Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

Posted by Allison Burket | July 11th, 2011

Over the past several months, I’ve been exploring what it might take to build a nourishing food system in DC. I’ve had the privilege of hearing ideas from different individuals and groups about what collaboration could look like and how something like a food policy council might help move the city as a whole in the right direction.

To me, the discussions have been exciting and the possibilities seem both endless and achievable. It’s also apparent that the work goes far beyond generating good policy ideas. Speaking with groups who’ve been living and working in the city for a long time, it becomes increasingly clear that as a white, young, relatively new arrival to the district, and someone who came from a pretty comfortable economic background, I need to spend some time reflecting on my identity and role.

It’s no secret that across the country, the impact of a broken food system is disproportionately felt by communities of color. In DC in particular, parts of the city with higher concentration of African Americans often have higher rates of poverty, lower access to healthy and affordable foods, and higher rates of the accompanying diet-related diseases.

Studies and facts are easy to find, yet less often do I find them accompanied by thoughtful analysis of why and of the reality of a racist food system that has been built and perpetuated throughout our nation’s and our city’s history. “Race & the Food System,” a project of WHY Hunger and Growing Food and Justice For All Initiative, explores some of that history and the present reality. From low-cost labor inputs from immigrant workers, to the discriminatory treatment of black farmers by the USDA, to the ongoing unequal wages and employment patterns across all aspects of the food system – it’s clear that race matters.

WHY Hunger and GFJI breaks it down: “The problem is systemic; therefore, the solution must be approached with an eye towards understanding those systems and how to change them.” So what does systemic change in DC look like? And how might something like a food policy council play a role?

As a starting place, it’s clear that white people like me must reflect on our identity (and the privileges that have come with it) and take responsibility for our place in an unjust system. Next, I hope we can prioritize listening and learning – about the history of food and racism in this city, about how ways of working on food politics might perpetuate some of those injustices, about work that’s already being done and ideas that people already have about how to fix it. (I’m excited about this week’s National Black Agricultural Awareness Week as one of those opportunities to reflect and learn. Learn more here )

We can gain strength for the long journey by knowing other cities have made progress – white people and people of color together building the kind of just, transparent, welcoming community needed to do this hard work. Some cities, like Detroit and Oakland, have explicitly built diverse representation and ownership into the mandate and mission of their food policy councils. Others have used participatory action research to engage as broad of a spectrum of impacted groups and individuals as possible in creating and implementing a ‘food systems plan.’ And some, like Toronto’s organized food community, took a few steps back through public conversations and gatherings, with the support of the Growing Food and Justice for All Initiative’s Toronto chapter.

The Community Food Security Coalition summarizes the aim: “In order to dismantle the structural racism within our food system, we must make a determined effort to cultivate and increase the leadership, voice, perspectives and demands of low-income communities of color within the food movement.”  I hope that our work in DC can be shaped by that vision.

Posted by Allison Burket | July 7th, 2011

[Cross-posted on the Bread for the City blog]

Earlier this summer, Louise Thundercloud, Angie Stackhouse and I represented Bread for the City at the Community Food Security Coalition’s (CFSC) “From Neighborhood To Nation” Conference in Portland, OR. This event convened people from across the country who are working to promote local and state-level policies for healthier and more just food systems.

Set in a city whose mayor owns chickens and dedicates city hall land to the production of food for local homeless shelters, the conference had no shortage of government-driven food-policy role models. We learned about progressive and impressive urban agriculture policies and programs in Baltimore, healthy food systems resolutions in Cleveland, coordination across Michigan’s cities to identify shared infrastructure needs, and Seattle’s efforts to link local legislation to national Farm Bill policies.

Posted by Jeremiah Lowery | June 6th, 2011

Last year, President Obama signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 into law; the act also being a huge boost to First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move! Initiative”. The new law is intended to improve the quality of school breakfast, lunches, and other foods sold in schools.

However, as politicians applaud themselves on taking a step to strengthen nutrition programs nationwide, a noteworthy movement to build a better food system is still ranging on in the nation’s capital. This movement is not being organized by politicians or in city hall, but in the classroom and organized by students who want a change in their school’s food program.

