Food Justice Voices
WhyHunger’s Food Justice Voices series was created to support and amplify the voices of people working to regain control of their communities’ food system.
At WhyHunger’s Midwest Gathering, leaders from across the region come together to share knowledge, build relationships, and learn from community-led efforts advancing food justice. This short video highlights the organizations, farmers, and advocates who are creating local solutions and strengthening a growing movement for change. Learn more about the Midwest Gathering here.
This video highlights MPP (Movimento dos Pescadores e Pescadoras Artesanais do Brasil), the movement of artisanal fisherfolk in Brazil and organizing work to resist against corruption, ocean grabbing, commodification and other impacts from the privatization of the sea.
This Food Justice Voices series from the Rural Women’s Assembly (RWA), a self-organised network or alliance of rural women in the SADC, uplifts the stories of struggle and resilience of women on the front lines of food sovereignty, the climate crisis, land rights, feminism and seed saving. Click through below to view this multi-part series:
Karen Washington: BIPOC Knowledge & Power in the Food Justice Movement
“Food justice is not a passive movement. If you are actively working on food justice,…
Food Access Problems need Food Justice Solutions
Canadians have a right to food – sort of. In accordance with the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which the Canadian government ratified in 1976, everyone living in this country has a right to food. That makes the government the duty bearer in ensuring that people can feed themselves, their families and their communities. This does not mean that the government is required to give out free food. Rather, the government is obliged to create the conditions for people to be able to access good, nutritious, affordable food with dignity, now and in the future. Successive governing parties, however, have failed to meet these obligations. Learn what steps FoodShare Toronto took towards food and social justice and its impact. Download the full publication
Solidarity, Education and Action! Comedores Sociales: An emerging movement in Puerto Rico
Before Hurricanes Irma and Maria struck in 2017, a large percentage of Puerto Ricans faced food insecurity on a daily basis. In fact, Puerto Ricans were 4 times more likely to be hungry than the average American. In a region with rich soil, a temperate climate and a rich agricultural history, these figures become even starker when set against the reality that more than 85% of food consumed by Puerto Ricans is produced off the archipelago. Download the full publication in below. English Version Spanish Version
Neighbors Together
View our online interactive web page Thirty-five years ago, the community of central Brooklyn saw a steep decline in quality of life for its residents. Lack of jobs, a cut to social resources, and a swell of drugs hit the area -and fast. Residents began to see their neighborhood changing rapidly, and those who wanted to see their community thrive took action. Check out the full publication and watch video testimonials to learn more. Download the full publication View our online interactive web page
Pathology of Displacement: The Intersection of Food Justice and Culture
In new Food Justice Voices issue Pathology of Displacement: The Intersection of Food Justice and Culture, storyteller, healing practitioner and food justice organizer Shane Bernardo tells his story about how displacement has affected his ancestors and family within the Philippine diaspora, and how he is working to reclaim ancestral subsistence practices that connect him to land, food and his roots. In this piece Shane breaks down what was lost due to colonialism and how we can fight to get it back to truly achieve a real “food justice” movement. Download the full publication here.
El Sueño Americano ― The American Dream
Food Justice Coordinator Kathia Ramirez shares her perspective on the journey of immigrant farmworkers pursuing the American dream and shares why food justice is important on every level. “In the U.S.’ quest for cheap goods and labor, we have intentionally created a need for undocumented, low-wage workers. As we pump cheap food into the Latin American and domestic marketplaces, it is the workers, who we lure here to help us produce this food, that suffer the consequences, coming up against many barriers to securing their own daily meals.” Download the full publication here. Download the PDF here.
A Farmer Like Me: Exploring Hunger, Race and Farming in America
In Food Justice Voices “A Farmer Like Me: Exploring Hunger, Race and Farming in America,” farm and food justice activist Lorrie Clevenger of Rise & Root Farm, shares her childhood foundation, experience as a Black farmer and her vision on how we can make our agricultural system better. Download the full PDF here.
