Liberating our tables: Changing how we eat to change what we eat
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Published in the Michigan Citizen
• Sun, Apr 29, 2012
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By Gregg Newsom
This is the latest in a series of columns discussing the Environmental Justice Principles drafted and adopted by delegates to the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit held Oct. 24-27, 1991.
Last week, our co-columnist Patrick Geans Ali kicked off our discussion of Environmental Justice principle No. 7, which “demands the right to participate as equal partners at every level of decision-making, including needs assessment, planning, implementation, enforcement and evaluation.” Patrick offered up a discussion of participation in relation to the draconian political attack on community power through emergency management and the economic/geographic engineering of the Detroit Works Project. This week, as we shift our focus to this Environmental Justice principle and how it relates to food, like Patrick, I can’t imagine a better time to look at this principle.
While recognizing that I often get distracted by many issues, which is easy to do in Detroit, I try to keep food as my central focus, as many elders have advised. I perceive that food connects us all to each other and to the earth and through deepening our relationship and awareness of the food system, which reflects the entire cycle of life, I believe we can heal, reconnect and rebuild our relationships. What I perceive as large-scale corporate oppression informs my efforts in co-creating smaller, more intimate ways of doing things. While we’ve seen proof of the reconnecting/healing potential of neighborhoods through some community gardens and agricultural efforts, what I look toward is how a certain level of community participation and awareness can support a reawakening of direct democracy, one that shifts power into the hands of people.
Recently, local activists and leaders Ron Scott and Yusef Bunchy Shakur penned “Detroit’s Declaration of Peace, Hope and Love,” which wisely conveys that at “this time in Detroit’s history … Detroit needs a ‘people first’ mentality.” As I perceive it, this declaration serves as a call to not only our humanity, but to come together to support and establish liberated peace zones where communities can build power in the face of emergency management, consent agreement and corporate domination.
While it is vital we gather together in larger numbers, I humbly offer, with food at the center, that we consider the tables and benches where we gather to eat — as a family, with friends or alone — as liberated spaces as well. I’m trying to view and promote our kitchen tables and wherever we gather as spaces to practice relearning how to treat each other with respect and how to participate in community.
Can power really shift through how we eat food? I’m beginning to understand that how we eat is as important as what we eat. My relationship with food is filtered through a number of privileges, so my family and I have choices when it comes to what we eat. I also recognize there is a large population of Detroiters who, like many people around the world, have little or no choice when it comes to what they are eating. I certainly do not want to dismiss access to safe and culturally relevant food as a principle in itself but I suggest we connect more to “how” we eat, whatever it is that finds its way to our table or into our hands.
No matter what we are eating — whether we’ve made it from scratch or picked it up at the corner store — through chewing and swallowing, we are connecting to and participating with something outside of ourselves. That may sound a bit cosmic, but eating is, in reality, a very intimate act, one that many traditionally share with family, close friends and community. There has been a great deal of effort to consumerize how we eat. From the TV dinners of the 1950s to the “grab and go” food sticks peddled through gas stations today, I’ve witnessed what I consider to be a blatant attempt to dilute the power of participation at its root by resetting the family table around the television and inspiring us to consider eating food as something that should be multitasked while on the run.
I want to again lift up the importance of breaking bread together as a means of “resetting” the table and reconnecting with the personal power required for participation in decision-making, needs assessment, planning, implementation, enforcement and evaluation. I don’t want to present this as an easy task, but I’ve taken to heart that, even though we appear to be programmed for pathology though media dependence, there is something instinctual and cross-cultural about getting together to enjoy food and talk. Getting together, cooking, eating and communicating are skills that we, whether privileged or not, have been divested of. In order for us to move closer to a meaningful manifestation of this EJ principal, we need to take back how we eat so we can reestablish power over what we eat.
Gregg Newsom is the communications coordinator for the Detroit Food Justice Task Force. Visit www.detroitfoodjustice.com.
April 29, 2012 No Comments
Reminder: Deadline April 30th, Undoing Racism DFS Advanced Training
Undoing Racism in Detroit’s Food System Advanced Training
Please spread the word!
Undoing Racism in the Detroit Food System Advanced Training will take place on Friday, May 4th, 6:00pm – 9:00pm and Saturday and Sunday May 5th and 6th from 8:00am-5pm at MSU Center, 3408 Woodward, Detroit. The cost of registration is $165 for two and a half days and includes lunch both days and a “lite breakfast”. While we recognize the extent of the time commitment, it is important to the process that those participating must attend the entire period.
