We often read about issues of class, race, and gender, but it’s challenging to understand them beyond a theoretical perspective until you are actively involved in these issues on the ground. When we leave the desk and enter the field, learning occurs in an exciting, engaging and stimulating manner. We enter into unchartered territory with a few tools to help navigate. This kind of learning also becomes so much more personal. Reality hits, and it hits hard. It plucks those inner emotional chords; it resonates and rings with you for a while. I’ve had similar experiences before; that is the beauty of a liberal arts education. Sometimes I’ve had an outlet to discuss them. On other occasions I’ve decided to keep them to myself. I’m learning to articulate my thoughts and appreciate that this course has encouraged me to do so weekly. Most importantly, I otherwise would not have felt so intimately connected to these topics if it were not for the opportunity I have to be learning directly about food justice in Washington, D.C.

These were a powerful set of readings that exposed some of the controversial underpinnings of the food justice movement. They made me deeply question our current approach to addressing food inequality. Agyeman accurately explains the uniqueness of food and its relevance to place, asserting that “there is likely no other resource required for human survival that is as culturally bound yet so dependent upon material realities of the natural environment” (217). We always want to do the right thing, but how can we really know what that is? I think former congresswoman Eva Clayton does an excellent job of explaining the balancing act that our government policy makers and community organizations must deal with. She says, “as far as policies, we have to make sure programs are equally available to all communities—they don’t outwardly discriminate but they [are not] aggressively inclusive so there must be evidence that they are doing outreach to the most vulnerable communities” (Clayton in Ammons 16). The goals of food justice and neoliberalism are easily intertwined, and I keep returning to questions that many people involved in these efforts often ask: who are we helping, and who are we hurting? Who are we serving, and what do they really want?

Theories of change are only really effective when they recognize and center on the needs and interests of every person they are trying to positively impact. This requires the change maker, program developer, policy maker, activist, etc. to put themselves in another person’s shoes and think critically about how their mission is going to help resolve the fundamental, underlying issues that are affecting the people they would like to serve. This is much easier said than done.

I would agree with Agyeman that food justice organizations are often working within a neoliberal infrastructure, which is nearly impossible to break away from. Many community organizations that would like to help address these issues have limited resources and rely on grants as well as support from more privileged members of the community to move forward. For these reasons, it’s very easy to buy into the “alternative food movement” that is indirectly “re-creating and reproducing the socioeconomic and racial inequalities that exist in the system” (Agyeman 213). However, the end goal for these organizations is not to make a profit but to build a community. I agree that we need to be looking through an urban political ecology lens in order to find this balance that Eva Clayton describes. Supplemental food programs, like WIC and SNAP, address the symptoms of the inequalities that are present in a community. But, in order to move towards rebuilding our broken food system, we need to focus on the political, social and economic inequalities that divide our communities. I think there is hope that community spaces, like Common Good City Farm where I am working this summer, can help to maintain this balance as they encourage neighbors to connect with one another and work towards a common goal of not only growing food but building a strong and resilient community.