Kwabena Nkromo

Kwabena Nkromo partners with inner city residents to create food security

“I believe anything is possible with the power of the human mind combined with industriousness and right spirit. As an activist, I view my work as a spiritual battle for what is good and whole in the world. I seek to be a cultivator of not just food, but civilization and transformed human beings. The little I know is like a mustard seed in size, but with it I expect to move mountains.”

The Work

I am primarily working on developing urban agriculture based local economies for marginalized people and neighborhoods in the metropolitan Atlanta area, with the goal of creating green sector jobs opportunities and increased community wealth. Another major focus for me is housing justice work in the wake of the financial crisis, through leadership in the Occupy Our Homes Atlanta movement. Additionally, I am co-Chair of the Fulton County Affiliate of the Georgia Green Party focusing on quality public education, improved public transit, and fighting mass incarceration. I have worked for the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Atlanta Civic Site as a Community Builder for Family Economic Success, as well as with Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative Inc in my hometown of Boston as Director of the Resident Development Institute. I have many years of civic leadership and community organizing experience, including liberation theology ministry with the Shrines of the Black Madonna of the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church.

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Inspirations and Influences

“I give you a mustard seed by which you can move mountains…if you have a mind to.” – Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman (Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr.) 1st Holy Patriarach and Founder, Pan African Orthodox Christian Church

I have been influenced by mother and grandmother as street ministers, my eldest brother Dannie who was a true “man of the people”, a surrogate father named Dr. Mudavanha-Patterson who taught me to think critically and develop a revolutionary worldview, Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman (Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr.) as my spiritual father who taught me how to build a group among many other things, and Dr. Bob Randall who introduced me to “horticultural literacy” and my life’s work with food justice through urban agriculture. I am primarily inspired by the life and example of personal human transformation exemplified by El Hajj Malik “Omowale” El-Shabazz, also known as Malcolm X. My scholarly pursuits have primarily been inspired by Dr. W.E.B DuBois and my writing style by Haki Madhabuti (Don L. Lee) of Third World Press fame. I am a student of Marcus Garvey’s vision of Pan-Africanism, Fannie Lou Hamer’s political activism, and the black nationalism of Henry McNeal Turner, Martin Delany, Henry Highland Garnet, Edward Wilmot Blyden, and Paul Cuffe. My history frame of reference is owed to Chancellor Williams, author of “The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D.”

Personal Quote

“Economic development is something much wider and deeper than economics, let alone econometrics. Its roots lie outside the economic sphere, in education, organisation, discipline and, beyond that, in political independence and a national consciousness of self-reliance.” ― E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered

Wisdom

I believe anything is possible with the power of the human mind combined with industriousness and right spirit. As an activist, I view my work as a spiritual battle for what is good and whole in the world. I seek to be a cultivator of not just food, but civilization and transformed human beings. The little I know is like a mustard seed in size, but with it I expect to move mountains.