Originally appeared in: The Nation
Ben Ehrenreich
June 24, 2010
“Welcome to the D,” said Kwamena Mensah in a resounding baritone on Tuesday morning. It was the first day of the 2010 US Social Forum and Mensah, president of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, was standing before a circle of about 65 activists to open a workshop on the thriving local urban agriculture movement. Mensa’s group and Earthworks, a predominantly white urban farming group, combined what had originally been scheduled as two separate workshops in order to discuss their efforts to navigate complex and often painful racial dynamics in order to work together.