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| Arriving at the conference, very very early. |
My dairy consumption and cigarette smoking have caught up
with me once again with a slight fever and general achiness so I am not able to
keep up the level of hanging out I was hoping for this weekend. I chose instead to dedicate my energy
to attending the Just Foods Conference, an annual conference here in NYC
focusing on food justice and sustainability with the input of farmers, food
advocates, consumers and the like.
I joked for two weeks before hand I was attending the conference to find
my farmer husband, ya know for the commune but in reality I was attending in my continuing effort to
rehumanize myself after academia. I realized I needed to get my shit together
and start plugging into the NYC activist, foodie, general pro rev scene. Just Foods was an excellent place to
start and I am kicking myself for having not attended the conference the
previous two years I have been living here in New York.
Just to get beef out of the way, the conference of course had its stock
of obligatory white liberals.
There was a share of entitlement, great white hopeness and coded
language, where the “underserved” and “diverse” means Black and maybe
Latino and where the
normalization of whiteness led to comments that included the concept of “us”
and “them”. This doesn’t offend me
as a Latina but just as a human living in 2012 . Once again, we are all one. The paradigm of whiteness and white privilege is dying and
it is sad to see people hold onto it so desperately. Let it go and
join us already. But this
percentage was in the minority, I am grateful to say. The level of bad asses in attendance was beyond inspiring
and it was hard to count myself amongst them. Beyond discussing how to grow yourself into a farmer and the problems with the USDA, much of the conversation was transformative even
spiritual. Not just from the
speakers but particularly in interpersonal interactions at breaks, in line for
coffee, questions and comments etc. It was story after
story of epiphanies, learning, making a jump from an office job to digging in
the soil. There is a change in the
air- can’t we all feel it?
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| Lunch, some pickled zucchini and tomatoes |
To highlight some of the amazingness, I have the names of
some folks down below and am doing my best to provide the most up to date links
of the projects they are working on.
Undoubtedly the people I most admired at the conference were mostly
people of color who talked about their lives as farmers (both urban and rural) but also used
their opportunities in the spotlight to talk about dismantling racism and
classism and addressing the true causes of
hunger and food related disease in this country.
Tanya Fields.
All I had written in my notes during Tanya’s talk was
“fucking amazing”. I was
transfixed by her and literally on the edge of my seat and I leaped up to a
standing ovation as soon as she was done.
On the topic of addressing food issues in the South Bronx. “I am sure I
am going to offend some people in the room but we don’t need white people from
the Mid West bringing produce into the Bronx and telling us what to eat….We
don’t need a Trader Joe’s or a Whole Foods in the Bronx, we need to empower the
people of those communities to produce that food themselves” http://theblkprojek.wordpress.com/about/
Yonette Fleming-Urban farmer in Bed-Stuy, a neighborhood that will forever hold a very special spot in my heart. On community empowerment - “This is not about turning the community into consumers”
On changes she has seen in the food justice movement in the last five years - "It has changed from a white elitist movement to a movement for the
people! But this is not by accident but because of work done by people of color on the ground”
On white solidarity “Do not be blinded by your privilege!”
Zaid Kurdeih who started a farm because he could not find Halal foods in his area back in the 80's. “Home, food, shelter, health -are the pillars of
humanity. This is all we need to
exist on this earth. This is all we need , this is a blessing.”
Jalal Sabur. Freedom Food Alliance. I have a video here so he can speak for himself but I was super impressed by Jalal's constant messaging of the inherent importance of solidarity and his ability to connect the farmer and food to multiple levels of injustice.
http://blog.cunysustainablecities.org/2010/11/freedom-food-alliance-bridging-the-gap/ (not his blog but includes a good interview with him)
http://blog.cunysustainablecities.org/2010/11/freedom-food-alliance-bridging-the-gap/ (not his blog but includes a good interview with him)
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| The conference was held in a high school in Mid Town and this poster was hanging in one of the classrooms. I love you New York. |
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| Tanya and I, end of conference glow. |
“When you don’t believe in what your
doing, work is indeed a curse”.
These folks were presenters at the conference but I made connections with a bucket load of really inspiring people who were just as amazing, just hanging out. This conference lit a fire in me but most importantly it was fun.
A few more links:
http://browngirlfarming.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pigford-Blues/107686005984000 (documentary on discrimination of Black farmers by the USDA)
http://www.justfood.org/farmschoolnyc
http://brooklynfoodcoalition.ning.com/
http://harlemse
http://brooklynfoodcoalition.ning.com/
http://harlemse
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