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Geoforum 61 (2015) 17–26
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Geoforum
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum
Bridging good food and good jobs: From secession to confrontation
within alternative food movement politics
Justin Sean Myers a,⇑, Joshua Sbicca b
a
b
Marist College, Department of Sociology and Social Work, Poughkeepsie, NY 12601, USA
Colorado State University, Department of Sociology, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 1 July 2014
Received in revised form 2 February 2015
Available online 28 February 2015
Keywords:
Alternative food movement
Food chain worker
Food desert
Food justice
Labor movement
Wal-Mart
a b s t r a c t
Much of the alternative food movement is predicated on a prefigurative politics of building alternatives to
the conventional agrifood system, with only a smaller segment invested in a politics of confrontation
with that very same system. In the context of actually existing agrifood relations, this raises a number
of concerns. First, the movement often ignores challenging race and class inequality within the agrifood
system in favor of realizing environmental sustainability and supporting small farmers. Second, corporate
agribusinesses often co-opt the movement’s consumer-centric and health-centric framings to legitimate
low-wage big-box retail development in low-income urban communities. Third, the movement does not
always recognize how low-income urban communities are developing language and tactics to shape local
economic development. In this article, we investigate new alliances between alternative food organizations and labor organizations that use confrontational politics to demand greater food justice and
economic justice in the conventional agrifood system. Specifically, we focus on struggles against
Wal-Mart in New York City and Los Angeles and the discourse of ‘‘Good Food, Good Jobs,’’ which is used
to build alliances between alternative food activists and labor activists working to address the root causes
of food insecurity and food deserts. We find that at the core of the Good Food, Good Jobs discourse is a
politics committed to increasing the power and health of food chain workers, and more broadly, the
communities within which they live, by rejecting the tradeoff between food and jobs, which empowers
working class people to shape the development of their communities.
Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction: beyond just good food
Over the last decade popular buzzwords in much of the United
States (US) alternative food movement (AFM) have been ‘‘buy
local,’’ ‘‘go organic,’’ and ‘‘support local farmers.’’ If you have read
a food magazine or attended a food event odds are you have come
across articles, shirts, stickers, or pins that put you on notice:
‘‘Meet Your Farmer,’’ ‘‘Know Your Farmer,’’ ‘‘Every Family Needs
a Farmer.’’ The USDA has even launched a ‘‘Know Your Farmer,
Know Your Food’’ campaign. While this cultural diffusion gets
people to think about where their food comes from and who grows
their food, this discursive and strategic preference is also problematic because it reinforces the long-term bias within US culture
toward the White yeoman farmer, and ignores the reality that most
food chain workers are Black and Latino/a wageworkers in the sectors of production, processing, and retail (Allen and Sachs, 1992;
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: Justin.Myers@Marist.edu (J.S. Myers), j.sbicca@colostate.edu
(J. Sbicca).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.02.003
0016-7185/Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Allen, 2004; Alkon and Agyeman, 2011; Alkon and McCullen,
2011; Liu and Apollon, 2011). Moreover, the working conditions
and pay for these food chain workers are generally the worst, not
just within the agrifood system, but the overall economy (Food
Chain Workers Alliance, 2012).
These problems are not addressed through a farmer-centric politics; in fact, they are intensified through the economic logics and
spaces that emerge within the AFM (Alkon and McCullen, 2011;
Guthman, 2011; Alkon, 2012). By prioritizing local smallholder
agriculture, environmental sustainability, and an economic model
of paying more for food the loudest voices in the AFM promote a
niche market rooted in affluent, often White, consumers voting
with their forks (Slocum, 2007; Guthman, 2008a, 2008b; Alkon,
2012). This foregrounds a prefigurative politics of flight, exodus,
or counter power that invests the resources of the AFM into
constructing new standalone local agrifood systems, which preferences secession from rather than direct confrontation with the conventional agrifood system (Kloppenburg et al., 1996; Allen, 2004;
Lyson, 2004). Such a politics often reinforces a neoliberal consumer-based social change model and marginalizes the voices of
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J.S. Myers, J. Sbicca / Geoforum 61 (2015) 17–26
those in the movement fighting the structural conditions of the
conventional agrifood system. In doing so, the AFM has generally
ignored the working conditions and livelihoods of food chain workers in the urban centers where the AFM is most prevalent.
This oversight becomes particularly salient in the conflict over
how best to combat food deserts, areas where activists and policy
makers deem fresh, healthy, and affordable food hard to come by, if
not altogether absent. The AFM often posits farmers markets, community supported agriculture (CSA), urban agriculture, and corner
store conversions as the solution, while Wal-Mart and Michelle
Obama put forth big-box discount stores and low-wage capitalism
as the solution. In either of these cases, the overwhelming focus is
on supply side dynamics rather than demand side problems, which
translates into efforts to create spaces of consumption where food
can be brought to the poor instead of combating the economic
inequality and poverty that creates food insecurity and food
deserts in the first place. In doing so, both the AFM and Wal-Mart
merely address the symptoms of poverty, food insecurity, and food
deserts, and ignore a root factor, lack of good jobs.
This article documents two examples of new AFM alliances
between food and labor activists that challenge race and class
inequalities within the conventional agrifood system, specifically
the lack of good jobs. The first is based in New York City (NYC)
and the second occurs in Los Angeles (LA). These new coalitions
are not focused on prefigurative or stand-alone alternatives, but
on improving the conditions of work within the conventional agrifood system, and are brought together by the discursive frame of
‘‘Good Food, Good Jobs’’ (GFGJ), which unites notions of food justice and economic justice. Through an analysis of the GFGJ discourse in NYC and LA we document a more confrontational food
politics than those epitomized by the slogans of buying local and
eating healthy, one that seeks to prevent Wal-Mart from locating
in low-income urban communities in favor of higher wage unionized grocery stores.
Alongside documenting the emergence of such alliances, the
discourse and organizing device of GFGJ offers both theoretical
and practical insights into a food politics that strives for economic
security, social mobility, and public health. First, by linking economic insecurity to poor food and poor health the discourse strategically undermines Wal-Mart’s urban development strategy that
exploits the public health crisis of diet-related diseases to address
its economic growth crisis. The discourse thereby rejects the
neoliberal consumer health framework used by Wal-Mart, which
states that lower prices, instead of better jobs, is the best way to
address food insecurity and food deserts. It also rejects the implicit
assumption of Wal-Mart that low-income communities have to
choose between good food and good jobs rather than being able
to have both.
Second, GFGJ pushes against a model of social change that privileges secession. On their own, environmental and health centric
discourses limit and concede many important structural battles
on the ground that prefigurative solutions are preferable and sufficient. In avoiding the concerns of non-farmer food chain workers,
there is a missed opportunity to build a broader based movement
around matters of class and race inequities, worker rights, and control over the production, appropriation, and distribution of the
social surplus. Additionally, the thin labor analysis in much of
the AFM is a factor in why Wal-Mart’s healthwashing1 has such a
ready pull; local food advocates have primed consumers to focus
on good food and good health and ignore labor rights issues.
1
We use this term to refer to the practice of using health in order to mask socially
or environmentally problematic practices. While health advocates will use this term
to refer to misleading food labeling practices (e.g. ‘‘all natural’’), we want to highlight
how ‘‘healthy’’ food hides labor exploitation.
Third, activist’s notion and practice of GFGJ pushes scholars to
consider the growth and transformation of the AFM through new
alliances operating inside and outside conventional agrifood systems. If the AFM is invested in systemically improving the living
conditions of communities that face poverty and diet-related diseases then it is important to challenge the actors that structure
food environments and the distribution of wealth. This requires
attending to confrontational forms of politics reflected in crossmovement alliances that include all food chain workers, emphasize
labor rights, and prioritize economic justice.
Tension between secessionist and confrontational politics in
the alternative food movement
Over the past few decades, industrial agriculture has been
subject to critique by a growing and networked group of farmers,
environmentalists, consumers, and activists (Friedmann, 1993;
Feenstra, 1997; Allen, 2004; Qazi and Selfa, 2005). This broadbased movement takes many different names: civic agriculture,
slow food, food sovereignty, and food and environmental justice
(Lyson, 2004; Shiva, 2005; Gottlieb and Joshi, 2010; Petrini,
2010; Wittman et al., 2010). We refer to these interconnected activists and organizations as the alternative food movement. Despite
differences, there are common themes that bind the AFM together.
In short, the AFM claims that corporate industrial agriculture
harms the planet, farmers, democracy, and our bodies. It does so
by degrading ecosystems, denying smaller agricultural producers
the capacity to make a living, concentrating control of the agrifood
system into the hands of a small number of corporations, and giving consumers diet-related diseases.
