Bloomington city councilmember Isak Asare spent part of his Saturday talking about food justice—the idea that everyone deserves access to nutritious and affordable food.
Asare was not the only one.
He was one of five people who participated in a panel discussion hosted by the People’s Market, and moderated by Jada Bee, a market co-founder. Other panelists included three Black farmers, Lauren McCalister, Ty Simmons and Ephraim Smiley. Simmons and Smiley had made the trip down from Fort Wayne to participate. McCalister’s journey from Ellettsville was shorter—she’s the LFPA (Local Food Purchasing Assistance Program) executive director at People’s Market.
Rounding out the group were Asare and Monroe County councilor Jennifer Crossley.
Asare talked about the nine-member city council on which he started serving this year. “Nine of the nine people on city council will be like: Yeah! We need food justice!” Asare said.
He added, “But we will not talk about that anytime soon.”
Why not?
Asare’s answer: “Because, we—hear me very clearly—we, as a body, can’t figure out how to get it on our agenda!”
A couple of times already, during council meetings in the first six weeks he has been serving, Asare has raised the issue of agenda setting and meeting structure. It’s actually encouraging that he brought it up again on Saturday.
It’s also encouraging that on the topic of access to local food, Asare should have at least one willing collaborator on the council. With more than two decades of service, representing council District 4, is Dave Rollo. Reached by phone late Saturday, Rollo said that he and Asare had met early on, to talk about their areas of agreement, and local food was one of those areas. That’s great to hear.
Anyhow, it means I am now looking to Asare and Rollo to figure out how to get food justice onto the Bloomington city council’s work plan.
On Saturday, Asare gave a recent example of the way Bloomington’s city council agenda currently gets set, and followed—to the detriment of more important topics.
Appearing on the agenda for the city council’s first February meeting was an ordinance that amounted to a clean-up of wording. In several places, the ordinance replaced in city code the phrase “transportation and traffic engineer” with “city engineer.” Any reference to “his or her” was replaced with “their.” The ordinance also added some standards for protection of trees in the public right-of-way.
Glossing over the procedural requirements of state law and local code, at the Feb. 7 city council meeting, Asare made a procedural gambit to take care of that ordinance in a single step, by voting on it that same night. But it was clear that Asare’s effort would not have had the required unanimous support, so he did not push forward on it.
That meant the council held its Feb. 14 meeting the following week as scheduled, with just one piece of legislative business on its agenda—the wording cleanup ordinance. (It passed unanimously!)
About that particular ordinance, Asare said on Saturday, “I’m thinking, we could vote on this next month, we could vote on this next year, or we could vote on it now. This is an inconsequential conversation, right? But it’s filling up all of our space.”
Asare continued, “We need a government that is actually responsive to the needs of the people.
That’s not rocket science.” A barrier to being responsive to the needs of the people, Asare said, is the way the council’s meetings are designed and the agendas get set.
Asare put it like this: “Enemy Number One are processes—and let me be clear, these are processes that are rooted in white supremacy—that keep order.”
He continued, “When you make a process that is based on order, the idea of that process is to keep some people out, is to decide: What do we talk about? When do we talk about it? How long do we talk about it?” And it makes who gets to talk about it most important.”
Those processes “make it so difficult to move the agenda towards actionable items of immediate importance,” Asare said.
“Why don’t we create an ordinance that says that every tree planted in the next five years in Bloomington needs to be fruit- or nut-bearing?” Asare asked.
Asare identified part of the problem as a need to get such an ordinance onto the city council’s agenda. “The only way for us to get it on the agenda is that somebody would have to introduce it—as a bill.”
Asare ticked through a list of competing time commitments that would make it challenging for him alone to write up a draft ordinance. “I can’t defy the laws of physics,” he said. For one thing, Asare has a full-time job as assistant dean for undergraduate affairs at the Hamilton Lugar School of Indiana University, and two children.
Asare continued, saying, “But there’s a better way forward. And we can actually do consensus-building activities in the city government, where we can all come to the table and say: Here’s some things that we want to do. And then we can say: Hey, Jada Bee, write the draft and bring it to us!”
