Growing Local SC celebrates diversity, equity, and inclusion as central to our mission and affirm solidarity with those individuals and groups most socially vulnerable. We actively disavow all racism, xenophobia, homophobia, sexism, transphobia, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, ageism, classism, ableism, and hate speech or actions that attempt to silence, threaten, and marginalize. As a network focused on cultivating a thriving, equitable, inclusive, resilient, and just food economy providing access to healthy food for all, we must first recognize the historic, ongoing, and systemic role that racism has played in our state. As part of this process, we will work to critically understand and address the culture, systems, policies, institutions, and infrastructure that have created our currently inequitable food system.
 

Growing Local SC acknowledges that the place in which we work, South Carolina, is located on the traditional lands of The Catawba Indian Nation, Beaver Creek Indians, Edisto Natchez-Kusso Tribe, Pee Dee Indian Nation, Pee Dee Indian Tribe, Lower Eastern Cherokee Nation, Santee, Sumter Tribe of Cheraw, Waccamaw Indian People, Wassamasaw tribe, Chaloklowa Chickasaw, Southern Iroquois, Natchez, Pee Dee Indian Nation of Beaver Creek, Sewee, Congaree, Wateree, Westo, Waxhaw, Lumbee, Chicora, Winyah, Saluda, Miccosukee and all those others not named but honored in spirit. We acknowledge the painful history and dispossession of the Indigenous Native people of South Carolina and honor the ongoing connection of all Indigenous people past and present to these lands and waters. We welcome and invite all Indigenous communities in South Carolina’s food system to join the network and encourage all members to connect with their local tribal communities.

We recognize that many in the South are uncomfortable acknowledging the history of our region but as so succinctly stated by KJ Kearney during the Inaugural Growing Local SC Food Summit, “Uncomfortable for whom?”. Our network honors the desires of those communities most negatively impacted by systemic racism to dictate what is necessary in the process of creating a truly equitable and just food system. The BIPOC members of Growing Local SC have expressed a clear desire for South Carolina to acknowledge and address the historical trauma caused by the legacies of colonialism and structural violence perpetuated which persist currently. We intend to invite our members on a collective journey through critical self-reflection and empathetic dialogue paired with tools and resources to support the network on a path towards healing and growth.

Please join us in this path along the continuum of becoming an anti-racist multicultural organization, a journey on which we know will come with missteps, struggles, and growth as we grow together.