FOOD FIGHTS: Hunger Politics and Struggles for Autonomy & Resilience, Part II

Moderator's Note: With this guest essay we post the second in a new series on FOOD FIGHTS: Hunger Politics and Struggles for Autonomy and Resilience. The series was launched in October 2011 and examines hunger as a longstanding neoliberal capitalist political project that intentionally, and sometimes perhaps inadvertently, punishes tens of millions in the USA and a billion-plus bodies in the Two-Thirds World suffering from malnutrition, hunger, famine, and the loss and disruption of native agroecosystems, foodways, and heritage cuisines.

The political project to homogenize and control the global food system dominated by a handful of multinational corporations and powerful nation states is capitalist at its core and manifest source. This reflects the culmination of five decades of American policies that made food into political weaponry, as Harry Cleaver presciently observed way back in 1977.  

However, the series emphasizes the importance of developing a two-sided analysis that poses a dynamic tension between domination and resistance and so proposes to develop analyses of struggles against neoliberal capitalism and for the autonomy of the 99 percent.

The basic idea behind Cleaver’s 1977 article was that food is a type of political weaponry and that this became official US policy during the Nixon Administration when Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz declared that food was indeed part of the toolkit of American “diplomacy.”  Secretary Butz announced this policy in 1974 with the simple statement: “Food is a weapon.”

To continue the series, we are posting a critical analysis by our colleague and fellow blogger, Dr. Pancho McFarland on Harry Cleaver’s article, “Food, famine, and the international crisis,”  that brings the original analysis into contemporary context that also weighs in on the case for autonomy through grassroots urban agriculture.

From Weaponry to Sovereignty

by Pancho McFarland, Ph.D.

With my colleague, Dr. Devon G. Peña, I am interested in the application of the autonomia model to the study of food politics and a better understanding of the new social movements around food justice and food sovereignty. In this essay I discuss sections I and II of Cleaver’s visionary 1977 article.  Throughout, I will add my own analysis of how this might apply to our food sovereignty struggles today.

Part I: Toward a class analysis of food systems

Cleaver’s critique of left (Marxist and non-Marxist) analysis of the world food system helps sharpen our understanding of the place of urban agriculture, especially community gardens  and urban farms, in a working-class revolutionary movement.  He says that non-Marxist critiques of the food system and food crises point to the consolidation of corporate power in agribusiness.  Marxists agree but add imperialism as a central factor. 

            Cleaver forcefully argues that both critiques discount urban and rural working class consciousness, resistance and self-organization.  He writes that in both of the ‘left’ perspectives “capitalism is seen as the only active force.”  Cleaver’s addition is to show that the working-class has shaped global and national food policies through its active resistance to the ruling classes’ use of poverty and hunger as weapons in class warfare.  Working-class self-organization forces capital to reorganize. 

            Here Cleaver’s analysis of working class self-organization around food helps the contemporary food sovereignty movement build upon earlier successes and failures.  The article seeks to accomplish two things: 1) develop a class analysis of food as moments of class struggle and 2) apply this class analysis to postwar development.

Part II: Food and class struggles

Section II uses a dialectical approach to understanding food and the dominant capitalist food system.    He opens the section with the following:

To undertake a class analysis of food, one must begin with the realization that there are always two sides to the issue, two perspectives corresponding to the two basic classes in capitalist society.  Yet at the same time, the two sides are not separate but interact as aspects of interacting classes.  As each side struggles for its own ends, those struggles impinge on and force changes on the other.  For the working class, food is above all our basic consumption good—a fundamental requirement for us to live and enjoy life.  For capital, food is primarily a commodity like others, and the organization of the production and distribution of food has made agriculture a sector of capitalist industry in which people are put to work and exploited.

           

            For the capitalist, food is a commodity and a tool of control.  Through the early and ongoing enclosures the bourgeoisie appropriates common land resulting in the dispossession of people from their primary means of subsistence, culture and autonomy.  Rural people lacking a means of subsistence are urbanized, proletarianized, and controlled.  This is the nature of capital accumulation.  The remaining rural workforce is controlled “through the manipulation of land.”  Capitalists’ “control over distribution…exercised through retail outlets and prices…” provides a strategic advantage over the urban proletariat.

            At this point in Cleaver’s analysis we see how it resonates with a food sovereignty perspective.  From this perspective we believe that issues of food injustice result from capitalist control over the means of agricultural production and distribution.  These include agribusiness consolidation of land and control over the necessary inputs such as seed, pesticides, energy and machinery.   Profit-driven markets are based not on serving people through providing everyone with sufficient amounts of food but on what yields the most profit.  If people starve in the meantime, well, “that’s just the cost of doing business.”

            However, as Professor Cleaver reminds us, “the working class is not passive before capital’s possession of this power.”   Through the working classes’ centrality in the production and distribution networks we can lay claim to much of the ruling class’ power.  Historically, the working class has fought for wages, sought control over production processes and the organization of their labor, demanded lower prices, engaged in direct appropriation and looting among other strategies and tactics. 

            Capitalist relations of production pit the producing sector of the working class (rural workers) against the consumer sector (urban workers).  Consumers want quality food at a cheap price which means that rural bosses squeeze profits out of rural laborers through a less-than-subsistence-wage piece-rate system.  Cleaver points out that “the fundamental power of food for capital is the power to force the working class to work to get it.”  Even though it seems that the power of corporate agribusiness is overwhelming, we should recognize as Cleaver does that the working class has strategically used their division by fighting for wages and recomposing itself through migration.

            Currently, the work of many in the food sovereignty movement has recognized this strategy of capital and begun to develop urban-rural relationships that, in large part, bypass the circuits of capital.  Organizations in the Chicago area such as The Black Oaks Center for Sustainable and Renewable Living and the Healthy Food Hub operate in terms of communities not commodities.  They are theorizing and enacting a new organization of labor which doesn’t divide rural from urban and dissolves the distinctions between producer and consumer.

