Mikkey Halsted’s powerful track, “Liquor Store”, was featured on NPR this morning as part of a story on an Arab & African-American Muslim coalition group’s investigation on small South Side stores, who are not selling healthy or fresh products to the community.
Food deserts are communities without major grocery stores – sometimes for many miles. Corner stores fill that void in many neighborhoods on Chicago’s South Side. But these stores often don’t sell fresh or healthy food. Now a coalition of Arab and African-American Muslims is looking closely at such small South Side stores, many of which are owned by Arabs. The coalition is working to hold these corner stores more accountable to their neighbors.
Chicago hip-hopper Mikkey Halsted is unambiguous in his rap about food and liquor stores.
Corner stores can be aesthetically unattractive storefronts crammed with junk food – setting off tension between black customers and Arab store owners.
And for that reason the Inner City Muslim Action Network, or IMAN, has started Muslim Run. It’s a campaign to tackle poverty and the lack of access to healthy foods in communities of color. An interracial group of IMAN organizers watch Mikkey Halsted’s video in a recent planning session … and it strikes a chord.
You can read the full article here, or listen to the clip below