A resident pushes a cart full of groceries she won at a grocery distribution event at the closed Aldi in West Garfield Park.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
With the recent closures of two grocery outlets on Chicago’s West Side, the number of food deserts has reached a crisis level, exacerbated by the pandemic. It’s almost for many black families in this city to access new food within a mile of their homes.
What is most shocking is the inability of this city’s leaders to scale up sustainable policies and economic incentives to meet this fundamental long-term human need.
The City Council recently gave Mayor Lori Lightfoot the authority to acquire the site of the closed Aldi grocery store on West Madison Avenue, to meet for lunch in Garfield Park and the West Side.
While this is a step, it is a Band-Aid in a widespread and long-standing problem.
In 2020, the Chicago Food Equity Agenda reported that, overall, 19% of other people in Chicago’s metropolitan domain faced food insecurity. And 29 percent of Citizens of Latino Communities and 37 percent of Citizens of Black Communities said they didn’t have enough to eat. daily.
This disparity reflects an entrenched structural racism. The Food Empowerment Project reports that more than 500,000 Chicagoans live in food deserts, spaces where other people have few or no practical characteristics for buying healthy food, with the vast majority on the South and West sides.
Another 400,000 people live in neighborhoods where fast-food restaurants and liquor outlets abound, but grocery outlets are scarce.
While the city council’s recent green light to win the closure of Aldi is encouraging, resolving this factor will require more than unique projects and ambiguous goals.
In June 2021, Lightfoot announced that the Mayor’s Office would work heavily with the Greater Chicago Food Depot and the Departments of Public Health and Family and Support Services to address those critical priorities: “Remove barriers to pantry expansion; commercialize and maximize nutritional systems and benefits; Leverage municipal and institutional materials for local BIPOC manufacturers, manufacturers and food businesses and remove barriers to urban agriculture.
This kind of rhetoric sounds good, but it accomplishes nothing. Our city wants specific initiatives, developed in particular for neighborhoods affected by food insecurity, as well as follow-up studies on the effects of those initiatives.
The council deserves to use the tax-raising investment budget and the federal COVID-19 relief budget to create new programs. the south or west side, as Whole Foods did in Englewood in 2016.
The Planning Department expands incentives for grocery stores to serve underserved communities, holds grocery store chains accountable for closing their doors, and makes public the procedure for addressing food insecurity.
Store closures in urban neighborhoods have been a reality for many years. In 2017, according to Mid-America Real Estate Corporation’s biennial study of urban grocery retail outlets, nine Chicago grocery retail outlets had closed since 2015, resulting in a loss of 544,512 squares. food inventory feet.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation notes that, according to the USDA’s 2017 Food Access Research Report, approximately 39. 5 million people (12. 8% of the U. S. population) are in the U. S. world. USA) live in low-income spaces and other spaces with limited healthy food, according to the
The good news is that many people, either despite the obstacles and because of them, are taking steps to replace the food landscape.
Thanks to a recent $2. 5 million grant from the city as part of Chicago’s stimulus package, Elizabeth Abunaw, founder and CEO of Forty Acres Fresh Market, now operates an emerging market and weekend farmers market, as well as a delivery service to the citizens of the West and South Side. He recently partnered with Deshawn Nelson, founder of Mr. Nelson’s Movers, and Imperfect Foods to distribute enough new vegetables and fruits to one hundred families affected by the closure of Save-A-Lot.
The Downtown Muslim Action Network will soon open Go Green Community Fresh Market, a $5 million two-story market that offers new food and groceries from the city’s Go Green on Root initiative.
These community-minded marketers deserve applause and gratitude for filling a void.
However, there is a pressing need for the City Council and Mayor to expand concrete, long-term policies on this issue.
It’s time to eat each and every day.
Jitu Brown is the national director of the Journey for Justice Alliance, a network of organizations in more than 30 cities. Jay Travis is a former executive director of Kenwood Oakland Community Organization.
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