            Cleaver’s analysis continues by examining another food-based division in the working-class; that between the waged and the unwaged.  The unwaged, namely housewives and small farmers, do a significant amount of work that allows the capitalist food system to function as well as the working classes to survive.  The non-waged female sector of the working class has resisted their exploitation of their labor through entities such as the Wages for Housework movement.   Peasants, too, are vulnerable since the power imbalance between them and the capitalists controlling distribution networks forces peasants into a semi-waged state in which they are forced to sell their labor power to the ruling classes through the production of agricultural commodities sold on a market controlled by capital.  They, too, resist periodically.

            The unwaged, like the waged, sectors of the working class use their marginal power and disadvantage as a strategy against capital.  Cleaver explains that:

The experience of recent years in both urban and rural areas has demonstrated that the unwaged often indeed make themselves not available for work.  In fact, this unavailability (for waged work) became one of the key elements of the crisis of capital in the 1960s as blacks, women, and students in the West turned to rebellion instead of jobs, and peasants in many countries undertook guerrilla warfare rather than present themselves to capital for development.

            I want to posit here that retaking our labor power and our very bodies from capital through the self-edifying, unalienated labor of community and backyard gardening can be undertaken through an ethic of the ‘rejection of waged work.”  Capital would be forced to reorganize or otherwise attempt to regain control of the two most important functions of the proletariat (at least as they see it): 1) its labor power to produce commodities that can then be sold for a profit and 2) its consumer power.  If workers don’t buy commodities at prices above the wages paid for the labor to make the commodity, then capital loses profit.  If workers refuse to work, that is, make commodities for the benefit of owners, then the bosses have nothing to sell. 

            The development of a local food economy that includes all sectors of the working class as common and sovereign owners of the land and agricultural resources takes away capital’s strategic advantage.   We reject its imposed, alienated conditions of labor and its control over commodity distribution, especially prices.  We now gain control over the most important thing: our means of subsistence.  Mass exodus from the labor force for control over a sovereign local food system begins to make capital obsolete. 

            I believe that this worker self-organized activity along with the ecological limits of the planet will likely usher in a post-capitalist era.  The questions are: What will this post-capitalist era look like?  How will the working-classes mold this new era?

            Cleaver’s lessons for an anti-authoritarian food sovereignty movement and a post-capitalist worker-organized society don’t stop here.  He continues his critique of the leftist analysis of “students of imperialism [who] see only capital moving in the world.”  He instructs that “We must see the international character of the working class and the circulation of its struggles for more, better and varied food.”  The food sovereignty movement is international in scope.  International discussions and transnational struggle against capitalism and for a truly democratic future are as important to working class strategies as are the locally organized and focused food economy strategies of community gardens, new rural-urban relations and the dissolution of the producer-consumer distinction within the working class.

            La Vía Campesina has been at the forefront of international cooperation around food sovereignty.  The hard work of member organizations and individuals has caused many of us to look to their lead in theorizing and implementing food sovereignty ideas, strategies and tactics.  They are explicit in their international character.  Their website describes the organization this way:

La Vía Campesina comprises about 150 local and national organizations in 70 countries from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas.  Altogether, it represents about 200 million farmers.  It is an autonomous, pluralist and multicultural movement, independent from any political, economic or other type of affiliation.  (www.viacampesina.org).

            Numerous examples of the transnational character of the working class and international alliance building exist.  Other recent high profile moments of international working class struggle against capital and its food system include The Landless Workers’ Movement of Brazil and the Zapatistas of Mexico.  While each of these examples is unique and place-based, they have enjoyed international support from wide sectors of the working class and have taken pains to view their struggle from an international perspective.  They are both locally-focused and internationally engaged.  Careful attention to each of these movements can provide important lessons to our work in food sovereignty especially in the areas of food justice in urban settings.

            Cleaver ends section II of his work by describing three important periods in the struggle over food between capital and workers.  The rest of the work examines in detail each of these important moments.  He ends the study with a summary of lessons a working-class orientation toward food might have to teach us in future struggles around food.  Subsequent blog entries will address these aspects of Cleaver’s analysis.

Guest Blog: Farm workers, hunger, and anti-immigrant hysteria

Moderator's Note: This is the fourth in a series of guest blogs by students in my University of Washington food sovereignty seminar. Teresa Bailey presents an insightful analysis that links anti-immigrant hysteria to the high incidence of hunger among undocumented farm workers.

Farm Workers: Fuel the U.S food system while going hungry

Teresa Bailey

The backbone of United States food production is the labor of immigrants from Mexico and Central and South America, many of whom are not U.S. citizens. The agricultural labor force is estimated to consist of 75 percent people born in Mexico; some estimates are that at least 53 percent of farm workers are undocumented.1 Undocumented and documented immigrants from Mexico are undoubtedly an integral part of the U.S. agricultural labor force.

When discussing immigration I must emphasize the structural violence perpetuated by the United States government that has devastated the Mexican economy, resulting in the high rates of immigration from Mexico. The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) enabled the dumping of U.S. subsidized corn and other crops on the Mexican market and at the same time the Mexican government discontinued land subsidies for campesinos. Local farmers, unable to compete with U.S. subsidized imports, went out of business. Thus, many former farmers were left with few to no options other than to travel to the U.S in hopes of making a livelihood to support their families.

Increasing violence associated with the drug cartels also contributes to the migratory flow and the inability of many to return to Mexico. United States residents are the number one consumers of the illicit products of the Mexican drug industry; this is another way in which the U.S. creates the conditions, which force many people in Mexico to risk crossing the border into the U.S. Finally, the increased militarization of the border has put an end to the revolving door policy in which Mexicans could work in the U.S. and then return to their families seasonally. As border crossing becomes more costly and dangerous, immigrants increasingly must remain in the U.S once they have crossed, and thus many are separated from their families for longer periods than was traditionally the case.