Overall, the dominant political logic within the US AFM
incorporates components of civic agriculture, locavorism, and slow
food, and reflects a secessionist wing of the movement that is
pro-farmer, pro-sustainability, pro-good food, and consumer and
market centric. The primary concern of this wing is the negative
effects that emerge from the alienation of the food producer and
consumer from each other and the land; a problem whose solution
is said to require the relocalization and repersonalization of food
production and consumption (Kloppenburg Jr. et al., 1996; Allen,
2004; Qazi and Selfa, 2005; Hinrichs and Lyson, 2007).
The catchword for this relocalization process is the ‘‘foodshed,’’
which embeds food relations ‘‘socially, economically, ethically,
and physically. . .in particular places’’ (Kloppenburg Jr. et al.,
1996: 38). Ecologically, localizing food with smaller biodiverse
farms will embed food production in local ecosystems and improve
the sustainability and resilience of agrifood systems. Economically,
such farms can use direct retailing like farmers markets, CSAs, and
farm to school and restaurant programs to capture more of the food
dollar. By moving toward a lower volume higher price model rooted
in biodiversity small farmers are able to become ecologically as well
as economically sustainable. Politically, local food rooted in an economically independent middle-class of small farmers is presumed
to recreate ‘‘civic capital’’ and community relations. With this
comes increased democracy at the town level as inequality in
employment, income, and power is minimized through preventing
the polarization of economic and political structures into wage-laborers and corporations. Physiologically, local food that is minimally processed is claimed to be higher in nutrients and lower in the
salts, sugars, fats, and oils of many processed foods found in grocery
stores and fast food restaurants. Consequently, local food is healthier food and can reduce the prevalence of diet-related disease.
To realize these goals, advocates often call for the AFM to work
from interstitial food spaces in the hopes of developing emergent
transformations. This requires AFMs, as ‘‘movements of self
protection,’’ to prioritize the dual processes of ‘‘secession’’ and
‘‘succession’’ (Kloppenburg Jr. et al., 1996: 37). The principle of
J.S. Myers, J. Sbicca / Geoforum 61 (2015) 17–26
secession is based on producers ‘‘disengage[ing] from the existing
food system’’ and creating alternatives to the conventional system,
such as those mentioned previously (Kloppenburg Jr. et al., 1996:
38). Secession helps set the foundation of the foodshed. The second
process, succession, requires consumers to reallocate their
commitments and resources away from the conventional agrifood
system and toward alternatives. That is, it preferences supply side
solutions to problems within the conventional agrifood system. For
ease of use, we refer to this dual process as secessionist politics.
Despite its prominence, the secessionist politics of the dominant wing of the AFM is not the only political logic in the movement. The AFM is riveted by tensions between a secessionist
wing that privileges prefigurative actions, avoids engaging the
state, and focuses on voting with one’s dollar and a confrontational
wing that seeks systemic change within the conventional agrifood
system, emphasizes the positive regulatory power of the state (e.g.
through leveraging some of the 200 US food policy councils), and
prioritizes labor rights and economic justice (Goodman and
Dupuis, 2002; Johnston, 2008; McClintock, 2014; Sbicca, 2014).
This confrontational wing has raised several critiques of the secessionist wing, based on the limits that such a model places on:
building political power, challenging corporate control of the agrifood system, and developing progressive demand side solutions.
First, food localization projects do not always reduce inequality
but may actually reaffirm or intensify inequalities (Hinrichs, 2003;
Winter, 2003; Dupuis and Goodman, 2005; Qazi and Selfa, 2005).
This is not due just to insider/outsider dynamics and how these
dynamics are classed, raced, and gendered; the AFM’s economic
model of paying more for food may prevent the participation of
lower income communities (Hinrichs, 2003; Slocum, 2006, 2007;
Alkon and McCullen, 2011).
Second, the AFM’s motto of ‘‘voting with your fork’’ has produced a missionary politics of ‘‘bringing good food to others.’’ In
these food projects middle and upper class White outsiders
emphasize making proper food choices through nutrition education programs while opening a few farm stands and farmers markets in lower income communities (Guthman, 2008a, 2008b,
2011). The consumer orientation behind such projects creates
solutions based on a lack of education, despite evidence that price
points and limited disposable income are key barriers to consumption of local produce (USDA, 2001; Briggs et al., 2010; Alkon et al.,
2013). Lower income families already pay a higher percentage of
their income on ‘‘food at home’’ than do middle and upper income
families (Goldstein and Vo, 2012). Expecting them to pay more for
food without increasing their income contributes to a regressive
economic and food politics.
Third, AFM practices predicated on secessionist politics often
operate alongside conventional food spaces in a non-antagonistic
manner and even face the prospect of co-optation. Despite the
growth of the AFM, the conventional agrifood system is larger,
more powerful, and more concentrated than ever before
(Howard, 2009; McMichael, 2011). This is increasingly apparent
with the conventionalization and industrialization of organic food
(Allen and Kovach, 2000; Delind, 2000; Guthman, 2004; Howard,
2009; Johnston et al., 2009). Therefore, while the AFM has developed strong networks to create new supply chains, these networks
tend not to prioritize building broad based coalitions that can challenge the existing political and economic forces shaping the conventional agrifood system.
Fourth, small farmers, environmental sustainability, and good
food consumerism are privileged over economic justice and labor
oriented politics that focus on the conditions of food chain workers
(Harrison, 2011; McMillan, 2012; Holmes, 2013; Jayaraman, 2013;
Gray, 2014). Relatedly, millions of conventional food chain workers
lose a powerful political ally that could help advance a fair food
ethic for more than just farmworkers (Jayaraman, 2013; Gray,
19
2014). In short, a consumer-based political logic that avoids challenging corporations or the state at the point of labor overlooks
the important role conventional food chain workers play in connecting ecological, economic, political, and physiological critiques
of industrial agriculture.
Advocates of a confrontational political logic seek to recenter
the AFM on how to change the structures of the conventional
agrifood system to realize environmental sustainability and social
justice. This more confrontational wing seeks state-based reforms
that shape food labor conditions, demand side approaches that
make it easier for consumers to eat healthy and sustainable food,
and structural changes that ensure the long-term sustainability
of agricultural practices. These activists often push for labor rights,
seek to ban pesticides, aim to remove genetically modified seeds or
label the products containing such ingredients, and/or ensure public policy maintains food safety (Gottlieb and Joshi, 2010; Nestle,
2010; Schurman and Munro, 2010; Harrison, 2011).
In what follows, we focus on food activists who confront the
state and Wal-Mart over the issues of economic inequality, food
deserts, and labor exploitation. In their eyes, an AFM that privileges
local food and small-farmers and ignores urban food chain workers
misses an important opportunity to bridge a range of concerns that
can improve conditions within the conventional agrifood system
while building support for alternative agrifood systems.
Methods
Data for this article comes from two separate projects with
overlapping interests and methods. While the contexts in NYC
and LA vary, they are both major metropolitan areas with significant racial and ethnic diversity, large working class and working poor populations, historically strong labor movements, and
more recently, influential alternative food movements. They are
also both key urban markets for Wal-Mart’s growth strategy and
in each city there have been pitched political battles over the siting
of Wal-Mart stores, which offers insights into more labor based
confrontational discourses and tactics in the AFM.
The first author’s data on Wal-Mart in NYC emerges from
ethnography, in-depth semi-structured interviews, and archival
materials. For over two years, he spent three to four days a week
as a volunteer at the food justice organization East New York
Farms! (ENYF!) and a community gardener at Hands and Heart
Garden in East New York. He assisted ENYF! staff, youth, and
community gardeners in the planting, growing, and harvesting of
produce from urban farms and community gardens as well as its
sale at the ENYF! farmers market and farm stand. He also participated in monthly meetings for the organization as well as the
garden, served as a facilitator for garden meetings, and attended
monthly skill-based workshops and town hall meetings. Alongside
the fieldnotes derived from these experiences, he conducted 10
interviews, lasting between one to four hours, with ENYF! staff
and community gardeners. He also collected archival materials
including internal documents of ENYF!, reports from civil society
organizations, and electronically accessible newspapers.
The second author’s data on United Food and Commercial
Workers 770 (UFCW 770) and struggles over Wal-Mart in LA also
comes from ethnography, in-depth semi-structured interviews,
and archival sources. He spent three months as an intern with
UFCW 770, during which time he also had regular interaction with
Food Chain Workers Alliance (FCWA) and Los Angeles Alliance for a
New Economy (LAANE).2 Over the course of 20–40 hours a week, he
undertook administrative office duties such as developing maps and
2
FCWA is an alliance made up of organizations fighting to improve food chain
worker livelihoods. LAANE is an organization working to improve the economic
security of working class people throughout LA.
