As part of its Women of Color strategy, OKT is bringing some amazing women to Grand Rapids to educate and inspire. If you made it to our February Women of Color Cook, Eat & Talk, you heard Lila Cabbil, president emeritus of the Rosa Parks Institute, speak on white

allies against racism via teleconference.

Lila Cabbil will be here in person May 21 to facilitate a daylong Anti-racism Summit. Lila worked alongside Rosa Parks for decades. She is one of the editors of the book Accountability and White Anti-Racist Organizing: Stories from Our Work.  Lila continues to work tirelessly for water justice in Detroit and, now, Flint. In addition, she has worked with Our Kitchen Table staff on team-building.(We are truly blessed!)

Detroit food justice and media activist, Lottie Spady will facilitate OKT’s May 12 Women of Color Cook, Eat & Talk: Herbs from Your Garden as Medicine. A media-maker and herbalist who often lends her talent to OKT’s programs, Lottie spent many years working with the East Michigan Environmental Action Council (EMEAC). She utilizes a framework rooted in popular education, social justice, and social entrepreneurship to help develop relevant 21st century skills that community residents can translate into community and economic development. Lottie will speak about the uses of medicinal herbs we can grow in our own gardens. (OKT food gardeners grow many such herbs!)

On August 11, the Women of Color Cook, Eat & Talk will feature Adela Nieves speaking on “Food as Medicine.” Adela Nieves ADS, CCT, RMT is a Traditional Community Health and Healing Arts Practitioner, currently studying to become a Naturopathic Doctor. Deeply committed to integrative wellness approaches, she practices Acudetox (ear acupuncture), indigenous traditional medicine, cupping therapy, whole person natural care, and Reiki for individuals and groups struggling with addiction, PTSD, stress and trauma. Her philosophy is to support those in their journeys to tell their own stories and define health, healing, and wellness for themselves.

Next fall, Shakara Taylor will  lead the November 10 Women of Color Cook, Eat & Talk. She is also facilitating OKT’s “Diagramming Your Food System” workshops in April and July. A mother, returning generation farmer, educator, activist-scholar and PhD student at Michigan State University Department of Community Sustainability, Shakara explores decolonial pedagogies in the food justice and food sovereignty movements within the communal praxis of black agrarianism. Her personal journey of loving, healing and decolonizing is intimately wedded with working and learning with the land. She is committed to working with communities and using land-based activism to build food sovereign communities.