The Aspen Institute’s Food & Society Program and Share our Strength explore the relationship between the food movement and historic inequities
Contact: Jon Purves
The Aspen Institute
Jon.Purves@aspeninstitute.org
Washington, DC, October 21, 2020 – Today, Food & Society at the Aspen Institute and Share Our Strength announced a new collaborative speaker series, Conversations on Food Justice. Conversations will examine the roots and evolution of the food movement and how it intersects with race and class, as well as health, educational, and environmental inequities. The food justice movement as we know it today was born of the legacy of organizations like the Black Panther Party, which launched the Free Breakfast Initiative in 1966. This first session will explore the origins of the food justice movement, and how it intersects with fostering racial equality.
The inaugural session, The Radical Origins of Free Breakfast and the Food Justice Movement, will take place on Thursday, October 29th from 2-3pm ET and will feature as moderator Norbert Wilson, professor of Food, Economics, and Community at Duke Divinity School, in conversation with Ericka Huggins, educator and a former member and leader of the Black Panther Party, and Devita Davison, executive director of FoodLab Detroit. , and registration will be free and open to the public. Conversations on Food Justice will include a multitude of diverse voices to discuss the consequences of unequal food access, and how the food justice movement can be a catalyst for equity.
“The pandemic has exacerbated a problem that even beforehand was unacceptable,” says Share Our Strength’s Founder and Executive Chair, Billy Shore. “If we don’t aim our efforts toward food justice, then anti-hunger work – though essential – will be just a band-aid, not a solution. Conversations on Food Justice will elevate voices that educate, inspire, and challenge ourselves and others to go beyond charitable responses and address the root causes of why so many Americans experience hunger. This is a solvable problem.”
“Good food can be good only if it has been raised by people who are treated and paid fairly,” says Corby Kummer, executive director of Food & Society at the Aspen Institute. “At a time when the safety as well as the rights of farmers, food-service workers, and even restaurant diners are threatened every day, the conversations we’re lucky enough to be holding with Share Our Strength can bring to the forefront the people fighting for justice day by day.”
“The mission of the Aspen Institute is to drive change toward a free, just, and equitable society,” says Dan Porterfield, the Institute’s president and CEO. “Share Our Strength shares that vision and we’ve long admired its inspiring work. The No Kid Hungry campaign is a national model for how to scale efforts that literally save lives, and we’re thrilled to partner with them.”
Registration and program schedule are available at the Aspen Institute’s virtual events page. Sessions will be recorded and archived on the Share Our Strength and Food & Society . The next discussion, projected for the first week of December, will examine the perceptions, policies, and practices that keep people hungry, and how safety net programs like SNAP and WIC can be reimagined to fill gaps in access to healthy and affordable food.
Share Our Strength is ending hunger and poverty – in the United States and abroad. Through proven, effective campaigns like No Kid Hungry and Cooking Matters, we connect people who care to ideas that work.
https://www.shareourstrength.org/
Food & Society at the Aspen Institute brings together public health leaders, policymakers, researchers, farmers, chefs, food makers, and entrepreneurs to find practical solutions to food system challenges and inequities. The common goal is to help people of all income levels eat better and more healthful diets—and to enjoy them bite by bite.
https://www.aspeninstitute.org/programs/food-and-society-program/
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