Jakara Movement’s environmental efforts are focused on a cleaner, safer community
In West Fresno, the environmental movement begins in the neighborhood.
It’s an area where shade, food, and safe places to walk top the environmental agenda. While the existential threats of climate change, dirty air and bad water require global, national and statewide responses, the Jakara Movement has focused its environmental work on Fresno’s historically neglected backstreets west of Highway 99—with a couple of major successes.
Jakara has convinced the city to expand parkland in West Fresno and to fix up the parks that already existed, including the installation of a walking path in Jaswant Singh Khalra Neighborhood Park. In addition, Jakara has established a monthly farmer’s market in the park.
“When I think of environmentalism, it’s not just about green space or clean air. It’s also being able to see the community that you live in.”
Mandip Kaur, Health Program Manager, Jakara Movement
“We all know that the air quality in the valley is horrible, but that is a larger ask,” said Mandip Kaur, the health program manager for Jakara Movement who grew up in West Fresno. “For the everyday person, it is simpler: Can we get a sidewalk so we can walk to the park, to the grocery store, to walk our children to school safely? In the parks, can we get better shading without plastic seats? Those are small fixes that can lead to larger ones.”
The Jakara Movement was created to improve the quality of life for working-class Punjabi Sikh immigrants. But in West Fresno, everybody has benefited from the group’s fight to improve the parks and bring in healthy food.
“When I think of environmentalism, it’s not just about green space or clean air,” Kaur said. “It’s also being able to see the community that you live in. Our community is so diverse—Punjabis, other immigrants, Spanish-speakers, African Americans, Middle Easterners. It leads to a greater sense of safety when you see the community you are in, the clean spaces like a park. Kids become more compassionate when they play together in a park.”
Kaur sees nutrition as a major social determinant of environmental health. Toward that end, the Jakara Movement last year won an outreach grant from Kaiser Permanente to give the neighborhood healthier eating options. The result was Jakara’s founding of a monthly farmers market at JSK Park.
“We only have three grocery stores on the west side, and people have only a limited access to fresh, healthy food,” Kaur said. “That’s where the farmer’s market concept started. We wanted it to be walkable, with local vendors, and we’ve found two farmers who bring in fruits and seasonal vegetables.”
Kaur believes a good place for environmentalism to start is with local people “living their day-to-day” and organizing to make their surroundings more livable. While big politics will determine environmental battles in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., Kaur sees the environmental movement growing greener in West Fresno, in JSK Park, where elderly couples walk on a safe and shaded path and where they and their neighbors can buy clean and healthy food once a month from farmers who grow it just blocks away. They are small steps, the park and the farmer market, but crucial and necessary in a life-or-death journey toward a safer, cooler planet.
For more information about Jakara Movement, go to www.jakara.org.
