For Maurice Wince, helping community members access food with dignity and choice looks like asking what they want to see on the shelves of his Sherman Park Grocery Store, 4315 W. Fond du Lac Ave.
“Because I got multigenerational folks walking in the grocery store and saying, ‘Hey, if you get this, I’m coming back,’” he said at the African American Roundtable’s Food Access Town Hall on April 25.
The African American Roundtable plans to officially launch the Feed the Change MKE campaign with a press conference and resource fair from noon to 2:30 p.m. on May 30 at Greater Holy Temple Christian Academy, 9520 W. Allyn St.
The roundtable, or AART, is a political organization focused on developing Black leaders and building Black liberation. AART held visioning sessions for a Northwest Side community safety campaign in 2024, which led to it centering the campaign around food access and forming a cohort of resident leaders last year.
The campaign’s goal is for the Milwaukee Common Council to add $1 million to the city’s Fresh Food Access Fund to support the long-term sustainability of grocery stores, farmers markets, community gardens and nutrition education programs.
“We want a greater food system that’s not relying on corporations, the unpredictability of the SNAP program or anyone beyond ourselves because, again, we keep us safe,” said Ryeshia Farmer, community programs manager for AART.
Learning from grantees
At the town hall, community members and local leaders asked questions to Wince and Annia Leonard, whose businesses had previously received matching grants through the city’s Fresh Food Access Fund.
Leonard operated the Good Food Bus from 2020 to 2023, which was a privately owned bus that would get food directly from farms and vendors and distribute it in Milwaukee neighborhoods on a pay-what-you-can scale.
“Having kids run up and ask me about the bus and the cool paint job and talking to them about where I got the food from, like it really got them involved,” she said.
Wince said his business does not pay the same price point per unit as big box stores like Aldi, but he tries to get deals when he can.
He told a story about a bus driver who called him to see if her kids could wait at the store while she finished work.
“I knew then that we had not just been in the community, but became a part of the community,” he said.
Leonard said the food bus struggled to sustain funding after applying for but not meeting grant qualifications. His business did have some access to the Fresh Food Access Council.
“But we didn’t have our own manpower to really engage as fully as we could have,” she said.
Fresh Food Access Fund
The AART’s food access campaign is part of broader effort by residents, organizations and elected officials to address food disparities in Milwaukee after several grocery stores closed last year.
The Food Justice Collective, a network of local advocates, and resolutions from the city and county use the term “food apartheid” to reflect the systemic restrictions to affordable and healthy food for low-income people and communities of color.
Ald. DiAndre Jackson, who was present at the town hall and chairs the Common Council’s Judiciary and Legislation Committee, initiated a resolution passed in February to allocate $1.8 million of lawsuit settlement funds to a Grocery Store Retention Fund.
On April 21, the council approved $400,000 of those funds to go into the Healthy Food Establishment Fund as part of a $2.8 million legislative package to sustain local grocery stores and pharmacies.
The Healthy Food Establishment Fund is the current name for the Fresh Food Access Fund in the city budget, according to the Milwaukee Health Department, which administers the fund.
“Please know that the full council is 100% in support of supplying our communities with fresh food and vegetables,” Ald. Larresa Taylor said.
Future organizing
The campaign’s leaders hope to work with Ald. Lamont Westmoreland and Taylor because they represent the city’s 5th and 9th districts on the Northwest Side, Farmer said.
Taylor said she would support using green space at the former Northridge Mall site for a farmers market or finding a different space in the district, like the produce stand near West Good Hope Road and North Park Manor Drive.
“If we can work in partnership with someone to try to get that open, I would love to be able to look at ways that we can do that,” she said.
AART hasalready met with elected officials and is planning events to campaign throughout the city’s budget season. Its goal is to garner an additional $1 million in investments by the end of the year.
“We’re really excited about the $400,000 deposit,” said Devin Anderson, AART’s campaign and membership director.“It’s our job to stay connected to really get us over the finish line with the rest.”
To learn more
The campaign launch event will have resources, family-friendly activities, free food and giveaways. Learn more here.
Meredith Melland is the neighborhoods reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Report for America plays no role in editorial decisions in the NNS newsroom.
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