Jada Bee, who is one of the co-founders of People’s Market, would be a natural person to ask to help draft an ordinance. Among her offerings as a vendor over the last few years have been applesauce and persimmon pulp—from wild-foraged fruit. In any conversation about the topic, it will not be long before Jada Bee will bring up the idea of planting nut- and fruit-bearing trees on public land.
I don’t think the Bloomington city council necessarily needs to enact an ordinance to compel the planting of nut- and fruit-bearing trees on public land, even if more such trees is the goal.
Still, it makes sense for the city council to push the topic of food justice forward—a public conversation among its members, new Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson’s administration, and residents. It makes sense because the city council is the fiscal body for the city. So the city council at some level has something to say about what kinds of trees the city purchases for planting on city-owned land.
Local food is a topic that I have on occasion heard councilmember Dave Rollo bring up over the last five years. But it has mostly been in the form of one-off mentions, not an organized approach to adopting policies that might result in easier access to fresh food for local Bloomington residents.
Reached by phone late Saturday, Rollo was receptive to the idea of choosing trees for planting on public land that are nut- and fruit-bearing. In fact, he told me that “edible landscapes” were a concept that had been included in the 2009 report from Bloomington’s peak oil task force, which he led. That report concludes:
[A]rable land available within the City of Bloomington alone (as much as 8,000 acres, or upwards of 5,000 square feet per resident) is potentially sufficient to meet most of the vegetable, fruit, egg, and some poultry requirements of city residents were it to be cultivated to the maximum extent possible using the most productive and intensive garden‐scale methods.
At the time, Rollo told me, there had been pushback to the idea of planting fruit-trees on public land—from the city’s urban forester at the time. Rollo said the objection had been: “They’re messy. Who’s gonna clean up the mess?”
Rollo allowed that the “mess” was a non-trivial consideration. Fruit could fall on sidewalks, make it slippery, attract hornets, start to smell bad were among the parade of horribles that could come with planting fruit-bearing trees.
But Rollo said that what he had suggested at the time was: Why don’t we at least do a pilot? Rollo suggested trying some place where people want the trees—some neighborhood where they’ll say, “I can’t wait to harvest the apples, the pears, the pawpaws, or persimmons.”
Rollo said, “It just went nowhere.”
There are already some fruit-bearing trees planted in Bloomington’s public right-of-way. For example, the city’s tree inventory shows 25 persimmon trees sprinkled across the city. Bloomington’s persimmon trees are plotted out as orange dots on the city map, which is included as a graphic with this column.
Various one-off suggestions that I have heard city councilmembers make over the last five years typically come in the context of the annual budget deliberations, which take place at the end of August.
But the administration’s basic preparation for the budget, which gets presented to the council in late summer, has surely already started for this year. In August, it will be too late to make suggestions that can easily be incorporated into the 2025 budget.
So it’s not too early right now for Bloomington’s city council to figure out what topics it wants to put on its work plan (aka its “agenda”)—topics about which it might want to express an opinion to the administration.
It’s not necessary to think in terms of an ordinance or a resolution—even if those are the standard tools used by the city council. Let’s imagine a different tool, like a simple motion made by a councilmember—supported by a majority vote of the council, at a collaborative work session attended by the mayor, resident-experts, and the public at large:
I move that the city council hereby requests that the mayor incorporate into the 2025 budget a pilot program for systematically planting nut- and fruit-bearing trees on city-controlled land.
Such motions would be enough to give the mayor some idea about what specific priorities should be reflected in the budget. If the 2025 proposed budget doesn’t include a pilot fruit tree program, after the council has requested it, there would be a chance to ask Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson: Why isn’t there something in this budget to support a pilot fruit tree program?
Even if Bloomington’s city council is off to a slow start as far as making city government responsive to the people, Asare’s remarks during Saturday’s panel actually left me feeling optimistic.
Asare said on Saturday that he doesn’t think Bloomington’s city council will have food justice on its agenda anytime soon. I am hopeful that Asare’s city council colleagues will prove him wrong.
