Task Force Member Introductions: Gina
Interview and Words By Ester Hewitt
I met Gina at La Luz, a newish coffee shop on Griegos, a place that grew from a little pop-up shop to a vibrant third space for the surrounding area. Gina is one of the community members selected for a position on the 2025 Resilient Futures Initiative’s Task Force. I met with Gina to hear her story and learn what had brought her to this intersection of sustainability and community. She initially struck me as somewhat quiet and serious, but I quickly became hooked as the layers unfolded into a picture of determination, adventure, curiosity, and resilience.
Gina told me that as far back as high school, she wanted to build community and make the world a more beautiful place. Those two values led her from Minnesota to Colorado to Homer to New Mexico, but I’ll let you hear the story in her words.
I have a lot of background organizing around food, farmers markets, and building local economies. I went to the University of Minnesota and received a Bachelor of Individualized Studies in mass communication and design, but it was more like art for social change. When organizing in Salida, I joined a little reading group that the local library was organizing. We all read this book based on social justice surrounding food. Every week, we read a set of articles and then came together in a discussion group about our food system. I was reading, and I started thinking-- I need to learn how to grow food. I didn’t know where to start, so I decided to start volunteering on farms. One of my friends I had met in that area was driving back to Alaska, so I just went with him. And then I started hitchhiking because there aren’t that many roads in Alaska. I started volunteering on farms and homesteads, and then, hitchhiking, I made my way up to Fairbanks, over to Anchorage, and then down to the end of the road, which is Homer. If you went any further past there, you would end up in a Russian village, which is really the end of the road. I then got connected with a woman who makes jams and jellies out of the berries that she grows and picks, and I was like her little berry harvester helper. She had a homestead, and I lived with the singer Jewel’s family. I wasn’t thinking about the future for myself. I just kept living from my heart, to be honest.
You know, I think that ultra-local organizing and relationship building are really important parts of living in a democracy and having a voice as a collective. I ran a Farmer’s Market in Homer and the Downtown Growers Market, worked for the Downtown Main Street Initiative, was a teacher, and did school programs. When we bought our house, I noticed that we didn't have a neighborhood association; years passed, I had more kids, and then finally, I was like, you know what? I can't keep waiting around for someone else to start this neighborhood association, so I'm just going to do it with a few of my neighbors. Now we have maybe 80 people in our membership, and on Saturday, we had Tree New Mexico come and plant 200 drought and heat-tolerant shade trees.
We also have Acequias that run through our neighborhood, and I've been interested in how we can make this existing green infrastructure more accessible and user-friendly, allowing people to use them as walking and biking alternatives instead of the more dangerous streets.
Little by little, I've been trying to connect people in the neighborhood while living an intense journey of being a mom, working, and still remaining true to my desire to make the world more beautiful, like actually making it more beautiful. Planting more plants.
Throughout her narrative, Gina repeatedly demonstrated her capacity to combine vision with action. This is a time in our community when we need both. We are excited and thrilled to have Gina join our community task force and share the wealth of her diverse experiences.