Using Seeds and Soil, Cuir Kitchen Brigade Helps People Feed Themselves and Their Neighbors Through the Coronavirus Pandemic

Graphic by Sarah Sarwar // Photos from cuirkitchenbrigade.co

It’s May 1st, International Workers Day, and I’m sitting at my kitchen counter waiting for a 20 foot box truck to arrive. When it does, the other members of Cuir Kitchen Brigade and myself will offload about 100 milk crates filled with dirt, ready to become a part of gardens in the homes of residents in Bushwick and Bedford Stuyvesant.

We are the last of three stops this truck is making. Its first and second were Kings Manor Museum located in Jamaica, Queens and Universe City in East New York, Brooklyn in which a total of 326 milk crates were distributed.

This journey began at JFK airport, where last week a group of 12 of us spent a total of six hours clipping zip ties and liberating the unused crates in order to encourage what has now become over 600 individuals across the five boroughs and New Jersey to start feeding themselves and their neighbors. This garden was in use for five years, its crops serving the restaurants inside of terminal five, before it stopped running. Through various relationships with organizations we were notified of its impending disposal and decided to repurpose it by distributing the crates to residents of New York. These crates are equipped with liners and filled with clean soil. This work is in collaboration with Cuir Kitchen Brigade, Reclaim Seed, The Curb Banquet, Sajo Jefferson, Sawdayah Brownlee and Lucy Lesser. Together we are known as the Milk Crate Collective.

So what does that mutual aid look like for the Cuir Kitchen Brigade?

As individuals who are constantly on the frontlines, from working in Boriken after hurricane Maria to feeding people at the border, our work in food sovereignty centers the lives of Q/T/BIPOC. Cuir Kitchen Brigade was formed responding to a crisis situation, born out of the necessity to feed Boricuas after the hurricane. Since then our mission has expanded to include frontline communities that are disproportionately impacted by climate change and disaster.

As a group of Queer and Trans BIPOC we have always felt the call of duty to help our communities survive, to reconnect with land, heal our traumas and to frame food soveriegnty through a healing justice lens. So when Covid-19 started and we began to see the impact it had on the BIPOC community we couldn’t help but to get to work.

Two weeks ago we had a line of over 100 people outside of my home – in what is now functioning as our HQ – waiting for us to hand out seedlings, compost and seeds. The line of individuals stretching to the corner as everyone observed the 6 feet distance rule, all of them donning their PPE. As individuals, families and elderly folks crossed the street to our table asking what was available we witnessed the joy on their faces when given the tools they need for their own liberation, for our collective liberation.

We have mailed seed kits across the U.S. and the Carribean and through social media have been fortunate enough to see those seed kits transform the lives of people. One of the people who was sent a seed kit told us that this season two black five year old girls, her daughters, would be planting their first garden in Cincinnati, OH with those seeds. This DIY Urban Gardening Zine illustrated by Ollie Montes De Oca and written by me during this pandemic has been shared and archived as a resource for individuals we are not able to reach through other channels. My living room floor is covered in boxes filled with seeds, my backyard has a greenhouse for seedlings and my home – while always existing to serve the people – is doing so even more now.

Throughout this pandemic Cuir Kitchen Brigade’s goal has been to focus on the long term. Our communities have lots of needs right now and individuals are mobilizing in many ways. Our way is a commitment to long lasting change, to self-sufficiency, to inter-dependence and to creating the world we want to see.


COMMUNITY CHECK is a series about mutual aid and taking care of each other in the time of coronavirus.

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Luz Cruz

Lucecita Cruz is a Queer Anarchist Afro Latinx farmer, organizer and writer from the Puerto Rican Diaspora that lives in New York City. They are fighting to protect front line communities who are affected by food injustice and climate change. They have organized with inter-generational BIPOC Queer and Trans folks around gender, race and food. Luz organizes in a way that combines writing, food and activism to better understand our current conditions and develop ways to help fix them. They believe in the liberation of Boriken and of all peoples from their oppressors.

Luz has written 1 article for us.

9 Comments

  1. This Community Check series really is the bomb or however the kids say it nowadays.
    I really wish urban gardening would take off more in Berlin, there’s so much potential here.

  2. This was excellent, heartwarming and full of hope ! Thank you !

    I deeply believe gardens are (the) key for any kind of revolution. There’s something in the air these days – everyone around me seems to be planting and growing, and there are so many ways to reclaim it.

    Crate gardens are the best, I’ll head out to pamper mine right now.

  3. This is great, thank for sharing this. There should be more community gardens across the country.

  4. Thanks so much for sharing! I love this. I am wondering how to share my seedlings. As per usual I over-planted (I plant like my .25 of an acre lot is 25 acres) I have about 75 plants rn, and a crap ton of stuff in the ground. You motivated me to figure this out!

  5. Thank you for this! Gardens for community building are one of my very favorite things.

  6. LOVE LOVE LOVE!!

    In case Cuir Kitchen or orgs you work with want to apply for funding for community organizing, this is a fund focused on queer orgs led by & serving people who identify as one or more of the following: Trans/GNC, Intersex, Black/African-American, people of color/people of the global majority, indigenous/Native American, poor/low-income/working class, and rural. The deadline to apply this year is May 31 –
    https://fundingqueerly.net/apply-for-funding

  7. I love this! My dad has always been a gardener and I’ve dabbled on and off. This year I’ve been gardening with my kids and love connecting them with our food. This year we added chickens and I’m excited for eggs this fall!

    Thank you, Luz, for sharing about your valuable work!

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