[onscreen] globaloneness project [onscreen] The People's Grocery [♪ slow-tempo funk music ♪] We founded People's Grocery in 2002. [Brahm Ahmadi, Executive Director, People's Grocery} What we understood was that food is a critical component to everyone's life. It is both--simultaneously intimate and universal to everyone. [♪] [ambient noise] Initially, our goal was to create a grocery store for the community of West Oakland. [♪] [ambient noise] It's a community of approximately 30,000 residents. There is no grocery store, at this time, for this community. In contrast, there's about 53 liquor stores where many residents do the bulk of their food buying. Our fundamental mission is to create a local food-system that supports the health and economy of the West Oakland community, and benefit those who have often been left out of it. Mainly low-income people, people of color, who are faced with some of the most severe conditions around chronic disease-related diets. So People's Grocery is really an effort to ensure that a perspective of social justice, of social equity is really at the forefront - what we call "food justice," which is really the principle that all people, regardless of economic and social constraints, should have access to the best foods available in our society. Today, in 2008, we have the highest level of hunger that the United States has experienced - approximately 35 million people are vulnerable to hunger, every single day in this country-- that is largely a consequence of economic disparities, both in terms of income, but also in terms of how the food system has become structured-- to become a mechanism for wealth creation for those who control the means of production. [♪] What we're seeing now, is incredible detriments to local economies throughout this country in which -- [onscreen] Safeway [onscreen] United Markets [onscreen] Whole Foods --large, chain, big-box stores come in and practically destroyed what we called, the old "Main Street." [onscreen] Sycamore St. And one of the most severe consequences of that is communities, like West Oakland, that do not have big boxes and in which historically the mom-n-pop businesses were outcompeted by big boxes and had to close their doors-- is that we don't have food retail here anymore. with the exception of liquor stores and fast-food restaurants. [♪] [onscreen: various fast-food restaurant signs] Yet we believe that through food, through the culture and the connection that food can bring to land, to traditions of agriculture, to sustainable organic methods of growing, in particular, there is an opportunity to begin to regenerate those relationships to nature so that urban consumers can again become connected with the environment, and be a part of the solution for creating a more sustainable world. [♪] It's not just the food, it's actually improving the health and economics of West Oakland-- [onscreen] Jason Uribe: Farm Researcher, People's Grocery -- and having more jobs, more really well-paying jobs more businesses, local businesses, that sort of thing, so that the wealth stays within the communities and it doesn't just go out into the corporations, you know, that maybe are there--the businesses that are there-- that don't keep the money circulated within the community. [♪] People's Grocery is organized, sort of, into 3 spheres of activities and programs-- that interrelate with each other to begin to form a local food system. Some of these basic programs include: our adult cooking class, for example, in which we bring adults from the West Oakland community together for 6 weeks at a time to focus on healthy cooking, to kind of break some of the barriers of knowledge, or myth, around how to prepare healthy foods, how to prepare fresh foods. And it's an astounding experience where people are coming together, not only to learn about how to cook healthy foods, what are whole foods, what are fresh foods, but to really come together, in terms of community, to bond, to celebrate, to build relationships through this way of sharing and talking about food. [♪] [inaudible dialogue] Another sphere of our organization is our urban agriculture program. It's a mix of gardens and a farm. We have 3 community gardens here in West Oakland, and a farm in Sunol which is in the south part of Alameda County. >> So, well come inside and I'll show you what's going on. This garden is part of a larger project to educate the community about using our resources here, in urban areas, -- [onscreen] Vicky Ramos: Assistant Farm Manager, People's Grocery -- local resources that we have to meet our needs, our food needs. [♪] So it really brings in just the issues of food security, and having access to food, and really reducing our footprint by being able to grow this food locally. And I really feel like food security and having access to food is a basic need for everybody. [♪] This is the Sunol Ag Park - it's what it's being called. We have 2 acres that we're leasing. And the idea is that we want to reconnect people with where their food comes from. And so, local food is part of that. Less fossil fuels are being used to get the food to the people, and a lot of the farms that are within 150 miles that are bought into a local food-system are organic, so we don't use pesticides, we don't--we really are trying to take care of the earth, and take care of the planet. [♪] So the farm produces a variety of produce, seasonal produce that is distributed to the community here in West Oakland primarily through a program, a produce-box distribution program which is happening here behind me, which is a way of bringing fresh foods to residents who traditionally don't have access to them. Because fundamental to this community is finding a way to increase consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables. Many residents are relying on heavily processed foods, and packaged foods, and have very little fresh fruit in their diets. [♪] >> Ronnie Jac-- Dickerson Most are very excited about the notion of, sort of, creating new models for our future world - the opportunity to sort of change the direction of the course of what we have assumed to be given to us-- meaning, that these economic constructs, or these market assumptions, or what is celebrated or prioritized in our society can actually be redefined. And what we've found, in just a few years of doing the work, is that even people like us, who are just regular residents - we don't have power, we don't have wealth, we don't have a great degree of sophistication - we can make really meaningful change-- to ignite and inspire a vision of what is possible in a different way. And you never know where those seeds really are that will, in 50 or 100 years from now, become the way of life. [♪] [inaudible] www.globalonenessproject.org