Brown Girl Swagger

What do Marcus Garvey and apples have in common?

Zena Nelson and self sufficiency.

Who is Zena? An ambitious, bright as a whip, Garveyite spearheading a  food co-op in  her native South Bronx as a method of bringing not only a more holistic approach to wellness in the hood but also a little bit of social justice through ownership,  that’s who. Oh and she’s an MBA student.

(Insert Diddy’s “take that take that take that” right here)

If you’ve ever been to any inner city neighborhood before the sweep of gentrification you would know that it’s easier to find a bodega selling canned and syrupy peaches before finding a peach with a stem. In many of New York’s neighborhoods populated by people of color this is still the case (gentrification isn’t finished yet y’all).

There are sometimes many miles in between a front door and an overpriced fresh vegetable stand or supermarket. That is where the South Bronx Cooperative comes in (co-op = autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise OR bunch of folks putting money and time where their mouths are).

On the corner of East 158^th Street and Third Ave in the Bronx, Zena will be channeling information and produce (and some banging natural ingredient cream soda) to folks of all ages, health conditions, and backgrounds.
She’s got a few ideas fueling her including leveling the playing field for colored folks. They’ll be yoga classes available, instruction on home-growing (herbs and things), and medical/health/wellness advice in conjunction with doctors, among other things.
Zena’s been writing grants, tiling floors, creating market projections, fundraising and stacking yogurt. Dang y’all and she ain’t even 35.

She channels Marcus Garvey’s spirit by emphasizing the unity in commUNITY. Of the opportunistic and often parasitic businesses that come into the hood and leave with a good portion of residents’ money without fairly trading beneficial items she says “Get your own. Don’t give someone the power to take your money and when they want to leave, they leave and you are stuck with nothing. Don’t let them take you over; own it yourself.”
So now that we know she’s building it, will you come?

South Bronx Food Cooperative Website: http://www.sbxfc.org/index.html

3103 Third Avenue Bronx, NY

NOW GO JOIN!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 at 2:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, Congregate, Soul Sistahs, Activism!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.