20
J.S. Myers, J. Sbicca / Geoforum 61 (2015) 17–26
surveys, calling strategic community partners to participate in various demonstrations, assisting with preparation for meetings with
community activists and business owners, visiting workplaces, and
participating in union and alliance protests. In addition to fieldnotes
that recorded day-to-day operations and conversations, 19 interviews, lasting one to two hours were conducted with union leadership, organizers, and key strategic partners. Last, he collected and
analyzed archival sources to reconstruct and verify relevant histories. These include internal records and documents, virtual materials
such as Facebook postings, media coverage such as newspapers, and
non-profit and government reports.
Background: Wal-Mart’s food desert challenge to unionized
labor
There are many different organizations and interests working to
end food deserts, but one of the most visible is Wal-Mart. Although
it did not begin in grocery retailing, Wal-Mart has made significant
inroads into the industry since the 1990s. Today, the company is
the single largest purchaser of US agricultural products and a little
over half of its sales come from groceries (Food and Water Watch,
2012). Wal-Mart is also the biggest customer of Dean Foods,
General Mills, Kraft Foods, and Tyson Foods. In 29 domestic markets Wal-Mart controls 50% of grocery sales, while nationally the
company controls about 33% of the grocery market; its closest
competitors, Kroger, Safeway, and SuperValu, each control four to
nine percent (Lichtenstein, 2010).
Although the social and economic effects of Wal-Mart are
mixed (Bonanno and Goetz, 2012), public perception backed by
an increasing number of studies suggests that the company contributes to driving down the living standards of millions of people
globally. These processes have been particularly apparent within
the grocery retail sector (Wood, 2013). Grocery retail has long
served as one of the few sectors where people without a college
degree can earn livable wages, receive a range of benefits, and
work in a safe environment. One reason for this is the historic power of unions to expand and maintain union density through the
growth and decline of US manufacturing (Vidal and Kusnet,
2009).3 For instance, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW),
which primarily represents grocery retail workers, is the second
largest private sector union in the US. However, the entry of WalMart into grocery retailing has forced major supermarket chains in
low-income areas – most of which are unionized like Kroger – to
reduce prices and employment, which sometimes leads to exit
(Ellickson and Grieco, 2013). At the same time, the entry of Wal-Mart
can decrease retail employment levels and reduce wages and benefits (Artz and Stone, 2006; Neumark et al., 2008). Wal-Mart’s unionized supermarket competitors have used this shifting landscape to
seek concessions from workers in order to stay in business, partially
because their economic performance diminishes with the entrance
of supercenters (Volpe, 2014). One of the overall impacts for workers
is that as Wal-Mart has increased market share, union membership
levels have not kept pace with core industry leaders, and their bargaining power has weakened (Hurd, 2008). In short, Wal-Mart is a
direct threat to unionized grocery retail workers and shifts the food
work landscape for working class communities away from middle
class mobility.
Despite the negative consequences of the ‘‘Wal-Mart effect,’’ it
is precisely its purchasing power, market saturation, and logistical
networks that are being leveraged by Wal-Mart and Michelle Obama and framed as an asset that can eliminate food deserts and
counter the public health crisis of diet-related disease (Obama,
3
There has still been a slow decline in union density in grocery retail, from 34% in
1983 to 17% in 2011 (Volpe, 2014).
2011; Wal-Mart, 2011a, 2011b).4 Wal-Mart has stated that it will
open or expand between 275 and 300 stores serving over 800,000
people in food deserts by 2016 (Wal-Mart, 2011b). This expansion
is on top of the company’s claim that it has already opened 218
stores in food deserts since 2007, which would take the total from
2007 to 2016 to over 490 stores serving 1.3 million people. Proponents argue that healthy, and to a degree, organic food, can become
affordable through Wal-Mart’s economic model premised on low
prices, low wages, high product turnover, and high volume sales.
Contradictorily, the entry of Wal-Mart into communities is associated with increases in poverty (Goetz and Swaminathan, 2006), which
is the condition under which many scholars contend food deserts are
produced in the first place (Walker et al., 2010).
Wal-Mart’s diagnosis – that food deserts are unhealthy spaces
in need of big box stores – reflects a broader neoliberal corporate
strategy to convince the public that solving these problems
requires the expansion of corporate consumption spaces rather
than equitable economic development (Ken, 2014). The major
problem with the Wal-Mart/Obama framing is that it is a cover
for a necessary act of market expansion for a company struggling
with economic stagnation (Holt-Giménez, 2011). From the 1960s
through today, Wal-Mart’s growth has occurred primarily in rural
and suburban areas that have started to reach the limits of market
saturation: same-store sales have declined for nine straight quarters, from 2009 to the second quarter of 2011, and for all four quarters during 2013. Anticipating this growth problem, Wal-Mart
started looking in the early 2000s to expand into urban areas.
Yet, since these urban areas are also traditionally the home of
unions, Democrats, and liberals who are often opposed to
Wal-Mart, the company has sought to use the language of combating food deserts to break down these barriers to growth
(Holt-Giménez, 2011).
Wal-Mart’s efforts have not gone without notice though; they
have been met in many instances with contestation by alternative
food organizations, labor unions, city officials, community groups,
and small business organizations. These groups have championed
an alternative logic to Wal-Mart’s supply-side economic model
and anti-labor practices. In contrast to a stand-alone healthy food
discourse, which is usually associated with secessionist strategies,
a diverse set of activists and organizations in NYC and LA have
articulated the discourse of ‘‘Good Food, Good Jobs’’ to support a
confrontational politics that unites food, environmental, health,
and labor concerns around the notion of economic and food justice.
There will be no Wal-Mart plantations, for there are no slaves,
in East New York, Brooklyn
East New York is located in the easternmost section of
North-Central Brooklyn. Home to more than 183,000 people, the
community is 51% Black, 39% Latino, 2% White, with a large number of the Black and Latino/a residents identifying as Caribbean
(NYCDP, 2012). It is also a low-income community struggling with
poverty, unemployment, and crime due to a legacy of redlining,
urban renewal, and planned shrinkage (Posner, 1977; Eisenberg,
1999; Pritchett, 2003; Thabit, 2005). In East New York municipal
disinvestment and white flight entailed grocery store flight and
real estate redlining became de facto food redlining. Access to
and affordability of fresh healthy produce emerged as a problem
because the community either contained bodegas that sold no produce at all, was dominated by fast food restaurants, lacked grocery
stores, or had a few grocery stores that primarily sold expired,
4
That food causes obesity (e.g. food deserts/food swamps) is highly contested (cf.
Guthman, 2011).
J.S. Myers, J. Sbicca / Geoforum 61 (2015) 17–26
moldy, and spoiled foods (Pratt Planning Studio, 1996; Gecan,
2002, 2003; NYCDCP, 2010).
East New Yorkers were not content with this situation though
and have sought out access to fresh and affordable produce
through protesting existing stores, shopping outside the community, and growing their own produce in backyard and community
gardens (Gecan, 2002, 2003; Thabit, 2005; NYCDCP, 2010). They
have also supported the city’s efforts to create healthy bodegas,
green street vendors, and use financial and zoning incentives to
lure grocery stores and supermarkets back to their neighborhoods.
Yet when rumors began to circulate that Wal-Mart was targeting
East New York, community residents aligned with politicians,
unions, community organizers, and small businesses to prevent
such an occurrence based on notions of racial and economic justice,
in spite of the fact that Wal-Mart would bring fresh affordable produce to the community.5 For these groups, addressing food deserts
means more than just access to produce.
Two outspoken critics of Wal-Mart were City Council speaker
Christine Quinn (D – Manhattan) and City Council member Charles
Barron (D – East New York). At a rally supported by the UFCW and
led by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union
(RWDSU), Christine Quinn stated her opposition to a company with
a history of racial and sexual discrimination, low wages, and
employee reliance on public subsidies,
Wal-Mart’s corporate philosophy. . .runs counter to the core
values of New York City. . .Now we. . .need to get more retail
establishments, particularly those that sell supermarket food
good for people. . .[b]ut. . .we [a]re clear about the types of
supermarket jobs we wan[t] and that we wan[t] them to be
assets to the community. . .That simply is not Wal-Mart
(Lombardi, 2010).
