Community Organizing Through Food

David Boucher and Stephanie Shipley are celebrating 14 years of connecting people through food with Amaranth Bakery and Café. The pair always shared a love for community organizing and knew that food has a way of bringing cultures together. In 2000, they bought the rundown building at 3329 W. Lisbon Ave. with the intention of building a public meeting space in a neighborhood that needed more access to public places.

The bakery was founded on an idea that change can happen in a community if people are given a space that allows them to feel comfortable and interact with one another. From the beginning, the café was meant to help ideas grow. That’s why the seating area consists mostly of large tables which organically allow people to start conversations. Movements and local initiatives happen through relationship building, explains Boucher, and “none of this happens without trust.”

As their budding business developed, so did their food and Shipley’s knowledge of baking. “I feel like this place created me as the baker, as the food person,” she says, as someone who never had experience in baking previous to the café. She was first inspired by the large red plant she saw being grown by her neighboring Hmong gardeners. “The amaranth plants that grew in the community gardens were strong, anchored and unwilted,” says Boucher. Shipley’s research of the plant led her to discover the many cultures that have a history of cultivating it. That helped her realize the importance food and crops hold in different ethnicities and religions.

So, she intentionally built the menu to be inclusive and healthy. Even though Shipley is vegetarian, she makes a point to add meat into their hearty vegetable-filled soups because meat is so valued in the culture of the neighborhood. By simply adding meat to her soups, she gets more people to try something they wouldn’t normally eat.

Their menu has adapted over the years because of the people from various cultures that they’ve invited into their café. Boucher and Shipley have made a point to hire people wanting to learn the trade who bring their own perspectives on food. By being willing to take extra time to teach those with less experience, the couple, in return, learns from their workforce. They also support neighborhood businesses and budding entrepreneurs who help develop new products that the couple otherwise wouldn’t have thought of. The support they’ve offered has not only created an open safe space in the café, it’s also built up the surrounding neighborhood. Boucher and Shipley view the world in very different ways, but their goal has always been the same: Empower the people in the neighborhood so they can improve their community as well as their own well-being.

Learn more at facebook.com/amaranthbakerycafe. Read this article on the Shepherd Express, part of the column “Hero of the Week.”

Inspiring the Community Through Harmony

Members of the LGBTQ community have fought for decades for equal rights, and amidst that movement, LGBTQ choral groups developed to support the cause. Six years ago, the Milwaukee gay men’s chorus, Our Voice Milwaukee, has joined that movement to bring positive voices and support to the local community.

The Gay Rights Movement started to gain traction in the 1980s because the LGBTQ community was in crisis. People were dying from AIDS while the public turned a blind eye. People were working to make the LGBTQ culture more widely accepted, and part of that effort was the beginning of the LGBTQ choral movement. The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus was started in 1978 and is widely recognized for starting the choral movement that brought hope and a public awareness to a group of people who were struggling. It only took a few years before LGBTQ choral groups were popping up around the world; today, Milwaukee carries on that flame.

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The LGBTQ choral movement was started in the midst of death and loss, as a way to bring public awareness to the AIDS epidemic, to support those mourning their loved ones. “People’s worlds were falling apart, and it was a way to get out there and say, ‘listen, we’re not just a disease,’” says John Walch, who recently served as president of Our Voice Milwaukee for two years. That message of awareness is still important, but as Walch explains, the choral movement has developed into a celebration of identity and the freedom that LGBTQ people have to express themselves. “We’re proud of who we are, we’re representing who we are, and this is how we do it—through song.”

The official mission statement of Our Voice Milwaukee is “offering harmony in music to help inspire harmony in community.” They are boldly and openly themselves, showing their audiences that it’s okay to be open about your identity. The members of the men’s chorus see it as vital to have a strong public presence, especially in a society where being gay has only recently become widely accepted. More so, the chorus is making a point of creating an environment where their members and audiences can feel safe and meet new people. Walch explains that energy and confidence radiate from participants during their concerts because of the harmonies they create. He has loved singing since he was a child and “it’s the feelings that, for so many years, I didn’t feel like I could express. I can be on stage and express my feelings. It’s who I am. It’s a powerful feeling.” The choral group exists so that others can experience that same feeling.

The chorus has performed all around the city for the last six years, including concerts for PrideFest, Bucks’ Pride and Brewers’ Pride. They have also raised money for causes such as the Gay-Straight Alliance at Watertown High School and the It Gets Better Tour, a project dedicated to suicide prevention in the LGBTQ community. Their next performance will be singing the national anthem at Pride Night for the Milwaukee Admirals on Wednesday, Feb. 5. Our Voice Milwaukee proudly sings for inclusion and acceptance of all cultures. They continue the tradition of LGBTQ choruses around the country who stand as symbols of hope for the community.

Learn more at ourvoicemke.org. Read this article on the Shepherd Express, part of the column “Hero of the Week.”

Helping 53206 Through Gardening: Andre Lee Ellis Grows the Community Through Gardening

“We need to take our hands off the trigger and put them in the soil, because if your hands are in the soil, you can’t have them on the trigger of a gun,” says Andre Lee Ellis. With a background in theater, Ellis never expected to be in the business of gardening, but a series of events led him to start the organization called We Got This. The program provides support and guidance for African American boys through gardening. Since its inception in 2011, We Got This has grown tremendously because of community support and has changed the lives of many young men.

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Ellis and his wife moved to Ninth and Ring streets in 2011. Within their first week at their new home, they heard six gunshots outside their front door. His wife ran from the kitchen to find a young man lying dead in the street. There was a lot of bad activity on that street corner, Ellis explains, but on that same corner was a small plot of land with raised beds. One day, he asked a young girl playing in the street what the raised beds were. She responded with an attitude and said, “It’s supposed to be a garden, but don’t nobody grow nothing.” Ellis thought that should be changed.

With the idea stirring in his head, he was approached one day by a worried mother from the neighborhood. Her 11-year-old son had committed an offense and was being held at the police station. Ellis went with her to the station to convince the officers not to arrest the boy because the boy was participating in a program with Ellis that coming Saturday. He made it up on the spot, and when the officers asked the name of the program, Ellis said the same thing he kept repeating to the worried mother: “We got this.”

That Saturday, the boy showed up to the small plot of land across from Ellis’ house at 8 a.m. sharp. With the promise of $20, the boy worked with Ellis to start the garden. The next Saturday, the boy came back with five friends, promising them $20 each. Unprepared, Ellis told the boys that he didn’t have the money. Instead, he told them to raise their fists in the air and pose for a picture. He posted that picture to his network on Facebook asking five other black men to come to the garden and support the boys. By noon, seven men showed up. Each week, more boys would come to the garden, and with them came more people from around the city willing to fund their efforts.

The program has empowered young boys to make an honest income and provide for themselves. With close to 90% of them not knowing their father, Ellis and other men in the community are showing up to be that father figure and offer guidance that they haven’t had before. That mentorship is helping the boys find new confidence and imagining new possibilities for their futures. 

These efforts are taking place in the heart of the 53206 zip code. Ellis recalls the negative articles that cite facts about incarceration, claiming that the area is one of the worst places to raise a black child. But he lives there, he explains, and he sees the good that’s happening every day. What those articles are missing are the people who live in those communities who support their neighbors and build up their youth. Those facts completely gloss over the capabilities these young boys have and the possibility for change in this city.

Just like any other person in this country, these young men have the potential to grow up and become loving fathers, caring neighbors or anyone else they can dream of. It’s time we start paying attention to the neighborhood’s potential, not its statistics.

Learn more at wegotthismke.com.

Read the article in the Shepherd Express, part of the regular column “Hero of the Week.”