This training is being facilitated by CrossRoads Anti-Racism Organizing and Training. http://crossroadsantiracism.
Scholarships are available, first-come, first-served and limited. Please also note that space at the workshop is limited to 40 people. All applications must be received by April 30, 2012. Priority will be given to those who live or work in Detroit, or have participated in the monthly Undoing Racism Gathering sessions. Checks should be made payable to The Capuchin Soup Kitchen with Undoing Racism placed in the memo line and mailed to URDFS c/o Shane Bernardo, Earthworks Urban Farm, 1264 Meldrum, Detroit, MI 48207. The full application is available for download.
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/events/354389197942052/
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April 27, 2012 No Comments
Southwest Detroit Freedom School
Detroit – TODAY and for the next five days: Please support and spread the word! This deserves national coverage. These students need to be lifted up as the leaders they are. In our current political/economic climate, I believe we all have an opportunity to learn from and be inspired by the way they are rolling with this. In Solidarity! ~G
Soundtrack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1trVIrl9Xg
Southwest Detroit Freedom School
School Starts: Friday April 25, 2012 @ 10:55 a.m.
On Friday, April 27, 2012 at 10:55 a.m., we students of Western International High School will be starting our first day of class at Southwest Detroit Freedom School at Clark Park, across from our beloved school which we were suspended from. After over 300 of us staged a student walkout on Wednesday April 25, 2012, over 150 of us were given 5-day suspensions. One of our fellow students, targeted as the “ring-leader” is being threatened with formal charges for helping organize the walkout. We were walking out in solidarity with our fellow students at Southwestern High School to save their school from closing. More importantly, we were also fighting for quality education for us at Western, and at ALL DPS schools. We do not understand why we are being punished with a loss of educational opportunity when that is exactly what we were fighting for. To further demonstrate our commitment to education, we will be attending our own school taught by ourselves and community educators for the duration of our suspension. We are still looking for more teachers and students.
Contact us if you want to help and/or attend.
E-mail: ourvoicesouthwestdetroit@gmail.com,
Twitter: @_OurVoice, #LetOurVoicesBeHeard
Tumblr: ourvoicesouthwestdetroit.tumblr.com
Facebook Group: Southwest Detroit Freedom School
EVERYONE IS WELCOME….JOIN US!!!!
Classes will be about:
the history of Southwest Detroit
the Civil Rights Movement
Bboy/BGirl classes (Breakdancing)
the specifics of the Detroit Public School system
the Student Code of Conduct
your civil rights
Lino-cut prints
woodprints
screenprinting
social justice
Hip-Hop
poetry workshops
You will also have a space to do make up work for the days you are suspended.
and much more!
Our Demands to the Detroit Public School System are the following:
1. Don’t close Southwestern High School.
2. Don’t close Maybury Elementary.
3. Remove suspensions for students involved in the walkout.
4. Don’t keep students away from school for walking out to stand up for what they believe.
5. Don’t want suspensions to go on our student records.
6. Don’t press criminal charges against students’ involved in the walkout.
7. Don’t violate students’ rights.
8. Don’t take students’ phones and search through & delete their content.
9. Don’t lay hands on students. No more physical attacks on students by security guards.
10. No more favoritism in who is & is not being targeted for suspension.
11. No more favoritism to certain students, student groups, or sports teams.
12. Honor the DPS Code of Conduct.
13. School Supplies: toilet paper, hand soap, etc.
14. Clean bathrooms, facilities.
15. Stop making students feel like we’re in prison.
16. Higher expectations for students.
17. Better college prep.
18. Stability– teachers who will actually be there for us, who are qualified.
19. Protection of teachers & their union.
20. We want equal opportunity to education.
21. Stop selling away community assets.
22. We’re students, not money signs or criminals. Stop running school like a business or a prison.
23. Give students an equal say in what goes on in all DPS schools. Give students a place in decision-making process. We want a Voice.
24. We need to invest more into our education than what our test scores are gonna be.
25. We need a better education– not students’ fault that money isn’t being used correctly.
26. We need teachers that teach, adequate books and supplies.
27. Remove the Emergency Financial Manager. Give control of schools back to community by reinstating the School Board.
28. Stop closing DPS schools. Go with what we have, stop closing everything down. Fix what we have. Stop closing DPS schools and allowing the chartering of so many schools. Stop turning schools into for profit businesses.
29. WE DEMAND RESPECT!!!!
April 27, 2012 3 Comments
