How urban agriculture is transforming Detroit


This documentary captures philosopher and social activist Grace Lee Boggs at age 97. A Chinese American philosopher, writer, and activist rooted for more than 70 years in the African American movement in Detroit. Her story unfurls to portray an evolving city and to examine the power of ideas and imagination to propel change.

"Bryant Terry knows that good food should be an everyday right and not a privilege" — Alice Waters.
 Bryant is a 2015 James Beard Foundation Leadership Award-winning chef, educator, and author renowned for his activism to create a healthy, just, and sustainable food system. In Afro-Vegan, he blends African, Carribean, and southern staples and ingredients to create new, creative culinary combinations that will amaze vegans, vegetarians, and omnivores alike. 

Social Activist Riet Schumack is spearheading a grassroots youth gardening movement to help rebuild Brightmoor, a struggling neighborhood on Detroit's Northwest Side.
Riet had hope, and this hope led her to take action. With a passion for gardening and children, Riet decided to start a garden for kids, which she named Brightmoor Youth Garden.  Not long after Riet started Brightmoor Youth Garden, Brightmoor began to see more and more green spaces take over the vacant lots. One little garden has resulted in hundreds of gardens being part of a movement.  And more important, the neighborhood became a community. 

Detroit's evolving food system has deep southern roots. Beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s, an informal network of Detroit grandmothers known as the Gardening Angels set up community gardens to provide refuge and sustenance. These women grew backyard crops for their families. They also grew for homeless shelters and others in need. Working vacant lots and abandoned industrial sites, they farmed urban Detroit and demonstrated how that work reconnected their children of the asphalt to the earth.

Once America's "arsenal of democracy," Detroit over the last fifty years has become the symbol of the American urban crisis. Historian and Detroit native Thomas J. Sugrue examines the role race, housing, job discrimination, and capital flight played in the decline of Detroit.

From the environment and immigrants’ rights to racial justice and more, food is one of the most accessible ways to understand what’s going on and how we can take active steps to create change.  Feed the Resistance is more than just a cookbook with practical recipes, it also includes a handful of essays that speak about intersectional politics, creating a safe space for discussion, and how food can build community. Three sections break down the recipes: for those too busy resisting to cook; feeding a crowd; and baked goods and portable snacks — "for the activist on the go."