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The “Food Justice” Movement: Trying To Break the Food Chains
by Mark Winston Griffith
December 2003
One of the great, often unspoken, forms of oppression that low- and moderate-income communities suffer through is the lack of access to healthy food. When I moved back to Central Brooklyn in 1985, I was stuck by its barren nutritional landscape. It wasn’t just that options like fresh produce and organic foods were hard to come by. But the storefront food provision systems themselves - “bullet-proof” fast food joints, poorly stocked and over-crowded supermarkets, cruddy, stomach-curdling bodegas – seemed to represent a level of self-destruction and dietary corruption that went well beyond my inability to buy tofu on Nostrand Avenue. While most residents and activists look at conditions such as public safety, housing availability, public education, environmental concerns and economic opportunities when taking on community development issues, seldom do we consider one of the most basic elements – how an area feeds itself – as a sign of neighborhood well being.
Recently I stumbled upon a growing movement of activists who have coined a phrase - “food justice” - that I think places how and what a community eats squarely in the context of community building and social change. Up to now “food security” has been a more common term used to describe a similar, if not broader, area of social concern. While government bureaucrats and international non-governmental-organizations alike have been using food security to call attention to a whole host of agriculture- and hunger-related issues, activists have also used it to focus on creating community-based ways of producing food in an affordable, sustainable and environmentally-friendly manner. Along the way they have sought to create local jobs, promote good health and stress the importance of small, local farmers.
by Mark Winston Griffith
December 2003
One of the great, often unspoken, forms of oppression that low- and moderate-income communities suffer through is the lack of access to healthy food. When I moved back to Central Brooklyn in 1985, I was stuck by its barren nutritional landscape. It wasn’t just that options like fresh produce and organic foods were hard to come by. But the storefront food provision systems themselves - “bullet-proof” fast food joints, poorly stocked and over-crowded supermarkets, cruddy, stomach-curdling bodegas – seemed to represent a level of self-destruction and dietary corruption that went well beyond my inability to buy tofu on Nostrand Avenue. While most residents and activists look at conditions such as public safety, housing availability, public education, environmental concerns and economic opportunities when taking on community development issues, seldom do we consider one of the most basic elements – how an area feeds itself – as a sign of neighborhood well being.
Recently I stumbled upon a growing movement of activists who have coined a phrase - “food justice” - that I think places how and what a community eats squarely in the context of community building and social change. Up to now “food security” has been a more common term used to describe a similar, if not broader, area of social concern. While government bureaucrats and international non-governmental-organizations alike have been using food security to call attention to a whole host of agriculture- and hunger-related issues, activists have also used it to focus on creating community-based ways of producing food in an affordable, sustainable and environmentally-friendly manner. Along the way they have sought to create local jobs, promote good health and stress the importance of small, local farmers.