Alex Epstein - Urban Gardener Planting ‘Relationships’

Every person, every culture—whether separated by one generation or ten—has ancestors who once lived alongside the land, in harmony with it.

█ Alex Epstein, founder of Root Catalyst

My name is Alex. I grew up in New York City. The work that I do now—and have been immersed in for the last 17 or so years—is as much a personal journey as it is communal. I work with communities and schools to reclaim vacant spaces and create urban gardens.

For me, that work has had many different iterations over the years in terms of how it has connected to my sense of purpose.

Natural disaster or man-made disaster?

When I was 15, in high school, I had a very powerful and transformative experience on a trip to New Orleans (Louisiana, USA) soon after Hurricane Katrina (August 2005) had devastated the city. At the time, the narrative I heard over and over from the media was that it was a natural disaster that had devastated the city. But when I went there and heard stories from people who had survived the storm, it felt like a veil was lifted from my perception—not only of the situation in New Orleans but of the world.

I realized that while the hurricane itself was a natural disaster, the disproportionate effect the storm had on poor people and people of color was very much un-natural. The impact of whose homes were devastated and who had the least resources to return home was absolutely correlated to race and class—issues that stem back decades, hundreds of years, back the design of New Orleans and other American cities, the forming of our country, and originating in the colonization of the land we now call the “United States”.

That experience jolted me and helped me see an inseparable connection between our natural environment and the socio-cultural conditions we have created and live in. It set me down a path of activism, fueled largely by anger and angst at the time, organizing many youth in NYC to be a part of protests and social justice organizing efforts.

It took years until I came to realize that, in a lot of ways, the most radical thing an individual or a community can do is grow your own food and sustain yourself.

▲ Alex is committed to helping the next generation living in cities reconnect with the land, believing that only then will they truly care about the environment we live in. Establishing Interdependence

After years of channeling my activist energy into trying to dismantle the systems that oppress us, my perspective gradually started to shift toward the belief that if we can sustain ourselves as individuals, cultivate healthy bodies, and cultivate healthy communities, then we begin to liberate ourselves from those oppressive and unsustainable systems. Those systems are dependent on us—as consumers, as voters, as bankers, as generators of waste, as participants. So if we become independent from them, those systems start to fall apart.

Those aren’t things that will happen in my lifetime, but every time I plant one seed in a community garden, it feels like a small step in the direction of building interdependence—on a relational level with the people I live near, with people of different generations in the communities I’m part of, and ultimately with the earth. “Change comes from a series of many small ripples coming together to create a wave”. I think that’s very true of social movements, and it’s true in our bodies—that’s how we transform our inner-dimensions.

So, was there a tipping point? The truth is, I’ve had many small, incremental moments that I maybe didn’t recognize at the time as profound, but they nudged my course—shifted my journey—this way or that. The common thread between those experiences is that they’re all relational, and resonated something deep within me.

Don’t ignore that profound moment

We (Editor’s note: referring to climate action partners) all met on these crazy journeys that I still don’t fully understand. Up until I was part of this Interdimensions of Climate Change (IDCC) series, my relationship to farming and urban agriculture—I didn’t see it as a spiritual practice. I still don’t have a specific [tradition] to this day, but coming into contact and building relationships with people who have so many different connections to their land, their culture, their work, their bodies, their experience—relationship by relationship, experience by experience—has slowly shifted the way I understand myself in relation to the land I come from and work with.

It’s slow; it’s gradual. Sometimes there are hugely profound moments, but just as important are the small ones.

Now, as a gardener, I’m trying hard to tap into a deeper, more spiritual connection to working with land, because all of our ancestors at some point were farmers. Every single person from every culture—maybe one generation removed, maybe ten—but all our people came from land and lived in deep harmony with it. As a person who grew up in New York City, I didn’t have that; I’m so far removed, I have no idea how far back my family's land connection goes.

I’m beginning to see the work I do as creating the beginning of a new trajectory—a legacy. I hope my kids have a much deeper relationship with land than I’ll ever be capable of because of the world I came from, and hopefully their children even more—generation by generation.

Profile

◀ Photo provided by Alex 

Self-identified as global citizen, community organizer, urban farmer, artist, proud uncle, compost enthusiast, and student of the universe. Actively engaged in building resilient communities since the age of 15, with a long-standing commitment to social and environmental justice.

At 19, moved to North Philadelphia and co-founded Urban Creators with like-minded collaborators. Together, they transformed a 2-acre vacant lot filled with waste into an urban farm called “Life Do Grow,” which became a site of twelve years of deep community and land-based work. In 2023, Life Do Grow evolved into Root Catalyst, continuing to support communities by co-creating “spaces of reconnection” with local residents—often in schools or community gardens—fostering renewed relationships between people, land, and one another.


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Resource: Issue 512 of Humanity Magazine, Dharma Drum Publishing Corporation