CRAVE Justice! ALL WEEK LONG!

CRAVE is grateful to be in solidarity with other youth lead food justice movements throughout the country and around the world organizing food justice events throughout the days between International Food Day, Sunday, October 16th through National Food Day, Monday, October 24th in active and engaged celebration of Food Justice Awareness Week.  This week seeks to connect us all more deeply to with the foods we crave and consume, providing opportunities for learning, community building, and creative direct actions toward addressing the inequity and injustice within our food system.  This is our living thanks for the food we consume and those who work sustain us by their labor.

This week begins on with a working tour of Danny Woo International District Community Garden, at 310 Maynard Ave. S. Seattle, WA from 10am-4pm on Sunday, October 16th.

We'll get a basic tour of the garden from Danny Woo's very own loving leader Jonathan Chen as well as be put to work volunteering our labor while learning from elders in this amazing and historic garden where we will celebrating both the history and community around food in our lives, and preserve traditional knowledge.  Please be on time and dress in layers with boots and clothes for getting dirty, and bring a water bottle! There will be an hour long lunch as well as lots of love.

On Friday, October 21st from 7-9:30pm CRAVE will cosponsor A Friday Night At The Meaningful Movies viewing of the powerful documentary Urban Roots by Tree Media about food justice movements in Detroit!


The film will be shown at Keystone Congregational Church 5019 Keystone Place N. Seattle, WA.

URBAN ROOTS, directed by Detroit-native Mark McInnis, tells the powerful story of a group of dedicated Detroiters working tirelessly to fulfill their vision for locally-grown, sustainably farmed food in a city where people -- as in much of the county -- have found themselves cut off from real food and limited to the lifeless offerings of fast food chains, mini-marts, and grocery stores stocked with processed food from thousands of miles away. 

For more on Meaningful Movies check out their website here: www.meaningfulmovies.org they will also be showing the amazing documentary Forks Over Knives on Friday, October 14th at the same time and location.

On Saturday, October 22nd from 7-9:30pm at Rainier Valley Cultural Center, 3515 South Alaska Street, Seattle, WA 98118 CRAVE will be  co-hosting the CRAVE Justice for Somalia CommUNITY Art Jam FUNdrai$er. This amazing evening will feature powerful performances by local poets, musicians, and dancers, as well a stunning silent auction and art sale.  Tickets will be $10 and all proceeds will go to directly providing aid to families in Somalia directly affected by the famine.

We're also planning a trip up north to visit national youth food justice leader Joaquin Martinez of Rooted In Community on Sunday, October 23rd in solidarity action with Communidad A Communidad, a radical woman-lead food justice/immigrant solidarity organization up north in Whatcom and Skagit Counties.

And finally!  We will connect with other local organizations and direct actions throughout the week and on Monday, October 24th, National Food Day. 

Stay tuned at here and on Facebook for more updates on other awesome CRAVE Food Justice Awareness Week events and beyond.

CRAVE in Philadelphia for the Rooted in Community Conference

Hey everyone, its Aman, Donte, and Tammy coming to share a little about what we did and learned in Philadelphia, PA. As some of you may know we attended the youth-led 13th annual Rooted in Community Conference hosted by the awesome activist at the Urban Nutrition Initiative. The five day conference consisted of building our knowledge, learning how use this new found knowledge, then marching the streets of Philadelphia to promote the Youth Food Bill of Rights we created.   We hope this day-to-day general overview will give you a sense of the awesome work that we were proud to be a part of.  Also stay tuned for our individual stories to also help enlighten you on our personal experiences and insight we got from the trip. Hope you enjoy this little bit of brain food!

Day one of the conference we walked to the University of Pennsylvania campus, where we would stay for the duration of the conference, and got registered. We were greeted by the warm and enthusiastic Urban Nutrition Initiative crew who showed lots of love to everyone. As we waited for the rest of the organizations to filter in we signed up for our field trips and workshops that were going to be held the next day. We were also interviewed Flip’s media team, which would document the entire RIC conference. As more people started to come through we started to play games and started to introduce ourselves to our peers. After most of the crews had shown up we were then lead by a drill team to Houston Hall where we would eat dinner. There we were would split into our groups, which were decided by the sticker on the back of your name tag, and set norms for our group and for the conference.

Day two of the conference was action-packed as we went on field trips to different gardening areas throughout Philly. We went to a field where we listened to the Rebel Gardeners talk. These Rebel Gardeners were a group of middle school students who gardened at their school and shared granola bars with us which the ingredients were harvested in their garden. These granola bars would be a good source of energy for Donte, Aman, and Stephany as we were all going on a bike ride to Mill Creek Garden while Tammy was going to MLK High School. Some of the things we saw on our garden field trips included composting toilets, solar panels, beehives, and green roofs.