It is nice to hear about these public leaders trying to solve a real problem. Traffic bump-outs and bike lanes are getting old.
we’re dying, Margaret. we’re literally dying. there are about 1-3 deaths on city roads each year, hundreds of injury crashes, and thousands of property damage crashes. the cost is much higher than the deaths and injuries, because we must live our lives in fear of these consequences. we don’t just feel the fear, but we adjust our behavior because of this fear. we live with this violence.
please show some sensitivity when dismissing problems as unreal.
and p.s. you don’t live here. these aren’t your leaders.
The hyperbole does not help your argument like you must think. You should consider this as an aspiring public figure. Just a friendly tip 😉
J – thanks for the feedback.
but it’s not hyperbole. it’s just data. you can look it up. if you don’t care about this human cost then you are free to your opinion.
to the extent that i’m a public figure, my only goal is to represent people who think it is a big deal. people who are walking in the street feel a threat upon their lives every day in a visceral way that they cannot ignore. but it seems to me like you’re telling me you can ignore it.
so, i’m not representing your interests. i hope someone else does because your needs matter too!
This conversation started by CM Asare could be transformational.
I am familiar with a place where a persimmon tree overhangs a Bloomington street and sidewalk. It is a mess when persimmons ripen, fall to the ground and are trampled under foot or are flattened by autos.
I’ve heard persimmons should only be harvested after they fall from the tree, which would seem to make them a bad fit for urban forestry.
Council member Rollo Saturday at his constituent meeting Saturday and the greenway process improvement meeting that the Mayor hosted asserted that ‘bumpouts’ (sorry, my interest in the topic is exhausted, too) are unsightly and poorly maintained.
Given these examples there would seem to be some basis for the urban forester’s apprehensions about the city’s ability to adequately maintain urban fruit trees.
I bet the squirrels would appreciate some nut trees though. They got all the apricots from a tree that once stood on my lot.
The idea has merit but needs to be framed more clearly. All the trees currently being planted DO bear fruits and nuts – all are flowering plants that produce fruit every year, whether it is a berry, pome, nut (which is a type of fruit), or what have you. You are suggesting that trees be planted that bear fruit that are edible to humans. It would help to clarify that in what moves forward.
Great idea for public fruit and nut trees, and for the needed broader conversation on food justice!
Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit whose mission is “to inspire communities to cultivate thriving systems of growing and sharing fruit” would be a great partner, too. This group has a well-established community orchard, educational outreach and volunteer network, and has experience partnering with multiple others in their mission.
i am so excited that Cm Asare is bumping into these limits! i know, if he continues, he will have an impact. progress is slow but his approach will yield dividends for us!
i have to say, when i first started reading this article, i felt like the mission statement “food justice” was so nebulous i didn’t know what to make of it. but the concrete detail of, for example, public fruit trees, is something i can really sink my teeth into. and i hope that builds into something else to tackle some of the more nebulous aspects of the problem.
but i love urban fruit so much. did someone just say “Greg, write a 2000 word essay on fruit”?
there’s a big ol Persimmon overhanging the road behind my house. i love it! i mostly eat the ones that fall in the ditch along my neighbor’s yard but sometimes i eat the ones that fall in the street. i bike through its rotting pile every day without significant concern. but once, i was frustrated by my kid’s decision to walk right through the fruit (instead of around it) in october — and its dropping season is so long. so probably Mr Coulter is right, it would be a poor choice overhanging a sidewalk.
there’s a bunch of mulberry trees overhanging sidewalks. i walk under them all the time. there is a brief season where it’s kind of messy when they all fall. but i never resent that, because i have always enjoyed the harvest. it is great to simply stop and pick a dozen berries. every single day. for more than a month.
one of my neighbors planted raspberries along the sidewalk. when it was fruiting, it was awesome. but for the winter, it is just bare thorny branches poking into the sidewalk. it would have been far more awesome if it had been planted just one or two feet further back from the sidewalk….but then maybe i’d feel bad about leaning into their yard for the harvest 🙂
just off of my beaten path, there is an apple tree in the grassy median. when i stumbled across it, it was full of apples and they were delicious! i also have my own apple tree that sometimes fruit rolls down onto the sidewalk, and from that experience, i suspect it’s not really a big problem. when the apples fall, they’re usually still kind of firm, and it’s not a huge uncountably large number of them.
