Resistance Is A Garden
A Painted Bride project combines urban farming, art and education to empower Black and Brown Philadelphians to grow their own futures
By James Peterson
Philadelphia Citizen
NOV. 02, 2023
Excerpt:
What if resistance were a garden? What if growing your own vegetables/herbs, or cultivating your own garden were a revolutionary act? For the Painted Bride’s Resistance Garden project, these are not rhetorical questions.
The project aims to strengthen the connections across various urban garden and/or agricultural initiatives in Philadelphia, and to enhance community engagement with “local garden and food culture through zines, foraging tours, youth education, and artist activations at partner sites.” The program’s coordinator, Amalia Colon-Nava, is a self-professed “dirt baby” who approaches her role with equal parts humility and divine sensibility.
She playfully refers to her father as an “OG” farmer, but Colon-Nava is a serious urban farmer. She is third generation. “I’ve grown up around gardens and gardening my whole life,” she says. “My grandparents have land in Mexico which they left because it’s very hard to make a living there off of farming, but they love gardening …” For Colon-Nava, her family’s love, and the ways gardening and farming were part of her upbringing, are critical to who she is now. It explains why her work with the Resistance Garden project is important to her and to the communities that she serves (literally).
“Community gardens are places created by groups of people to grow food and community. But more than that, they are places where people come together to make things happen.” — Claire Nettle