Mexican farm workers are filling a labor need that Americans are unwilling to fill, and are thus vital contributors to the U.S. economy.  Despite this, as unemployment rates in America reach record highs, Mexican immigrants are scapegoated as villains stealing American jobs. Consequently, this has given rise to a wave of anti-immigrant legislation in many states across the U.S. The first being the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (SB1070), signed into law by the Governor of Arizona on April 23, 2010. The law requires immigrants to carry documentations at all times and allows law enforcement to ask for such documentation without a crime being committed. This is widely seen as racial profiling.

Many states have followed Arizona’s lead as extremist right wing groups in the country fuel anti-immigrant rhetoric and legislation including laws passed in Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, South Carolina, and Alabama. In Alabama, HB 56 is the most extreme of this state-level anti-immigrant legislation to date; it was passed in June 2011. This law requires public schools to check for documentation of school children, electronic verification of citizenship status by employers, and legalized racial profiling of Latinos. The law has been devastating to Alabama’s agricultural economy, as farm workers have left the inhospitable state causing a huge shortage in agricultural labor and billion dollar losses in the sector. This situation in Alabama is just one example of how important undocumented farm workers are to food production in this country.

These states, with their overtly racist and anti-immigrant agenda, do not reflect the only strategy adopted ort pursued by state legislators to make their states inhospitable for immigrants. In Washington state the 2011 legislative session witnessed numerous legislative proposals that used budget cuts to target legal and undocumented immigrants. The budget cut proposals included eliminating the State Food Assistance Program and cutting 26,000 undocumented immigrant children from access to health care through reductions to Apple Health for Kids.2 As far as passing anti-immigrant laws in Washington State, numerous proposals have been introduced including efforts to ban undocumented immigrants from acquiring driver’s licenses. What we saw in Washington was a covert attack on the undocumented immigrant community. Washington state may not require immigrants to carry documentation at all times or legally condone the racial profiling of Latinos, however it will cut health care for immigrant children and get rid of food assistance for immigrant families.

The Washington State Food Assistance Program was created under the governorship of Garry Locke in response to the Congressional decision in 1997 to bar immigrants from the receiving federal food stamps until they can provide documentation of five years of legal residence. The State Food Assistance program perfectly mimics federal food stamps, yet directly fills the gap felt by the immigrant community.

However, during the 2011 legislative session Governor Gregoire, with a 2 billion dollar budget deficit, proposed to eliminate the program entirely. To be fair, cuts were being made to many different government services and departments, however a heavy burden was on social safety net programs. But to eliminate a program completely rather than reduce its funding is a drastic step because there is a very small chance of the program being re-instated. This would have had a devastating blow, with 31,000 people losing their food stamps.2 The legislature decided to save the program, but cut the funding in half.

As the 2012 Washington State legislative session is set to begin, the state faces a fourth year in a row with a major budget shortfall and Governor Gregoire is proposing an additional round of 2 billion dollars in cuts. What is left of the State Food Assistance program, saved last year, is once again on the chopping block for complete elimination.3

The audacity of barring people from food assistance because of their citizenship status is disgusting. The bitter irony of such a decision is intensified when considering that the very same farm workers who put the food on everyone’s table have extremely high rates of food insecurity. In Washington State and across the nation, farm workers go hungry at rates several times higher than the national average, estimates show that 86 percent of farm workers experience food insecurity.4 , 5  Farm workers have very low incomes, averaging $11,000 nationwide.1 The nation’s food security depends on Mexican farm workers, yet these same farm workers struggle to put food on their own tables because they are paid so poorly and are barred from food assistance programs that other people with the same low incomes have access to. The Governor should not be eliminating the last remnants of food assistance to immigrant families, but should instead expand the program by not requiring any identification so that undocumented immigrants will have the option to support themselves and their families with food assistance. There needs to be a shift in the rhetoric that recognizes the important role undocumented immigrants have in our community.

 

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1 U.S. Department of Labor, National Agricultural Workers Survey (2005).

2 Children’s Alliance, The Facts about the State Food Assistance Program (2010).

3 Office of the Governor, State of Washington, Proposed 2012 Supplemental Budget (2011).

4 Washington State Department of Health, Hunger in Washington (2008)

5 Weigel M M, Armijos R X, Hall Y P, Ramirez Y, Orozco R. The household food insecurity and health outcomes of U.S.-Mexico border migrant and seasonal farmworkers. Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health 9:157-69 (2007).

Guest Blog: Grocers in a Box?

Moderator's Note: This is the third in a series of contributions by students from the food sovereignty seminar I am teaching at the University of Washington this autumn 2011 quarter. This post is from Laura Christie, who is pursuing a self-designed major in food studies. Ms. Christie’s contribution focuses on the development of a new model to address food deserts in the Seattle area, the so-called “Stockbox Grocer.” This concept is reminiscent of the traditional green grocer that was once a fixture in inner-city neighborhoods and is indeed making somewhat of a comeback today in many Seattle-area ethnically-diverse neighborhoods.

Stockbox Grocers Aims to Fight Food Deserts

Laura Christie

            Food deserts are a well-worn topic in the food sovereignty discourse. Food deserts are residential areas lacking establishments selling fresh produce, meats, dairy and whole grains. Typically, inhabitants must travel several miles to find such whole foods; for urban residents that distance is one-mile and for rural residents it is ten, according to the USDA. In many food deserts, residents also lack personal transportation and must rely on increasingly inadequate public transit to get to grocery stores. What should be a ten or twenty-minute trip often turns into a two hour-long travail. 

            Using the census to quantify, the USDA estimates that 23.5 million Americans live in food deserts and unsurprisingly more than half (13.5 million) are low-income (USDA 2011).  This number is likely an underestimate, especially if we account the number of undocumented immigrants and their families who are typically not included in the census, but are more likely to be both low-income and living in food deserts. 

