ab banks, an urban farmer whose work is grounded in agroecology, wellness and Black food autonomy, is the Garden Lead for People’s Programs at the Oxford Tract at UC Berkley, which grows food and seeks to advance food autonomy for Oakland’s Black population and to ensure that healthy produce is available to under-resourced community members, including the unhoused. Peoples Program is a Black-led organization founded by Black youth to empower the community of Oakland.

Previously a Just Leader Fellow with the Cooperative Food Empowerment Collective, which seeks to build a cooperative food economy powered by the visionary leadership of Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, ab also started the (Free) Community Health Clinic, and is the Agroecology and Wellness Coordinator at the Berkeley Food Institute. Arty Mangan of Bioneers interviewed ab banks.

ARTY MANGAN: One of the many positions you hold is the Garden Lead for the People’s Programs in the East Bay. Can you describe the community that you work in and how the program serves that community?

ab banks: Initially a friend of mine developed an urban garden on a quarter-acre of abandoned land on Campbell Street in West Oakland, but we recently transitioned off that land to the UC Berkeley Oxford Tract. The produce that was harvested from that land in West Oakland went to local families. We started an informal CSA grocery program for local families that has expanded and now serves about 150 people. We don’t actually farm in that neighborhood anymore because­ the land is going to be developed with housing, but we still serve the same people that we started the CSA with.

ARTY: That is a big challenge of urban farming. I’ve heard many times from urban farmers who had established farms and gardens but eventually had to move because the city or the landlord wanted to develop the land. It makes it challenging. Michael Ableman, an urban farmer I know well, works in a very underserved part of Vancouver, BC, and most of his workers are unhoused people who have a variety different challenges in their lives. He farms in the parking lot of a major sports arena and knows that eventually he may have to move, so he created a one-acre orchard composed of 30 to 40 different varieties of fruit trees, but all of the trees are planted in 4X4 planter boxes, three-feet high, so, if he has to move, he can just forklift them onto a truck and move them to a different location.

ab: That’s amazing!

ARTY: Michael wrote a book about the project: Street Farm: Growing Food, Jobs and Hope on the Urban Frontier

ARTY: You also started the Free Community Health Clinic. Can you tell me a little bit about how that started?

ab:  in 2017, when People’s Programs started passing out food, it was evident even then that there was a big need for some type of public medical care. People would come to pick up food and some of them would have injuries and wounds and ask us for Ibuprofen and things like that. We had started with providing food and then extended it to passing out clothes, but we felt the next obvious step was to provide free accessible healthcare, so we raised funds and were able to buy a mobile clinic—a clinic on wheels. Now, along with hot meals, we provide access to free healthcare, as much as you can do in a mobile clinic. And for anything that we can’t do, we send people to a referral to get the medical care they need.

That’s how it started, and it’s still expanding. We want to be a resource for what the community needs; we don’t want to limit it. If another need is asked for and we can help, we’re going to build a program around that and offer that as well. When I think about the populations I serve, these folks have the answers; they know exactly what they need. They’re not in need of a savior to come in and do all these things for them. What people need is a viable local economy, self-determination, and the ability to set their own destiny, whatever that means for them. When I talk to students of color, they know exactly what they want to do and need—they just need the resources to get it done.

Photo by Marco Alexander

Julius Nyerere, a highly influential former president of Tanzania, wrote a book called Ujamaa about how important it is for farms to be in the hands of local farmers who care for the people around them and know what they want to eat, and how that creates a sense of community. When we started the farm in West Oakland, it drew in the community members around us, and they gave us feedback. When your food isn’t local, you can’t make decisions about how food is grown. Urban farms are important because city folk need food and should have autonomy over the food that’s grown, and they should know how to grow their own food.