After Stephany had recovered enough from her heat exhaustion, on our bike ride back from Mill Creek Garden, we then had free time and met up at Houston Hall a little bit later to go to our first workshop. These first round of workshops were to help us understand in a deeper context some of the food injustices in our food system. Our second workshop after fifteen minutes later was about how we organize as youth to continue our movement in our communities.

 After filling our bellies at the BBQ

Day three of the conference Donte, Aman, and Tammy worked on the Youth Food Bill of Rights in the morning. All the youth broke into their groups again and brainstormed about what we wanted to see in their food system. Check out this list to what we youth wanted (http://www.youthfoodbillofrights.com/)! After finishing putting together the Youth Food Bill of Rights, we then went into our “Express your Voice for Food Justice” workshops. These workshops were art based and included poetry, cooking comedy, theatre of the oppressed, as well as others. These would be preformed the next day at the Youth Food Bill of Rights Declaration and would give insight on just what we saw and what we wanted to change in our food system.

After spending many hours on the Youth Food Bill of Rights and art workshops we were definitely looking forward to free time. Aman, Donte, and Tammy went to a local shopping mall, called The Gallery, with some local Philly youth as our guides.

When we arrived at the Community Potluck after coming back from The Gallery, not only were we tired but were also hungry. The food they served at the potluck was delicious but was rudely interrupted by wind, rain, and thunder. As Seattleites this really didn’t bother us as we need some relief from the hot weather in Philly. 

Day four of the conference was all about Declaration of the Youth Food Bill of Rights. After some final editing and revising of the Bill and some much important photos, this big movement was headed on the streets in the name of Food Justice. With our picket signs in hand and chants being yelled, it was quiet an experience for us youth involved. The unity and energy that we showed, even though the sun we were being baked by the sun, was also impressive to be apart of. The performances that we had rehearsed the day before were now being preformed and the Youth Food Bill of Rights was also read. It was powerful to declare the Youth Food Bill of Rights in the same place were the Declaration of Independence was signed because we both were fighting a over

The final day of the conference was all about reflecting, with our regional groups, about what we learned from all these other amazing youth and how to keep these movements going in our communities. We also picked three of the declarations in the Youth Food Bill of Rights that we would directly try and change as soon as we got back home. We also got to watch the unofficial video that Flip put together of the RIC conference. The video really touched everyone who was in the room because it really captured the essence of what this food justice movement and RIC was all about. After we finished watching the video we then headed outside and were part of a giant group hug. We then said our final goodbyes to the friends we made in Philly, giving our phone numbers and email addresses so that we can stay connected with other youth in our fight for food justice. 

The insight we got from the conference really gave us a vision of where we want to head as a program. To think that no one has started some of these things already in such a “progressive and green” city really shocked us when we reflected on it. We came back to Seattle as trailblazers because a lot of the changes we want to see aren’t happening in our communities and as a youth-lead group it really speaks volumes of what we are trying to do not only locally but nationally as well.

CRAVE's Rooted In CommUNITY Shareback Celebration!

This summer 3 South Seattle youth and one adult ally traveled to Philadelphia, PA for the 13th Annual Rooted In Community (RIC) Youth Lead Urban Farming and Food Justice Conference hosted by Urban Nutrition Initiative (UNI) to represent Seattle and the PNW! With Nova HS student Donte Johnson and recent Middle College graduate Aman Hidalgo Watson representing Cultivating Radical Action, Vitality, and Education (CRAVE) @ and recent Nova HS graduate and future Evergreen University student Tammy Do representing both CRAVE and Food Empowerment, Education, and Sustainability Team (FEEST) and Social HeARTistry Educators director Stephany Hazelrigg, the PNW held it down with all these amazing farmers, organizers, educators, and community leaders! This heirloom volunteer Seattle crew made powerful impressions and creative and safe spaces to grow and glow in Philly amid and alongside 120 other youth and about 50 adult allies...all who are organizing around food justice issues in their communities representing over 40 organizations from around the country to draft the Youth Food Bill of Rights!!  

What an inspiring journey! Read more about it here at craveseattle.blogspot.com

phew! what a mouthful!...and so much more to show and say and share! please come to our shareback celebration where we will share a media montage of this epic journey, a panel discussion, and update of upcoming ways CRAVE is organizing around food justice in South Seattle and beyond!!


we'll create opportunities for you to join forces, engage in our efforts, and support our work as well as have amazing art, delicious healthful foods to share! come build with us on ways to grow and share food honor, safety, health, access, and sustainability, and JUSTICE for all. 

