Of Metropolitan
Washington
VISION
The United States is a nation with an abundance of food, with sections of the country deemed “the world’s breadbasket” for the massive volumes of food they produce then send out across the U.S. and the world – and sometimes throw away for the sake of the market – for both the 1% and the 99%. Yet, the US also has broad swaths of areas deemed “food deserts” – meaning areas where its residents have limited access to food stores, farms and other sources of readily available healthful food. In Washington, DC, we have the 5th highest food costs in the nation while simultaneously undergoing rapid gentrification. This condition has led to the rise of efforts by consumer groups and even the US Department of Agriculture to support such alternatives as community gardens, farmers markets, food banks and pantries, cooperative grocery stores, and other strategies to meet this most basic of human needs – that mostly affects both the working and non-working poor.
This conference is subtitled “The Why Conference” because we seek to engage the participants in exploring the answer to the basic question ‘Why in the world’s wealthiest nation does hunger exist? and, Why do we accept it as normal?’ At the same time, the conference will bring various people together to educate and be educated about hunger, food production, food access, food resources, food distribution, and to help create and develop organizations to fight hunger everywhere we find it, among our various constituencies of the 99% – mothers, fathers, children, families, elders/seniors, single adults, workers, people of color, LGBTQI+, transgender, and all oppressed groups. We seek to learn as much as we can about the subject of hunger through a variety of study schemes that will illuminate the class nature of our problem, promising to share the information as soon as we receive it as widely as possible; and to work with participants to craft solutions for the numerous problems we identify.
Read the full conference concept paper here...
We are being divided between those without any being sacrificed for those with many. Hunger is real – but we can solve it, primarily because we are the only ones who can and will.
“Food scarcity is not the problem, but the scarcity of real democracy protecting people’s access to nutritious food is a huge problem. So, fighting hunger means tackling concentrated political and economic power in order to create new equitable rules. Otherwise hunger will continue no matter how much food we grow.”
- excerpted from Backgrounder, World Hunger: Ten Myths by Food First co-founders Frances Moore Lappe & Joseph Collins
GOALS
The fundamental question we will be addressing through this conference is one that is rarely asked in any of the various sectors of the food community:
We live under a [food] system that makes its money off of the suffering of the people. The divide and conquer aspects of that system play a critical role in the development or its lack thereof, in a fight for better safe, affordable, culturally appropriate, more nutritious food. The challenge is that safe, better, affordable, more nutritious food does exist – just not for poor, working people.
Our short and long-term goals for this conference are to:
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Use it to bring us closer together and better understand the causes of hunger,
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To equalize the uneven development that currently exists within the food community,
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A clearer understanding of the existence of agribusiness that controls the food in our communities, country [and the world] and the uneven playing field it presents [i.e., Monsanto, Kraft, Walmart, to name a few, and USDA, which helps to justify its profiteering].
For the long term, we'd like to see an organization coming from this conference that, using its knowledge of the food community and struggles, pulls together a similar conference annually or biannually or a way of communicating with each other once or twice a year, sharing our successes and failures; that brings us closer to a lot of our goals of ending hunger; and crafts strategies that both ends public policies that maintain hunger while crafting corollary strategies for policies that both empower people and end hunger.
To support these goals, we also plan on a booklet coming out of the conference organizing that explains our efforts and the work in a tangible way. We also see our local/regional/national effort as one that can be replicated in other jurisdictions.
The booklet coming out of this, our ad book, will have instructions within to guide others on making use of it as a tool both to raise funds and to record the history of their work.
REGISTER NOW
Food Justice and Our Right to Food - The Fight Against Hunger
As this conference strives to be an inclusive and welcoming environment, where all participants in our food system can participate, we do not wish that the registration fee
Following completion of the registration form above, please follow the link below to complete registration by paying the $25 registration fee. This tax-deductible donation to support costs of the conference and towards building more sustainable food systems. serve as a limitation to anyone. If in need of assistance, please contact us to be considered for scholarship assistance.
Any additional amount above the $25 will go towards supporting conference scholarships towards those needing assistance. Please consider contributing, if able.
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Complete Registration
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We are proud to be partnering with others working to improve our food systems and communities here in DC. Contact us to become a co-sponsor!
cENTRAL NORTHEAST CIVIC ASSOCIATION
ADDITIONAL MATERIALS
Food Justice and Our Right to Food – The Fight Against Hunger
The Complete Conference Concept Paper
The United States is a nation with an abundance of food, with sections of the country deemed “the world’s breadbasket” for the massive volumes of food they produce then send out across the U.S. and the world – and sometimes throw away for the sake of the market – for both the 1% and the 99%. Yet, the US also has broad swaths of areas deemed “food deserts” – meaning areas where its residents have limited access to food stores, farms and other sources of readily available healthful food. In Washington, DC, we have the 5th highest food costs in the nation while simultaneously undergoing rapid gentrification. This condition has led to the rise of efforts by consumer groups and even the US Department of Agriculture to support such alternatives as community gardens, farmers markets, food banks and pantries, cooperative grocery stores, and other strategies to meet this most basic of human needs – that mostly affects both the working and non-working poor.
The idea for this conference crystallized as we discussed this area becoming more of a food desert with the rumored closing of the only Safeway in this area of Ward 7 for an unspecified time for renovations and what we would do about it. Why do we have some areas of cities with food deserts next to others without? Study shows that it is nearly the same in most cities with the food deserts being concentrated in areas populated by the working class, whether employed, semi-employed, unemployed, uncompensated – pointing strongly to the class nature of this problem. Hunger in our communities is strongly linked with numerous problems and negative health indicies, suggesting hunger is really a health problem. These same communities are also often plagued by police brutality and high incarceration rates, as well as declining numbers of safe and affordable housing options. We are being divided between those without any being sacrificed for those with many. Hunger is real – but we can solve it, primarily because we are the only ones who can and will.
The WHY Conference in March 2018 is to offer an opportunity to bring various people together to educate and be educated about hunger, food production, food access, food resources, food distribution, and to help create and develop organizations to fight hunger everywhere we find it, among our various constituencies of the 99% – mothers, fathers, children, families, elders/seniors, single adults, workers, people of color, LGBTQI, transgender, and all oppressed groups. We are seeking to learn as much as we can about the subject of hunger through a variety of study schemes that will illuminate the class nature of our problem, promising to share the information as soon as we receive it as widely as possible; and to work with participants to craft solutions for the numerous problems we identify.
Why this conference and why now? There are historical roots to our challenges with hunger, some of which are even reflected in policy. The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) was the first Defense Act passed after WWII when advocates emphasized that it was the US government’s failure to invest in its school children that resulted in so many young men having been disqualified for military service for
nutritional deficiencies. The School Breakfast Program (SBP) was operated as a pilot until the 1960s when the Black Panther Party (BPP) launched its Free Breakfast Program as one of its Survival Programs; it fed so many hungry black children that the church community was embarrassed and the federal government had trouble convincing its allies that BPP was merely a domestic terrorist group. Today, we are confronted by a new administration that threatens to cut many programs that provide support to our communities, various programs that meet critical needs, including especially food programs, like: SNAP (Food Stamps), WIC, Farmers Market Nutrition Programs, School Meals (NSLP, SBP, After School Snacks/Supper, School Milk), Child & Adult Care Food Program (for children/adults in day care), and Senior Feeding programs like the Commodity Supplemental Food (CSFP) and Congregate Meal Programs. We must do what we can knowing that we have a right to food, and mount our fight against hunger in the face of a system that does not support our interests.