Commentary – At a time of global crisis, the UK’s fraying safety net has been under scrutiny and subject to urgent—though temporary—changes to slightly strengthen it, as part of efforts to improve the experiences of those relying on out-of-work social security for the first time.
Blog – Mutual aid efforts have a long-standing history of mobilizing food as an organizing tool — as a meeting point around which communities come together.
Author and activist Andy Fisher describes how America’s largest food charity, Feeding America, has failed to embrace the progressive values needed to respond to multi-faceted social inequities. Here is a 10-point plan to change that.
On October 22, 2020, the Global Solidarity Alliance for Food, Health and Social Justice urged members of the Sustainable Agriculture and Food System Funders (SAFSF) to go beyond charity and work toward transformational food system change through the first of a two-part webinar series titled: “We Can’t ‘Foodbank’ Our way Out of Hunger.”
The Global Solidarity Alliance for Food, Health and Social Justice is a group of non-governmental organizations, national networks, grassroots activists, and scholars began to emerge two years ago out of relationships built at Trans-Atlantic conferences and meetings, resulting in a growing shared analysis of and reaction to the increased use of private philanthropy and transnational corporate food banking as a response to “rich world” hunger and poverty.
Graham Riches, professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia, explains how food insecurity is a problem of inadequate income rather than food supply.
The concept of the deserving or undeserving poor stretches back to the Victorian age. However, my research on food poverty shows that these attitudes are still alive today, and very much a part of how those in receipt of social security are viewed.
PhD candidate Laura Castrejon-Violante and Professor emeritus Graham Riches question the moral basis of their university’s food bank campaign as a response to student food insecurity. They argue that food should not be a disempowering gift, but rather a right to be accessed with agency and enforced by social institutions.