Organic Community Power - Albino Garcia
Albino Garcia is the Executive Director and Founder of La Plazita Institute. Over the last 18 years, La Plazita has been serving New Mexico's communities through economic, cultural, agricultural and community revitalization through organizing and power building. In this episode, Albino gives a rich history of how La Plazita came into existence. He discusses La Plazita's philosophies of "La Cultura Cura" and how they are healing formally incarcerated youth and families through connecting them to the land. Albino also takes time to dive deep into what it means to build organic community power. He encourages organizers and movement workers to continue to take care of your community first, and the rest will follow.
This episode of In Praxis is a part of Season 3: Food Justice.
The information, opinions, views, and conclusions proposed in this episode are those of our podcast guests.
You can also tune into this episode on Anchor, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Stitcher. Below is a transcript of the episode, edited for readability. You can also watch this episode on YouTube with subtitles for accessibility.
Albino Garcia
Podcast Transcription
Albino Garcia 00:00
If you're going to be genuine, you can engage the system on the system's terms we have to come together as community and we haven't really been able or been resourced to come together genuinely. So we would need to put resources as much as you have a system to fix it. You need to dedicate those kinds of resources to community.
Podcast Intro 00:24
You are now listening to In Praxis, a podcast from The Praxis Project created to support, hear from, and uplift the stories coming out of the ecosystem of base building organizing. An ecosystem that includes frontline groups building community power and the folks who help support their important work. In season three, our host Blair Franklin is exploring community driven strategies for food justice. Our guest are incredible community organizers working to advance their farming practices, community led urban farming, and equitable food procurement and retail. These are their stories about how we feed our communities with healthy, culturally appropriate, fair and affordable food, and both community power to advance health equity through food justice.
Blair Franklin 01:46
So excited, Albino to be chatting with you today and learning more about your work and the work of La Plazita Institute. So we'd love as we get started, if you could just tell us a little bit about who you are and the work that you do.
Albino Garcia 02:00
Right. So my name is Albino Garcia, and I'm the Executive Director here at La Plazita Institute, located in the South Valley of Albuquerque, New Mexico, or just a couple blocks up for the Rio Grande River. It's called South Valley. So you know, there are areas that aren't necessarily I guess, as incorporated as other so we could still have, you know, chickens horses, roosters, sometimes too many barking dogs, you know, we're close to the Rio Grande River. So we're in a valley, the water tables, you know, pretty low here are pretty accessible. So we do a lot of farming, agriculture, we run off of our acequia systems and all wells. Today we serve a lot of system impacted individuals and families, returning citizens, we provide a slew of different kinds of grassroots approaches, with a cultural flavor.
Albino Garcia 03:00
Our philosophies, "La Cultura Cura", which translates to culture healed, we do a lot of reentry work, educational support, case management, social services. We're known for our traditional healing and cultural frameworks. We're an organic farm site so we have grown produce and agriculture, air food that we grow goes into the mouths of kids who are currently in incarcerated here in Albuquerque area in Bernalillo County, Youth Detention Center. We have an exclusive contract with them and as far as we know, we think we're probably one of the only detention centers that we know of so far that that we can prove as serving certified organic food to incarcerated children. And we come historically, from a population that, you know, part of the suppression and apprehension of our nutrition and our traditional food, right was controlled. And so today, we feel like it's bit of a revolutionary act, to grow our own food, and then provide it to these institutions that still perpetuate the trauma. One of the ways that they do that is by controlling the the food intake and the nutritional intake of, of our people, including our children. So we again, you know, we're, this is our little way of taking some of that control back.
Blair Franklin 04:26
Wow. Wow. Yeah, I'll be you know, thank you so much for sharing, really appreciating the naming of the land and the space and the people right by which you come from and you serve. And then also really leading us toward talking about all the services you provide case management, social services, all sorts of support, but thinking about food as revolution and writing organic food to folks as revolution. So that's such a powerful point. And I think, expanding upon that I would love to hear more about what led you started doing food justice work. Like what's your own food story? How did you come to doing this work with La Plazita?
