The Grassroots Morning Garden Project explores the everyday, place attuned practices of Black children and their maternal kin as a project of Black feminist study. This work at its foundation seeks to explore the multitude of ways Black children, their kin, and their extended networks of care find sanctuary in the landscapes of South Los Angeles, California—the ancestral, unceded territory of the Tongva people. Since autumn 2018, Ashley has organized forest circles for mothers and babies at sites such as Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area and Stoneview Nature Center. Through the Grassroots Morning Garden Project extant models of community based, caregiver supports, which often involve systems of eligibility and compliance, are re-imagined in collaboration with the folks they intend to serve.
Since 2018, Ashley has mobilized two foundational programs to serve the needs of children and families in the community. Grandmother’s Cupboard combats food apartheid, placing soul healing, culturally affirming foods into the hands of the people. As a direct action, hyper localized, neighborhood based effort, Grandmother’s Cupboard provides nourishing, whole food pantry staples to families in South Los Angeles working in coalition with local food justice organizations.
The Healing Care Baskets project centers Black babies and their maternal kin in South Los Angeles by organizing care baskets with goods curated specifically to meet the needs of maternal caregivers and little ones during the first year or so after those sweet babies have made it earthside. A gesture of care to hold them in our embrace far beyond the first 40 days, and deep into that sweet spot when they often need loving care and community the most. In the spirit of Ashley’s first mother and child circles, baskets are offered to Black babies and their maternal kin during a healing care forest circle that comes alive with a woodland walk, songs, storytelling, and nourishing handwork. This effort builds community and kinship around the need for restorative, meaningful rituals during the postpartum season, and affirms the deep knowing that one doesn't have to speak about their grief to release it. There is healing all around us.
Grandmother’s Cupboard and the Healing Care Baskets Project were both birthed from and funded by the work of Ashley’s collaborative zine publication with Jessica Lewis Stevens, Thirty Sunsets and a Moon, and continue to grow with each volume in right relationship with friends and collaborators like Inglewood Community Pantry, LA Community Fridges, Lily of the Nile Farmers’ Markets, and Divine Touch Doula Care. Reflections on this work can be found on the Thirty Sunsets and a Moon project archive.