By Adam Rabiner
Apple Pushers, March’s featured documentary for the Plow to Plate movie series, is narrated by Edward Norton, written and directed by Mary Mazzio, and underwritten by the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund. It weaves together two stories, a contemporary one about the prevalence of obesity in the United States, particularly in poor and minority inner cities, and the other thread, as old as the country itself, the story of immigration, as told through the recent experiences of five immigrants.Currently 72.5 million American are obese. African Americans have a 51% higher incidence of obesity than average, and Hispanics 21% higher. This comes at a terrible cost in public health dollars. Spending on obesity related health care due to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure are about $146 billion per year and are projected to rise to $343 billion by 2020. Compounding all of this is the fact that 23.5 million Americans do not have a supermarket within one mile of their home.
The two themes intersect because the migrants are “apple pushers,” part of New York City’s relatively new Green Cart program, whose purpose is to bring fresh fruits and vegetables to New York City’s “food deserts,” neighborhoods with a surfeit of corner bodegas, alcohol and tobacco shops, but lacking supermarkets with healthier options. The film’s definition is “a district with little or no access to foods needed to maintain a healthy diet but often served by fast food restaurants.”
The five immigrant street vendors are Jacob from Siberia, Russia both of whose parents were engineers who fled Russia due to anti-Semitism. Jake came to the U.S. as a kid speaking no English and only came to feel truly American after serving in Iraq after 9/11. Bardo, one of the stars of the film with the most screen time, is from Guerrero, Mexico. As a fifteen year old teenager Bardo walked through the desert to come to the U.S. After working a series of menial jobs for a few years he managed to save $50,000 which he used to start a business to import fruits and vegetables from Mexico. Unfortunately, his early shipments spoiled in transit due to lack of refrigeration and he lost everything and had to start over. Gloria came from Ecuador, leaving her one year old son and three year old daughter behind. Once here, she worked as a seamstress and sent all her money home to support her family. After four years she had saved enough to bring her children to New York. Shaheen is a badminton player from Bangladesh who came to the United States with only $200 in his pocket at the urging of his father so that he could help support the family. Like Bardo, he worked a series of small jobs eventually saving $80,000 which he used to open a small corner store in the Bronx. Like Bardo, he too lost his shirt. Sarahi is from Puebla, Mexico. From the age of eight she worked with her parents in the corn fields but when she was fifteen her father insisted she seek better economic opportunities in the U.S. Sarahi’s first job was as a maid earning $40 per day ($4.00 per hour) for a family on Long Island. Much of her earning was used to pay back the Coyotes who helped her enter this country. All five of the immigrants, whether they came to the United States legally or illegally, subsequently obtained legal status.
The Apple Pushers describes how “white flight” in the 1970s and the changing dynamics of the supermarket industry both contributed to the development of food deserts. There is also a fascinating segment about the heated debates that took place in the New York City Council over the Green Cart legislation. But as the name of the film implies, of the various plot lines, the one that gets the most time and attention is the experiences of the immigrants. Like many who came before them and thought that the “streets were paved with gold,” they had preconceived, naïve ideas of a fairyland of castles and princesses, a “land of milk and honey” where men smoked big cigars, lived in nice houses and worked in big buildings; where money could be found on the streets, in garbage bags. It did not take them very long to learn otherwise.
Every apple pusher, while lucky to receive a coveted Green Cart permit, has to overcome five major challenges: location, neighborhood competition, a legacy of animosity towards street vendors that goes back to the turn of the century, a plethora of rules and regulations, and obtaining the produce from a wholesaler. Each of these five challenges is described in colorful and sometimes painful detail, such as a “landlord” illegally charging an apple-pusher $300 a month in “rent” to use the sidewalk in front of his shop or a street cop doling out a $100 fine for selling peanuts, a fruit rather than a vegetable.
The Apple Pushers, while an insightful commentary on food access and entrepreneurship is ultimately a celebration of immigrants. It successfully makes the case that these hard working, gritty and determined individuals make their communities more vibrant, improve the economy by paying taxes, employing others, and sometimes founding important companies such as Kraft Food, Goldman Sachs, Google and Bloomingdales. That this country is made better by their pluck and presence, is an important and necessary message to hear right now.