Albino Garcia 05:05
Yeah, so La Plazita it will be 18 years old formally in September. August/September 18 years ago, just literally one block from where La Plazita is there's a curve on the Isleta Boulevard. We here who live close by we call it "dead man's curve", we've always call it dead man's curve. It used to be a place where lot accidents happen because it's kind of a sharp turn. And so we're right near dead man's curve. I live two blocks from dead man's curb and La Plazita is a block on you know, opposite of that. So in some sense, you know, what led me to this is, you know, there's an old teaching in the movement of End Barrio Warfare, social justice, movement work. It's like, if you don't clean up your own backyard, how are you going to clean up somebody else's right. So in some sense, La Plazita is me staying true to the virtue of our teachers and mentors. Clean up your own backyard first, right? So, in other words, do work in your own neighborhood, before you go to try to fix somebody else's neighborhood. Right. So La Plazita, S was built under the premise of taking care of our own people, our own kids, their own families, their own streets, stuff like that. Part of that initially is keeping kids above ground a lot of violence, I work in the field of diversion intervention, gang intervention street, you know, working with men and women, children on the inside and the outside and trying to get them resources and get them on track and get them healed up as much as we can before they make a decision that takes them back into the system, etc.
Albino Garcia 06:48
So, I was approached by some leaders about 18 years ago right when I founded La Plazita and there had been a big old, kind of a reckoning with local leaders, grassroot leaders, and the government,the local government, Bernalillo County, they had acquired an 11 acre parcel of land right here, literally one block from my house, and it's called The Sanchez Farm. So it was a 300 year old farm site. It had an old hacienda, it had been abandoned, and the Hacienda was vandalized and use for homeless spot—drugs. So the county went in and acquired the land, do the back taxes and whatever. And they condemned the property. So they bulldozed it down, they had plans to develop that property. And then the local leaders said because they were going to try to do a zone change, and change like the flavor of the whole neighborhood. So much leaders got together and they came up with different answers and solutions and meetings. And finally, in the 11th hour, when they had a joint use agreement, the agreement was to turn it into 100 year floodplain zone, also known as an open space for community. Like, open it up for like community gardening, they needed a nonprofit organization to manage it.
Albino Garcia 08:20
Initially, I was approached just to be one of the what they call a "parciante", which is one of the members to use certain parcels of land just to kind of have kids grow food that I worked with. And rather than steal and deal and make money on the street. I told them wow, if you could grow a 50 foot row of tomatoes, you can grow anywhere from 50 to 100 pounds a tomato organically. At $3.99 a pound $4 a pound certified organic tomato, you can make, you know, 100 pounds a week. How much is that? Right? And could you use that to buy a little low-rider, pay your cell phone bill, whatever the homie said, Yeah, of course, you know, and most of the homies that we're here, in some way, shape or form had some kind of ties to some old school, grandma, grandpa kind of gardening, you know, it is still prevalent in the culture here. So my thought was just to kind of do that. And my thought was just kind of like, reduce crime a little bit by giving them some legitimate connection to the land and make money for right.
Albino Garcia 09:34
So that was the plan. But the organization that was going to head off, walked away from the idea at the last minute and they needed somebody to sign the dotted line for this open space on behalf of the community. I was approached, and I told him, "You know, I mean, I've been a farm worker, but never a farmer". And there's a difference you know, a farmer you know, pretty much owns the seeds and the crop that he puts in the ground where a farm worker usually does it for someone else, right? And so you know that people say, "hey, we'll teach you, we'll show it will take care of it". Because I knew nothing about irrigation. I knew nothing about water rights, I knew nothing about land acquisition, what seeds to put where and what three sisters, you know, corn, squash, and beans, like, all of this stuff came after, you know, they just needed someone with the nonprofit status to sign the dotted line on behalf of the community. Well, we've had it now for 18 years, and now we're certified organic program, and we provide food to hundreds of people every week with our garden.
Blair Franklin 10:45
Yeah, wow. You use the word organic, you know, pretty often, I think we're talking about how the food is produced. But also it's so organic in how you came in to kind of being one of the many community stewards right of this space and thinking about using food access, growing as a means of like violence prevention, and just like connecting people back to their land. Yeah, thank you so much for that really powerful story. You talked a little bit also, as you were just telling your story a little bit about how the folks you're working with kind of our old school connected to like grandma, grandpa community gardening and had some of that in their families and their histories. I'm curious about what the food landscape looks like, in the neighborhood before sort of doing this work and what it looks like now?
