WhyHunger’s What Ferguson Means for the Food Justice Movement series is a bold attempt to explore the way in which police violence and institutionalized anti-black racism is deeply interconnected to food, land and Black bodies. What is the connection between the death of Black people at the hands of the state (police shootings) and the death of Black people at the hands of the corporate food system (diet-related disease/land displacement/redlining)?

To lift up critical voices of the movement, WhyHunger’s Beatriz Beckford facilitated a national call with dynamic organizers and activists across the country to gather a collective interrogation of these issues from the perspective of Black activists organizing around food justice. Issue #4 features Charm Taylor, independent artist, activist and Co-Director of Community Outreach & Youth Internships at The Backyard Gardeners Network in New Orleans, LA, who discusses how activism and interdependent movement building can help marginalized people reclaim land and control over food.

Excerpt

Beatriz Beckford: What explicit connections can we make between gender, food justice and police violence?

Charm Taylor: What we see happening in Ferguson is a symptom of institutionalized American denial. That is to say, public housing policy as it stands is not the same thing as “40 acres and a mule.” Let’s face it, to be Black and poor in America means the state exercising control over your ability to acquire generational wealth and mobilize out of the “trap”; its “population containment” masking as public welfare. What if highly policed “low-income” and “subsidized housing” projects became “low risk, land subsidized” to cultivate land and return to communities with access to our cultural roots of farming? That’s liberation from such a grossly outdated paternalistic view of public welfare and true progress!

Download and continue reading the full issue. Also, join this important conversation online using hashtag #FoodJusticeVoices to share your thoughts!