Mr. Barron has used less diplomatic language when speaking about
Wal-Mart, calling the company a ‘‘roving plantation’’ that is not
welcome because ‘‘there are no slaves in East New York’’ (Stewart,
2011). He has also publicly critiqued the Wal-Mart/Obama alliance
for using the public health crisis of diet-related disease to reinforce
low-wage development models in Black communities,
[F]ar too often when you travel through low-income communities like ours you see McDonalds and fast food. This fast food is
killing us. . .creating obesity and diabetes. . .when you walk
around, get off the subway, all you see is fast food. . .Michelle
Obama might be right about food but she is wrong about
Wal-Mart. We want jobs and work that allows you to unionize,
have a pension, a living wage, there is nothing better than a living wage.
In order to stop more low-wage development in East New York, Mr.
Barron has tried, with the aid of his wife, Assemblywoman Inez
Barron (D – East New York), to block Wal-Mart’s entrance by preventing a land sale between the city and Related Companies, whose
Gateway Center complex would have Wal-Mart as an anchor store
(Tracy, 2010). Because the City Council has no official power to
block who Related Companies leases space to and since the city
already approved the shopping mall project one of the major plays
left – besides community organizing to create a pro-union antiWal-Mart climate – has been to refuse to allow the land transfer
to occur.
5
This capacity of Wal-Mart was tacitly supported by Mayor Bloomberg but he used
little political capital to ensure Wal-Mart moved into East New York. Given high
unemployment rates and lack of grocery stores in the community, local politicians
and religious and community leaders met with Wal-Mart in closed-door meetings in
an attempt to ensure local hiring and above average wages. While not all community
residents were anti-Wal-Mart they were worried about local economic impacts and
whether Wal-Mart jobs would be pathways out of poverty.
21
Alongside politicians, unions have played a particularly important role in organizing to keep NYC Wal-Mart free. The International
President of the UFCW, Joe Hansen, emphasized that good jobs are
fundamental to creating access to and affordability of good food,
[T]he First Lady’s commitment to addressing childhood obesity
in the U.S. is laudable. . .But with income disparity between the
rich and the poor at more extreme levels than during the Great
Depression, Wal-Mart must be held accountable for. . .[it] is
more responsible than any other private employer in our country for creating poverty-level jobs that leave workers unable to
purchase healthy food or provide a good life for their families
(UFCW, 2011).
In NYC, this has meant UFCW Local 1500 working with the NYC
affiliate of Jobs with Justice to launch the Good Food, Good Jobs
campaign.6 A central part of this campaign involved working with
the Mayor, the City Council Speaker, the Department of City Planning, and a coalition of community groups to create the Food Retail
Expansion to Support Health (FRESH) initiative that provides financing and zoning incentives to expand grocery stores and supermarkets in underserved communities. Speaker Quinn has reaffirmed
UFCW’s claims that the FRESH initiative cannot solely be a good
health campaign, but should also be an economic justice project
where food can be strategically employed to create good jobs, ‘‘We
talk a lot about getting people food, so they can feed their families.
Now let’s use food to get people jobs, so they can afford to feed their
families’’ (Quinn, 2009).
Another group pushing back against Wal-Mart is Wal-Mart Free
NYC, a coalition of unions, community based organizations, faithbased organizations, elected officials, and small businesses. Bertha
Lewis, who works for the coalition and previously worked with the
Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN),
was vehement in her opposition to Wal-Mart’s entrance into the
city based on wanting good jobs, not just any job,
Their strategy now is urban expansion, which is code word for
black and brown neighborhoods, poor neighborhoods, places
that they believe are not as powerful politically, that have high
unemployment and poverty, so that they can come in and be a
predatory retailer. For years, a red line was drawn around these
neighborhoods, and they didn’t have access to credit. It’s almost
the same language now. It’s ‘‘Aww, you don’t have access to fresh
food’’ and ‘‘Aww, you don’t have access to affordable goods. Let
Wal-Mart help you.’’ It’s a cynical race-based ploy. . .we’re not
here for a Wal-Mart plantation. There was full employment on
plantations, but we’re not going to do that here (Scola, 2012).
In addition to political officials, unions, and economic justice
organizations, the food justice organization East New York Farms!
(ENYF!) has supported efforts to prevent Wal-Mart from locating a
mere two miles from their network of urban farms and community
gardens. While ENYF! politics are focused on building an alternative agrifood system through local sustainable agriculture and
community-led economic development they also form alliances
with organizations working to transform the conventional agrifood
system and improve conditions for food chain workers. Most
recently, workers at the local grocery store Farm Country and organizers for New York Communities for Change (NYCC) used their
space in a successful campaign for back wages and unionization.7
Sarita Daftary, the project director of ENYF!, does not believe that
Wal-Mart has much of a positive role to play,
6
Jobs for Justice is a national network of local organizations that utilize grassroots
organizing to realize workers’ rights, economic justice, and democracy.
7
NYCC is a coalition of organizations across New York City and Long Island that use
direct action, legislative advocacy, and community organizing to fight for social and
economic justice for low and moderate income communities.
22
J.S. Myers, J. Sbicca / Geoforum 61 (2015) 17–26
[R]ight now it’s really hard for me to think of a way that
Wal-Mart could be reformed to be part of the food justice movement. . .[which emphasizes] people having ownership and decision making power. . .[A] giant like Wal-Mart is always going to
stick it to producers. . .and that’s why they want to be so big
because they can set their price. So that’s never going to be
compatible with a just food system. And then the way they treat
their workers, which is also connected to their size. That they
can just dominate the employment market. . .and do what they
want with wages.
Despite Wal-Mart’s deep pockets and savvy marketing campaigns their effort to locate in East New York ended in defeat,
reminiscent of the company’s failed attempts to enter Queens
and Staten Island in the mid-2000s.8 Pro Wal-Mart consumers were
not organized and sympathetic politicians were generally unengaged
in shaping the public image of Wal-Mart, often working behind the
scenes instead. Accordingly, Wal-Mart was largely left alone to run a
campaign with no local roots and a Mayor who was unwilling to act
to guarantee their success. The fact that the Wal-Mart Mexico bribery scandal broke during these pitched battles further hindered the
company’s success. Community and union mobilizations, vocal City
Council opposition, and the anti-Wal-Mart declarations of the 2014
Democratic mayoral candidates all created roadblocks, that, for the
time being, are insurmountable. In a city with a long history of immigrant rights and union organizing, immigrant entrepreneurialism,
and welfare state politics, Wal-Mart’s big-box, low-wage, low price
discourse was too anachronistic. In a city with the highest rates of
inequality in the US, the promise of cheap products eventually rang
hollow, as people understood you need a good job in order to put
good food on the table.
Rather than Wal-Mart, a unionized ShopRite supermarket will
anchor the Gateway Center II complex, the largest suburban style
shopping mall in NYC. The store will be 90,000 square feet, three
times the square footage of all the existing grocery store space in
East New York, and employ 300 full-time and part-time workers
who will have better wages, health care, and pension benefits than
Wal-Mart employees (Massey, 2011). Consequently, unlike WalMart, ShopRite was framed as an ‘‘asset to our local community’’
(Herman, 2012) by Joy Simmons, Charles Barron’s chief of staff,
praised by Speaker Quinn as ‘‘a company with a history of responsible business practices’’ (Rogers, 2012), and applauded by Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz for ‘‘creat[ing] union
jobs at a time when we need them the most’’ (Collins, 2012). For
all involved, combating food deserts meant good jobs, for only
through living wages could people obtain access to the good life,
which included good food.
Offering Los Angeles Wal-Muerto Kale does not substitute for
good jobs that combat poverty
Los Angeles is the largest of 88 cities in Los Angeles County, and
embodies the metropolitan area’s racially diverse and economically stratified character. The city is largely Latino/a (47.9%) with sizeable White (28%) and Asian (13.9%) communities, although the
Black community has halved over the last thirty years to 8.5%.
While the overall poverty level is 20.2%, it is higher for Blacks
(24.9%) and Latino/as (25.4%) and tends to vary widely by
neighborhood.9 In neighborhoods that lack well paying, secure jobs,
there also tends to be fewer healthy and affordable food options and
8
Wal-Mart contributed ‘‘donations’’ to environmental organizations and youth job
programs in the hopes of winning support from city council members and city
residents.
9
Statistics come from the US Census Bureau from either the 2010 Census or the
2007–2011 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates.
higher rates of diet related health problems (Bassford et al., 2010;
Blue Ribbon Commission, 2008). This grocery deficit persists in many
low-income communities of color despite efforts to bring in unionized grocery retailers and hundreds of millions of dollars of unmet
demand for good food (Shaffer, 2002; Social Compact Inc., 2008).