Albino Garcia 11:36
Yeah, you know, I can't take like full credit of what it looks like now. I think we can genuinely say we can take some with others. Right around that time we started, there was some folks trying to come together and leverage resources, leverage seed buying, and leverage T-teams, and things like that. We of the initial group of contemporary farmers, gardeners, whatever, we were the only kind of socially based one. Meaning that I had a 501 (c) 3, I was a community based organization non-for-profit, and the organization was listed as the farmer rather than me as an individual. And then the others were individuals trying to prepare their land that they had access to, and use it as a sustainable way of life for their own life and their families. Ours was more of a sustainable way to heal and to do land restoration, and to do intervention and prevention work. By having a space in place where youth who normally were involved with the criminal justice system will have and reconnect to the land, reconnect to culture, make a few bucks, eat some real food for the first time rather than buy it at the supermarket, right, like grow it.
Albino Garcia 13:13
So ours was educational, cultural, you know, social justice, like I said, had that little romantic, revolutionary flavor to it. Now, what it turned into is phenomenal today in our work, because it influenced our whole mission. Initially, we were just focused on trying to keep kids out of prison help men and women coming out of prison, do social services. But adding this whole farming tip to it just was a natural for our culture, historically, and contemporarily speaking. And so we have now our farm is a healing place. Children who have a conditions of probation, or even were a Metro Court site where people get citations, they can't afford to pay in cash. So they work a month and community. They come over here, they learn how to plant seeds, they learn how to water it, irrigate it, they learn how to maintain it, how to weed it. And then they learn how to harvest it, how to wash it, prepare it, and how to sell it and it's this whole cycle of life. And it has become a premier aspect of our mission now. It's an amazing thing! So kids who formerly were incarcerated that were eating this food, didn't know where it came from. But once they got released, they come over here. They became part of producing it. Now they really know. So it's really it's cool as hell.
Blair Franklin 14:49
Yeah, Wow! The healing that happens through the work. I mean, you so vividly talked about how the farm arm is a healing place right even as doing some diversion works like folks that might be engaged with the system in some way might get diverted to working in community and really learning some of those skills of harvesting, weeding, irrigating caring for lands, getting access to food. Really excited and blown away by your work, Albino and the work out your helping folks in community. I'm curious if you have anything else you want to mention name or uplift, particularly around the relationship between food and healing and medicine, and ways in which you've seen healing happen through folks being on the land and doing the work?
Albino Garcia 15:33
Well, yeah, I mean, I gotta say that interestingly, when the world shut down and was immobilized by fear and infection of COVID at the highest point. One of the biggest areas of concern was by day La Plazita serves as an alternative to detention program in sight for the system. But because of the nationally and locally, programs, youth projects and programs all shut down, every agency went to no in person activities for a good period of time. There were no contact with youth. So then youth who were going to projects and programs that weren't say residential that were spaces in places where they felt like they belong, that would support them during the day, and all that kind of stuff. All that stuff shut down and then we, on the other hand, were able to continue to work with our youth. Because our sites were open, they were outside, and you could distance farm and garden and visit. The kids were going crazy, they were going stir crazy being at home, and everything being shut down. So by us having garden sites that were mostly outdoor, it became the go to place in our city to refer kids to positive activities. Otherwise, they will be kind of like having not much to do even technology, they were going kind of crazy. So in a way, we were able to use the space and the place to continue our services and then grow them. It was so interesting, how much kids just want to be back outside. Right? And then also just to be able to be invoice shot of each other versus through technology in virtually excetera. Right. So there was a hunger for it and we became a go to place to send youth to. And so yeah, that that was one other little crazy tip that happened.
Blair Franklin 17:55
Yeah, thank you for sharing. And I feel like I've seen and heard a similar theme where organizations that are really deeply rooted in their neighborhoods and their communities, already working with young people, especially when the pandemic hit. And that shift of needing to figure out how to continue and support that work. Some organizations like yourselves that were really just able to do that pivot at a time when it was so needed, right. And we talked about young people being stir crazy and needed to get outside and having the safety round social distancing, and stuff kind of built in. Incredible under the gap, thank you for for sharing that that story that resonates with all of us in the pandemic can do and I think community work. So I want to just ask quickly about community power. How do you see your work addressing community power and building community power if at all?
