4 Ways to Join the Food Justice Movement as a Total Beginner

My fight for food justice is rooted in love for my son. In 2012, I was pregnant and struggling to juggle two jobs. I didn’t always have enough money to nourish myself and my growing baby. Thankfully, I qualified for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), but the grocery store that was within walking distance was often out of WIC-eligible items. That meant that I either had to get on the city bus and go to a grocery store in a wealthier neighborhood or forfeit items on my voucher that I desperately needed. But every month, I somehow made it work. I was able to feed myself, and by extension my son, healthy, well-rounded meals. I am proud that I was able to give my son a great nutritional start. Not everyone has that privilege. 

My son was born about a week earlier than I expected. I remember breastfeeding him in a courthouse while waiting for a representative from House of Ruth, an organization that helps women, children, and families get through hardships like domestic violence and homelessness. As I fed my baby, I felt as though I was holding the whole world on my shoulders like a melanated Atlas, protecting my son from all the threats to Black children. My heart was so heavy when he was that age. A year before my son was born, Trayvon Martin was killed. Being in a gated community didn’t protect Trayvon. Being smart didn’t protect Trayvon. Being a good mother might not be enough to protect my son. Still, I fight every day to make sure my son is safe and well, my love and fear for him palpable at each moment. Advocating for food justice in our community—for people’s right to accessible, affordable healthy food—is a core part of that mission.

We live in the segregated city of Louisville, Kentucky. Louisville is becoming increasingly diverse, but I still made a conscious decision to purchase both my homes in the city’s West End, which is predominantly Black. Despite what outsiders may think and what mainstream narratives about violence say, I feel much safer here than I would in a white or affluent neighborhood. The issue, however, is that we are stuck in a food desert. 

There are a few different ways to define a food desert, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but it essentially is a poor area with too few supermarkets or large grocery stores (the presence of such stores is how the USDA tracks access to healthy and affordable food). Instead of a supermarket or large grocery store, most neighborhoods in the West End have a corner store, liquor store, or food mart, but those typically don’t have the capacity to handle large volumes of food, and many don’t have the technology to accept Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) or WIC. Residing in a food desert is a subtle form of racism that permeates every facet of our lives. Long before COVID-19 threatened our safety, living in a food desert threatened our livelihood.

The most commonly cited numbers on the subject say that 44,000 people in Louisville live in food deserts, and 120,100 are food insecure, meaning they don’t have reliable access to sufficient amounts of healthy food. More than once I have taken my son to a grocery store on the Black side of town and accidentally purchased long-expired milk. (Seeing armed police officers stationed at the entrance of the store only adds insult to injury. Once, my son asked me why they needed guns at a grocery store. It broke my heart.) The USDA’s Food Access Research Atlas, which maps food deserts across the country, clearly shows that many people in Louisville’s West End fall at the intersection of having low income and subpar food access. Since diet is so foundational to health outcomes, it’s no surprise that residents of the predominantly Black West End have a life expectancy that is up to 12.6 years shorter than those in some predominantly white areas of the city, according to a 2017 Louisville Metro government report. Other factors are certainly at play here, but as the report notes, access to healthy food is a big one.

As we’ve seen with COVID-19 and many other diseases that disproportionately affect Black people, an overwhelmingly common societal refrain is to blame Black people for bringing these health outcomes upon ourselves. Instead, we need to hold systems and structures accountable for the racist ways they contribute to these health disparities. Rather than blaming someone for having chips for breakfast, we need to dismantle the food apartheid and housing injustice that often serve as barriers to healthier options.

On June 1, the only large grocery store near me closed its doors amid ongoing protests in response to the unjust killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black people at the hands of police and racist vigilantes. In response to this closing, I created #FeedTheWest with Taylor Ryan, executive director of the nonprofit Change Today, Change Tomorrow. #FeedTheWest is a food justice program that is rooted in anti-racism. So far #FeedTheWest has raised $250,000 in cash and $1 million in groceries to feed more than 12,000 West End residents. #FeedTheWest is a direct response to our area’s food crisis.

This is not just a story about my family. It’s not just a story about how two Black mothers fed 12,000 people in a month with grassroots organizing. This is about all of us taking concrete steps to become stronger food justice advocates for those who are most vulnerable. It’s about working to address emergency food access needs while also creating sustainable systems that can support the community when the government fails. If you’re ready to join the fight, here’s how you can help advocate for food justice both locally and nationally.

1. Get the lay of the land around food insecurity in your community.

Every city is different. Struggles can vary from neighborhood to neighborhood, and those nuances matter. If you are interested in fighting for food justice, research is absolutely necessary. This is especially true if you’re white, since doing your research can help you avoid developing a white savior complex that results in you doing more harm than good.