The ESL program at Cardozo High School is comprised of students from countries across the world, from Western Africa, China, to Latin America; which is why they are correctly referred to as “many languages, one voice”. For almost 3 years, with the help of Jenny Nelson the Education Coordinator, they have been trying to wage a campaign to change the food system in their school. Also, ESL students come from ethnic backgrounds that place an emphasis on prepared rather then processed foods, with many of the students being vegan; therefore changing the quality of foods in their school has become a very personal cause for the students.

According to Jenny, the students started out the campaign by trying to talk to the School Nutritionist. However, the School Nutritionist stated that the issue is “closed” and the students have plenty of healthy options at the school’s A La Carte line and with the weekly pizza (although pizza is one of the top 3 causes of child obesity). Jenny and the students will try to reach out to the School Nutritionist sometime in the near future, but they believe the path to changing their food program will probably not come through the School Nutritionist.

At the moment, Jenny and the students are at a standstill. They are still meeting weekly to think of new ways to organize around their cause. They have been trying to reach out to organizations like the Capital Area Food Bank and also officials in D.C. Public School System. Some other options have been to reach out to the Cardozo Alumni Association and also the Cardozo Student Government. Sadly, it has been very difficult because ESL students are marginalized, given their foreign backgrounds.

However, Jenny and the students will not be deterred, and their quest for a better food program is ongoing. While First Lady Michelle Obama is working on her “Let’s Move” campaign on the national level, these students have been moving, fighting, and are becoming an inspiration for a better food system for all of Washington, D.C.

As the campaign continues, I hope to have an update for DC Food For All soon. To get more invovled in projects like this, please visit: http://dcfarmtoschool.org/

Jeremiah Lowery can be reached at jeremiahalowery@gmail.com.

Posted by Louise Thundercloud | June 2nd, 2011

Louise Thundercloud attended the Community Food Security Coalition’s conference on local food policy, along with others from Bread for the City. Check back soon for more!

I traveled to Portland last week to attend CFSC’s food policy conference with a couple of goals: namely, to begin crafting language which will enable discussions on food policy to be translated into language, both indigenous communities and people within urban communities can understand. I wanted to be able to show those communities the connection between diet, fitness & health in practical terms, but to also connect those conversations to politically, the importance of being able to eat well.

I learned that all of us working on food justice have got a lot more learning to do, not just how to change policy to make fresh food available to people, but to get more at why it is people don’t have access, and how to better communicate with people who aren’t working in the field.

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Posted by Molly Meehan | March 8th, 2011

The Accokeek Foundation’s Center for Agricultural and Environmental Stewardship, in partnership with the National Immigrant Farming Initiative and the Rural Coalition, is collaborating to present our 2011 Food Justice Series. This series of four open-to-all events will feature a panel of speakers and a period of discussion, and will spotlight the issues that affect food [...]

Posted by Allison Burket | January 18th, 2011

This post is the first in a series from Bread for the City intern Allison Burket exploring the basics of food, hunger, and politics in the District.

What’s up with food and hunger in DC? In what ways is DC “food insecure”?

First, some figures. According to the USDA’s analysis, over one in eight families in DC classifies as “food insecure,” of not having sufficient access to nutritious food over the course of a year. Of all households in DC with children, 40.6 percent have had times when funds were not sufficient to put food on the table. The Capital Area Food Bank, which serves over 478,100 local residents, released its own comprehensive profile of hunger in DC in 2010. They find that 1 in 3 DC residents is at risk of or experiencing hunger. The food bank has seen a 25 percent increase in food clients in recent years.

Economic hard times in the city exacerbate the impact of an industrialized food system in which lower-quality foods are produced on the cheap. Diseases related to diet and lifestyle are at an all-time high across the country. In DC, where the obesity rate is 22.2% and levels of residents with hypertension reach beyond 28%, these challenges are disproportionately felt in low-income communities and communities of color. For example, Ward 8, which is 92% Black or African American, has a median income of around $25,000 and an obesity rate of 41.9%. This can be compared to Ward 3’s 84% white population with median income of $72,000 and 11.7% obesity rate. (For more on obesity in DC, see the report from the DC Department of Health.)

Communities that are already struggling to afford fresh and nutritious food might not be able to find these staples in their own neighborhoods. So-called “food deserts” result from policies and development practices that have left many lower-income neighborhoods without access to full-service grocery stores or alternative sources of fresh food. DC Hunger Solutions has led the research on the “grocery gap” phenomenon in a 2010 report that identifies the areas in the city, particularly Wards 7 and 8, most impacted by uneven distribution of full-service grocery stores and draws connections to issues of unemployment, obesity, and the local economy. The DC government has launched an effort to combat this phenomenon, though based on experiences with similar initiatives in New York and Pennsylvania, reducing food deserts alone is insufficient to bring down obesity rates.

