[The following information is largely based on my experience and education with The Real Food Generation. If you are interested in this work/conversation, please consider donating to them as well as continue to familiarize yourself with other organizations on the ground, dismantling oppression in all systems.]

This blog post has been a long time coming. I’ve recently been opening up about some profound experiences of my past and the learnings I have been able to take part in. I’ve also opened up about stepping away from the work of direct organizing for food justice.

In the years since this work, I have had the opportunity to change career trajectories several times and take control of my health in a way that empowers me to live my fullest life. I’ve also always known that it is my duty and calling to give this information back to those around me so that they to can be moved not just to educate themselves, but to act.

I studied Political Science in college which can roughly be defined as the interaction between People and Systems, with an emphasis on the study of Systems (a professor once explained that Sociology is very similar with the emphasis on the study of the People in this relationship.)

At some point in early life, we are each introduced to the Systems that rule our lives. For many of us that might be our exposure to Early Education and the Public School System. For others it might unfortunately be family interactions with the Criminal Justice System. Regardless, at some point we are all exposed and we realize that this systems exist and to various degrees effect our daily lives. We also all have varying degrees of power or involvement with these systems.

Which is why, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, although hopefully you know this by now, but everything is political. The degrees to which you can ignore that truth is an example of a thing called Privilege — which means you generally benefit from these systems.

Between my freshman and sophomore years of college, I was introduced to an organization now known as the Real Food Generation. This movement met me where I was at in experiencing my own struggles around connection to food and nourishment, while making it clear that my decisions are not made in a bubble. More importantly, that every choice we make as individuals on what we eat has massive ramifications for the work around us.

I started to unpack terms like “eating local,” “organic farming” and “fair trade.” Yes I wanted to know about the health and nutrition behind what eating in these ways would do, but clearly there was a wider element at play as well. Out of many social justice issues, I found myself most drawn to food justice.

For an exposé on Organic Farming as a term (and just a great overview of the modern food system overall), I highly recommend Michael Pollan’s bestseller, the Omnivore’s dilemma.

Between all of this unpacking, I started to see that not only did I envision a food system where I felt good internally, but that was creating the type of world I wanted to see. I’ll never forget my friend Ashley telling me about growing up in Illinois and seeing two teenage boys come into town after getting sprayed with pesticides from a passing plane over acres upon acres from corn. The boys were treated like we are seeing COVID-19 play out today - full hazmat suits and need for decontamination. Even at a relatively young age, Ashley made the connection that why is this the response to people being sprayed with these chemicals when it’s intention is to apply it to our food to be eaten?!

It sounds daunting, but while at every turn there are really horrible practices taking place in our food system, I have witnessed firsthand over the last 8ish years that there truly is a movement for taking back our food supply and offering sustainable and just alternatives. This is the mission of the Real Food Generation and in bringing up the next group of leaders for the movement (check out Founder Anim Steel speak to the mission when he was named a James Beard Leadership winner)

Because racial justice and systemic racism are at the forefront of our country’s attention right now (and hallelujah for that!) I do want to break down two aspects of the food system at a high level that more directly tie to racial oppression. That said, let it be known that our entire food system is based on racism. Our land was stolen from the native peoples who lived here, and it was cultivated and tilled by enslaved peoples. When we moved to an industrial model post World War II, we continued to rely on indentured, migrant and immigrant labor which brings us to the current state.

Access to “Healthy” and Cultural Food

Taking the fact that Fat Phobia has racial ties as well (I can’t wait to read Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings), there is a stark reality that knowing someone’s Zip Code directly correlates to their overall health. Clearly we know the history around segregation and White Flight. We know that neighborhoods are often drawn around racial lines, but the connection to food here is extremely interesting and concerning.

Many of you may be familiar with the term Food Desert which means insufficient access to fresh food within a particular area. Think of places you have been where the only food sources were fast-food chains and gas station convenience stores. I love this interview with activist Karen Washington because she actually moves to the term Food Apartheid to acknowledge the systemic racism that created the phenomenon we see as Food Deserts. Also that Food Sovereignty — the ability for a community to control its own food supply — is directly linked.

