Hilltop Urban Gardens

Founded in late 2010 by long-time organizer Dean Jackson, Hilltop Urban Gardens is a community-based urban agriculture, justice, and equity organization in Tacoma, WA. HUG partners with the community to grow healthy food, young people and neighbors. We seek to inspire our community to live with abundance while understanding and interrupting the root causes of economic poverty & wealth accumulation and systems of oppression. We believe growing our own food independence is an important strategy in this process. We see food as a basic human right. Everyone deserves access and the ability to produce and distribute fresh, affordable, healthy, clean, sustainable, safe, and culturally appropriate food. We call this FOOD JUSTICE. HUG's mission is to develop systems for food sovereignty and create racial and economic justice. Our vision is communities that take care of each other. We strive to put the we back in me! HUG values interdependence, abundance and community building. We also recognize the importance of having a practical understanding of the issues that can act as barriers in our communities. While we dig our hands into the earth, HUG aims to build community-based solutions to these barriers. HUG is led by and centers economically poor people and people of color in our work and leadership. We are an anti-racist, anti-oppression organization that is putting those principles into practice. This means that we walk it, more than talk it.