Food for 'us': understanding the dynamics of personal politics and ideas of community in the Common Ground community garden

Despite international efforts to combat world food problems, the number of hungry people in the world has actually increased. In February 2008, I became the Garden Coordinator for Common Ground, a progressive resource center in Athens, GA. Using this opportunity to conduct research, I hoped to see whether a small-scale food garden can help to create a new sense of community among the participants despite individual differences in political values. Using alternative methodologies, such as Participatory Action Research (PAR), I found that while we may not have directly fed hungry people in the local area, growing food was still a radical activity because it aligns with five main areas of anarchism: freedom, empowerment, autonomy, mutualism, and praxis. Thus, anarchist theory can help to frame the actions of the growers, while also providing a way of understanding the broader role of community gardens in constructing a new and better future.