Re(posting): Re(doing) Food Justice

 Tomas, Andrew, and Mohamed weighing produce in Summer '10

I love this piece by Leticia Garcia, about (re)defining Food Justice in terms that celebrate the complexity of urban life and communities, and acknowledge the vital leadership coming from communities of people who are most impacted by poverty, racism, and food injustice.

Garcia challenges us to move beyond the "framework that defines 'healthy food' in proximity to euro-centric food values. Such race and class-blind projects encourage dependency on the dominant culture, rather than revolutionizing food access for communities on their own cultural terms."

It's an applied project, and requires more than just thinking about food and food access from the dominant perspective. In fact, as so often, operating from the dominant perspective won't result in the kinds of action or make the kinds of changes that are needed, because of the inherent bias and blindness that reinforces dominance. So working on Food Justice must be a community project:

"Changing how we perceive poverty can revolutionize how we approach food justice. It can change how activists (re)do food justice as a form of social justice. This (re)doing of food justice emphasizes two things: first, that food justice is an action or a form of social activism rather than just an idea; second, that being critical activists affords us an opportunity to call for a “redo” and change how food justice is done."

Check it out!

And let us know how YOU are (re)thinking and (re)doing food justice.



http://beyondthefarm.org/exploring/redoing-food-justice/