            King County is relatively free of food deserts, as defined by the USDA. There are exceptions including south-end neighborhoods like Delridge, White Center, High Point, South Park, and others.  Delridge is a neighborhood at the southern end of West Seattle; the majority of residents in this 8.5 square mile area are people of color with the largest population being Asian American, then African American, followed by Latina/o, with other ethnicities making up the balance (“City-Data”).  A quarter of all Delridge residents were born outside of the United States, almost 10 percent speak very little English or none at all; Delridge has far fewer higher education degrees than the Seattle average and a lower yearly income (“City-Data”).

            These demographics trends are consistent with areas considered food deserts.  In the case of Delridge, shopping options are limited and consist of convenience markets that do not stock fresh fruits and vegetables.  Grocery stores apparently find few business incentives to build stores in the area due to high start-up and operational costs and the perception of the lack of a guaranteed market that would take produce off the shelves before it must be thrown out. Of course, grocers in low-income and communities of color often sell produce well past expiration dates and are also known for selling inferior quality perishable goods.

            What is the solution to the type of food desert faced by a neighborhood like Delridge? One possibility is the concept of Stockbox Grocers – an idea that is the brainchild of two graduate students from the Bainbridge Graduate Institute.  The goal of these students was to find a small business solution to the challenge of getting fresh produce and whole foods to low-income, low-access areas.  Their solution was to turn an old shipping container into a mini-grocery store that provides grocery staples (chicken stock, vegetable paste, etc.) and fresh foods (milk, eggs, produce, grains).  Not only does this business plan get whole foods to food deserts, but they are able to do so and charge far lower prices because their overhead does not include high start-up costs, utilities, or worker wages. 

            One of the founders, Carrie Ferrence, states: “We take away the high set-up cost…We take away the high ongoing operating cost, and we focus on the inventory that moves most efficiently” and adds “Huge grocery stores are fairly inefficient…They depend on 15 percent of their inventory to carry the profitability of the rest of their store” (Bruder).  Modern technology is also key to their low costs and efficiency.  The store uses an iPad and a “Square” (a small credit card swiper that can be plugged into a smart phone) to process electronic payments and track inventory (Woodward). 

The inception of Stockbox received a lot of attention; they are the recipients of a $20,000 grant from the Seattle Office of Economic Development and the King County Dept. of Health and another $12,500 from the University of Washington Foster School of Business.  The $20,000 provided by King County is part of a larger $1.1 million dollar grant to get more produce and whole foods in convenience stores and corner stores in areas of low food access. 

Stockbox Grocers debuted their shipping-container-store in Fall 2011 in the parking lot of an apartment complex in the Delridge neighborhood.  Their first pop-up store was open for an 8-week trail period, closing in the first week of November (Ferrence, and Gjurgevich).  Stockbox offered healthful options like fresh fruits and vegetables, dried beans, rice, pasta, milk, yogurt, cheese, eggs and nuts; but they also carry less health oriented foods like Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup, packaged macaroni and cheese and Jiffy Peanut Butter, because they wanted to provide foods people would actually buy (Thompson). 

In deciding what to stock, the founders noted that: “Most families, most communities, buy the same five to 20 items, week in and week out, so they only need to go to a huge grocery store once or twice a month to get the remaining items” (Bruder).  During their 8-week run they found that 25-30 people came in to shop each day, often commenting on how nice it is to have groceries nearby and telling their stories of previously having to walk very far or take several buses to grocery shop. 

The founders are receptive to any advice or suggestions and when a customer suggests that they carry a certain ingredient that is more culturally or regionally appropriate, they quickly can add that to the shelves.  Since Stockbox’s infrastructure consists of preexisting shipping containers, they "can drop a store into a community and have it up and running pretty quickly, rather than having to spend months building out a brick and mortar location” which increases Stockbox’s potential to have a huge impact on food sovereignty by being able to quickly target and act in the highest need areas.

So what does this do for food security?  It is a necessary step towards better access to healthy foods. Of course, there are much more deeply seeded problems of income inequality, structural racism in the housing and employment sectors, and the demands placed on those working in low-income jobs (e.g., often longer hours, harder physical labor, poorer or non-existent benefits, and much lower pay); these conditions take time and energy away from one’s ability to grocery shop and prepare healthy meals. 

The way jobs and hourly wages are structured make it much easier to stop at a fast food restaurant after work for dinner or to feed a family Of course, the ideal solution is to deal with the huge income inequalities in neighborhoods like Delridge, especially since those inequalities disproportionately affect communities of color.  In the mean time, making real food accessible to low-access areas is critical.  The stockbox idea provides one viable option, even under the structural inequalities that favor fast-food chains.

With its mobility, minimal input costs, and low prices, Stockbox Grocers may be an important “transitional” answer to the challenges and deprivations posed by urban food deserts.  While it may be a temporary institution, it has potential to become a more permanent structure, especially if it can continue to sell at lower prices because of its lower operating costs.  It would be fascinating to see if the Stockbox model became a neighborhood-managed worker co-operative.

Stockbox is still in its infancy but is proving to be innovative and receptive to criticism. For example, I would push Stockbox to have at least 50 percent of its product available for purchase with either SNAP or WIC credit, including all of the produce available for purchase by those programs.  I would also suggest that anyone working at Stockbox be knowledgeable of food preparation; if a customer asks what s/he could make that is quick, easy and healthy, I would expect the Stockbox employee to be a source of accurate knowledge.  I would encourage Stockbox to have recommended recipes posted next to certain items and provide short instructions on how to prepare certain vegetables, grains and legumes.   

It is easy to critique any start-up and I am not without my own criticisms, but overall the Stockbox idea is innovative, resourceful, and so far relatively effective.  With the success of the first one, they team is looking to open a permanent Stockbox in Delridge, Skyway and/or Southpark in Spring 2012 (Thompson). I encourage readers to go and see it first hand and offer necessary suggestions on how to improve this model; I also encourage readers to ask the more important questions about food deserts.  How has structural racism manifested to create food deserts and whom do they effect?  What is the point of having access to fresh, whole foods if the people in that neighborhood do not have the time to prepare it?  How do structural inequalities affect access to healthy foods?   While operations like Stockbox are helpful, they do not solve the

           

Bruder, Jessica. "A Start-up Tried to Eliminate 'Food Deserts'." New York Times 01 Nov

2011, n. pag. Web. 28 Nov. 2011

"Delridge Neighborhood." City-Data. City-Data.com, 2009. Web. 27 Nov 2011.

