Rise Up! Summer School 2020: Cultivating Resilient Food Systems in Times of Crisis

CAGJ is hosting Rise Up! Summer School  during the summer of 2020. Registration is now full. However, we are making all curriculum available to everyone interested!

Overview:

JUNE: Past/Laying groundwork & Foundations
Topics: Food Sovereignty, Food Justice, Agroecology, Seed Sovereignty, Decolonization, Racist & genocidal roots of US food system
Highlighted CAGJ Campaign: Solidarity with Farmworkers

JULY: Present/Current state of food system
Topics: Corporate control of the food system, Agribusiness impact on climate crisis, Food workers’ rights and food security in a pandemic, Philanthro-capitalism
Highlighted CAGJ Campaign: Solidarity with African food sovereignty movement

AUGUST: Future/Paths Forward
Topics: Just Transition, Climate Justice, Movement-Building
Highlighted CAGJ Campaign: Solidarity with NW tribes in opposition to GE Salmon

JUNE – Past | Laying Groundwork & Foundations

1 – FOUNDATIONAL

• READ:
  • Declaration of Nyéléni, 2007 (7 min)
  • Food First Matrix (5 min)
  • Six Pillars of Food Sovereignty, Nyéléni 2007 (4 min)
  • Decolonization is not a metaphor by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang [Excerpts: ‘Intro’ (pp. 2-4) and ‘Moves to innocence’​ parts​ IV​, V, VI​ ​(pp. 19 – 28​)] ​ (30 min)
  • Land as Pedagogy: Nishnaabeg intelligence and rebellious transformation by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, [pp. 19-23] (17 min)
  • Towards a People’s Agroecology by Blain Snipstal, WhyHunger (9 min)
  • The Ten Elements of Agroecology, FAO (10 min)
• WATCH:
  • TEDxTC – Winona LaDuke – Seeds of Our Ancestors, Seeds of Life (17 min)
  • Vandana Shiva on the Real Cause of World Hunger (4 min)

SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN FOCUS: FARMWORKERS

• LISTEN: Are Their Apples Worth More Than Our Lives, May 2020 | NW Public Broadcasting article on Eastern WA fruit worker strikes. [Browse photos and listen to story] (4 min)
  
• BROWSE: Visual Companion: Reflections from weeks at the Yakima Valley Farmworker and warehouse worker strikes, Community to Community | May 24, 2020 [Accompanying podcast episode in supplemental section] (15 min)
• WATCH: Food Sovereignty and Justice for Farm Workers in Washington State, US Food Sovereignty Alliance (3 min)

• READ:

• • A New Farm Worker Union Is Born by David Bacon, American Prospect (2017) (10 min)
  • Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States (2013 edition), Southern Poverty Law Center [Parts 1, 2, 4, 9, and 11]) (35 min)

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2 – SUPPLEMENTAL

• WATCH: “Farming While Black: Uprooting Racism, Seeding Sovereignty” | Leah Penniman (1 hr)
• LISTEN: The Secret Ingredient Podcast: The Peasantry with Blain Snipstal (55 min)
• READ:
  • Dismantling Racism in the Food System, Food First (17 min)
  • Food Justice and Food Sovereignty in USA, Nyéléni Newsletter (25 min)
  • Dancing the World into Being: A Conversation with Idle No More’s Leanne Simpson (40 min)
  • Colonization, Food, and the Practice of Eating by Dr. Linda Alvarez (20 min)
  • What’s in a Social Justice Diet by Ray Levy-Uyeda (10 min)

SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN FOCUS: FARMWORKERS

• LISTEN: Community Voz: Reflections from Weeks at the Strikes | Community to Community’s ecofeminist radio show presents the grassroots work that local people are doing across intersecting movements. (1 hr)
• READ: Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States (2013 edition), from Southern Poverty Law Center [Full report] (2 hrs)

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3 – DEEP DIVE

• WATCH:

  • Globalize Hope: New film on the history of La Via Campesina (1hr 13min)

  • Blain Snipstal on Food Sovereignty,  Land and Power (9 min)
• BROWSE:

  • Indigenous Foodways Series, Civil Eats

  • Product of Mexico: Hardship on Mexico’s farms, a bounty for U.S. tables, 2014 Los Angeles Times article, photo essay and video on labor abuse in Mexico
• READ:
  • Free the Land, and Us, Too! Agroecology and Popular Struggle: Building an ‘Agrarian’ Intersectional Movement by Blain Snipstal
  • Report submitted by the Special Rapporteur on the right to Food, UN Human Rights Council, Olivier De Schutter, 2010 [pp. 6-15, Points A-E] (25 min)

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ENGAGE

Choose at least one of the following activities to deepen your connections:

⊹ Dare to invest in hope by planting a seed. Maybe this is a real seed in soil, or maybe just the seed of an idea that you write down or put out into the universe formally in some other way. Take time for ceremony. Honor the moment.

⊹ What is your food history? What is the history of your family, culture, or self as it relates to food? Are there fisherpeople, farmers, millers in your family history? What food cultures are a part of your daily life?

⊹ Whose land are you on? Do some research and go on an adventure! (?).

Pt. 1 – Take time to learn about the land you occupy- where you live, work, and play. Who has and continues to steward this land? Visit Native-land.ca and find your location. It’s worthwhile to compare other maps too, as maps are subjective, colonial, and ever-changing! Take some time to learn more about the Native peoples who have lived there since time immemorial. What does and has food looked like for them? What are their current successes, struggles? Get to know an Indigenous-led organization in your area and familiarize yourself with their current goals.

Pt. 2 – Look up 3 native plants, animals, or fungi that grow in your region. Learn about their importance to the local tribes, including their cultural, nutritional, medicinal, and economic values. Where will you find these in your area? Make some predictions then go outside. Ask some questions:what is the oldest living being you can find? Ask them what they have witnessed. How are these species threatened by colonialism, climate change, capitalism (e.g. directly threatened by invasive non-natives; habitat loss; encroachment of development; reckless human behavior, etc.)? Choose a way to process your thoughts. Maybe make a piece of art about it, or simply take some notes.

REFLECT

We strongly encourage you to keep a journal or some other way to express and process your thoughts. Choose a format that speaks to your creativity (it does not need to be written word by any means). Feel free to document any ideas that come up, new connections you’ve made, “a-ha” moments, experiences with the ENGAGE activities.

Here are some guiding questions to get you started. You will have the opportunity to share your reflections with the larger group on Slack, if you’d like to.

⊹ How might you begin to distinguish the differences between food sovereignty, food justice, and food security? What factors might we look for to identify each as a distinct approach? Consider examples from your own experience, where do they fit in? 

⊹ In what ways is our food system shaped by racism and oppression? What are some specific practices and ideologies that create and uphold systemic inequalities? As you learn more, what stands out to you as altering, reinforcing, and/or complicating your understanding? 

⊹ What is your position in the food system? Where might you hold agency for change?