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In terms of where to look for this information, city governments often keep reports on food access as part of their health and safety commissions. You may be able to find those reports online, or you can get in touch with your city’s public health agency to ask for that data. Sometimes this information is very visually appealing and digestible, like this food environment report that demonstrates the scope of food insecurity in Maryland, courtesy of Baltimore’s City Health Department and the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. Colleges and universities may also have helpful reports or academic journal articles on local food access, like this dissertation on Atlanta food deserts by a Georgia State University student.

2. Connect with Black food justice activists around the country—especially women.

My saving grace has been calling on other Black women’s expertise as we strive to build a sustainable food justice movement. Cassia Herron, head of the Louisville Community Grocery co-op, and Candice Elder, founder and executive director of the East Oakland Collective, have been active in the food justice movement for years and have shared so much valuable insight with me.

Herron’s food justice work is community driven. “We work every day to respond to the gaps,” she tells SELF. “The co-op has been leading in that way, but the system is hard to penetrate. It makes it doubly hard when Black women are the ones leading because we are undermined and undervalued.” Trusting Black women is absolutely imperative for this movement.

Elder’s program addresses another pervasive issue in food justice: housing insecurity. Qualifying for EBT or WIC won’t do much if you don’t have a refrigerator to store your milk. Elder’s main point of advice for activists is to plan, collaborate, and act. “We cannot do this work without the people who are directly impacted, and we can’t operate in silos,” she says.

You can also read works by Black food justice activists to deepen your understanding of the topic. Collective Courage is an essential read on anti-racist food justice advocacy by Jessica Gordon Nembhard, Ph.D., professor of community justice and social economic development in the Department of Africana Studies at John Jay College of the City University of New York. In it, Gordon Nembhard explores the cooperative economic strategies African Americans have used to survive, such as the way enslaved Africans would pool their money to buy supplies, food, or even freedom. These informal methods of food justice and mutual aid continue to live in the Black Lives Matter and food justice movements across the country.

“Cooperative economics can create new markets when white supremacist institutions reject us,” Herron says. “Lack of resources, monopolies, and blocked access to mentors and resources all keep racist corporations in power. We pool our social capital as a tool of resistance.” It’s also, Herron notes, a callback to movements past: “[We’re working] to open a sustainable grocery store as a reflection of Fannie Lou Hamer and thousands of Black women who led co-op developments when we only had each other to rely on.”

3. Think about both rapid response and long-term accountability.

While programs like #FeedTheWest and the East Oakland Collective’s initiative Feed the Hood are excellent for rapid response, it is crucial that we find sustainable ways to address the systemic inequities at the heart of food insecurity. This is why one of my goals for #FeedTheWest is to eventually open Black Market KY, a grocery store that brings affordable, healthy food directly into our neighborhood. If you can do it, shopping at this kind of Black-owned grocery store can be a good way to support food justice in the long-term. (The Next Door Market is another great Black-owned independent grocery store in Louisville.)

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Another excellent way to incorporate sustainable action for food justice into your life is to support Black farmers. Since the 1950s, millions of acres of farmland have been taken from Southern Black farmers by force. Black farmers have often been shut out of markets that could substantially improve their businesses, along with having their land vandalized and desecrated. As a sharecropper in Mississippi, my great-grandfather Alonzo Wells started work before the sun came up, kept going until it went back down, and was paid only $1 a day. 

To push for restorative justice for Black farmers, you can buy food directly from Black-owned farms near you. One amazing Kentucky program in this vein is Black Soil, which offers subscription plans for members who want fresh seasonal produce, meal-prepped options, and even seeds to grow their own plants. Another example is Kentucky Greens Co., which produces seasonal fruits and vegetables people can buy online. You could also add your voice to larger movements elevating the work of Black farmers and trying to hold major grocery stores accountable, like the 15 Percent Pledge, which is calling on large supermarket franchises to support Black farmers. Focusing on major grocery stores is actually a good area of focus for food justice; it’s why I created the #BokChoyProject to examine the differences between Kroger grocery stores in predominantly white and predominantly Black neighborhoods. You can support these kinds of initiatives on social media, and you can also research local grocers in your community to create a similar project of your own.

4. Have hope.

My hope is that if you’re not already involved in food justice, reading this will not only make you feel the urgency to act but also give you the tools you need to join us. #FeedTheWest and hundreds of other transformative initiatives will continue pushing for change and food justice. I refuse to stop until we have a sustainable Black-owned grocery store in the West End, and I won’t let corporations or politicians stand in my way. This is simply a starting point. As my son grows into a young man, I’m hopeful that food-based cooperative economics will uplift him—and many others—with justice and equity.