This exists due to land use development patterns in LA favoring suburbanization and auto-centric transportation, White only restrictive
covenants and redlining leading to residential segregation, and the
flight of supermarkets to the suburbs (Shaffer, 2002). Exacerbating
access to good food is an inability to afford it in part because of a
decline in union density and labor standards in the LA grocery retail
sector as Wal-Mart and non-union specialty and ethnic chains began
infiltrating LA County throughout the 2000s.10 This follows broader
California trends associated with store closures in major chains like
Albertsons, unionized chains choosing not to reinvest available cash
in wages and benefits, and the rapid growth of partially unionized
Costco (Jayaraman and FLRC, 2014).
Confrontation with these realities needs to be understood in the
context of the watershed 20-week grocery retail strike in 2003, and
the subsequent unsuccessful battle to keep Wal-Mart out of Chinatown. The 2003 strike pitted UFCW’s 70,000 Southern California
members directly against Albertson’s, Ralphs, and Vons and indirectly against Wal-Mart, as the grocery chains used the threat of
Wal-Mart to justify reducing wages and benefits, particularly after
Wal-Mart announced in 2002 that it would build 40 Supercenters
in California by 2008 (Cleeland and Vrana, 2005). Workers ended
up losing the strike, but UFCW and its allies rebounded over the
next decade by expanding their organizing strategies and alliances
as well as challenging Wal-Mart directly. As a result, the UFCW
won back its 2003 loses in later contract negotiations. Moreover,
with the exception of one Wal-Mart in Baldwin Hills, the company
has been largely unsuccessful in its attempts to enter LA until it
opened a Neighborhood Market (a smaller retail format) in the
central neighborhood of Chinatown in 2013.
The nature of these multipronged struggles reveals the complications of bridging concerns about poverty, healthy food access,
and the rights of communities to direct economic development.
Nevertheless, given the specter of Wal-Mart, a network of resistance expanded after the 2003 strike to include alternative food,
community based, public health, and religious organizations, as
well as politicians and artists. Reflecting such shifts in the AFM,
Joann Lo, Executive Director of FCWA and Vice President of the
LA Food Policy Council’s (LAFPC) Leadership Board contends,
More and more food workers are organizing to demand better
wages and working conditions and better food. Supporting their
campaigns is one way to join in on collective action. All people
in the food system – whether consumers, producers, or workers
– should be able to afford good, healthy food.
[BTFB, 2014]
Such a framing binds those who care about food justice and economic justice.
Just like in East New York, activists worried that Wal-Mart
would harm union members and increase overall poverty levels
in members’ communities. Jae, an organizer and political operative
for UFCW 770, believes there is a corrosive impact when Wal-Mart
locates in economically marginalized communities, ‘‘It affects the
entire food system. . .It’s almost like a silent killer, the race to the
bottom. If it takes on these communities, it will slowly affect
others.’’ The UFCW strike provided an added boost to a big box
ordinance proposal by Councilmembers Eric Garcetti (D – 13th District) and Ed Reyes (D – 1st District) to stave off a local race to the
10
This mirrors California trends. Non-union market growth between 2006 and 2013
is 48% for discount, 35% for natural/organic/gourmet, 11% for Latino, and just 6% for
traditional (Jayaraman and FLRC, 2014).
J.S. Myers, J. Sbicca / Geoforum 61 (2015) 17–26
bottom. Garcetti claims one reason for the ordinance is that WalMart’s low-wage labor model requires state subsidies,
They’re a Goliath, but we’re a Goliath, too, and we want to send
them a message. We don’t believe their business model is good
for the kind of economic development that we want in the
places where we need it most. And we want people to realize
that the 10 cents they may save on a jar of pickles could mean
paying another $5 in taxes for all the extra visits to local emergency rooms.
[Sanchez, 2004]
The ordinance passed in 2004 requires big box stores over 100,000
feet with more than 10% of their floor space selling non-taxable
merchandise (i.e. most groceries) to undergo economic impact
reports and public comments and hearings. Such initiatives
strengthen local democracy by requiring community input into
local development proposals. Although Wal-Mart has opened in
other cities with similar requirements, the intensity of the strike
and the ordinance represent widespread opposition to weakening
grocery labor standards, as well as the power of UFCW 770 and
its allies to restrict the company’s entrance into LA, at least in its
supercenter format.
While Wal-Mart was stymied for many years, it exploited the
‘‘use by right’’ clause in local zoning laws to enter Chinatown, a
robust immigrant enclave. Instead of going through the required
review process to build a Supercenter, Wal-Mart avoided extensive
government review for a Neighborhood Market by simply taking
over a building already zoned for such uses. An array of activists
once again mobilized. Although they convinced the City Council
to pass unanimously an emergency ordinance to prevent any permits for ‘‘new formula retail uses,’’ right before the vote opponents
learned that a last minute permit was issued to Wal-Mart the previous afternoon. With the suspicious timing of events, labor activists such as Diego, an organizer with UFCW 770, conclude, ‘‘That
kind of power is only ushered from the Mayor’s office.’’ On the
day of this vote, a representative for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa
avoided commenting on the Wal-Mart decision, stating the mayor
supports ‘‘bringing fresh and healthy grocery options to all of Los
Angeles’’ (Zahniser, 2012).
This event set into motion renewed efforts to take back the language of food deserts and decenter its conflation with consumer
access by demanding community rights to good jobs because such
jobs make acquiring good food possible. Jill, a communications
specialist for the advocacy organization LAANE argues,
A lot of times food and worker’s rights become separated. . .[I]f
you say to a worker, ‘‘You are not going to get more than $8 an
hour and no health benefits,’’ those people are going to be able
to barely afford to put food on their own table, yet they will still
be surrounded by it at work. . .If a company really wants to set
up there, they shouldn’t be adverse to the community being
taken care of on a very basic level. . .[H]aving grocery stores
with good jobs is part of the solution.
Such issues were also linked to culturally relevant economic development. With many locally run full-scale grocery stores and smaller
markets already in the neighborhood, activists from the Chinatown
Community for Equitable Development and their political allies
were concerned that Wal-Mart would lead to their closure. As US
Representative Judy Chu (D – 32nd District) said at a pre-Chinatown
protest press conference, ‘‘Because Walmart is able to get its low
prices and sell its cake for $1.99, [nearby] businesses will go out
of business’’ (Katz, 2012). Issues of poverty and equitable development resonate deeply for Representative Chu and others with
family who benefited from this immigrant enclave’s autonomous
business climate.
23
Despite the widespread and vocal opposition to Wal-Mart,
opponents were unable to prevent the Neighborhood Market from
opening. One reason for this was opposition by Councilmembers
Jan Perry (D – 9th District) and Bernard Parks (D – 8th District).
Unlike representatives in similar historically Black neighborhoods
lacking many grocery stores, such as East New York, they wanted
any food and jobs rather than no food and jobs. They refrained from
voting in a last ditch effort to issue a temporary building permit
restriction, votes that would have halted Wal-Mart. These challenges in bridging good food and good jobs arise despite community dissatisfaction with Wal-Mart. As Girshriela Green, a Wal-Mart
associate explains, ‘‘We’re still dependent on welfare, food stamps,
and we work. Yet, we still don’t make ends meet. . .They sell
dreams that’s not real’’ (Katz, 2012).
Such contradictions present activists with the opportunity to
build more broad-based organizing strategies for equitable economic development in LA, attempts made easier by a discourse
that bridges good food and good jobs. At a June 2014 special briefing and discussion of a report commissioned by UFCW’s Western
States Council on the state of California’s grocery retail sector,
attendees included anti-hunger, food justice, housing rights, labor
and public health advocates, as well as academics, grocery workers
and politicians. John Grant, a longtime labor leader in UFCW 770,
summed up the desire of these interested parties and allies for a
‘‘comprehensive solution.’’ He went on to say, ‘‘It is not enough
to say, ‘No’ [to low-wage grocers]. . .[T]hat does not solve the problem of communities lacking access to food. . .It doesn’t make a
damn bit of difference how much kale is in that brick and mortar. . .people aren’t going to be able to buy it.’’ Ultimately, there
was recognition that alliances need to organize continually around
how poverty creates public health problems. As Clare Fox, the
Director of Policy & Innovation at the LAFPC, stated, it is important
to ‘‘relate a living wage job to improvements in public health outcomes.’’ While not a direct result of a GFGJ discourse, recent victories such as the food procurement policy adopted by the city of LA
and by LA Unified School District reflect a more confrontational
political logic predicated on building trust and deeper AFM networks. The policy mandates that institutions adopt the Good Food
Purchasing Pledge to increase local food purchases that meet high
animal welfare, environmental, labor, and nutritional standards.
This creates new opportunities to increase the number of local food
producers and good jobs in more conventional sectors of the local
agrifood system, which incentivizes supporting good employers
and increasing access to healthy food.