Apple Pushers, March’s featured documentary for the Plow to Plate movie series, is narrated by Edward Norton, written and directed by Mary Mazzio, and underwritten by the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund. It weaves together two stories, a contemporary one about the prevalence of obesity in the United States, particularly in poor and minority inner cities, and the other thread, as old as the country itself, the story of immigration, as told through the recent experiences of five immigrants.Currently 72.5 million American are obese. African Americans have a 51% higher incidence of obesity than average, and Hispanics 21% higher. This comes at a terrible cost in public health dollars. Spending on obesity related health care due to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure are about $146 billion per year and are projected to rise to $343 billion by 2020. Compounding all of this is the fact that 23.5 million Americans do not have a supermarket within one mile of their home.
The two themes intersect because the migrants are “apple pushers,” part of New York City’s relatively new Green Cart program, whose purpose is to bring fresh fruits and vegetables to New York City’s “food deserts,” neighborhoods with a surfeit of corner bodegas, alcohol and tobacco shops, but lacking supermarkets with healthier options. The film’s definition is “a district with little or no access to foods needed to maintain a healthy diet but often served by fast food restaurants.”
The five immigrant street vendors are Jacob from Siberia, Russia both of whose parents were engineers who fled Russia due to anti-Semitism. Jake came to the U.S. as a kid speaking no English and only came to feel truly American after serving in Iraq after 9/11. Bardo, one of the stars of the film with the most screen time, is from Guerrero, Mexico. As a fifteen year old teenager Bardo walked through the desert to come to the U.S. After working a series of menial jobs for a few years he managed to save $50,000 which he used to start a business to import fruits and vegetables from Mexico. Unfortunately, his early shipments spoiled in transit due to lack of refrigeration and he lost everything and had to start over. Gloria came from Ecuador, leaving her one year old son and three year old daughter behind. Once here, she worked as a seamstress and sent all her money home to support her family. After four years she had saved enough to bring her children to New York. Shaheen is a badminton player from Bangladesh who came to the United States with only $200 in his pocket at the urging of his father so that he could help support the family. Like Bardo, he worked a series of small jobs eventually saving $80,000 which he used to open a small corner store in the Bronx. Like Bardo, he too lost his shirt. Sarahi is from Puebla, Mexico. From the age of eight she worked with her parents in the corn fields but when she was fifteen her father insisted she seek better economic opportunities in the U.S. Sarahi’s first job was as a maid earning $40 per day ($4.00 per hour) for a family on Long Island. Much of her earning was used to pay back the Coyotes who helped her enter this country. All five of the immigrants, whether they came to the United States legally or illegally, subsequently obtained legal status.
The Apple Pushers describes how “white flight” in the 1970s and the changing dynamics of the supermarket industry both contributed to the development of food deserts. There is also a fascinating segment about the heated debates that took place in the New York City Council over the Green Cart legislation. But as the name of the film implies, of the various plot lines, the one that gets the most time and attention is the experiences of the immigrants. Like many who came before them and thought that the “streets were paved with gold,” they had preconceived, naïve ideas of a fairyland of castles and princesses, a “land of milk and honey” where men smoked big cigars, lived in nice houses and worked in big buildings; where money could be found on the streets, in garbage bags. It did not take them very long to learn otherwise.
Every apple pusher, while lucky to receive a coveted Green Cart permit, has to overcome five major challenges: location, neighborhood competition, a legacy of animosity towards street vendors that goes back to the turn of the century, a plethora of rules and regulations, and obtaining the produce from a wholesaler. Each of these five challenges is described in colorful and sometimes painful detail, such as a “landlord” illegally charging an apple-pusher $300 a month in “rent” to use the sidewalk in front of his shop or a street cop doling out a $100 fine for selling peanuts, a fruit rather than a vegetable.
The Apple Pushers, while an insightful commentary on food access and entrepreneurship is ultimately a celebration of immigrants. It successfully makes the case that these hard working, gritty and determined individuals make their communities more vibrant, improve the economy by paying taxes, employing others, and sometimes founding important companies such as Kraft Food, Goldman Sachs, Google and Bloomingdales. That this country is made better by their pluck and presence, is an important and necessary message to hear right now.