Austin Harvest Reaps Hope for Local Youths
How former Chicago Bear Sam Acho spurred a coalition for change
Together We Rise
With respect and gratitude to Martin Luther King Jr. for his world-changing accomplishments.
Austin Harvest: How Athletes Gave Back to Move Forward
I was aware of Austin Harvest, a youth-run, outdoor pop-up Good Food market in the challenged West Side Chicago community of Austin. After I tuned in to a spate of local media attention in 2021 — and recognized it as a project seeking to restore jobs, hope and opportunity to an underserved community — I added Austin Harvest’s Monday, Wednesday and Friday openings to my weekly farmers market schedule listings.
I’d hoped to follow up with the organizers of the market but never squeezed it into my crazy schedule. So I didn’t know the back story of how a dedicated and determined former pro football player named Sam Acho lit the fuse for the project, which is in the process of constructing a permanent brick-and-mortar store at 415 North Laramie Street, on target to open in early spring.
Sam participated in a fireside chat with Rita Frazer, Director of Network & Audio Services at the Illinois Farm Bureau's RFD Radio Network. This took place during the opening session of From Food to Flowers: Everything Local, the combined annual Specialty Crop Conference and Live Local: Local Food and Farmers Market Conference, which took place in the state capital of Springfield January 11-13.
I watched the presentation online from Chicago and came away inspired, as did many in-person participants who posted about the event on social media.
Now a college and NFL analyst for ESPN, Sam started his pro football career with the Arizona Cardinals in 2011 and in 2015 joined the Chicago Bears for what turned into a four-year stint. The son of Nigerian immigrants, he grew up in an under-resourced area of Dallas, Texas, and he said he chose the Bears purposefully because he wanted to become a part of the community and help people.
“One of the things that I really wanted was to go to a place that had more need,” Sam said. “I wanted three things. One, I wanted an opportunity to play, start for my team. I wanted an opportunity to make an impact in the community, which Chicago provides.” Then he joked, “And I wanted good weather… but two out of three is not bad.”
With his football career winding down — he suffered a season-ending injury in 2018 — Sam was already contemplating his future when the crises of 2020 hit. With COVID raging and widespread civil unrest over racial inequity spurred by the murder of George Floyd, he reached out to a friend who ran a Chicago nonprofit and asked what he could do to help. She responded, “All we need right now is for people to come and listen… We have kids in our communities who are hurting right now. Kids who look like you are hurting.”
Sam promptly recruited Jason Heyward, a hero of the Chicago Cubs’ 2016 World Series championship; Mitch Trubisky, then the Bears’ starting quarterback; pitcher Lucas Giolito of the Chicago White Sox, and six other pro athletes for a listening session with 10 police officers and 30 young people in the Austin community. A bus tour of Chicago’s West Side followed, and the spark that became Austin Harvest was lit.
Sam said that within minutes, it became obvious that the neighborhood was rife with liquor stores but had few if any stores where residents could purchase healthy food. The athletes began to galvanize around the idea of buying a liquor store and converting the property to a pop-up youth-run market.
Sam related that near the end of the bus trip, a young woman participant spoke out, stating, “I know some of y'all see this as a field trip, to come and check out our community and leave. But a lot of us choose to live here. We choose to call this place home. So I hope you remember that when you go back to your homes.”
Within a week, the group was re-convened, and the idea that became Austin Market received an enthusiastic response. As Sam reported, the participants said, “We want to keep this thing going. We love working, this is like our dream.”
After hearing that community residents often resorted to McDonald’s and gas station carryouts for food — and had to travel 45 minutes if they wanted to buy fresh, organic food — the coalition established a core group of young entrepreneurs to run the pop-up market, then raised a half-million dollars (mostly from their own pockets) within two weeks to purchase and tear down the liquor store.
The 2020 pop-up, situated in a refurbished shipping container, was replicated in 2021. The program was (and is) administered by By the Hand, a nonprofit organization that helps young people in communities around the South and West sides, with its Austin location immediately adjacent to the Austin Harvest site.
Intended as a short-term pilot project, Austin Harvest took on a life of its own. The young entrepreneurs strongly advocated for a full-time permanent location, and after another round of fundraising, ground was broken. At the time there was only one farmers market in Austin, the seasonal market run by the city of Chicago, and the Austin Harvest team was able to obtain farmers market designation. And in a huge breakthrough, the Jewel Osco grocery chain reached out and offered to sell Austin Harvest products from its Locally Grown program — at cost.
Sam summed up the Austin Harvest project this way:
“A hungry nation cannot thrive. And if you just stop and think about that for a moment, think about our most basic needs for humans. Food, water, clothing, shelter, whether you're rich or poor, they need these things. It's like we thought we were going to help solve some super-crazy, complicated idea and just change all these things. And all we needed was food. All these people in this community needed was food. The whole reason behind Austin Harvest is food provides hope. It provides a table where community can come together. People from that community, we're starting to come together… You are providing hope and healing for people who need it.”
Sam Acho spells out his philosophy in his latest book, Change Starts with You: Following Your Fire to Heal a Broken World, to be published in March by HarperCollins. (Visit his website to pre-order.) This is a follow-up to his book published in 2020 titled Let the World See You: How to Be Real in a World Full of Fakes.
I look forward to attending the Grand Opening of the new store and following Austin Harvest’s journey.