Discussion and conclusion: producing spaces of hope through
the politics of good food, good jobs
The US AFM has long privileged environmental sustainability,
saving small farmers, and eating healthy food through a consumer
centric politics that elevates nutrition education and paying more
for local food. This politics has generally emphasized a prefigurative politics of secession from rather than confrontation with the
conventional agrifood system. Additionally, this secessionist politics has generally ignored or deemphasized broader social and economic justice concerns within the alternative and conventional
agrifood systems, particularly those of food chain workers and
lower income urban consumers in food deserts.
The politics of GFGJ aims to address this weakness within the
AFM by changing the framework through which people see the
symptoms and causes of food deserts, and lower income communities in general. Additionally, a GFGJ approach opens up space
for new alliances within the AFM as well as political tactics and
strategies used to address food deserts. Reflecting such shifts, activists in NYC and LA have worked together to reorient food desert
24
J.S. Myers, J. Sbicca / Geoforum 61 (2015) 17–26
discourse away from the supply side dynamics of low prices or
simply creating healthy food spaces toward a demand side dynamic of living wages. In doing so, they underscore that the root causes
of food deserts are tied to the structure of the economy in low-income communities, that of bad jobs or no jobs. While not discounting the creative food acquisition strategies of low-income
urbanites, the GFGJ approach responds to findings that the major
barrier to healthy food is cost (Alkon et al., 2013). The solution to
increasing access to good food for low-income communities is creating good jobs that will provide upward class mobility. A grocery
store in and of itself does not end food deserts, the type of grocery
store matters. Living wage jobs are an important component to
solving both the economic problem of poverty and the public
health problem of diet-related disease.
The GFGJ discourse, in linking food justice and economic justice,
is a bridge that enables coalition building between diverse organizations and activists desiring greater voice and power in community level and citywide development. It represents a creative politics
of possibility that breaks down barriers in the AFM and opens up
‘‘spaces of hope’’ (Harvey, 2000) to push for systemic solutions
and alternatives to problems within the conventional agrifood system. Such a discourse illuminates the recognition by those facing
many intersecting problems that more comprehensive solutions
require what Alkon (2012) refers to as a ‘‘cross-pollination’’
between social justice and sustainability and what Cole and
Foster (2001) call a ‘‘transformative politics’’ that empowers previously marginalized communities. Relatedly, the discourse can be
seen to represent one of a variety of what Carolan (2011) calls
‘‘rainbow evolutions,’’ which are more adaptive and resilient locally contextualized solutions. Additionally, the discourse elevates
more confrontational political logics within the AFM. This is especially relevant in light of food justice scholarship that places economic justice at the heart of AFM struggles (Gottlieb and Joshi,
2010; Harrison, 2011) and calls by scholars for greater attention
to the instances where those concerned with food justice ally with
workers to advance economic justice (Alkon and Agyeman, 2011).
In short, GFGJ pushes the farmer-centric and supply side consumer
orientation of much AFM activism and scholarly analysis to include
urban food chain workers and demand side labor solutions.
Framing the solution to conditions of food and economic insecurity in low-income urban communities through a comprehensive lens rejects strategies that would divide communities and
social movements. By demanding good food and good jobs, activists positively frame the desire for food justice and economic justice. In turn, this helps regenerate and expand the AFM through a
politics that supports alternatives as long as there is comparable
confrontation with powerful political and economic forces. There
is a place for a prefigurative politics of secession, but without
strategies to redirect value produced by workers and without
engagement in the political arena, the opportunity for creating
agrifood systems that offer good food and good jobs for all seems
unlikely. The practice of creating socially just and sustainable foodsheds benefits from bridging consumer and labor politics in alternative and conventional food supply chains.
The message behind GFGJ is that combating poverty and dietrelated disease does not require free markets and trickle-down
economics. It requires that communities have power over how
markets operate, because this will allow the value produced by
workers to be redistributed from corporations, Wall Street, and
the elite toward workers. In turn, workers will use that captured
value to afford housing, preventative healthcare, and good food,
send their children to college, take sick days, and enjoy vacations.
In doing so, the GFGJ discourse mirrors and gains support from a
strong push at local, state, and federal levels to increase the minimum wage, which is emblematic of a vibrant economic justice
movement challenging neoliberal development models. Take for
instance the fact that the new mayors of LA (Eric Garcetti – D)
and NYC (Bill de Blasio – D) are both publically opposed to WalMart and for increasing the citywide minimum wage.
Despite the emergence of the GFGJ discourse and its possibilities for transforming the way we understand food deserts and
the alliances and politics of the AFM, there are several external
and internal barriers to the discourse. Externally, food activists
deploying GFGJ must combat the allure of ‘‘any job is better than
no job.’’ As seen in LA, communities suffering from poverty, unemployment, and food insecurity often lack the political and economic
leverage to hold out or struggle for living wage jobs. This power
dynamic threatens the ability of a GFGJ discourse to realize justice
for workers and create the conditions for community-wide upward
mobility. Moreover, it is precisely the dependency and vulnerability of marginalized communities that Wal-Mart capitalizes
on with its proposals to quench the hunger of food deserts through
low prices. In this sense, activists demanding good food and good
jobs face uphill battles against corporate-state growth-coalition
dynamics, as seen in the case of both Mayor Villaraigosa and Mayor
Bloomberg tacitly supporting, and Michelle Obama explicitly supporting, Wal-Mart development in the name of improving public
health.
Internally, campaigns for GFGJ might benefit from moving
beyond mere bread and butter interests to encompass a holistic
labor, food, and ecological politics. Doing so could help GFGJ
become the discourse grounding vibrant blue-green coalitions.
We have shown how the GFGJ discourse builds power by bringing
together coalitions of different activists and organizations because
it does not focus on a single issue, which means that its politics
reach beyond fragmented and siloed AFM sectors. While the concept is inherently multifaceted and open, and has the possibility
to link together a wide range of issues, such as living wages, workplace safety, food safety, public health, and environmental degradation, questions remain.
First, will campaigns for GFGJ expand to include who decides
not only workplace conditions but also a company’s sourcing
requirements (e.g. local, organic, small-farmers, living wages for
farmworkers)? If the discourse only encompasses negotiating labor
contracts in terms of wages and benefits, and specifically for grocery store workers, then campaigns for GFGJ might have less of a
substantive effect on the structure and sustainability of food production. Rather than merely leveraging good food for labor, activists would need to leverage the power of labor for
sustainability. Given the current framing and implementation of
GFGJ we have yet to see a robust confrontational politics that tries
to reshape grocery store sourcing dynamics according to labor and
environmental standards.
Second, rather than merely uniting grocery store unions and
urban AFM organizations, will GFGJ be broadened to bring together
grocery store unions, farmworker, food processor, environmental
justice, and immigrant rights organizations? Such alliances could
significantly shape working conditions within the conventional
agrifood system and revive a progressive and social justice oriented community-based unionism. In targeting only one point of the
conventional agrifood chain GFGJ is limited, in scope and therefore
its abilities to combat poverty and inequality. So far, our cases
reveal the use of GFGJ by only a limited set of workers and communities deserving of economic justice.
Third, can a GFGJ discourse be used to increase reflexivity within the AFM regarding its own labor practices? Currently, many
small family farms rely on undocumented immigrant labor while
urban agriculture experiments rely on volunteer labor and both
operate on slim profit margins that make the work economically
precarious. Yet, much of this free or underpaid labor is made
invisible through a politics that privileges local food grown by
small farmers. While campaigns for GFGJ are encouraging AFM
J.S. Myers, J. Sbicca / Geoforum 61 (2015) 17–26
organizations to realize economic justice within the conventional
agrifood system, will the same organizations expand the GFGJ discourse to work for economic justice within the alternative agrifood
system? Given the often precarious economic dynamics that shape
small-scale farming and the health and environmental reasons for
why consumers buy local or organic, trying to fuse local food with
just food for all food chain workers has had limited gains.
Despite these barriers, with the emergence of GFGJ campaigns,
the Real Food Challenge at colleges and universities, and the Fair
Food Program of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, among
others, it appears that there is a renaissance in labor oriented confrontational political logics within the AFM unseen since the 1960s
and the United Farmworkers Union. Will any of this have lasting
impacts? Time will tell, but in the meantime, there is a need for
further investigation into the potential transformation of the
AFM by documenting, theorizing, and probing the political potential of these new confrontation based alliances and their pursuit of
more healthy and fair agrifood systems.
Acknowledgements
Both authors would like to thank all our participants for sharing
their stories, struggles, and hopes. We would also like to thank the
anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions. Obviously, any oversights or mistakes are our own.
