same common goal in mind. And that was how do we support our community? You know? And of course we're coming from the food angle, but we all know it's bigger than that. But right now we know we have to tackle the food insecurity first in order to move forward from here. And that was a unanimous understanding I felt like, around that table where, you know, you, there were local producers there, um, and there were other market managers there. And all of them I felt were on the same page. And to me, that collaborative work is going to be more impactful because it's so many people that are like, yes, we are all in. This is what we're doing. And, you know, we're able to get our opinions out, we're able to say what we're apprehensive, where we're concerned, and then other people at the table are like, we have those same concerns. And so that support, you know, once I left that I was like, that was amazing. Like, who knew that, you know, all these people were like, you know, so for that, that's, that's what I feel comes from being able to say like, we're, we're at this table Right. With you guys genuinely. Right. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

Julianna (21:38):

Yep. Um, I wanna shout out my, our friend plus who runs the Oak Cliff Veggie project. 'cause they have a motto that says cooperation over competition. Right. And I think that to me, that is the spirit of what we, that's the spirit we need to lean in on if we're going to solve the food crisis that our city faces. Um, we, we talked about at that last meeting, there are a lot of federal city, uh, and state resources on the table

Julianna (22:08):

For this work. But are they really like trickling down all the way to people like us on the ground doing the work? Not really. Not yet. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And we think that that's likely because of a lack of our collective organizing. Right. And so I think that that space is extremely important because any one of us cannot go and hold City Council or the United Way accountable for making sure the funding gets to the people in most need. But if we are doing it collectively and pulling our demands, our concerns, our questions together, we're just a lot more powerful in community with that diversity of backgrounds, experiences, and points of view. And so for me, I think it really empowers all of us to, to actually address the systemic level instead of only just scraping away at the symptoms that we're seeing in our, each in our individual nonprofits.

Raven (22:56):

Great.

George (22:57):

Well thank you so much, Juliana and Raven. And if you want to know more about Four Oak Cliff, the website is

Julianna (23:05):

Four Oak Cliff, four Oak cliff.org, spelled out F-O-R-O-A-K-C-L-I-F f.org.

George (23:13):

And stay tuned for more episodes of other partners, uh, that we'll be talking about as we address this matter of how to take the southern sector up in, in a way, toward greater equity and a more flourishing Dallas altogether. Thanks for joining us for Good God.