<http://www.city-data.com/neighborhood/Delridge-Seattle-WA.html>.

Ferrence, Carrie, and Jacqueline Gjurgevich. "Delridge Stockbox." Stockbox Grocers

Stockbox Grocers, 2011. Web. 26 Nov 2011. <http://stockboxgrocers.com/stockbox

-pop-up/>.

"Food Deserts." USDA. USDA, n.d. Web. 27 Nov 2011. <

http://apps.ams.usda.gov/fooddeserts/foodDeserts.asp&xgt;.

Thompson, Lynn. "Stockbox Brings Good Food To Where People Live." Seattle Times 06

Nov 2011, n. pag. Web. 28 Nov. 2011.

Woodward, Curt. "Stockbox Grocers: the Food Store That’s Kind of a Tech Startup (Inside a

Shipping Container)." Xconomy; Seattle. Xconomy, 11 Nov 2011. Web. 17 Nov 2011. <http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2011/11/09/stockbox-grocers-the-food-store-thats-kind-of-a-tech-startup-inside-a-shipping-container/>.

Guest Blog: Food Sovereignty for all Bodies

Moderator's Note: This is another contribution from students in the food sovereignty seminar I am teaching at the University of Washington this autumn 2011 quarter. This post is from Zoe Emery Handler and it focuses on a seldom examined dimension of the struggle for food justice, namely the challenges faced by persons with differently bodied (qua, disability) experiences. I have certainly learned a lot I had never considered from this wonderful post by Ms. Handler.

Food Justice for the Differently Bodied

Zoe Emery Handler        

            Food security is an extremely flawed paradigm and yet still dominates contemporary conversations and discourses addressing world hunger. Working to only meet the caloric needs of the world’s poor oversimplifies the various types of nourishment – nutritional, cultural, and spiritual – that food plays in fulfilling people’s lives. Additionally, such a conventional model encourages the proliferation of monoculture profit-motivated mass food production that further disenfranchises peasant farmers and makes it nearly impossible for migrant workers and others involve in food production worldwide to earn a living wage.

            Mainstream discourse about ‘food security’ only focuses on the need for the re-distribution of food rather than proposing radical re-imagining the way in which food is produced. However there is an emerging global movement calling for ‘deep food’  – food that is nutritionally adequate, environmentally sustainable (i.e. local, organic), culturally appropriate, and ethically produced. Leaders of the movement – including organizations like La Via Campesina  –  cite equality as a prerequisite for the attainment of universal ‘food justice’ and work to eradicate racism, sexism and classism across the globe.

            Yet, in spite of their recognition of the role that structural violence and institutionalized oppression plays in food distribution, even these progressive forces for food justice fail to consider or propose solutions that can address the food inequality faced by differently-bodied persons. Recent research “suggests that more than a billion people in the world today experience disability” (World Health Organization); this constitutes a great segment of the global population. It has been proven that “work-limiting disability substantially increases the risk of food insecurity for low-income families” (Nord 2008). Such a significant and marginalized portion of the world’s population cannot be excluded from the conversation of food sovereignty any longer, and their participation is necessary in order to truly meet the goals of food sovereignty for all.

            Barriers that now restrict differently bodied persons from accessing ‘deep food’ are multi-faceted, but primarily are rooted in economic inequities. Food insecurity disproportionately affects disabled persons simply because of lack of access to equal educational and employment opportunities that then decreases their earning power, limiting their options vis-à-vis food purchasing. Current programs in place in the U.S. that help persons with food insecurity - both with and without disability - are inadequate to meet the needs of their food consumption. One such example of a program is SNAP.  “The average SNAP beneficiary received $125.31 per month in fiscal year 2009. If food stamps constitute a person’s entire food budget—as often happens, even though the program is intended to supplement recipients’ own money—that translates to just under $1.40 per meal”(Mason). It must be remembered that those who are differently bodied may also incur living costs directly related to the maintenance of their disability, making it more likely that food stamps will be the only resource for putting food on the table. Such a low budget for food limits the SNAP users access to fresh nutritionally dense foods, and instead drives beneficiaries towards convenience and ‘junk foods’ that are available in larger quantities at a lower price.

            For differently bodied persons ‘deep food’ will also require things beyond the standard definition of nutritionally adequate, culturally appropriate, and ethically produced. Management of certain chronic illnesses - e.g. Diabetes - will require specific nutritional adjustments that differ from the nutritional needs of typically bodied persons. Additionally deep food must be physically accessible, something which will require the construction of food delivery systems which provide nutritionally and culturally adequate foods and the revamping of farmers markets and other such food sources so that they are equipped to deal with handicaps. Although adjustments in physical structure and accessibility are vital for including differently bodied persons in food sovereignty and deep food, such spaces must also be emotionally accessible. Widespread discomfort with disability and general misinformation about what it means to be disabled often results in differently bodies persons being subjected to demeaning behavior while exercising their right to autonomous food purchasing decisions.  Making deep food accessible to disabled persons is a complex process but at the root of all such efforts there must be a push to work towards the elimination of the idea that the differently bodied exist as the ‘other’. Structural inequities of the disabled, emotional and physical inaccessibility and discrimination all result from the dehumanization of disabled persons. Before there can be true universal food justice for differently bodied persons, differently bodied persons must be seen as intrinsically as valuable as their typically bodied counterparts. 

Works Cited

Mason, M.. "Food stamps for good food." The Nation. N.p., 2011. Web. 20 Nov 2011. <http://www.thenation.com/article/159160/food-stamps-good-food>.