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Agric Hum Values (2012) 29:203–215
DOI 10.1007/s10460-011-9336-8
Food sovereignty, urban food access, and food activism:
contemplating the connections through examples from Chicago
Daniel R. Block • Noel Chávez • Erika Allen
Dinah Ramirez
•
Accepted: 25 August 2011 / Published online: 18 October 2011
Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
Abstract The idea of food sovereignty has its roots primarily in the response of small producers in developing
countries to decreasing levels of control over land, production practices, and food access. While the concerns of
urban Chicagoans struggling with low food access may
seem far from these issues, the authors believe that the
ideas associated with food sovereignty will lead to the
construction of solutions to what is often called the ‘‘food
desert’’ issue that serve and empower communities in ways
that less democratic solutions do not. In Chicago and
elsewhere, residents and activists often see and experience
racial and economic inequalities through the variety of
stores and other food access sites available in their community. The connections between food access, respect, and
activism are first considered through a set of statements of
Chicagoans living in food access poor areas. We will then
discuss these connections through the work and philosophy
of activists in Chicago centered in food sovereignty and
food justice. Particular focus will be placed on Growing
Power, an urban food production, distribution, and learning
organization working primarily in Milwaukee and Chicago,
D. R. Block (&)
Department of Geography, Sociology, Economics,
and Anthropology, Chicago State University,
9501 S. King Dr., Chicago, IL 60628, USA
e-mail: dblock@csu.edu
N. Chávez
Maternal and Child Health Program, School of Public Health,
University of Illinois-Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
E. Allen
Growing Power, Chicago, IL, USA
D. Ramirez
Healthy South Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
and Healthy South Chicago, a community coalition focused
on health issues in a working class area of the city.
Keywords Food sovereignty Food deserts Food access
Food activism Community organizing
Introduction
Through a succession of highly publicized academic,
government, and private reports, the term ‘‘food desert’’
has become part of the general lexicon of urban life in the
United States. This is particularly true in Chicago. In one of
many examples, a 2005 Chicago Sun-Times article on
access to fresh produce in minority areas of the city begins:
‘‘The greens are wilted, with brownish edges. The oranges
are bruised and yellowing. Bunches of bananas have started
turning brown and spotty’’ (Fuller 2005, p. 10a). While this
is not a pretty picture, the store described was one of the
few with a relatively large produce section in the community, which had only one chain supermarket for 117,000
residents. The Sun-Times article reported on the release of
a study called ‘‘The Challenge to an Apple a Day,’’
released by the Chicago Department of Public Health,
discussing a series of community-based studies of food
access in six neighborhoods in Chicago (Block et al. 2005).
Later, a report by a local researcher, funded by LaSalle
Bank (now part of Bank of America) received front page
coverage and sparked a city commission and an annual
Supermarket Expo (Gallagher 2006). The Chicago interest
in food deserts reflects national trends. Similar reports to
those mentioned above have been published around the
country, in particular Philadelphia (The Food Trust 2001).
There, a ‘food desert’ study supported legislation in
Pennsylvania leading to tax breaks and subsidized loans to
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stores wanting to locate in underserved areas. This strategy
has now been repeated, with funding from Robert Wood
Johnson, in Illinois and New York. The federal government
is also becoming a major player, with a federal fresh food
financing initiative funded at over $400 million (U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services 2010).
The power of food access inequities to convey differences in the experiences of living in areas of high and low
income was more recently put extremely starkly by Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich. Schmich wrote on
the experience of getting a call from a child health organization while walking through the aisles of the newly
opened largest Whole Foods in the world, in the upperincome Lincoln Park area of Chicago. She describes the
bounty and wealth around her even as she before she
entered the store: ‘‘Under the May sun, I walked past bins
of fresh yellow corn, past sweet Vidalia onions, seedless
watermelons and a black Mercedes SUV nonchalantly
parked in a spot reserved for alternative-fuel vehicles.’’ The
organizer tells the writer that ‘‘A black baby in Chicago …
is 2 1/2 times more likely than the national average to die
in the first year’’. Schmich continues by contrasting the
scene around her to what the activist is telling her: ‘‘One
reason so many babies in Chicago die? The mothers are
more likely to be sick. (Wine-and-cheese bar on the left).
And one reason that the mothers are sick? They don’t have
access to fresh food. (Probitoics on the right; bakery and
sushi up ahead)’’. Schmich concludes by advocating for
programs to help bring supermarkets into underserved
areas: ‘‘No city will ever offer equality of everything to
everybody. But we live in a city where multitudes pay
$7.99 a pound at the Whole Foods salad bar. It’s time to
help the other multitudes find a decent apple’’ (Schmich
2009, p. 6). Schmich’s use of food disparities to showcase
societal inequalities and her final emphasis on food itself
shows both the issues and the opportunities offered by food
access. Food access inequities highlight how the experience of living in poorer communities is hugely different
from the experience of living in wealthier ones and that
these differences can even lead to increased death. However, their ability to highlight these inequities often leads to
a public response that focuses on only food stores themselves, rather than a broader focus upon the broader inequities in economic investment, political and economic
power, and health that the food desert issue highlights.
This article, written by two Chicago food activists and
two community based researchers, considers whether
‘‘food sovereignty’’, a global equity movement based
originally in the peasant organization La Via Campesina,
can offer a framework through which issues of community
control of, and disparities in, access to food resources can
be addressed in underserved communities in developed
countries. We do this through a discussion and analysis of
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two divergent types of data. First, we describe a portion of
the results of a series of structured group interviews on
food access from two low-income African-American
communities of Chicago’s South Side. This analysis
focuses on remarks made about issues of control, disparity,
and racism, seen through the community food access
landscape and how these compare and contrast to issues
focused upon by the international food sovereignty movement. Second, we describe the work of two Chicago
organizations, Growing Power and Healthy South Chicago,
as they try to address issues of inequality and access
through food. We conclude with a consideration of the
usefulness of food sovereignty as it relates to urban food
access issues in the US and a discussion of the role of food
access activism in urban America. We begin with a discussion of current writings on US food projects and food
sovereignty itself and, to frame the later material, a discussion of the condition of community activism in Chicago
and the persistent importance of the work of Saul Alinsky
in shaping Chicago activism.
Food deserts, community food projects, and food
sovereignty
Within the field of community food security, numerous
organizations have initiated programs to bring fresh, often
local food to ‘food desert’ areas. Many of these projects
have involved community gardens, urban agriculture, or
farmers’ markets and often pair environmental and community development goals through food growing and
consumption. These projects have varied from small scale
and community based, such as Oakland’s People’s Grocery
produce van and numerous farmers’ markets and community garden projects throughout the country, to projects
involving youth agricultural and job training such as Boston’s Food Project, to larger scale (and often less alternative) projects such as the Reinvestment Fund of
Pennsylvania, which makes low interest loans to those
interested in starting or expanding groceries in underserved
areas.
As Alkon (2008) describes in an investigation of the
West Oakland Farmers’ Market, these projects can
encounter difficulties including lack of interest among
community members and a disjuncture between project and
community goals. Guthman (2008a) and Alkon add that
trying to end food access inequities only through the creation of new sites for market transactions such as farmers’
markets or supermarkets does not address core poverty and
disinvestment issues in these communities. There are a
number of reasons for this. First, the economic interests of
the farmers’ usually trump the access interests of the
consumers the projects are trying to help. Solutions offered
Food sovereignty, urban food access, and food activism
are generally market-based and geared towards the
changing of ‘‘individual consumption practices’’ (Allen and
Wilson 2008) rather than collective action focused on
changing the ‘‘injustices that underlie disparities in food
access,’’ as Guthman (2008a, p. 443) describes. Second, as
Alkon (2008) outlines, interactions based around race and
class (the perceived ‘‘whiteness’’ of the projects and the
food itself) may shape relations between those running the
programs and the intended subjects, leading to misunderstandings and lack of interest of the products offered.
Third, the focus of these organizations has often been on
the promotion of the consumption of local foods. While
there are culinary, environmental, and homeland security
arguments for eating locally, local production does not
guarantee ethical production, and the conflation of ‘‘local’’
with ‘‘good’’ takes attention away from structural issues
present in the global food system at large (Anderson 2008).
Despite these many issues, the fact remains that food
access is a potent symbol for inequities in services between
communities and is an important issue in itself. When
Chicago Congressman Bobby Rush looks out at much of
the community he represents, he sees a food access landscape that, to him, symbolizes inequality and disparity.