ARTY: How does farming in the city affect the urban ecosystem?

ab: It totally changes ecosystems, and in my opinion, for the better. It just breaks up cement jungles, as a lot of folks call them, and creates more green spaces. There’s a lot of research about what green spaces do for mental, spiritual, and emotional health, and there is a biological benefit when people eat food that is grown where they’re from. A while back, I spoke to a nutritionist about the importance of eating eat food from your culture and eating locally grown food. If you don’t eat local food, you won’t have the correct microbiome to fight diseases that are prevalent where you live.

ARTY: That’s consistent with the Macrobiotic principle of eating food in season. Locally-grown food is food in season for that locale, so, for example, no pineapples in December…

ab: Exactly right.

ARTY: Let’s talk about your work as a Just Leader Fellow with Cooperative Food Empowerment Collective. Is your breakfast program inspired by the Black Panthers’ Free Breakfast Program in the ‘60s?

ab: Yes. Definitely. What we do is called “Decolonization Programs and Projects.” We think of it as being an evolution from a survival program. Everything that we’re doing is an attempt at decolonization. We pass out food because people are starving. We give free access to healthcare because people need healthcare. Some people with diabetes have wounds that escalate to infection and even amputation because they don’t have basic healthcare.  We provide basic needs directly in line with how the Panthers rolled.

They realized that a crucially important population in their community was students. Schoolchildren weren’t getting fed adequately, so when they went to school, they couldn’t focus because they were hungry. To a lot of people, it always feels like a complex issue—we need to get the funding, etc. No. We’re just going to go out there and set up tables and feed the children. Obviously, it takes a lot of logistical work to get that done, but if it needs to get done, we’re going to do it. That’s kind of the fervor that we carry when we’re building programs and projects.

We feed 300 to 400 people every other Sunday. During COVID, we went out three times a week because folks weren’t getting fed by anyone. Many in the homeless community depend on people leaving a restaurant giving them a dollar or leftovers. During COVID, that wasn’t happening, so we increased the number of days we provided food. We serve people in West Oakland near St. Vincent’s Shelter, and we also have a driving crew of folks who serve around 15 to 20 encampments, and that’s 300 to 400 meals.

ARTY: When the Panthers were feeding kids in Oakland and other cities in the ‘60s, they were harassed, jailed, even murdered by the FBI. How is your program perceived by those in power?

ab: I’d say we haven’t really been perceived by the government. In my opinion, if folks really cared about what we were doing, then we would have an endless supply of money, but we never see funds at all. I haven’t really experienced any harassment. There have been times, of course, where people have said, “Oh, you need a food handler’s permit” or have tried to put obstacles in our way, but it’s only made us better because if we get a critique, we’re going to definitely shift our feet and make sure we’re grounded and do the right thing in how our operations roll.

ARTY: Have the socioeconomic conditions improved in communities of color in recent years?

ab: No. It’s getting worse. Homelessness is up 22 percent since 2017. If people say it’s getting better, I point them in the direction of the homelessness rate. It’s clear in the data, and it’s obvious in the streets. The reason we focus on homelessness is because this is the community that we feel encompasses all the communities of the Bay Area. No one’s exempt from being homeless in terms of race and class. We see all different types of people, but still, the homeless in our region are majority Black.

ARTY: I ‘d like to ask you about what motivates you, what your vision is. I listened to an interview with you on KQED, and you said you’re creating sovereignty from an intersectional standpoint, pushing folks who are last to go first, and letting love lead the way.

ab: What motivates me is that I want all the people I know to have the ability to lead their own destiny and to be sovereign. I think folks often shy away from understanding that because it seems like a lot of work to be in charge of your own destiny, but I have 100 percent faith in the community that I serve, that one day we’ll be able to achieve our own liberation and be completely autonomous over our lives. That’s my motivation.

Just thinking about the work that we do, it’s really sad. It’s really sad to see people starve. It’s really sad to see people deal with substance abuse when there are real solutions that I don’t feel are taken seriously by the people in power. I want to continue to draw a line of demarcation and say, ‘Hey, listen, there’s stuff that can be done, and if the government can’t figure it out, let the people figure it out.’ Obviously, the people who are closest to the problems are closest to the solutions as well, so let those folks lead the way.

