Justice Through Food – A Community Food Sovereignty Collaborative

Food sovereignty engages grassroots leaders from marginalized communities of color to drive advocacy and social innovation. It focuses on food for people, values providers, and puts control locally.

When our marginalized and under-resourced communities have equitable access to land and capital, they can apply their traditional knowledge and entrepreneurship through food sovereignty and shift the power dynamics.

This work is about shifting power through food to ensure justice.

Justice through Food is a collaborative of organizations, from grassroots to national, representative of and predominantly led by people of color across the country who are using food systems as a catalyst for justice in their communities.

Although we will not have the legal structure of a Cooperative, we will function like a Cooperative – as opposed to an Intermediary – in that only member organizations will be eligible to apply for grants and receive assistance. To be eligible, over 50% of the total staff and board of an organization must be comprised of people of color. There is no financial cost to become a member. We will require each eligible member organization to complete an assessment of their intellectual and social assets as well as needs. This information will be owned and used by the Collaborative to inform the distribution of resources and identify areas of technical expertise within our membership.

Collective grassroots power building is needed for systemic change.
While necessary, directly funding BIPOC organizations alone will not ultimately change systems or allow for the creation of new systems. In fact, it is this realization that brought us together to take action.

Of course, we have worked together before. We have each served as the “token, spokesperson, or representative” for our communities for years working in the good food movement. Now, we want to do it on our terms, with our model, for the greater good of our communities. We know a collaborative network of organizations CAN collectively shift power to create new equitable systems – free of racism, exploitation and oppression.

We know there is great power in unity. And unity does not mean cultural assimilation!