Since January 2025, multiple USDA funds have been cancelled by the current president. Many of the funding programs cut have in common the goal to educate, conserve land and to feed children and vulnerable Americans.

• Regional Food Business Centers Program
• Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities Grant
• Patrick Leahy Farm to School Program Grants
• The Emergency Food Assistance Program
• Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program; and Local Food for Schools and Child Care Cooperative Agreement
• Working Lands Conservation Corps

Starvation as a tool of war

It’s beyond comprehension that within America, some Americans are at war with our country’s president over so many issues, the latest of which are tariffs driving up the cost of food, and district gerrymandering to intentionally disenfranchise voters who would most certainly not support the GOP’s ongoing assaults on its citizens.

More importantly, we conclude that this president is leading an effort to remove access to food for some citizens, we believe, in order to exercise control, not just over the numbers of live people present, but also to exercise behavioral control. Starving citizens to kill and control is not a new tactic and is used around the world by authoritarians.

In 1791, President George Washington ordered Secretary of War Henry Knox to destroy farms and livestock of the Wea Tribe that lived along the Ohio River valley – a fertile area with a long history of growing corn, beans, squash and other fruits and vegetables.

Knox burned down their “corn fields, uprooted vegetable gardens, chopped down apple orchards, reduced every house to ash, [and] killed the Indians who attempted to escape,” historian Susan Sleeper-Smith noted in her 2018 book, Indigenous Prosperity and American Conquest. Women and children were taken hostage. The goal was to destroy villages and farms so that Indigenous people would leave and not return.

Political beliefs aside, this president wants to eliminate food independence programs in order to reduce food security, displace and/or kill (by removing healthcare, vaccines and medical access) lower income, unhoused, immigrants, Black/African-American, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American, LGBTQ+ and rural poor White people who are deemed undesirables.

What we do to respond

Since forming ColorBlindWork, our goal has been to create food independence. That will never change. We emphasize that if you only have a sunny windowsill, you can grow anti-oxidant rich herbs to add to your food.

If you have more space to grow, then grow more and perhaps partner with like-minded gardening neighbors, family members or friends to supplement your diet with herbs, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, kale, and collards —some of the easiest and high-fiber garden vegetables. Save and trade seeds with fellow, trustworthy gardeners.

Do what’s necessary to support yourself and your family. Of course, what’s necessary will be depend on whether you believe you are on the side of those deemed desirable or undesirable.

---

ColorBlindWork | People. Plants. Purpose. sells herb and starter plants for new and experienced gardeners. Shop our online store or contact us today to special order anything not currently in inventory.