Doors and Dinner will be ready to share at 7pm
Media Montage and Philly Shareback and Strategy Sessions should kickstart around 7:30pm

Suggested donation to support this grassroots garden: $5-$20

this will be a drug-free, fragrance free event and open to all!

hope to see you there!




for more information on fb:
CRAVE://www.facebook.com/CRAVEcommUNITY
FEEST: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002352687924
SHE: https://www.facebook.com/SocialHeARTistryEds
RIC: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Rooted-in-Community/134215956600706
UNI: https://www.facebook.com/UNI.org

The Youth Food Bill Of Rights! July 30th at the Liberty Bell, Philly PA!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:  Ty Holmberg

Agatstson Urban Nutrition Initiative (AUNI)

3451 Walnut St. Suite P-1117A

Cell: (518) 304-3402

Email: tyholmberg@gmail.com

Today: July 11, 2011

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA- JULY 30^th 2011- 2pm

Over 100 Youth Leaders from Around the Nation

Present the “YOUTH FOOD BILL OF RIGHTS”

at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, PA

As the Culmination of 

The 13^th Annual Rooted in Community Conference

On July 30^th at 2pm, over one hundred youth leaders from around the nation, from thirty different food justice-focused organizations will convene at Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center to declare,  “The Youth Food Bill Of Rights”, a statement of what youth demand of their food system.  While gaining the attention of congress people, public officials, and community members, this youth-created document will influence the movement for a healthier and more equitable national food system and Farm Bill in 2012. It will be created during the youth powered and food justice focused Rooted in Community (RIC) National Conference (July 27-31) hosted by the Agatston Urban Nutrition Initiative (AUNI) at the University of Pennsylvania. 

Youth Food Bill of Rights: www.youthfoodbillofrights.com

July 27th-31st: 

RIC is a national network that empowers young people to take leadership in their own communities (www.rootedincommunity.org). It is a diverse movement of youth and adults working together to foster healthy communities and food justice through urban and rural agriculture, community gardening, food sovereignty, and related environmental justice work.  With eleven Philadelphia urban farming sites hosting RIC exposure trips, twelve youth-created and facilitated workshops on food injustices and community organizing, ten local Philadelphia artists teaching ways to “express your voice for food justice”, youth participating in this year’s RIC Conference will fully engage in the “food justice” movement and create the Youth Food Bill of Rights.

Youth participating in this year’s conference have extensive experience in the national food justice movement. In Boston, high-school aged youth are taking charge of their food with shovels and cultivators as they are learning how to grow organic vegetables under the “Food Project”. In New Mexico, “New Mexico Acequia Association” youth utilize digital media to protect the Acequia irrigation system that is essential to their community’s environment, agriculture, and life. Eight youth involved in the Agatston Urban Nutrition Initiative’s gardening and cooking internships, in Philadelphia, have recently started their own business called the Youth Urban Mobile Market (YUMM) that delivers fresh fruit and vegetables on a tricycle to low income neighborhoods of Philadelphia. Today where food and youth leadership can be seen as despairing, these youth give inspiration as to what can be accomplished through fervor and youth innovation. The youth empowerment model for health is one that First Lady Michelle Obama endorses in her Lets Move! Campaign.

This year marks a pivotal year for RIC as the upcoming year (2012) marks the possible renewal of the Farm Bill in its fifth year of enactment. The Farm Bill is the primary agricultural and food policy tool of the Federal government of the United States. RIC youth have joined together in consensus to demand a farm bill that prioritizes health and their country’s next generation. Named after the amendments to the US Constitution that listed the demands of the populous in regards to inalienable human rights, youth believe that the Youth Food Bill of Rights will outline human’s right to real food. Post-conference, organizers will continue to garner support for a youth-defined Farm Bill platform.  This August, RIC partner Live Real will meet with youth and communities along a series of nationwide "Food and Freedom Rides" to generate support for a fair Farm Bill.

Rather than accepting the food system that they have been born into, national RIC youth are creating revolutionary solutions and growing healthier communities. As Matthew Johnson, one RIC youth leader, stated, “We all eat, we are all affected, no matter who you are, join us on July 30^th.”

The Agatston Urban Nutrition Initiative (AUNI) (www.urbannutrition.org) is the host of the 2011 RIC conference. Eight AUNI youth are organizing the RIC conference. AUNI is apart of the Netter Center for University-Community Partnerships based at the University of Pennsylvania that engages K-16+ learners in an active, real-world problem-solving curriculum that strives to improve community nutrition and wellness through nutrition education, and high school internships in cooking, garden, and business sites.

The Farm Bill is legislation authorized by the Federal Government every five years. The last one was in 2007. The Farm Bill covers a wide range of topics, including payments to farmers to support the prices for crops, nutrition programs such as food stamps, international trade, conservation, and energy. The Farm Bill isn’t the only legislation to address these issues, but it is one time when we have an opportunity to speak out on things that concern so many parts of our lives.

The Bill of Rights is the first ten amendments to the Constitution that were ratified on December 15, 1791 that protected individual liberties.

