In this third short film in the #FoodSovereigntyStories series produced by Heather Gies and Colin Anderson, President of National Family Farm Coalition Jim Goodman shares his perspective on farm justice, a New Deal policy platform centered on protecting the wellbeing of farmers, consumers, and the environment.
Take a look at @foodsovusa’s second #FoodSovereigntyStories video! Each month, @foodsovusa will release videos that share the unique meanings that #foodsovereignty takes in different communities and the principles that bind them together.
Food Sovereignty Stories is a series of videos from social movements in the United States working towards a more just, sovereign, and sustainable food system. The first film focuses on food sovereignty and justice for farm workers.
For Brenda Bentley, an organizer with Community to Community Development (C2C), a grassroots organization fighting for food justice and migrant justice in Bellingham, Washington, food sovereignty is inseparable from immigrant rights.
“Food sovereignty in Bellingham for me has been trying to get a sanctuary ordinance for our undocumented community,” Brenda said outside Bellingham City Hall after a demonstration calling on lawmakers to act. “People don’t feel safe here.”
When Brenda shared her thoughts in October 2018, C2C had been organizing weekly “Dignity Vigils” outside City Hall for more than a year and a half to call for protections for undocumented people against detention and deportation. The organization has worked closely with farmworkers over the years to fight for fair wages, safe working conditions, and increased self-determination for farmworkers.
Brenda stressed that food sovereignty must start at the foundation of the food system with justice for the farmworkers who plant, cultivate, and harvest food.
“Food sovereignty for me, looking at it from that perspective, is people in the fields being comfortable to venture out to buy food, which they don’t. People feeling safe enough to come into town, which they don’t. People just being able to live without fear, to be able to afford the food that they grow, and they don’t,” she said. “A lot of our farmworkers at least in this county go to the food bank, and that’s disgusting.”
“For me, food sovereignty is justice for farmworkers, fair wages, a pathway to citizenship, a reasonable life, a future for their children—all the things that we want for ourselves and our neighbors, for everyone,” she concluded.
As C2C executive director Rosalinda Guillén put it, “everything circles around food,” and food sovereignty is part of “fighting for justice in every way that we know how.”
Food Sovereignty Stories is a video series exploring what food sovereignty can look like for diverse social movements across the United States. Share this video and follow USFSA for updates!
The US Food Sovereignty Alliance expresses our solidarity with those at the Highlander Research and Education Center after the recent racially-motivated arson attack. USFSA’s Political Education Collective drafted the letter, and the letter was ratified by the National Coordination of the US Food Sovereignty Alliance.
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To our friends and colleagues at the Highlander Research and Education Center:
The US Food Sovereignty Alliance (USFSA), a national alliance of food justice, anti- hunger, labor, environmental, faith-based, and food producer groups sends this message of solidarity and concern to the current staff, board and constituents of the Tennessee-based Highlander Research and Education Center, at the news of the March 29, 2019 arson attack that destroyed the main office building. While we are thankful that no one was hurt or injured, we are distressed that a white supremacist symbol was found in the parking lot near where the arson took place and deeply saddened by the loss of six decades of archival material that chronicled the emergence of social movements, including the Civil Rights Movement.
We recognize that much of our work as the US Food Sovereignty Alliance stands on the shoulders of movement organizers for union and worker rights, anti-racism, civil rights, social and economic justice, many of whom were the beneficiaries of education received at the Highlander Center, founded in 1932 by Myles Horton, Don West and James Dombrowski. We are grateful to be the beneficiaries today of the path that was laid to strengthen grassroots organizing and movement building despite acts of bigotry and hatred, and racially-motivated threats and attacks on the poor and working class which the Highlander Center resisted with popular education, language justice, participatory research and cultural work. By serving as a catalyst for communities to take collective action to shape their own destiny, the Highlander Center has persisted and triumphed for decades, from the time of the Great Depression, through Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement, and Appalachian economic justice struggles, and more recently struggles for democratization in solidarity with immigrants and other marginalized and scapegoated populations.
As we seek to develop our own political education processes as a US-based alliance devoted to profound transformation of the economy, culture and political organizing around food and agriculture in the United States and linked to struggles for food sovereignty worldwide, we lift up and honor the long history of education and training that Highlander has been an epicenter for.
As we stand in solidarity with the Highlander Center, we also stand firmly opposed to the rise of white supremacist groups and the ideology of fear-based bigotry and violent opposition to our movements for positive social change.
Forever in solidarity! Globalize the Struggle, Globalize the Hope!
Signed,
The US Food Sovereignty Alliance
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To view the .pdf letter sent to Highlander Center, click here.
By Eric Holt-Giménez, Ph.D., Social Scientist and Executive Director of Food
First/Institute for Food and Development Policy. The real causes of the 2008 and 2011 food price crises were numerous, but the fact that our global agricultural system is dominated by corporations, free trade, and speculation was neglected by most media outlets.
By Eric Holt-Giménez, Ph.D., Social Scientist and Executive Director of Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy.The food and financial crises of 2008 ignited a massive round of “land grabbing” in the Global South, with foreign agribusinesses leasing and buying large tracts of land to produce both food and fuel crops for export.
“The report therefore calls States for a fundamental shift towards agro-ecology as a way for countries to feed themselves while addressing climate and poverty challenges.”
“We, more than 500 representatives from more than 80 countries, of organizations of peasants/family farmers, artisanal fisherfolk, indigenous peoples, landless peoples, rural workers, migrants, pastoralists, forest communities, women, youth, consumers and environmental and urban movements have gathered together in the village of Nyéléni in Sélingué, Mali to strengthen a global movement for food sovereignty…”
Our global food system is terribly broken. Together, we can fix it! In the Curriculum you will find modules, factsheets, and other materials to learn about food sovereignty from the perspectives of consumers, anti-hunger organizations, environmentalists, and Small Farmers and farmworkers.
Short reflection on food sovereignty by Werner Fuchs, Lutheran pastor and translator, member of the CONSEA (National Council for Food Security of Brazil).
Taken from a presentation at the International Conference on Global Land Grabbing, Eric Holt-Gimenez of Food First and Annie Shattuck and Yi Wang explain how land grabs are affecting urban areas in the Global North, in addition to the rural land grabs in the Global South. This shared, universal threat requires immediate action and global solidarity
Eric Holt-Gimenez, Annie Shattuck, and Yi Wang explain how food retail corporations are behind the urban and northern land grab in this Food First backgrounder.
From The Applied Research Center, “The Color of Food” reveals that racism and exploitation that exist in our food system and suggests ways to transform our food system into a vehicle of justice.