More than just hunger at a given moment in time, these studies capture the impact of what is increasingly recognized as a broken food system. If recent headlines are any indication, it’s clear that the factors affecting our ability to feed ourselves in a way that is healthy, equitable, and sustainable are complicated and difficult to track, predict, or control: housing and development trends in DC make it difficult for DC residents to access food pantries and federal nutrition programs; battles on the national level over funding for school lunches and for SNAP benefits have been drawn-out and wonky; though farmers and consumer groups across the country have recently been putting up quite a fight, corporate concentration across the food and agriculture sectors continues to result in lower prices for farmers and higher prices for consumers.

So what would it mean to talk about “food security” in DC? According to the standard definition, a community is “food secure” when all residents obtain a “safe, culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet through a sustainable food system that maximizes community self-reliance and social justice.” This perspective is useful in that it considers all the factors that influence the availability, cost, and quality of food to area households, but gosh, trying to think about all those factors and how to make them work better for DC can be a little overwhelming.

The good news is that, while there’s a lot of work to be done, there are a lot of folks already doing it. Recent developments at Bread for the City, as well as a range of stellar projects, programs, and legislative victories captured on the DC Food For All blog, lead me to believe that DC can take the power of making healthy, sustainable food choices into its own hands.

Check in next week as I begin to explore the federal nutrition programs serving District residents!

Posted by Joseph ONeill | November 2nd, 2010

Posted by Greg Bloom | July 29th, 2010

Yesterday I posted the statement presented by the People’s Movement Assembly on Food Justice at the US Social Forum in Detroit last month. The statement is a collective declaration — of the shared principles and intentions (“…re-building local food economies in our own communities, dismantling structural racism, democratizing land access, building opportunities for the leadership of our youth, and working towards food sovereignty in partnership with social movements around the world…”).

As I reported during the Social Forum, many of these principles and intentions can be seen in practice in Detroit. My reporting there only scratched the surface of the work that’s been done — and one of the things I learned was how much discussion and collective self-reflection had come before (and in the course of) meaningful action.

In the particular case of Detroit, the local food movement engaged in a series of workshops (facilitated by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond) focused on confronting and dismantling racism in both the industrial food system and the movement itself. Participants analyzed race and power dynamics, and emerged with a shared set of ideas and vocabulary with which they can collaboratively work to restructure those dynamics.

During the People’s Movement Assembly on Food Justice at the Social Forum, participants formed a breakout group to focus specifically on this process of dismantling racism in the food system. As a white person of privilege working towards food justice in low-income, largely black communities in DC, I was grateful for the opportunity to join this group and learn more about my own role. Several leaders of Detroit’s movement helped facilitate the conversation, and we worked hard to consider what broad lessons could be drawn from their experience. The need (and desire) for greater dialogue was shared by all at the table, but many local food movements might not yet be at a point where it’s possible to gather the right set of people together in a room for a deep analysis of race, power, and white supremacy.

Yet we have to start the process somewhere (and, like it or not, that process is really best started in a place–not on a blog).

Fortunately, one promising answer can be found within the very stuff of this movement: food itself. More specifically, the way that social capital is generated by the growing, preparing, and eating of food. Several participants of the subgroup shared insights into how simple, deliberate community meals are used in their community to create spaces for dialogue and relationship-building. The Detroit folks recalled that their community’s dismantling racism workshops were, in fact, an idea that germinated in the course of a series of dinners among the movement’s leaders.

And so our Dismantling Racism subgroup of the Food Justice People’s Movement Assembly at the 2010 US Social Forum concluded with the presentation of what some may consider a “radical notion”: that we should gather people together in our communities to collaboratively prepare food, eat the food, and talk about the food.

Personally, I was energized and encouraged by this experience; after all, the DC Food For All launched 9 months ago in this very way. Relationships forged in the course of these early meals continue to bear fruit today. So I’m sharing the text of the proposal forged in Detroit here in hopes that we can experiment with these accessible, social, and political community-building meals here in DC.

A proposal for dismantling racism: Let’s eat together

{Click to read the full post.}