Shaping a Movement over a Meal
Students and Workers Eat-In for a Just and Sustainable Food Movement
by Hnin Hnin and Kyle Schafer
It’s called the food movement, but what does that really mean? Last month, students and campus dining workers came together to show us that it’s about building community and making change.
When Slow Food on Campus and UNITE HERE’s Stir It Up Campaign celebrated National Food Month together with Eat-Ins across the country, it signaled a small but inspiring convergence of two worlds.
Over 300 people participated in 6 Eat-Ins hosted by students and local union members at Northwestern, Wesleyan, and Harvard and Yale (jointly) and by SFOC chapters at Hamilton, Vassar, and Clemson. An Eat-In is part potluck, part protest. While each Eat-In was unique, they all shared the goal of building community to create change for good food and food workers—including everyone from the farmers who produce the food to the campus dining workers who serve it up.
(Hit the "read more" link for the full story!)
Harvard students and dining workers, members of UNITE HERE Local 26, were inspired to stand up for better food and better working conditions after driving down to New Haven for their Eat-In with counterparts at Yale and UNITE HERE Local 35. The Eat-In began with Yale worker and union member, Chef Stu Comen, sharing stories about union efforts to improve Yale’s food and how by working together, students and workers were able to create a national model for campus food service that promotes both sustainable food and sustainable jobs.
It’s not a new idea, but it is just now starting to grab the attention of the on-campus food movement: sustainable food and sustainable jobs are two sides of the same coin. The students and workers at the Wesleyan Eat-In agreed that the food on campus is increasingly local, sustainably-sourced, and cooked from scratch. One of the Wesleyan students, an environmental activist, thought more progress can be made by pushing for “complete visibility of food, knowing your farms and knowing the workers.” As we learn more about the connections between our food, environment and economy, it is clear that a good, clean, and fair food system must also be economically equitable. Inspired by their Eat-In with members of UNITE HERE Local 217, Wesleyan students committed to supporting the workers in future union contract negotiations. In solidarity, the dining workers expressed interest in volunteering at the student-run greenhouse farm.
A more just and sustainable food movement is possible if students and food workers build community to create change together. By teaming up with dining workers, students might find more success in changing campus food. Reflecting on the roadblocks her group faces in trying to sit down with dining administrators, Melissa Macher, one of the leaders of Slow Food Clemson University, said, “We want to merge ideas of Slow Food into our dining services—not only concerning food, but also workers rights...[We need to] lift the veil around our campus. The most surprising thing was that none of us know what the conditions are like for the food service workers. We don't know if they're happy or unhappy with their jobs, wages, and benefits. We discussed that and how its yet another way that we're disconnected from dining services.”
Food workers and students aren’t the only ones collaborating for better food and working conditions--they’re building a movement based on inclusion and solidarity--engaging their campuses as well as their local community:
- Reaching out to a campus environmental group, SEED, Northwestern University dining workers, who are members of UNITE HERE Local 1, and student leaders of a living wage campaign ate-in together.
- Slow Food Vassar students brought together over 120 college community members for their Eat-In, a collaborative campus initiative to promote awareness of food issues during Earth Week.
- Slow Food Hamilton students partnered with their local chapter, Slow Food Mohawk Valley, to organize over 70 students, local farmers, food activists, artisans and Bon Appetit workers to talk about the food movement in their area.
Connecting over a meal is a great first step to building community to create change, but there’s more work to do after the dishes are done. As the conversations and relationships built through these 6 unique but unified Eat-Ins take shape, the food movement might look no further than campus cafeterias and classrooms for a defining vision. Young people, food workers, and communities united, standing with each other for a more economically just and sustainable food system.
(You can also read a slightly different version of this post at Slow Food USA's blog.)