Nord Mark, . "Disability Is an Important Risk Factor for Food Insecurity ." Amber Waves. N.p., 2008. Web. 25 Nov 2011. <http://www.ers.usda.gov/Amberwaves/february08/Findings/Disability.htm>. 

World Health Organization, The World Bank. "World Report on Disability." World Health Organization. N.p., 2011. Web. 30 Nov 2011. <http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2011/9789240685215_eng.pdf. 

Guest Blog: Food Freedom or Food Justice?

Moderator’s Note: With this blog, we re-initiate a series of contributions by students in my University of Washington courses. This contribution is from a student in my Chicano Studies 498a Special Topics seminar, “Food Sovereignty Movements in Mexico and the United States.” The posting was prepared by Steve M. Sullivan-Zárate, Esq. and is a fascinating reflection on the possible opposition/contradiction between “food freedom” (a.k.a. consumer freedom of choice) and “food justice” (the abolition of hunger and the provision of adequate, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food).

“In Poor Taste”

A Glorious and Belligerent Treatise from the Age of Deep-Fried Consciousness

By Steve M. Sullivan-Zárate, Esq.

            In favor of discourse surrounding buzzwords such as shade-grown, sustainable, slow-food, deep-food, fair-trade, seasonal, local, equitable, organic, and whatever else, a commonly overlooked topic in the dialogue surrounding food justice are the matters of convenience and taste. We can talk all we want about eating locally, sustainably, organically, equitably, and so forth, but when all’s said and done, when people have a choice about what they eat, there is always the risk that people will choose based on taste, convenience and comfort instead of the environmental or socio-cultural impacts. With this writing I would like to explore the paradox of Food Freedom and Food Justice.

            It would probably behoove me greatly to begin by defining the key terms. After all, one hears the word Justice thrown around with the same impunity as the word Freedom. They’re often even used in collaboration, as though they are but two complementary flavors inhabiting the same delicious candy bar, arm-in-arm in the revolutionary struggle of peanut butter and chocolate. “Freedom and Justice for all”. To complicate the common, simplistic and unexamined definitions of Freedom and Justice, Albert Camus once famously said: “Absolute Justice is achieved by the suppression of all contradiction; therefore it destroys Freedom”.

            This phrase seems to suggest a contrary interpretation; that instead of and far from being collaborative ideals, they are in fact, in their purest forms, actually in direct opposition to each other. Absolute Justice would mean that there really is “one correct way” whereas Absolute Freedom would mean the complete absence of taboo - every path open, just as valid as the next. “Every/any way” vs. “One way / the right way”. Freedom vs. Justice.

            Humans naturally crave certain, specific tastes- sweet, salt, spice, and fat. This inclination wouldn’t normally be a problem except that we’ve ceased to eat food opportunistically like every other member of the community of life. Naturally, we would only very rarely come across enough sugar, salt, spice, or fat to pose a particularly grave threat to our health. The urge was always there throughout our evolution exactly because those foods were so scarce but we do need a certain amount of them in our diet. After the advent of intensive food production (which operates on the premise that all food is ultimately human food and is often referred to as “Totalitarian Agriculture”), we suddenly had access to huge quantities of foods that were cultivated to satisfy our hereditary urges for certain tastes. When you get right down to it, there are really good reasons for both why people eat at fast food restaurants or munch candy bars, and why the sale of fast/junk food is so obviously successful. Reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with economics...It’s convenient and tastes good. Nevermind that comfortable foods are harmful on any number of levels, they are not only cheap and convenient, but they also happily satisfy the tastes that we crave- sweet, salt, spice, and fat. Herein lies the problem of Freedom vs. Justice.

            Consumer-citizens of dominant culture the world over (but especially Americans) have to choose between eating something because it’s seasonal, organic, healthy, etc..., or to eat something that they know comforts them, tastes very good, is quick and ready, and satisfies their evolutionary cravings. Activist groups have found themselves in the unsavory (pun intended) position of trying to argue against what tastes best to the human tongue and is most easily at hand. It’s like when parents admonish their children to eat their meticulously prepared Lima beans and Spinach “because it’s good for you” even though it tastes like... Lima beans and Spinach and you could have just thrown in a frozen pizza. In this way it could be considered Freedom to have a myriad of food options and the right to choose whichever, but it could be considered Justice to have “one right way” to eat: local, slow, deep, organic, seasonal, and all that.

            And don’t mistake me and get all angry dear reader. I’m not saying that because foods are produced respectfully, they can’t taste good or be incredibly flavorful, but I AM saying that they usually don’t taste like a goddam Snicker’s bar so let’s do away with that critique right now. Junk food has a gravity all it’s own. If ice cream didn’t make you fat, have any adverse health effects, was readily accessible worldwide and could be produced respectfully/organically/sustainably/whatever, then who would eat fair-trade, shade grown, local organic broccoli instead? Come on now. And I’m a man that loves me some good steamed broccoli. The fact is that people gravitate towards quick food that meets their cravings. Heirloom squash is all well and good but people seem to like the McRib despite overwhelming reasons not to.

            It’s news to me, but apparently every economist worth their salt (notably Paul Hawken, Richard Robbins, and Milton Friedman) knows that to maintain a healthy Capitalist economy it must increase annually by 3 percent. This implies three very important things to me: 1) There is an underlying assumption that infinite growth on a planet with finite resources is even possible, 2) people always need to sell more (and profit, which means selling something for more than you know it’s worth or buying for less than you know it’s worth), and 3) people always need to buy more. What happens when people are satisfied with what they have or want to live within their means? The economy falters and the entire apparatus of the dominant culture shows its fragility. In order to keep things running smoothly, businesses have created a competitive advertisement industry based entirely around carefully suggesting that people buy, suggesting that people... indulge. Like Burger King says: “Have it your way”.

Dominant culture fetishizes both consumption and Freedom, (hell, we invade other countries ostensibly just to spread the gospel), and what better way to demonstrate consumer freedom than an abundance of food choices? Even small town grocery stores have literally dozens of varieties of salad-dressing, pasta sauce, potato chips, chocolate and other products, not even counting the foods you mix and match yourself.

