WHAT IS GOOD FOOD? • OVERVIEW
Graphic by Christina Bronsing Lazalde. Quote from Decolonize Your Diet, accessed November 19, 2018, www.
decolonizeyourdiet.org
Food justice 2 efforts, the Good Food Purchasing Program included, address these injustices.
According to Just Food, food justice involves “communities exercising their right to grow, sell,
and eat healthy food.” What we love about food justice is that it is never just about the food.
Or, as Cesar Chavez famously said, “The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always
about the people.” 3 We can’t talk about food without talking about access to land and water,
democracy, economic justice, health, and race. Because these things are so interconnected,
food and agriculture are important tools in fighting for a better world, a world where all people
can lead dignified lives.
Many organizations are using food and agriculture to nourish, organize, and build collective
power by doing things like: creating healthy neighborhoods through urban gardening;
building economic justice for formerly incarcerated people (check out Planting Justice in
Oakland, CA!); or creating a new worker-led social responsibility model to ensure workers
rights aren’t being violated (like the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Immokalee, FL).
There are endless possibilities for how we can use food and farming to build strong, healthy
communities and improve the health of our bodies and the planet. What kind of world do you
want to create?
NOTES
1
Nourishlife. “Eating Together,” 2018, accessed January 12, 2019, https://youtu.be/UGGuRWhgO54
2
Cited in: Alison Hope Alkon and Julie Guthman (eds), The New Food Activism: Opposition, Cooperation, and Collective
Action, UC Press, 2017, p. 6.
3
Cited in: Alison Hope Alkon and Julie Guthman (eds), The New Food Activism: Opposition, Cooperation, and Collective
Action, UC Press, 2017, p. 6.
GOOD FOOD PURCHASING PROGRAM • GOOD FOOD RISING
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