Big Food actively lobbies against small farmers and communities having alternative means of growing food and meanwhile is the creator of the processed food filling store shelves. This ends up disproportionately affecting communities of color who do not have the resources and means and access to social capital to fight back and fund alternative sources. Therefore they are left once again at the hands of corporations to be responsible for their food supply — you can see where we end up with that.

Now as much as I love shopping at our local farmer’s market that is year-round and abundant (and also very expensive!) this is not even a relevant experience for many communities nor is it affordable for most people. There are some great programs out there like our Fresh Bucks program in Seattle that allows food benefits to be used at farmer’s markets but this also doesn’t get at the root of why we have a system that artificially makes conventional processed food so cheap, leaving all of the Real Food to have to compete with raising prices. Also food benefits are cut down by every conservative president and are not an end-all solution to food inequity.

If you do have the means of spending a bit more on your food (and I mean really examining your spending and making some choices here), I implore you to please please please consider investing in your own health as well as this vision for a more equitable food system by doing the research and voting with your dollar. It does help on a small scale but to see this play out in large ways, you can dive into the Real Food Commitment campaign by Real Food Generation or check out the documentary Food $en$e on the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.

This is a segway into the other topic I wanted to cover which is very relevant to COVID-19 and is particularly striking with what is happening in my home state around the virus right now.

Farmworkers’ Rights

Have you ever gone through the exercise of tracing back where your food comes from? Regardless of where you shop for groceries, the food didn’t just appear on grocery store shelves: it likely came from a distributor, who got it from a large facility that supports either one larger corporation or several smaller ones. If we’re talking animal products, there were some processing facilities along the way and potentially CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations). If it was produce, eventually you make it back to an individual farm.

Have you ever thought about who picked that piece of produce for you? Yes, industrial farming has become more mechanized but there is still a major element of manual labor.

Farmeworkers also historically have not received all the same protections as other types of laborers. Guess where this originates from? Again, who used to work fields? Enslaved peoples.

Farmworkers have no right to unionize and although are now entitled to a minimum wage, it has been very easy for employers to skirt around this. If you watch the work many of them perform day after day for extended hours (which they have no overtime protections), it quickly paints a picture of broken bodies.

What is happening in Yakima, WA is not just the COVID-19 outbreak of fears with hospitals literally at capacity. The disease has spread rapidly in the largely agricultural spaces of the county: food processing facilities. Yes, our food supply is obviously vital — everyone needs to eat. But workers have clearly been sent back to work without adequate protections to account for COVID-19 and now the people who get food to your table are highly at risk for dying of this disease.

I’m not even going to dive into the healthcare system implication here but when you look at the poverty rates of most of these farmworkers, that clearly plays a role.

Now a largely Latino employee base, farmworkers are at the forefront of immigration issues, subjecting themselves to really awful work environments because they have come to the US illegally. Yet after the picture that I just described above, do you really believe most people are seeking out this intensive work? This also continues to perpetuate segregation within areas like Yakima and similar assumptions around crime that are seen against black communities.

As I mentioned above, although this sounds daunting, you can choose with any of the meals you eat per day to vote for a system that continues to perpetuate the problems I stated above (and many more) OR you can think through supply chains and where your dollars are going to start to envision a much more equitable food system.

Google is a great resource, but as I often encourage others, listen to people’s firsthand stories. Ashley’s story about the boys and pesticides stuck with me. Hearing friends’ encounters with the immigration system has stuck with me. Listening to the workers of Immokalee share their stories has stuck with me. Listening to native tribe leaders speak about the need to protect salmon populations and fight against GM salmon has stuck with me. Reading Karen Washington’s account today of the type of food access she had growing up sticks with me. You can’t deny real human experience on the ground, sharing from what is actually happening — not some convenient or money-making media spin. This is also where the power of social media can come into play by hearing people speak from and share a much closer version of their real world.

Storytelling is such a beautiful act of radial activism. It takes bravery to stand up and share what has happened or is happening to you so listen, feel, learn and then do something about the stories you hear. Eventually like it did for me with food, you realize that there is something much greater at stake here, and we all must play a part to dismantle the current system and rebuild together.

Thanks for reading and please let’s continue this work and dialogue. The work doesn’t end until Real Food is just food.