For a culture in which everything bends to the needs of the economic system, is it any great surprise that consumers have been fully indoctrinated into the notion that “the customer is always right”? We’re conditioned to the point that even the way we make friends and interact with other humans follows this mandate of comfort and indulgence. We can block phone numbers and online chat partners if anyone says word one with which we disagree. We can get delivery food or go through the self-checkout to avoid any possibly uncomfortable social interaction. Almost everything is considered disposable. At every point the “Westernized” consumer is encouraged to act based solely on comfort, convenience and taste.

The other day I overheard someone telling a friend that: “The only thing Americans fear is inconvenience”. I thought that was an apt appraisal. The battle here is unbelievably difficult because not only is it internal and subtle, but it counters the fairy-tale logic with which we’re all familiar. The struggle isn’t between the forces of what’s good and what’s evil, but the forces of what’s good and what’s easy.

This all begs a question though; If we are trained and strongly encouraged from birth to insulate, indulge, comfort, and make exceptions for ourselves in order to spur the economic system, then what does that mean for our strategy if we care at all about Food Justice?

Clearly the utopian ideal would be to convince every man, woman and child the world over to personally and moreover, voluntarily become comfortable with discomfort/inconvenience, and resolve to eat a certain way because it’s more Just, but it would be more than a little naïve to bank on that kind of worldwide, individualistic transformation.

At some point we have to bring up the effects of a Capitalist economy. At some point we have to acknowledge the unsustainability of the current system of food production. Certainly at some point we must address the fact that any FORCED change towards eating with deliberation and respect, will leave many people feeling mightily displeased by the limitations on their eating habits and resentful of those who forced the change. It might even result in backlash. Asking people to adopt what’s essentially an entirely new lifestyle is a tricky proposition. Is the plan just “wait for collapse” or is it still “wait for the universally voluntary transformation to a better lifestyle”? Could change take the form of a cultural shift in the way we view and interact with the world? If so, could that culture-shift withstand the mechanism of economy that already ruthlessly put down so many other, more firmly established cultures? 

All of these are big questions, I know... but I keep coming back to that quote by Camus. If Freedom and Justice are indeed at opposite ends of the spectrum, then perhaps, like so many things in the world right now, they’re out of balance. Perhaps we need more Justice for our Food. It’s one thing to diagnose a problem, it’s entirely another to treat it. 

South Central Farm Update: Leslie Radford on SCF and Occupy LA

 

Moderator's Note: We are presenting a very insightful and significant update from Professor Leslie Radford, a long-time supporter of the South Central Farmers. In this update, Dr. Radford notes that instead of paving the way to restore the South Central Farm for the low-income and predominantly African-American, Mexican, Salvadoran, and Chicano residents of the Central Alameda neighborhood, instead of leaving them even two and a half acres for a soccer field, Mayor AntonioVillaraigosa and Councilmember Jan Perry are offering farmland to the predominantly white, and until recently mostly middle-class, occupiers of City Hall, people widely perceived as the symbolic children of Westside liberals. The offer itself will undoubtedly get more attention and add more to the environmental credibility of the two elected officials than the nail in the coffin of the South Central Farm ever will.

 

Why the Whole Movement Should Be Watching

What It Means to Occupy Los Angeles 


 

by LESLIE RADFORD

Los Angeles

All across Los Angeles you’ll find small, quiet occupations, clusters of tents sheltered by overpasses or erected in communities that emerge in the twilight and disappear at dawn. Most have been there for years, in places like Watts and Skid Row, a fact of life for much of Los Angeles south and east of City Hall.

Last night, the newest one, the biggest and noisiest, was offered a building, housing, and a farm. Occupy Los Angeles, just a little over 50 days old, has rattled the bars of City Hall, the building it surrounds, so emphatically that the monolith that is the City has rocked. Yesterday, the City signaled a buy-out deal to OccupyLA in exchange for removing the part of the encampment from City Hall’s south lawn.

Many of Los Angeles’s long-term advocates for social and economic change are trying to figure out what just happened. City Hall politicians played “divide and conquer” on a much bigger scale than deciding who gets to stay and who gets to leave the encampment. Community activists have whispered that the Occupy Wall Street movement across the United States is driven by people formerly of privilege, mostly white and with dashed expectations of a middle-class life. The City has forced Occupy Los Angeles to address that challenge, and where the movement goes next depends in great part on their next move.

Occupy Los Angeles, ensconced on the north and south lawns of Los Angeles’s City Hall, is the nation’s largest encampment associated with the ubiquitous Occupy Wall Street movement since Occupy Wall Street NYC in Zuccotti Park was dismantled in a police raid a week ago.

Although without a defining set of demands, Occupy Wall Street participants cite social justice, political accountability, and economic realignment as reasons to claim possession of land and visibility. The police raid on Zuccotti Park triggered a week of coordinated police incursions into Occupy encampments across the country, dismantling the sites and displacing the protesters. Except in Los Angeles.

Since before its inception OccupyLA has been unique in that it negotiated its encampment with City officials before the protesters took up residence on the City Hall lawn. Most in OccupyLA have asserted that the police belong with the occupiers as members of the 99% and have avoided encounters with police that might signal hostility. With the exception of an unexpected clash with police on Thursday morning and a nonviolent civil disobedience action that resulted in planned arrests Thursday night, OccupyLA as a whole has had no significant conflicts with LAPD.

Occupiers have come to know and chat with the uniformed police who stroll across the grounds in pairs. OccupyLA’s City Liaison committee has continued conversations with police and City officials, and after weeks of rumors, they announced an exchange offered by the City to the occupiers that would cede the most visible part of the lawn for some security for the occupiers. But it’s not that neat, and it’s not that easy. Dealings with City Hall never are.

