Damon, who has led pop-up dinner series and worked as the culinary director of Cherry Bombe, had long noticed how difficult it was to access nutritious, affordable groceries in her Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. It was a void she knew she could help fill, building something that was “bred from the moment, but for forever.” The idea was the starting place for her organization, Kia Feeds the People Program, a budding nonprofit dedicated to putting quality produce and pantry items in the hands of underserved Black and queer and trans people of color (QTPOC) in Brooklyn. The best solutions for the problems facing communities often come out of the communities themselves — no one knows as intimately the depth of need, or the nuances involved in addressing those needs. Little wonder then that over the past year, Black-led initiatives like Kia Feeds the People have felt especially vital as the Black Lives Matter protests, which filled streets around the country in response to the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, became a broader reckoning with the systemic racism inherent in so many U.S. institutions, our food system included. In the months following the protests, and as the effects of COVID-19 continued to be felt disproportionately in Black communities, the exploding discourse around the vision of an anti-racist future compelled some activists and lawmakers to advocate for policies that would dismantle structural racism. But a more grassroots-led path forward for Black folks also presented itself: creating organizations outside of these institutions to provide meaningful representation and support.