Choked by Weeds: Food Injustice and the Poor

Photo credit: cekrypton2

It really bugs me that I talk about being vegan and buying organic when there are entire groups of people who can’t have this conversation because it’s not an option for them. They don’t have access. It’s the I would if I could, but I can’t so I won’t sort of thing.

The poor can’t afford to eat organic. This isn’t rocket science. Most normal people understand that we would be hard pressed to find someone collecting food stamps paying $2.99/lb. for organic apples at Whole Foods.

There are poor people who are hungry, and there are poor people who eat. Just because people eat, however, they are not necessarily eating food, rich or poor. They are eating “edible food-like substances” as Michael Pollan puts it. And these substances make people’s hearts burst and legs fall off. If you think I’m kidding, there’s an impoverished man I know whose amputated leg – caused by diabetes complications – has a wound so persistent that it refuses to heal. I knew a homeless girl in her early twenties who’s had parts of several fingers removed, also due to diabetes.

The point is that not having access to real food doesn’t end at hunger. People might eat, but edible food-like substances kill people, or at the very least makes them chronically sick. It’s these substances that the poor have access to, and the healthy stuff is difficult to afford or come by. Plus, whatever levels of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer the United States averages, poor people are bunched up together in droves at the summit of the (skewed) bell curve, piled high like refuse. There are more sick among the poor than among the middle class and rich. There are more poor among people of color than among non-Latino/a whites. There are more poor among single moms than among married couples, more among immigrants than citizens. The rates are alarming. Whatever social problems we have, like our ongoing diet-related health epidemic, the poor’s experience of them is worse.

A clip from the movie Food Inc. illustrates our current food crisis. It features the Gonzalez family, a struggling Latino-American family. Mrs. Gonzalez poignantly summarizes food injustice as she explains, “When you have only a dollar to spend and you have two kids to feed either you go to the market and try to find something that’s cheap or just go straight through a drive thru and get two small hamburgers. This is what’s going to fill her up more than that one single item at the market… .”

Fortunately, the food justice movement is designed to help people who normally don’t have access to good food get access to healthy, nutritious, food. There are food justice groups forming across the nation in neighborhoods where it can be difficult to obtain fresh produce and healthy food. The People’s Grocery is a good example. I strongly encourage you to watch this video, where Brahm Amadhi, its founder, explains the ways The People’s Grocery works to solve the food crisis in poor neighborhoods. He says, for example, “Today, in 2008, we have the highest level of hunger that the United States has experienced.

Photo credit: cometstarmoon

Approximately, 35 million people are vulnerable to hunger every single day in this country. That is largely consequence of economic disparities both in terms of income but also in terms of how the food system has been structured to become a mechanism for wealth creation for those who control the means of production.”

When we talk about food justice, we talk about changing systems. At the very basic it includes changing what agribusiness is allowed and not allowed to do when it comes to producing and distributing our food. This impacts all of us, rich and poor. It goes beyond this, however. Where you find food injustice, you find other injustice as well, including racial injustice. Not only are people of color overrepresented among the poor and malnourished, on the other end of the food crisis, at production, immigrant workers are paid slave wages, held against their will, beaten, or forced to work under dangerous conditions. Injustice is viral. It invades. It persists and it chokes, like weeds.

But we can’t get depressed about it. We have to do something, instead. Whatever you race or socioeconomic class, your gender or immigration status, there are groups who would love for you to join them in their fight to change systems and improve living for all of us. What we do to fight injustice, we are doing for all of us. If our food system goes to hell, it goes to hell for all of us. The poor aren’t the only ones dying at the hands of agribusiness. Diet-related health problems like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, are killing all of us. The poor happen to have it the worst.

At the very least, educate yourself. I can’t say that I know everything about our food crisis, or even social problems, and I’m a social worker. So I don’t expect anyone else to know it all either, but you can’t do anything if you aren’t well informed. This blog entry is chock full of links to articles and videos that will help get you started. And here’s a few more that I just can’t resist sharing:

In 2003, the Gotham Gazette published an article that serves as a great introduction to the food justice movement.

Photo credit: foxandfeathers

Check out this interview with eco-chef and food justice activist Bryant Terry, a very cool dude. He’s perfectly in tune to the ways poverty, race, socioeconomic status, gender and food intersect and has some great suggestions on steps we can take to help the food justice movement flourish, both on the personal and the community level.

I recently stumbled upon a blog about race and popular culture called Racialicious. I have linked you to the food section, since it most directly pertains to this conversation; however, I urge you to take a look around the rest of the site. Subscribing would be a convenient way to keep up with her posts (Subscribing to my blog would be great, too!). It will help you keep in tune with the ways race permeates through all aspects of living.

One day, when I was looking for vegan vitamins, I came across the Sistah Vegan blog, and swelled with joy when I found out that A. Breeze Harper, the author, is scheduled to come out with the first book to examine food justice and being vegan through a gendered and racialized lens. Super cool.

Happy reading! Let me know what you learn along the way.

(c) Jessica Rowshandel, 2010

Advertisement