and i feel like people just kind of kick them into the grass. but i think for these apple trees, they happen to be maintained by the neighbor, not the city. hardly anyone kicks my apples into the grass, because i get to them first.
there’s black walnut trees all over town. i’m not a huge fan. i have yet to eat one i’ve found in the wild (maybe this is a mark against me). once i got beaned in the head by one, and it wasn’t as bad as i expected but it also wasn’t great. on the sidewalk, they can sometimes pile up and become a nuissance and a genuine tripping hazard. but also, most of the time it’s just one or two and you can kick it out of the way. in fact, many many times i’ve made a game of kicking them down the sidewalk.
ginkgos. barf.
there used to be a fantastic cherry tree on college ave…you could get a couple from ground level but i always wanted to bring a ladder or harvesting-stick to get my fill. but they cut it down almost as soon as i discovered it. 🙁 i never noticed it on the sidewalk, but that’s probably only because of much more severe chronic vegetation on the sidewalk there. WHICH BTW THE CITY FIXED THIS LAST YEAR! Engineering Dept has started to follow up and make sure vegetation is cleared from the sidewalk when it is reported!!!
there’s a ton of crabapples all over. some of them give fruit you can see and some of them, the fruit is invisible to the human eye? i still chomp on them every now and then and uniformly: they are not awesome.
i’ve found some elderberries and i love them. only problem with them is if you’re not familiar with them, there’s of course always the “is this poison?” question that might slow people down. i’ve never seen one situated such that it would harm a path, so i don’t know if they drop in any obnoxious quantities.
there’s a large grape close to the B-line behind the downtown Bloomingfoods. most years, it is worthwhile to spend a couple minutes standing on the picnic tables to get a good harvest. and it is a long season, 2 months of fruit. i park my bike under it every 3 times a week and i’ve never minded the debris on the ground, though there must be a lot of it. once i was there and i saw a homeless-looking guy harvesting from it, and something about it was making him paranoid, as if he thought he was breaking the rules to be taking the public fruit. i tried to make him feel welcome but me talking to him just made it worse. that was a bummer.
a lot of bush honeysuckle blocking the sidewalk. it makes a very attractive poison berry. once i had my 2yo on my shoulders and i was ducking around a bush that was blocking my way, and he grabbed one and put it on his mouth. the bitter flavor of poison immediately made him throw up on my head. i had to poke around in the upchuck that had cascaded to the sidewalk to find the berry and be sure what it was he had eaten. boo honeysuckle.
personally, overall, i have found the branches at eye level to be far more distressing than anything a tree has ever dropped on the sidewalk. and i hate seeing all of the broken-off trees all over town from drivers that can’t stay within the lines! and the leaves and black walnuts are at least as bad as any rotting pile i’ve ever seen.
so i have no punchline except that the details will matter. but personally i’m excited!
As City Council president, I am committed to adding work/discussion sessions to the Council’s calendar soon, so that we can talk about items that are not yet developed into legislation and learn from the public and each other how best to approach them.
That’s great. Thanks Isabel
Jada Bee writing city ordinances? That smells worse than the rotting persimmons all over the sidewalks by where I live. Yuck.
I fail to see how rules governing scheduling 2 meetings to discuss and then vote on an ordinance are “rooted in white supremacy.” Is this just a catch-all buzz-phrase used by people who are too lazy to conjure up a real argument against them? Rules can change but you need actual reasons and data, not just “white people made them up so they are automatically racist.”
I appreciate The People’s Market’s leadership on food justice in our community – and they are right to go to people with power and resources (our city government) to help further food justice. And for anyone, like Greg, who is pumped on planting fruit trees this season — The Neighborhood Planting Project — gives away thousands of free native fruit and nut trees all over Monroe and neighboring counties. You can organize a give-away and planting in your neighborhood or simply request trees for your yard:
https://neighborhoodplantingproject.org/
Edible landscaping, agrihoods, rooftop greenhouses & gardens, housing as urban farmacies & green jobs are intrinsic components of our Holistic Affordable Housing program & models will be explored during our Living Homes Conference community stakeholder charettes. To be involved with our nonprofit initiatives, Email bluebeebiospherics at gmail_com with Subject Line: Edible Housing Food Sovereignty