long winded post about week three

Today at work, I had the incredible experience of finally meeting a lot of FoodLab member businesses, people and names that I’ve heard many stories about in the past few weeks from my coworkers. Right now is the Allied Media Conference, which is a conference centered on social justice and activism in many spheres. Today (June 15th), we had our Network Gathering, which is basically a meeting of many of our members as well as “allies”, which are people that are not members of FoodLab but either used to be or are general supporters of the organization. This year, the Network Gathering was focused on our “Good Food, Good Jobs” initiative, which is actually what the UM intern, Kelsey, worked on last summer. It focuses on how small food businesses can create meaningful jobs that pay well, which therefore creates relationships and income for the business.

Yet, before we delved into GFGJ, there was a presentation from PolicyLink, a California-based nonprofit that tries to influence policy to be racially and socially equitable and create cities where everyone can live up to their potential. Chris from PolicyLink gave us a rundown of their Equity Profile of Detroit (http://www.policylink.org/find-resources/library/an-equity-profile-of-detroit), which summarized data concerning statistics like unemployment, average wage, etc. More importantly however, it showed trends in these data and further broke down the statistics by race. While it is no secret that there is a wage gap between Whites and PoC, it is startling to see the stark numbers, that while wages have decreased in all people in Detroit, they have decreased for PoC by (around) $3 versus the $1 for whites in the same time frame. The statistics that stuck with me most were that one in three youth in Detroit are “disconnected,” meaning that they are neither in school nor looking for jobs/working, and that two thirds of Black renting households are rent-burdened, meaning that they spend more than 30% of their income on rent. This reminded me of the “two Detroits” narrative that Devita talked about on Tuesday, because I have heard a lot of students at Michigan say that they may want to live in Detroit after graduation because it is so cheap here especially compared to other large cities. While it may be cheap in comparison, it is obviously not cheap for the real residents, and it is just another source of disconnect between the longtime residents and those that are moving in right now.

Many FoodLab members discussed the “disconnected youth” statistic and how devastating it is, and how they try to do their part to help while running a business. A few business owners that are doing fantastic work at creating good jobs spoke about how they not only do not discriminate in hiring, but seek out ways to make their food business more accessible. For example, one man talked about how he petitioned the city to put a bus stop right in front of his restaurant, so that people without cars could work there. Not only does this allow for more people to work there, but it is better for the environment, and brings more people (and therefore revenue) by. This is a perfect example of a triple bottom line business strategy that emphasizes people, planet, and profit. I got to hear a lot of really inspiring business owners that make intentional choices to help their communities and the environment, and I learned more about how all the pieces fit together. As many of them noted, it is harder to be an intentional small business owner than to run a typical “corporate America” business, but it is worth it every day. I was so happy to meet these people and be able to hear their stories and what they are doing to improve their communities through food, which is what many of them called the “ultimate equalizer.”