For me, the most telling reading of this week was actually a video. LaDonna Redmond’s Ted talk about food justice really opened my curiosity about how I think about food. Redmond started her video with the idea of an activist, and what it means to show activism about a certain pressing topic. Redmond described herself as a food activist, and talked about how her son started to develop food allergies. She described that she wanted to provide the freshest food for her son. I really liked how she talked about the definition of a food system in the context and frame of how she saw it. Mrs. Redmond provided juxtapositions of food systems with violence. I enjoyed the symbolism that she used with the tomato and the gun in saying that it was easier to find a gun than find a fresh tomato in her neighborhood. She connected her food experiences on a personal level, which left me feeling even more connected to her. Additionally, I loved how she tied food into the many social and political inequalities that have occurred in this country, and how she also broke down the economics and labor that are connected to food becoming more corporate in this country. She talked about how many of the laborers who are being exploited are minorities, and there needs to be not only immigration reform, but also a call for fair wages. I really respected Mrs. Redmond’s call to integrate the various social and political components that play into the lack of a truly defined food system in this country. I believe that as a country we should produce our own food by developing a food system in which we know exactly where are food is coming from, and allow for more equality in the distribution of food. There needs to be a revival of the time in which everyone cooked the food in which they had ultimate access to, and I think that this is the main point LaDonna Redmond is trying to convey to her audience.
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Armon, I don’t think you could be more right about this week’s readings. LaDonna Redmond faces the conversation that Pollan, Petrini and Berry ignore. She acknowledges that our food system is grounded in history, it is broken, our history is upsetting and we have avoided it, and that is exactly why our system is still damaged. When these conversations about history, economics and politics can happen on the top end of the food movement, the back-to-the land foodies and “real food” people, everyone will be more aware and think in broader, more honest terms about food in America. People need to realize that to talk about food in America is to talk about poverty in America, and to talk about poverty in America is to talk about race in America. This ultimate conversation, reconciling our country’s story of slavery, is the conversation being broached at all ends but also avoided. Until our country, as Redmond insinuates, adopts a historical narrative that paints a brutally honest and real portrait or our economic, social and political history, our food system will not be seen on a political level, and this is Food Justice 2.0. This is where the word “justice” comes into play. It’s because eventually, like environmentalism, a political value only afforded to those of privilege, food needs to come to the forefront as the central and most basic need for the American poor. Politics are where structural change occurs. DC is where these politics and the urban ag revolution come together, so enjoy it and think big.