Cultivating International Solidarity Through Popular Resistance
Rural family farmers and migrant farmworkers are at the front lines of the climate, fossil fuel, fracking, water and land struggles across the U.S. They have been increasingly uniting with urban and international social movements to build resistance and change the system that has consistently failed them. Download: Cultivating International Solidarity Through Popular Resistance.pdf
What Ferguson Means for the Food Justice Movement
Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, was shot and killed on Aug. 9, 2014 by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, in Ferguson, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis. What does what happened in Ferguson and the subsequent response that followed have to do with the food justice movement? Risk Ratios reveals that Black people were killed at 10 to 40 times the rate of whites or other minorities at the hands of the police. Research also forecasts that Black and Brown children are now expected to live shorter lives than their parents, due to diet-related disease. This special series of WhyHunger’s Food Justice Voices 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 grassroots leaders, WhyHunger’s Beatriz Beckford facilitated a national call with dynamic organizers and activists across the country to discuss the connection between the oppression that Black communities face…
Agroecological Approaches to Poverty, Migration and Landlessness
Agroecology | Poverty | Migration & Landlessness At the U.S.-Mexico border, surveillance cameras and military check-points are part of everyday life for those that reside in the surrounding communities. In the borderlands, many workers and their families are exploited and marginalized; ancestral farmland is taken away and replaced with destructive industrial agriculture, and fresh, healthy, local food is not readily accessible for most residents. In this second publication in WhyHunger’s Food Justice Voices series, “Agroecological Approaches to Poverty, Migration and Landlessness,” Alma Maquitico writes that agroecology, or the practice of developing farming systems with low-input ecological principles, can empower people to claim their right to healthy food. “If human rights is the theory,” writes Alma, “agroecology is the practice.” Alma works with low-wage communities in the borderlands as an educator, farmer and leader in grassroots farming initiatives. As a Mexican woman, she writes from personal experience that, “Forced migration…is characterized by the urgent need to free ourselves, to find a way out of poverty and exploitation, an urgent quest for self-determination.” Agroecology, she writes, is a framework for creating community-based farm systems to develop and support that self-determination, and at the same time builds a new model for agriculture that…
Dignity, Hope, Wellness and Action: Against All Odds in the Sonoran Desert
A firsthand account of community-led groups and individuals in the Sonoran desert borderlands who are building dignity through struggle from the ground up, this publication asks the question, “How can people in the borderlands be healthy and empowered when their communities are under attack?” This question is at the core of cesar lopez’s “Dignity, Hope, Wellness and Action: Against All Odds in the Sonoran Desert,” the first publication in WhyHunger’s Food Justice Voices series. This thought-provoking piece goes beyond the issues of hunger, addressing the border region’s wide disparities in political and economic opportunity. Did you know 60 percent of fresh produce eaten in the U.S. is grown in Mexico? That produce is transported directly through the borderlands, while farmworkers in Mexico suffer from hunger, inhumane labor standards and poor wages, and people living on both sides of the border go hungry. But there is hope. cesar’s piece provides a firsthand account of community-led groups and individuals in the Sonoran desert borderlands who are blazing another trail — fighting to heal from the trauma, working to put an end to a destructive system and building dignity through struggle from the ground up. “The impact of these homegrown leaders is hard…
Social Justice for Lunch: Delta Fresh Foods Initiative at the National Farm to Cafeteria Conference
Social Justice for Lunch explores the work of the Delta Fresh Foods Initiative (DFFI) to transform the food system in the Mississippi Delta region into one that is more equitable and just for all. Continuing WhyHunger’s Food Justice Voices series, Social Justice for Lunch gives insight into an equity-based approach to address the lack of access to nutritious food and the direct connection to decades of persistent poverty and oppression. DFFI was created from the ground up by organizers who recognized the importance of having a justice lens on their work and the necessity to include marginalized voices at the table. Together they chose to use Farm to School projects to strengthen the local food economy, promote healthy lifestyles and build social equity for Delta residents. “With limited staff and a large chunk of geography to impact, we chose school, community and church gardens as a focus for projects to build the supply and demand in communities.” –Judy Belue, Director DFFI Hear directly from the voices of Deborah Moore, DFFI Board Chair, Judy Belue, DFFI Director and Brooke Smith, WhyHunger’s Grassroots Action Network Co-Director who has worked with WhyHunger to support the development of the organization since 2009. Learn about…
Youth Food Justice Zine
Explore a compilation of drawings, poems, photos and short stories that elevates the voices of youth food justice activists, as well as intergenerational narratives around youth power within the context of the United States. The newest addition to WhyHunger’s Food Justice Voices, The Youth Food Justice Zine offers a platform for young food justice activists to share their stories, publish their creative work and express their views on the state of our nation’s food system. This compilation of drawings, poems, photos and short stories elevates the voices of youth food justice activists, as well as intergenerational narratives around youth power within the context of the United States. The Youth Food Justice Zine is a must read for anyone engaged in the food justice movement. Download: Youth Food Justice Zine.pdf