Food Fight: Is Food Activism Part of the Anti-Capitalist Struggle?

with Antonio Roman-Alcalá

Why start with food? While hunger is clearly a political issue, a concern for gardening and slow, local, or organic food could be dismissed as apolitical bourgeois lifestylism. Or, it could be seen as an intimate entry point for a cultural battle with global political significance for democratic governance and ecological sustainability. Reworking our relationship to the thing that holds us hostage to "the machine" is a prerequisite for removing consent to, and support for, what must come down for a new society to be formed. Food, like shelter, is a necessity for survival, and therefore its politics are a crucial touchstone for our movement. Rapid changes in food culture, and successes in the domain of food justice, suggest that it is also a potential source of tactics for a broader movement for economic justice.

Our discussion of food politics will be introduced by Antonio Roman-Alcalá who spends his time realizing his vision of "sustainable hedonism" by teaching organic farming techniques to urban dwellers, organizing communities into more cohesive and politically active wholes, and bridging art and music with everyday life. Antonio plays drums in the band Future Twin, is the editor of the San Francisco Art and Politics magazine, director of the In Search of Good Food movie, and shares skills at Alemany Farm and other urban farms. He also co-founded the San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance.

(For more info on this topic, see Antonio's article To Profit or Not to Profit on the Food Movement?)