Albino Garcia 18:49
So building community power. So we're the were the recipients of a grant that enabled us to...Well, first of all, we were approached by a foundation, and asked what would community and system engagement look like? And stuff like that right?And I was like, "Boy, this is like the buzz question now." You know, everybody's trying to talk about system and community engagement, stuff like that. And I think genuinely and truly speaking, what it would look like, and the question of, you know, how do you build community power? I said to them that there are a foundation that has funded system reform work and system change from within the system, and others going into the system and putting resources and ideas and new design together and working from the inside out. And most of engagement has always been like having select community stakeholders be invited to their world. So I told them, "Hey, if we're going to truly build power, then we need to create our own collaboration without the system." They were puzzled by that it's and said "Well, how was that system engagement?" I said "It's authentic engagement." But if you're gonna be genuine, you can engage the system on the system's terms, we have to come together as community, and we haven't really been able or been resource to come together genuinely. So we would need to put resources as much as you have in the system. To fix it. You need to dedicate those kinds of resources to community and then we need to come back together because we've been forced to compete with one another and fight one another for scraps of resources controlled by the system, if we can get resources not controlled by the system, and we can control those resources, we can change things, we can build power.
Albino Garcia 20:55
So they gave us a half a million dollars. And we invited 25 organizations, serving youth in our community, outside of the system, most people and gave them all subcontracts and we put the criteria for those 25 organizations was to select and nominate a system impacted youth or family member, impacted by the criminal justice system and invite them and we will compensate them as well. At the highest rate that that foundation would allow a youth contractor, and that's $40 an hour. So bottom line is, we started to come together and we spent a whole year, almost a year and a half building base and power and narrative, exclusive of the system with no distractions. 25 organizations reaching about 30,000 people weekly. So our network is tremendous, our capacity, and it is informed directly by system impact youth and family members. It's phenomenal. And we have the system now, after a year and a half of coming together as a community wondering and knocking at the door like, "Hey, what about us? I mean, are we supposed to be involved in this?" Yeah, but we just haven't determined our terms yet. So you know, you've had decades of control and power and everything. And I think we're going to go ahead and just make sure we, we got our stuff together before we start to invite you to our table, and we're going to determine how we're going to invite them and who's going to be invited and not everybody's going to be entitled unless they really have community centered in a genuine way and if they don't, then they will not be invited. And so that's building power.
Blair Franklin 22:52
Yeah, Albino I have chills. That was was so powerful! And just the clarity around, of course, we can't engage systems on the systems terms. And really building out with young people with other organizations that are not working outside of the system to really talk about strategy and how you support folks in community and really communicating the terms to engage with systems and we the naming to the foundation, what needs to happen, and then paying young people just well and what they deserve. Right. And I have chills from what you shared. So incredible. Yeah, just really appreciating the stories that you're bringing into the space. I'm curious, what are some of the greatest barriers you've experienced to your work? And how do you overcome them? You've talked about some but yeah, curious Are there are other barriers that come up?
Albino Garcia 23:46
I think some of the greatest barriers is frankly, the depths of indoctrination, and colonization on all people of color. You know, we could easily say that the challenge is the system and so forth, or the foreign construct, or oppression, or racism. But for me, if I'm gonna be real, my challenge is our own behavior, how indoctrinated we are and how oppressed we are, and the characteristics that oppression brings out in us towards each other. And almost like the challenges the loyalty that we have to indoctrination, it really hurts my soul, right? We have this tendency to hope and to get together. Then we have these patterns that are so deep, that we go back and start behaving the same way soon after meetings and stuff. It's like that— so undoing characteristics and behaviors that are now generational. It's gonna take generations for us to change. Jeez, you're not gonna believe this. I have law enforcement here, I got SWAT coming I have to get off the phone.
Blair Franklin 25:10
Okay, that's fine. Yeah, I will email you separately. Okay, take care!
Albino Garcia 25:13
Bye
Blair Franklin 25:14
I know that was quite an abrupt ending to this week's episode of In Praxis, but wanted to let folks know that Albino is completely fine. The folks that showed up came to the wrong address, and we were unable to reschedule a time to finish the interview with Albino. So wanted to really appreciate him and La Plazita for all the wisdom that they shared during this podcast, and hope you enjoy the episode. Lots of love deep appreciation thanks so much!
Blair Franklin 26:10
Thank you for listening to this episode of In Praxis. We hope you all enjoyed it. Make sure to visit our website www.thepraxisproject.org Where you can check out additional episodes with other guests, as well as learn more about our work.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
community, people, food, system, land, organizations, youth, power, invited, approached, farm worker, kids, healing