I’m motivated by the history and legacy that has been left behind for me by the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords, and all the African anti-colonial freedom fighters—Thomas Sankara, Julius Nyerere, Amílcar Lopes da Costa Cabral, etc. All of those people inspire me, and all the revolutionary movements that have happened inspire me to keep going and to keep understanding and not backing down from what I know to be true, which is we are our own liberators.

ARTY: On that KQED interview, you also talked about radical forms of self-love. How do you reconcile the concept self-love with working to overcome injustice and suffering in your community?

ab: When there are people on the streets starving or people in your family struggling with substance abuse, that must be addressed first in order to actually feel that there’s promise in the future. If you want to develop love for yourself, there’s work that needs to be done to make sure your community is safe and good. That’s partly why I do the work at People’s Programs

I could shut myself off from the community, get a massage, do some yoga, go to the gym—which are all things that I do—but I need to help feed my people, read to gain knowledge, and talk to people and see if I can give them what they need, because without that, I’m going to feel the pain of the exploitation of capitalism without having any answer for it.

ARTY: As a frontline activist covering many bases in terms of serving community needs, there’s a high risk of burnout. You mentioned how you take care of yourself, but do you have any recommendations, things you’ve learned about how to avoid burnout?

ab: I think it’s important to analyze particularly where the burnout is coming from. I can feel when it’s happening before I get tired. When I start to feel burnout, I feel a dissociation, but I also have a slight pushback on this. There are people who don’t do any direct service work but still experience burnout. It’s an emotional feeling because of all of the really messed up, nasty stuff going on in the world. My answer to that is what I was alluding to in the last question. When you’re doing all of these self-care things, but they’re not working, it’s often because you are part of a broken system, and you’re feeling hopelessness because you’re trying to fix something on the personal level without actually contributing to a wider solution.

We’re experiencing pain and grief for something we feel helpless in, but actually there’s a bunch of things you can do to contribute to the revolution, so that’s my first thing. The second thing is for people who are on the frontlines doing direct-action work—my advice is build a team, a solid team of folks you can be honest with, who can hold you accountable, who know your triggers and know what’s going on in your life. It’s not as simple as just saying, ‘Oh, you should journal,’ or ‘Oh, you should go for a walk.’ I think it’s much more complex than that. The only real advice I have is to have comrades and community members who are in your corner and are keeping it real with you; keeping it real when you mess up; keeping it real when you’re doing good; keeping it real when you need a break. If you don’t have people on your side, and you’re trying to do everything you can for the revolution all at once, then you are going to burn out.

Doing this work is a marathon. It’s not a sprint. You have to able to delegate something to a comrade and say: ‘Hey, listen, I can’t do this right now.’ And they trust you because they know how much you are putting into the work. It might seem from the outside that I’m doing a lot, but I’m doing exactly what I’m passionate about, and I’m not doing more than I’m supposed to be doing. I’m delegating when I need to. I help run the clinic and the farm, but I don’t run the clinic or the farm by myself. I do what I can, and I’m honest and truthful about what I can do. And I can prevent my comrades’ burnouts by stepping in when they need a break, but if we’re all kind of dragging our feet, then we’re all going to burn out.

I was telling one of my elders how tired I was. I had to work the farm that day and the clinic the next day. I was working seven days a week. She looked at me and said, “ab, you’re not going to fuck up the revolution with one day of rest.” It’s important to note that when you’re going real hard, you need to listen, so you know when you’re going past your limit and you need a break, and you know when you need to keep going.

ARTY: You cited that expression: “It’s a marathon, not a sprint.” It usually takes a long time to understand that. It’s usually folks who are older than you who figure that out, and, too often, by the time they figure it out, they have seriously burnt out. Everything is so urgent right now, and yet this is a multi-generational struggle. Yes, we’re looking for as much success and progress as possible right away, but at the same time, we’re trying to build something solid that other folks can stand on and build on in the future.

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