食品工人在示威,要求每小时15美元的工资
斐波那契蓝/CC BY.0 (Flickr)

Food Justice

在美国, 我们渴望“人人享有自由和正义”,“而是在我们的食物系统中, as elsewhere, 现实往往与这种愿望相去甚远.

目录表

在美国, 我们渴望“人人享有自由和正义”,“而是在我们的食物系统中, as elsewhere, 现实往往与这种愿望相去甚远.

我们的国家是一个悖论, 建立在517888九五至尊娱乐的基础上, egalitarian ideals and on systematic practices of injustice and oppression—colonialism, slavery, genocide, 以及对劳动力的剥削, especially immigrant labor—that we have never fully confronted, repudiated, 或者弥补.

我们的食品系统就是证据A. Our supermarket shelves display an astonishing variety of food options, 然而,数以百万计的人民却被排除在这种富足之外. Racial and economic privilege determine what kinds of food are available to us. Food justice advocates refer to this systematic stratification of our food choices as “food apartheid”.

These inequities will not just go away; we have to do the work of dismantling them, 通常是在面对反对的时候. A host of national and local organizations are engaged in food justice work, UCS与其中几家合作过, 最值得注意的是我们与 HEAL食品联盟 and the 所有人的好食物.

机会不平等及其后果

多项研究证实了布莱克, 印第安人, and Latinx people in the United States are significantly less likely to live near a retailer selling fresh, healthy food. This difference is deadly: rates of diabetes and other metabolic diseases are also higher in communities of color, 这两种现象是相关的. A 2016 UCS analysis found that increasing the number of fresh food sources in communities of color would significantly lower diabetes rates.

但地理上的接近并不是全部. That same UCS study found that when communities were viewed through the lens of income rather than race, adding more fresh food outlets to the mix had no effect on diabetes rates. (It doesn’t matter how close the farmers market is if you can’t afford to shop there, or if you work two jobs and have no time to cook dinner from scratch.)

In short, unequal healthy food access is a problem with multiple dimensions. Effective solutions will need to address all of them—and to ensure that these solutions are as just and reality-based as possible, it’s important that community voices play a leading role in framing them.

食品工人的公平

Over 20 million people work in the US food system – that’s about one-eighth of the US labor force. 与其他行业的工人相比, 食品工人更有可能工资过低, 缺乏健康保险和其他福利, 面对不安全, 不健康或剥削性的517888九五至尊娱乐条件. 根据食物链工人联盟2016年的一份报告, 在美国工资最低的10个517888九五至尊娱乐岗位中,有8个是食品系统的517888九五至尊娱乐. 工资盗窃等滥用行为, 性骚扰和517888九五至尊娱乐场所暴力很常见, 如果食品工人说出来,他们几乎没有法律保护.

激进组织,如 伊莫卡利工人联盟 (CIW) are standing up to demand fair wages and an end to abusive working conditions in the food industry. As consumers, we can stand with these efforts by educating ourselves and voting with our wallets for fair treatment of food workers, with the help of innovative labeling initiatives like CIW’s Fair Food Program.

所有权的重要性

One of the most effective ways to disempower a community is to exclude it from ownership of land, businesses, 还有其他资源. 波特兰州立大学2019年的一项研究表明,黑人, Latinx and 印第安人 people are grossly underrepresented among the nation’s farm owner-operators. This disparity has its roots in the theft of land from Native communities and its transfer to white settlers, 多年来,歧视性的所有权法律强化了这一点, separate-and-unequal support for land-grant universities serving different racial communities, 以及其他结构性种族主义的表现.

相关资源