Nourishing Social Justice
The enterprise was an inventive workshop for the Latin American, Caribbean and U.S. Latino Studies (LACS) course "Food and Social Justice in America," devised by course instructor Cassie Andrusz- Ho Ching, a LACS lecturer, and held in the Honest Weight Food Co-Op on Watervliet Avenue in Albany on March 10. (Days before such gatherings would be discontinued in Albany due to COVID-19.)
Colonization, according to Andrusz- Ho Ching, directly impacted natural environments disrupting animal habitats, crops and food chains supporting indigenous life and culture. The workshop, aided by the coop, which lent its kitchens out to the students after they'd obtained necessary menu ingredients in the store proper, was an act of decolonization — "the unending, ever changing and imperfect process of delinking from colonial knowledge, practices and culture," according to Andrusz- Ho Ching.
Undoing colonization requires, she said, a "practice of everyday acts of resurgence and reclamation of indigenous knowledge, culture and ways of life." The workshop, she said, thereby promoted social justice through the students’:
- Sharing knowledge of decolonizing food
- Challenging oppression by identifying structural violence in the food system from colonization till the present
- Shift as a class from thinking and talking about equity to an action-orientated agenda, where they selected recipes, led small teams of cooks and taught other students/peers
- Learning, through this experience, to communicate with each other, problem solve, and build trust and empathy as well as a deeper class community
Photos by Patrick Dodson
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