Since I was much younger I have always loved folktales, parables and fables from many different backgrounds and religions. In 7th grade I even started writing folktales featuring characters I had been learning about from Chinese and African traditions in Literature class. As an activist my favorite stories have always been about cooperation. If you have a free minute or so you should read The Sufi Story and the classic Stone Soup. 

On the Food Bus we sometimes serve sandwiches with fish-shaped bread. When I was serving them earlier this month the parable of Jesus feeding the masses with 2 fish and 5 loaves of bread started scratching at my brain and I have been wanting to write something about it for a few weeks now. I still don't think I have worked out exactly what I have felt lead to talk about, but maybe this post will work it out.

This story is an often quoted miracle about what God can do with even the smallest resources (i.e. a little boy gave Jesus the bread and fish and the amount given was not nearly enough to feed the masses). Well, I believe in miracles, for sure. I've seen too many miracles happen when communities are brought together to achieve their goal. I have not really taken to reading the Bible literally so  my mind's eye tends to see the feeding of the masses as something closer to what happened in the Stone Soup story rather than supernatural division of the fish and bread.

Most days getting the Food Bus on the road with adequate amounts of resources feels like a miracle. Everyday this program needs many people for it to happen. I couldn't even give you a true number on exactly how many people put in some long hours to make this program possible, but I am so grateful to be working with them.

Solving our food security issues feels like it will take a miracle and a good dose of divine intervention. As a community we can make miracles happen and no contribution is too meager to help in the struggle. But the key is that we will have to come together to solve it. That means we have to step out of our comfort zones to meet and learn from people of all walks of life that are living the daily struggle. It means taking to task the people making decisions on food policy. And most importantly, it means finding others that are doing this work and figuring out how we can work together to build a better food system. The struggle is constant and never-ending, but there will be wins, big wins. When folks come together we manifest the wins.

Have you heard about this thing called the Farm Bill?

For the past year or so I have been following this piece of legislation with utter outrage most of the time. The Farm Bill authorizes funding for most federal farm and food polices and it is supposed to be reauthorized every five years. The Farm Bill is Big Ag's playground to secure subsides for certain crops over others and it's a big reason why crappy food is some much cheaper than real, fresh food. It is also how programs like S.N.A.P (formerly known as Food Stamps) is funded.

 In the past year I have heard every thing from huge fast food chains fighting to accept S.N.A.P benefits to funding programs that increase access to locally grown food being thrown in the mix to see what will end up in this bill. In fact, I could probably dedicate a whole blog to the Farm Bill and how it impacts us. But, one aspect actually made it into the bill that I cannot stand for and I want to talk about it and some about the intersection of Racism and Food Access.

If you are one of those post-racial America types I dare you to stick around for the rest of this blog because I am about to drop some truth on you. Racism is alive and well in America. Racism is not about individual interactions. You can treat people decent all you want, but it won't change the fact that some structures are set up to screw people of color, especially if they happen to also fall in the category of the working poor. It also won't change the fact that these structures hurt everyone, not just people of color, and we all have a stake in forcing them to change.

Now I'll explain my reason for jumping up on my soap box today. The Senate just accepted a deal that would kick the formerly incarcerated off of food assistance programs. They are trying to gut, I mean cut, funding for food assistance programs like S.N.A.P. because they are rubber band programs. This means that when the economy is doing well and people have jobs less people need this program so it shrinks and we spend less on it. When the economy tanks, like it did in 2008, more people become eligible for the program and we spend more on it to cover the new folks. People have been fighting for years to make food assistance programs static. We would only spend this amount of money on programs a year and when it runs out of money it is good luck to you good kind folks that need it. But, please do try again next year.

Some folks may be saying, "Well, if they are going to cut the program it only seems fair to give benefits to people that haven't landed themselves in jail, right?"

Yeah, I have a problem with the "deserving poor" argument. A big one.

Food is a basic need for survival, therefore food access should be a right. Deciding that some people are more deserving of assistance than others is ludicrous, unfair and completely unjust. As a Food Justice advocate I will not stand for someone to starve because they got put on the cradle-to-prison pipeline

Secondly, The Prison Industrial Complex is RACIST and guaranteed to punish the poor far more harshly than any other class.

