Mon, Nov 3

The Pear Tree That Refused to Die

I first heard about the East 83rd pear tree from a woman named Auntie B, who handed me a jar of pickled beets and a story.

The year was 1965. A wrecking crew came to raze her block for a freeway ramp—yet one pear tree survived. They tried cutting it twice. Its roots? Wouldn’t let go.

If you want to understand food justice in Cleveland, don’t start with policy reports.
Start with the tree that knew how to stay—when no one else held space.

🥀 This Isn’t a Food Desert. It’s a Food War Zone.

On Cleveland’s East Side, I saw:

• Busted streetlights

• Boarded grocery stores

• Elders hauling groceries from Family Dollar with nothing fresh but bruised bananas

This wasn’t hunger. This was displacement. Disinvestment. Soil poisoned by policy.

And still—resilience bloomed.

Lot by lot, a grassroots network of growers began reclaiming land. Not just farming. Resisting.
At the center?

A 62-year-old retired teacher with a seed vault and a vengeance.

🌾 Auntie B & the Revolutionary Gardeners

Auntie B had already trained three generations to compost with eggshells. She ran a seed-and-story swap from her church basement.

Her crew? Teenagers she called the Revolutionary Gardeners.

“We don’t just grow food,” one said. “We grow memory. We grow fire.”

They weren’t planting flower beds. They were building climate-smart, permanent food forests in Cleveland’s most neglected zip codes.

They needed funding.
They called me.

🧠 The Funding Whisperer Gets His Hands Dirty

They thought they needed a grant writer. What they really needed?

A strategist fluent in systems disruption and bureaucratic alchemy.

I showed up in boots. Tablet full of tabs:

• USDA Urban Agriculture Innovation Program

• ARPA food resilience block grants

• State-level climate adaptation pilot funds

• Zoning flexibility tools

• A tribal fund for land stewardship exchange

They had the vision.
I helped make it funder-proof.

📜 Writing the Grant Like a Manifesto

We didn’t write a proposal.
We crafted a food sovereignty blueprint:

“From Vacant to Vital: The Cleveland Roots Food Forest Network”

The project would:

• 🌱 Restore soil and reduce urban heat by 6–9°F

• 🌱 Employ 25 local youth/year in green-certified jobs

• 🌱 Feed 1,200+ residents with culturally relevant produce

• 🌱 Host ancestral cooking labs (African, Appalachian, Indigenous traditions)

• 🌱 Turn food access into healing infrastructure

We included:

• GIS maps

• Soil diagnostics

• Economic multipliers

• Elder testimonies

• Youth media reels

We made the grant feel like a living, edible archive.

🍎 When the Grant Dropped, the Soil Sang

The funding arrived—$1.75M braided across four sources.

In just 6 months:

• 🍅 A greenhouse bloomed on a former dump

• 🥬 Kids harvested mustard greens for school lunches

• 🌞 Elders led fermentation labs in a solar-powered kitchen

• 🧑🏽‍🌾 A food forest council formed—land trust in progress

Auntie B held the land deed and wept.

“They said we’d never own land again. Now we grow it.”

🧺 Mr. Grant Money’s Harvest Notes: Tools from the Trenches

Before I left, the Revolutionary Gardeners handed me a seed crate and a poem etched in wood:

“You can’t heal the land without loving the people.”

Here are the five lessons I planted that day:

1. Narrative is Infrastructure

Your proposal should read like a blueprint and a prophecy.
Funders love outcomes. But they follow origin stories.

2. Lived Experience > White Papers

Let Auntie B speak. Let the youth write in their own slang.
Authenticity can’t be templated.

3. Blend Data + Dream

Spreadsheet the soil tests. But also map the memories.
Liberation and logic can coexist.

4. Food is Not Charity

This is climate work. Job creation. Public health. Reparations.
Frame it like infrastructure—not as a feel-good side dish.

5. Don’t Ask for Scraps. Claim the Feast.

This isn’t about tomatoes.
It’s about transformation.

🌱 The Future Is Already Fruiting

Food forests are not beautification projects.
They are:

• Living reparations

• Ecosystems of resistance

• Joy-rooted, community-grown wealth

In Cleveland, the soil remembers.
So does Auntie B.
And so will you.

And if you’re ready to green your own hood?
I’ve got the grant for that.

💬 Discussion Questions: Greening the Hood

1. How does reclaiming land through food forests challenge disinvestment and environmental racism?

2. What power lies in preserving and planting ancestral seeds in your neighborhood?

3. How can intergenerational leadership amplify food justice?

4. Why must food systems be treated as infrastructure, and how should grants reflect that shift?

5. If you had $1M in funding, what food justice project would you grow—and who would you feed first?