The National Constitution Center is Philadelphia’s historic museum, located two blocks from the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were written.

Big thanks and love to Seattle youth leaders Donte and Aman for representing CRAVE, to Tammy for representing FEEST, and to Joaquin from C2C up north in Whatcom County for reppin' the PNW for food justice for ALL along with the support of adult ally, CRAVE Program Director, and Social HeARTistry Educators Creative Director stephanY.

a youth-lead food justice movement in South Seattle and beyond...

a project of 

Your Support

At this point, when our delegation is leaving to Philly, it's important to give gratitude to everyone that has supported us and to ask for support from everyone in our communities.

For me CRAVE has been an amazing experience so far, we have demanded the food justice movement the Northwest will not be without youth voice. And that our fight for justice of one specific kind is not disconnected from the many other struggles for justice our collective communities are involved in. Supporting CRAVE is supporting the idea that food justice is thoroughly incomplete if it maintains patriarchy, that access to healthy food is not just if we torture animals in the process, and that community gardens can't be for the community if they aren't queer safe. At CRAVE we put our radical process above the money we make at the end of the day. As a result we've only been able to send a portion of the youth working with us everyday to the conference in Philly. That said, there is a group of youth getting the information and training no one imagined they would be getting a year ago. Just the idea of that has inspired me to work to ensure that when they return from the conference those youth can educate me and my community, but more than anything lead us into action around issues we care so much about.

Any money you donate will be used for nothing but the most radical and inclusive work for food justice in the PNW, but more specifically south Seattle, and if you don't believe me feel free to come through to any of our events (that we post here on the blog) or hit us up on facebook or email and build with us at a meeting.
You can find our PayPal here

Thank you!

See you soon! Here's some truth to chew on!

CRAVE gathered for one last Film Series and Discussion at WAPI in Columbia City before the national Rooted In Community Conference in Philly.  Aman, Donte, and stephanY leave tomorrow afternoon and arrive in Philly tomorrow evening, more than ready to represent the 206 along with FEEST leader Tammy, and are so excited to team up with Community 2 Community youth leader and RIC Advisory Committee member Joaquin for a powerful PNW caucus on ways to collaborate and proliferate!

In addition to sending off the crew in style with good inspiration and intention, we engaged in the "showing and telling" of MEAT the Truth that powerful and vividly lifts the veil behind factory farms as the #1 threat to/of global warming and asks why Al Gore didn't mention it, but once, in his renowned documentary An Inconvenient Truth.  Perhaps Gore found this important truth a bit too inconvenient for he himself to speak as an implicit consumer and complicit angus cattle rancher who directly benefits from the devastating fallout of the factory farm bomb.

Big thanks to Jen Chen from WAPI for the space, grace, and wisdom, to Kevin Tillman for the critical and clear perspectives and awesome documentaries and media we've visited thus far, and a great big thanks and welcome to the new adult ally/homie/artist and VOC, Coreena Reena to the crew who said she will most definitely be back for more!  according to word in the circle, stephanY's delicious robbin' hood meal might've had something to do with it.


stephanY served up some amazing mashed russet and yukon potatoes whipped and "creamed" with olive oil, hemp milk,  spanish yellow onions, sweet corn, cilantro, chile, pimienta, oregano, y sal topped with homecooked black beans with magical herbs and spices topped with freshly diced cebolla, and three varieties of tomatoes all culled from her summer job in the produce department at the local coop.  


The sharebacks, reflections, and discussion were powerful with folks showing profound critical analysis and understanding, deep compassion for all creatures and one another, and inspiring conviction to becoming more conscious and conscientious about what we C.R.A.V.E.; our choices when it comes to consumption, of food, and beyond... all are reconsidering their relationship to meat after seeing this film; either working to eliminate it from their diets all together, or at least limiting or decreasing their consumption.  It's also clear, as youth leader Ann Norton, a teacher to all, lovingly reminds us that we need community to remind us who we are and who we want to be.  This film, this movement, this commUNITY is all most definitely a must see indeed.

Stay tuned for more amazing films, food, and fun.

From Philly and Seattle!

donate now to support our radical movements!

CRAVE: Cultivating Radical Activism, Vitality and Education; a Feature with Kevin Tillman of the Vegan Hip Hop Movement

Animal Voices is proud to present a special feature with Kevin Tillman of the Vegan Hop Hop Movement. Kevin has been working with youth as part of the CRAVE (Cultivating Radical Activism, Vitality and Education) community. Click below to learn more about CRAVE and to hear two fresh tracks recently recorded at the WAPI from Carlos and Donte – two youth activist/artists.  CRAVE is raising funds to send youth to the grassroots, youth-led “Rooted In Community Conference” in Philadelphia, PA. To support our work or donate to send youth to the conference please access our paypal account:

Click here to Listen!