Emerging Food Oasis
With little prior knowledge of the history of North Minneapolis, it was difficult to know what to expect walking into my first day at Breaking Bread Café. Driving down Broadway Avenue, I noticed the troubling amount of boarded up businesses, people camped on the streets, and the unprecedented amount of police cruisers patrolling the crowded streets. I begin to notice the product of systematic marginalization in the North side that is typically kept from the public by the powers that be.
I ponder how we, as a society, have let a whole community be afflicted by the harsh historical oppression of what was once a flourishing community.
As I arrive at the colorful building on the corner of Fremont and Broadway, and walk into a vibrant space, smelling of fresh espresso and homemade breakfast food, I suddenly feel a sense of ease. This feeling progresses as I am greeted by Chef Lachelle Cunningham’s warm smile. Throughout my life, I have often been welcomed into a space with open arms, but until this point in time, it has never felt so genuine and pure, for this is a space where every impression feels like the first. I notice that whenever someone from the community walks into the café, either for the first time or for the one-hundredth time, the entire staff, and a majority of the dining room warmly acknowledges them. I have worked in restaurants for close to 7 years, yet have never experienced a dining room that feels like home, or resembles even a little bit of the community that you feel at Breaking Bread.
Although this space facilitates the opportunity to empower the neighborhood, I begin to understand through dialogues with locals that the power of this space can be attributed to the vibrant people that come in to be a part of this movement. When I imagine what it is like to be in the crosshairs of society, the way that the North side is, I suddenly realize the strength that is required to literally fight for the right to equal opportunity that many of us take for granted. Individuals outside of the community have often referred to North Minneapolis as a food dessert and a food swamp, meaning they have a deficit of fresh food, yet a surplus of processed food. But when conversing with local Michael Chaney, founder of Project Sweetie Pie, he classifies his community as an “emerging food oasis.” This resilience and optimism is something that I have found to be a common theme of North siders, and gives me chills every time I encounter the members of this powerful neighborhood.
Although we still have a long way to go, I believe that everyone can look at North Minneapolis and Breaking Bread as a template of the way that change is initiated. For we are past the point where it is enough to be “aware” but it is time to take action, starting dialogue and making very explicit guidelines for the way that things need to be. It is troubling that something as foundational as access to healthy food needs to be advocated for, yet this is the current landscape. We are not too small to make a difference. Together we need to take that first step, not because it feels good, but because it is every human’s right to lead a healthy and sustainable life no matter where they come from.
This piece is part of a series written by college undergraduates enrolled in off-campus study programs through the Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs (HECUA). HECUA programs offer students a chance to think deeply about the issues that matter most, and we’d like to share a piece of that experience with you. Every student post on the HECUA Medium page considers a theory or reading that intersects with that student’s lived experience. For more information about HECUA programs, click here.