Robert Greenstein the founder and President of the Center of Budget and and Policy Priorites said:

" The amendment would bar from SNAP (food stamps), for life, anyone who was ever convicted of one of a specified list of violent crimes at any time — even if they committed the crime decades ago in their youth and have served their sentence, paid their debt to society, and been a good citizen ever since.  In addition, the amendment would mean lower SNAP benefits for their children and other family members.

So, a young man who was convicted of a single crime at age 19 who then reforms and is now elderly, poor, and raising grandchildren would be thrown off SNAP, and his grandchildren’s benefits would be cut."

How is this just? How is it helpful? But, most importantly, how is this amendment going to effect people in real life? 

I can tell you it is going to hit the poor and people of color hardest. People like the good folks in Petersburg, VA that I spent last Summer working with to promote food security and health in their neighborhood and learning a ton about what Racism and Food Access looks like in real life. 

Petersburg residents are 90% African American. The entire city is a food desert/ food swamp. They are still effected by the outcomes of the resistance to integration with  many older folks being unable to read  because back in the day the Governor shut down the school system for five years instead of allowing black students to attend white schools and they missed those critical years of learning. Petersburg has the eighth lowest life expectancy in the the U.S. And the city likes to try children as adults to show they are super tough on crime. 

Folks that I care about are in danger of losing absolutely necessary benefits. People are elderly, they don't have any health care, experience a lot of pain, they can't work and self medicate with alcohol and drugs. Say somebody gets drunk and gets into a fight and lands themselves in jail,  which is not an uncommon story, what is this amendment going to mean for them and their family? 

They already lived in a city that had low food access. Now they won't be able to even buy the crappy cancer-causing food at the corner stores. And we already have a long history in our country revolving around what food certain groups of people have access to buy and eat as an extension of Environmental Racism.

In Kate Meals paper on Food Access in African American communities she writes:

"Nationwide, 38.1 million people, or 12.4 percent of the population, identify as African-American (or Black). When compared with the U.S. population as whole, African-Americans experience “hunger, poverty, unemployment, and income disparity” at disproportionate levels. In 2010, rates of food insecurity in African-American households were higher than the national average, at 25.1 percent. In 2008, 27.2 percent of African-American families had difficulty getting enough to eat, compared with 11.6 percent in Caucasian households overall."

Add on top of this disparity the problems people of color face with our justice system and this amendment means a lot of folks and families could lose their benefits. For some people this will mean another ticket back to jail either for falling into dangerous, high-paying, illegal work so they have enough money to buy food or because in jail they will at least get three meals a day. 

When the system is set up for people to fail it's hard for folks to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Especially when their bootstraps were cut up a long time ago. 

This amendment is wrong. This amendment is unjust. This amendment will pass if we don't do something to stop it and to stop it will take a lot more than just calling our representatives. 

Hey y'all!

This weekend was long in coming and I think it's going to be short in leaving.

Our program is serving between 650-700 kids a day at last count. That's about double what we were prepared for so this week has been interesting to say the least at all of the sites. Here is hoping next week goes smoothly. I'm planning another round of outreach this weekend and we are switching up some of our stops to see if we can get more folks on the bus. I'll keep you updated on how we are doing.

Now I wanted to talk about another project going on in Johnson City. I am also working with Grand Aspirations on local initiatives through our group Build It Up East TN. We have sister programs all over doing some great work including our name sake and good pals at Build It Up West VA. You all should check them out!

One of the community projects we have been batting around is starting a seed library...some where. The purpose would be to increase knowledge about seed saving, protect heirloom and open-pollinated seeds and getting seeds and knowledge out to anyone that wants to start gardening. Plus, we would get a chance to give GMO seed producers like Monsanto the finger in a matter of speaking.

If you have been following the rulings of the lower courts and recently the Supreme Court then you know it's not looking all that good for food policy or farmers. Intellectual property patents have been used as a cruel tactic to take over the food supply. If you control the seeds, you control the food. And right now Big Ag is tilting us all towards monocrops and destroying the biodiversity of our food under the flag of ending global hunger.