First, there is the farmland. A couple of weeks ago, LAPD demanded the removal of garden boxes that some occupiers had carried to the lawn to grow food, apparently signaling to the City some interest among the occupiers in farming. And mind you, this is not a garden. A garden would be ambiguous; a Farm has special resonance in Los Angeles.But elected city officials have a more self-serving motive in offering a farm to the occupiers.

Just last week, at the behest of mayoral candidate Jan Perry, the City Council sold off land promised for a soccer field at the site of the former South Central Farm. In doing so, they most likely paved the way to turn the former urban gem into another pollution-pumping, gray and cold, low-wage manufacturing site. The grassroots blowback has been harsh on Mayor Villaraigosa who is busy defining himself as the green mayor of the Million Trees program, and, after he hit a taxicab while riding his bicycle, the champion of bike lanes. And it’s been harsher on LA City Councilwoman and mayoral candidate Jan Perry, who’s tying her election campaign to developers for the money, even as she paints herself to voters as the advocate for healthy eating and green space.

So, instead of paving the way to restore the South Central Farm for the low-income and predominantly African-American, Mexican, Salvadoran, and Chicano residents of the Central Alameda neighborhood, instead of leaving them even two and a half acres for a soccer field, Villaraigosa and Perry offer farmland to the predominantly white, until recently mostly middle-class occupiers of City Hall, people widely perceived as the symbolic children of Westside liberals. The offer itself will undoubtedly get more attention and add more to the environmental credibility of the two elected officials than the nail in the coffin of the South Central Farm ever will.

Then there is the building. The City’s offer includes 10,000 sq. ft. across from City Hall for a dollar a year. The offer  on the table is, almost assuredly, tied up with the City’s frantic divestiture of its Community Redevelopment Agency money before the state Supreme Court rules in January on the legality of the governor’s plan to redirect CRA funds from developers to schools and public safety.
The exact location is still undisclosed, as are most of the details of the City’s offer to the occupiers, but a likely site is the mostly-vacant Parker Center, the former headquarters of LAPD, now used mostly for its jail and communications facilities. Parker Center is also where protesters who attempted to set up tents at the Bank of America plaza on Thursday were booked. In spite of that, OccupyLA is renowned for its cordial working relationship with LAPD, and a neighborly arrangement between the police and at least some of the Occupying protesters, perhaps, not a contradiction.

And there is the offer of housing for the homeless now encamped on the south lawn of City Hall. In the geography of the encampment, the south lawn is perceived as the residence of the homeless, the drug users, and the stoners, all sources of friction for the activists on the north lawn. The City is asking for its front lawn back, and it’s willing to let the north lawn campers remain, at least for now. In exchange, the City is offering to open up new shelter for the homeless who will be displaced. The effort to fracture the 99% along existing seams of class and political tension is transparent.

What’s not so evident is that if the City can establish that  it has provided 1,250 new beds in low-income housing since 2007, they get out from under a 9th Circuit order that allows sleeping on the sidewalk. That would leave the City free to resume citing and arresting those who do sleep outside or even sit on the sidewalk, the infamous practice Perry was fond of for cleaning up Skid Row in her district. As recently as 2010, Perry was railing against feeding people on the street. The entwinement of the protesters and the homeless, and the City’s insistence on not feeding people in public spaces, already has led to the closing of kitchen facilities at City Hall encampment.

Ironically, the court order allowing the homeless to sleep on the sidewalks is the basis for the occupiers’ encampment now going on at City Hall. Allowing the City to relocate the people on the south lawn to new low-income housing could precipitate the eventual end of the OccupyLA encampment at City Hall.

Back at the encampment, the occupiers are in the throes of debate about persistent key organizational questions, issues that the City’s offer are forcing to resolution. The determinedly direct and horizontal democracy of the Occupation, in which everyone is heard and everyone has equal weight, is being tested by the City’s insistence in dealing with a designated group. The line between those perceived as activists and those perceived as needing assistance turns out not to be as clear cut as the line between the north and south lawns. The impetus to cooperate with the police to avoid violence, long a mantra in this Occupation, has morphed into a corollary that, among the more confrontational of the occupiers, now looks like a blanket acquiescence to authority. On one hand, the deal is being hailed as a victory for the 99% and the power of OccupyLA and its tactics. On the other, it’s being denounced as a set up. And if there’s such a thing as a third hand, a large contingent of occupiers want to ask the City for more, up to and including the wholesale resignation of the mayor and city council.

And in the community, calls are already going out among grassroots groups for their own deals for 10,000 square feet in a city building and farmland, and people who’ve worked for low-income housing for years are shaking their heads. Wittingly or not, even before the deal has been consummated, the offer itself is throwing into bright relief the economic and racial divisions that simmer in Los Angeles. It remains to be seen whether those calling themselves the 99%, there on the City Hall lawn, can figure out how they can transcend the history of fissures that is Los Angeles.

Thus far, the inertia of OccupyLA has left it out of the Occupy Wall Street limelight. That may change in the next few days, as the largest standing encampment determines what course it and the Occupy Wall Street movement will take. Can the Los Angeles occupiers navigate their way and the movement though the seas churned by more experienced politicos, or will they inadvertently crash up against the complexities of realpolitik and real tensions in Los Angeles? The Los Angeles Times is already marshaling public support for the City’s offer.

At Tuesday night’s  General Assembly, the people roundly rejected the City’s offer.  A number of reasons were cited, but it seemed to me that chief among them was rejecting the whole idea of City Hall  setting the terms of settlement.

It was reported that in meetings held since city officials made their original proposal, they have thought better of some or all of it.  Negotiators reported that the terms were a lot less sure than they were yesterday.  It was also reported that the City gave the occupiers until Monday to vacate. I’m not clear if the expectation to vacate was for just the south lawn or for the entire occupation.  In either case, people clearly anticipated a confrontation on Monday.  I missed the very end of the GA, but unless there was a hard block, the City’s offer was rejected.

LESLIE RADFORD is an adjunct professor of communications and a freelance journalist living in Los Angeles.  She can be reached at LRadford@RadioJustice.net.