‘‘Why is it that in some communities consumers can buy
French fries but not fresh potatoes?’’ he wonders (Rush
2008). In US cities, inequalities in food access are often
appear quite stark, and it is helpful to remember that the
term ‘‘food desert’’ was coined by a resident of a Scotland
housing project ‘‘to capture the experience of what it was
like to live in a deprived neighborhood’’ (Cummins and
Macintyre 2002, p. 2115). The focus of food access as an
issue goes beyond the particular connections to health
(although these are important) to be a way that issues of
power, control, and inequality are written into the American landscape. Furthermore, food access issues themselves,
as Janet Poppendieck points out well in her studies of the
emergency food system, can bring together coalitions that
would not otherwise work on poverty issues (Poppendieck
1999). As Guthman (2008a) eloquently states, ‘‘the focus
remains on food, the area of concern which galvanizes a
wide range of actors, from public health professionals, to
sustainable agriculture practitioners, to community food
security and environmental justice advocates’’ (p. 432).
While this may backfire if the discussion never gets beyond
food access to its root causes, the coalitions that may be
built through the galvanizing force of food are not to be
dismissed. As longtime South Side Chicago AfricanAmerican environmental justice activist Orrin Williams
writes, food is ‘‘as important an element for vigilance by
the activist and academic communities as any other’’
(Williams 2005, p. 119).
We thus have a seeming dilemma that while food access
brings many people as well as governments, researchers,
205
and business together to focus on an issue of disparity,
overconcentration on food could lead to ignoring the issues
that caused the disparities in the first place. Furthermore,
the solutions offered, whether they are alternative, such as
community gardens or produce vans, or conventional
supermarkets, do not always fit the needs or desires of the
residents and may be put in place without gathering resident input. In the worst cases, companies, organizations,
and governments overlook the needs of residents and bring
in a store or programs that do not fit community needs.
Despite this, the fact that food access as an issue can unite
so many disparate organizations and that food access disparities place focus on general inequities of society and the
experience of living in poor communities makes food
access an important subject of both research and activism.
The food sovereignty movement and US alternative
food projects
The food sovereignty movement organized originally as a
reaction to the increasingly globalized and centralized food
system promoted by the World Trade Organization, the
United States, and major agro-food corporations. La Via
Campesina defined food sovereignty in 1996 as containing
the rights ‘‘of each nation to maintain and develop its own
capacity to produce its basic foods, respecting cultural and
productive diversity….the right to produce our own food in
our own territory’’, and ‘‘the right of people to define their
agricultural and food policy’’ (quoted in Desmarais 2007,
p. 24). Canadian policy activist Wayne Roberts summarizes food sovereignty as ‘‘when food is of, by, and for the
people’’ (Roberts 2008, p. 52). Unlike movements such as
local food, food sovereignty is a distinctly political concept
that is ‘‘a transformative process … to recreate the democratic realm and regenerate a diversity of autonomous food
systems based on equity, social justice, and ecological
sustainability’’ (Pimbert 2009, p. 5). If successful, this
process would necessarily transform the existing national
and international food system and the power structures
within it, including such processes as land reform, a
transformation of international tariff systems, and national
subsidies for industrial agriculture.
While these goals are large and global, it should be
noted that at the local level food sovereignty implies particular rights of individuals and communities to define their
own food system, to produce food in a safe manner, to
regulate production, and to choose their own level of selfreliance, rather than these being set by larger national and
international organizations. These goals imply a way forward that suggests ‘‘practical solutions’’ for projects and
resistance as well as the need for, and possible political
value of, local food production and distribution projects
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206
(Pimbert 2009). A key, however, is how democratic and
aware of local power inequities these projects are. As Allen
(2010) states: ‘‘The achievement of social justice within
local food systems requires an effective democratic process, including the empowerment of those who are most
vulnerable and have benefitted the least from current
arrangements’’ (p. 303).
The US could be fertile ground for applications of food
sovereignty to local food projects, in opposition to the
dominant food system. As Allen and Wilson (2008)
describe, ‘‘American agricultural policy set the stage for
and wrote the script of the agrifood system that is creating
global misery and devastation’’. Much of the alternative
food movement in the United States has been focused on
Buy Local food campaigns, promoting ecological sustainability, linking local, sustainable farmers to schools,
farmers’ markets, and other institutions, and supporting
changes in existing farm legislation to support such efforts.
These projects certainly lie within the general goals of the
food sovereignty movement, however in most cases they
set up alternative food systems in which poorer consumers
are not included. In addition, as Born and Purcell (2006)
argue, just because food is locally produced does not been
it is ethically produced, and community control may simply reinforce existing class and racial divisions. For
example, Guthman, in a study of the racial attitudes of
California farmers’ markets and CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) managers, finds that they blame the
overwhelming whiteness of their customers on education
and culture, rather than issues such as income disparities
between races combined with the costs of their products.
‘‘Specifically, managers portray their own values and aesthetics to be so obviously universal that those who do not
share them are marked as other’’ (Guthman 2008b, p. 393).
By contrast, food sovereignty, as a global movement, is
particularly focused on the concept that market forces are
not always the best way to regulate food production. In
addition, by concentrating on issues of control over economic regulation and planning and the right of groups to
have sovereignty over these decisions, it also may serve to
tie issues of control and economic disparity that occur in
many cities throughout the United States and elsewhere to
a global movement for food systems change. This is not to
say that such a connection must be made through food.
However, uneven development and differing access to
resources can be seen both by residents and non-residents
through differences in food access in ways that could make
food access activism an excellent vehicle toward building
more vibrant communities and more equitable societies.
Specifically in Chicago, a city rife with segregation,
structural racism, and top-down plans for improving the
plight of the poor, issues of control over resources and
land-use planning are important issues of community
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D. R. Block et al.
struggle and issues of access to land and the control of
property and land use plans are at the core of communitybased food activism.
Chicago activism, Saul Alinsky, and food sovereignty
Food sovereignty may apply particularly well in Chicago
because many community-based action groups in the city
are still rooted in the work of Alinsky (1971). Alinskyinfluenced organizations work within the established
democratic system, but focus on lobbying city elected
officials and employees, often in creative ways, to demand
services in their communities. At its root, this often abrasive method is designed to overcome equity issues in
power and services between communities and between the
desires of the city government and residents (Block and
Peterman 2006). Followers of Alinsky, local activists Gale
Cincotta and Shell Trapp, founded the National Training
and Information Center, which continues to train activists
from Chicago and around the country and works on
national equity issues. They work to ‘‘Take back our power
to use the government as our tool to promote the common
good, correct the injustices of the past, and redistribute
resources equitably and sustainably’’ (National Training
and Information Center 2009).
While Alinsky based his work in an urban environment
very different from that of the peasant and indigenous
leaders of the food sovereignty movement, the focus on the
right of people to shape their circumstances, in this case,
the portions of the food system that most directly affect
them, is similar. Like the food sovereignty movement,
Alinsky’s trainings and recommendations were a set of
political strategies and approaches that, while they often
aligned with left-wing issues, focused on altering the
concentrations of power (Alinsky 1971). The food sovereignty movement is similarly radical, generally works
within established democratic systems (rather than being
violently revolutionary), is similarly concerned with democratic control of resources, and often uses Alinsky-like
approaches in its activism and is similarly focused on
issues of local control.
The Alinsky strategy of working within the system but
using pressure and personal appeals to address inequalities
still is a hallmark of many Chicago community organizations. However, over the past 20 years many Chicago
community organizations have weakened. During the
administration of Harold Washington (1983–1987), Chicago’s first black mayor, many community organizations
became an integral part of the Washington governing
coalition. Following Washington’s death and particularly
with the election of Richard M. Daley in 1991 this strength
waned. Daley worked out a deal with the alderman so that,
Food sovereignty, urban food access, and food activism
in general, while the mayor controlled city-wide projects,
the aldermen were responsible for what happened in their
wards. The aldermen began to take on specific development tasks in the wards, as well as advocate for the
interests of the ward in the city council. This appropriated
one of the most important tasks of the Chicago community
organization, community advocacy (Block and Peterman
2006).
Community organizations began searching for alternative tasks. Some closed. Many started or became primarily
Community Development Corporations (CDC’s). Some
thrived with a more specific focus, such as providing
family, child, or health services. More recently, groups
around the city have turned at least part of their focus on
food production, access, and nutrition. In some cases, these
organizations were established ones for which food security is a new focus. For instance, the North Lawndale
Employment Network, an organization that primarily does
job training for ex-offenders, started a bee-keeping program which sells honey at local farmers’ markets and other
locations. In other cases, these groups were new. The Gary
Comer Youth Center, a well-funded new project on Chicago’s South Side, has a roof garden and a garden in a
brown field site that it uses for youth development and calls
itself ‘‘an oasis in the food desert’’. Many smaller, not as
well funded projects exist througho...