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L.A. County, nonprofits team up to tackle food insecurity

By Suzanne Potter, Public News Service

Monrovia tree ornament: ‘Public art that you hold in your hand’

By Staff

Before the pandemic, one in five people in Los Angeles County lacked consistent access to food - and in 2021, one in four low-income families experienced food insecurity, according to a new report from a coalition of county and nonprofit leaders.

The Los Angeles County Food Equity Roundtable released its strategic plan, designed to end food insecurity by 2030.

Charity Faye, program manager for the group Sisters in Motion, Black Women for Wellness, said families of color in Los Angeles have suffered disproportionately for many years. "Black and Brown families are three times as likely to face hunger than our White individuals within communities,' she said. "And so, food insecurity for us, we think of it as a public health crisis, because food access is actually a human right."

The plan lays out policies to make healthy food more affordable and more widely available, to build demand for healthy food by addressing lifestyle issues, and to support sustainable, local farming.

Frank Tamborello, executive director of Hunger Action Los Angeles, said authorities could help many families afford more food by expanding the Market Match program, which offers vouchers to be used at local farmers' markets. "So, it's not just that we need to get the county to implement new policies," he said. "We need the county to use its considerable voice, as a huge population center in the United States, to win changes on the state and federal levels."

He also praised the expansion of CalFresh to undocumented seniors and said he hopes to see the program include more age groups.

Jamie Fanous senior policy advocate and organizer with the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, said programs to make sure small farmers can survive tough times will support long-lasting, structural change. "We have the solutions," she said. "We just need to resource our farmers; we just need to resource the folks that are managing cooperatives or managing food hubs."

The Food Equity Roundtable is funded by the Annenberg Foundation, the Weingart Foundation, and the California Community Foundation, and is co-chaired with Los Angeles County.

Disclosure: Hunger Action Los Angeles contributes to our fund for reporting on Budget Policy & Priorities, Consumer Issues, Hunger/Food/Nutrition, Livable Wages/Working Families. If you would like to help support news in the public interest, click here.

References:

Report Los Angeles County Food Equity Roundtable 2022

Monrovia's 2022 holiday tree ornament. | Photos courtesy of the city of Monrovia

Courtesy of Gabriella Clare Marino

The city of Monrovia is offering for the first time a limited quantity of a winter holiday tree ornament that promotes and benefits public art.

“I call it an heirloom,” Councilman Sergio Jimenez said at the Monrovia CIty Council meeting Tuesday.

Referencing a Monrovia public art piece titled “A Book is a Dream That You Hold in Your Hand,” Jimenez said the ornament “is public art that you hold in your hand.”

“The design features a winter wonderland in Old Town Monrovia,” according to the product description on the city’s online store. “The beautifully crafted ornament is made of high quality ceramic, brilliantly designed by Monrovia artist, Austin Lubetkin.”

The doubled-sided, 2.5 by 2.5 inches square ornament features the Art in Public Places logo and the artist’s name of artist on the back side. The very collectable tree ornament also comes with a gift box.

Proceeds from sales of the tree ornament benefit the city’s Art in Public Places program.

“I think we originally had 300, and they are selling very fast,” Jimenez said. “I anticipate that in a short period of time we’re going to actually run out.”

The Art in Public Places program receives funding from a 1% fee attached to to residential development projects that have five or more dwelling units and cost more than $1 million, or commercial real estate projects costing more than $1 million, according to the city’s website.

Work on gateway to Redwood National Park winds down for 2022

By Suzanne Potter, Public News Service

Crews are making progress in building a new gateway to Redwood National Park in Humboldt County.

Work has just wrapped up for the year at the site of an old timber mill near the town of Orick. Operations will pick up again next spring, and the site is expected to open to the public in 2026.

Jessica Carter, director of parks and public engagement for the Save the Redwoods League, which owns the land, and project manager for the work at the Orick Mill site, said visitors will get to enjoy a host of new features. "They will see a completely restored landscape, about a mile of new trails," Carter outlined. "There will be a visitor plaza with interpretive exhibits, and there will be gathering areas."

The area sits on Native American ancestral lands, so the Yurok Tribe Construction Corporation is doing much of the restoration work. The nonprofit Cal Trout is also involved, restoring just under a mile of Prairie Creek and its flood plain, which are important to the broader watershed as breeding grounds for salmon and steelhead.

Carter noted the Orick Timber Mill operated from 1960 to 2009, and was demolished twelve years ago. "We inherited 20 acres of abandoned asphalt and concrete," Carter recounted. "There were some old housing sites, a grazing pasture, and a very degraded section of Prairie Creek with failing stream banks, a disconnected flood plain, and a whole lot of invasive vegetation."

Other partners in the restoration project include the California State Coastal Conservancy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Restoration Center, the Wildlife Conservation Board, and the Ocean Protection Council.

Disclosure: Save the Redwoods League contributes to our fund for reporting on Climate Change/Air Quality, Endangered Species & Wildlife, Environment, and Public Lands/Wilderness.

References:

Orick Mill site Save the Redwoods League, 2022