Food Justice Network Autumn Gathering: Campaigning for Food Justice

As summer came to a close, our autumn Community Food Justice Network (CFJN) event was a great opportunity to pause, reflect, and reconnect with Bristol’s thriving network of food justice advocates. The session explored our understandings of Food Activism and visited inspiring stories of activism from around the world. We celebrated our network’s activism and hopefully found some hope. So why talk about activism now? It can seem pointless to talk and reflect when the social and political issues around us feel so urgent. The current moment feels very scary. This can often leave us feeling hopeless, questioning ‘can I have an impact?’, or ‘is what I’m doing enough?’. This feeling of hopelessness can be overwhelming. It drags us down and makes it hard to push back. Action is the antidote to hopelessness. We can build hope through our connection with our communities. Hope is built on possibilities, seeing what could be, and recognising the amazing work we are already doing every day.  From hope, we can build our movement for food justice.

We began with an activity that matched different definitions of activism and campaigning to several organisations. We reflected on the wide range in definitions and decided that our understanding of activism is socially constructed. There are many ways to be an activist, from direct action all the way to acts of care. It was helpful to rethink care as an important fuel for our work and to see it as an act of resistance.

It was equally as enriching to explore examples of food activism globally. Our discussion of these different campaigns, tactics, and principles provided powerful inspiration. This activity sparked discussion about how food can be a tool for activism. It is a powerful force for connection, joy, and storytelling, among other things. Beyond that, talking through these campaigns helped us see how they connect to the work happening here in Bristol. It helped dismantle the invisible barrier that kept us from recognising the work we do as activism, and in turn seeing ourselves as activists.

We took this inspiration into creating an imaginary campaign in small groups. Many groups used this space to think about how food can be used to show solidarity with migrant and refugees and break through racist rhetoric. Finally, we heard encouraging stories of food activism from three wonderful organisations in our network: the Mazi Project, One Love Hub in Knowle West, and The Trussell Trust’s Guarantee Our Essentials campaign[PA1] . It was great to hear what inspired their campaigns, how they tackled these issues, and what they achieved. One key takeaway was that when we take action, unexpected positive outcomes can arise, regardless of whether or not we reach our goal. Sometimes, just taking action shows solidarity and care.

This brings us back to the idea that action is the antidote to despair. It felt nourishing to spend time celebrating our networks wins and really value the activism involved in our work. Hopefully we all left feeling enlivened and a little more hopeful, I know our Feeding Bristol team did.

Links

To explore global examples of activism, follow this link: https://beautifultrouble.org/toolbox/story