If you are like me, then you agree that this is more of an equation to guarantee global hunger.

If the system is broken we must grow a new one.

So what do you all think? Should we start a seed library in Johnson City?

Unicoi, TN 

Well, my worst fear happened today. The very first day of service we ran out of food. It was an easy fix, we survived and even managed to just be 15 minutes off schedule the whole day.

The drive home was particularly beautiful after a stressful day and I realized why I love it here so much. I realized why I love coming home no matter how far I've gone. It's the view. Every where you turn rich blue hues and many shades of green dazzle your eyes. The mountains surround us in this fantastic hug. You can't help but feel at peace and protected by the mountains.

 Now, lets talk a little about food access.

Many of the neighborhoods I visit are government subsidized housing or working class folks that are just barely above the poverty line. These folks have the knowledge and ability to access help for assistance programs if they need them. They even knew that you can buy seeds with your  S.N.A.P. benefits (formerly known as Food Stamps).

Then there is Railroad St.

Railroad St. is the wrong side of the tracks neighborhood in Erwin. I won't lie, it's a pretty shady area of town known as the home of our very minimal gang activity and drug deals galore. I'll also be honest and say that this is a part of town I try to avoid and it's the only neighborhood on my list that I was worried about visiting alone despite knowing folks down there and knowing they are good people. This is another intersection I'll have to talk about another time.

It is full of working class folks that barely make enough to shelter themselves and have to decide between food and a place to live often. It is full of immigrants and many multi-generational homes. The housing that folks can barely afford is dilapidated and probably very unsafe. This neighborhood needs some justice. Folks have been beaten down by life and by a broken system that sees them as collateral damage for too long.

When I went door to door talking to people about our food bus I ran into stories of folks that were in desperate need of food and didn't know where or how to get help. They had S.N.A.P, but it ran out in two weeks and for the rest of the month they barely had anything. They knew about the dinners at the Methodist church on Wednesdays and they knew about how to get a referral from DHS to get a box of food from Care and Share once a month, but they needed more help and I could tell because they were all getting on the thin side. Well, that's where my knowledge of charity ran out an my anger at the lack of food access in my own town boiled up.

I would probably classify where they live as a food swamp. A food swamp is an area that has low access to food and the food that is available for purchase is usually cheap, high-calorie, nutrient-poor, GMO, chemically altered, crappy food.  Places to get food in a food swamp are typically gas stations, usually corner stores, Dollar Stores, etc.

Food Justice is more than having food to eat. Food access means more than the ability to buy food. And food insecurity, as in not having a clue from where or when your next meal is coming, is a big problem locally, nationally and globally. You don't have to travel far to find people having a hard time feeding themselves. People are starving here. People are starving in developing countries.What are we going to do about it?

Feeding the hungry is an important step. We must go beyond that simple act and ask important questions. Why are people hungry? How do we empower them to take back control of their own food security? Is this something we can do alone or do we need broader scale measures? And specifically pertaining to myself and this neighborhood in my home town: Why is this neighborhood in such terrible conditions and lacking access to clearly needed basic resources for survival?

Charity makes poverty bearable, it doesn't solve problems or, in some cases, even help people. Not really. Charity creates an Us vs. Them mentality. WE are "helping" THEM. This is not helpful nor is it okay to think in these terms. But before I climb up on my soap box about Charity vs. Solidarity I will stop and continue.

I heard an excellent quote from some random person talking about military cuts on NPR today. I'll take the time to look him up and give him credit later. He said, "the first act in solidarity is breaking bread with one another." --see why I liked it so much?

 Now I am breaking bread with this community. I hope this is my first act of solidarity with them. I hope to learn from the people that live there and I know that I will. I'm not sure how to start being a good ally and showing solidarity with this community yet, but I am open, listening, thinking and connecting. Let's hope that turns into something useful. Till then I choose to keep working on anti-hunger and anti-poverty issues. I'll keep talking about food access and demanding that everyone in my community has Food Justice.