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My name is Brandy Brooks. I'm the Director of Community Programs at The Food Project.
And, the key thing that I work on is really how to
support and inspire other people to change the way
the food system works for them and for their communities.
I think some of the key oppressions that you see are
oppression by race or ethnicity, oppression by class or income,
oppression by language, sometimes by geography,
Uh, age can be a factor, especially in terms of how youth and the elderly have access,
and also gender in some cases.
I think that the way you really see it operate is
who's in charge of making decisions around
what happens related to a communities food system?
And, that can take so many different angles.
It could be, who gets to be a part of making decisions about how land is used in a community?
Whether or not it can be used for agriculture.
Whether or not people from the community can purchase it.
Uh, those folks are often, um,
tend to be white. Especially in dealing with minority communities, that's a real issue.
They tend to be income and power elites.
So, if you are low income, or
if you do have less formal education in a community,
your right, or your privilege to be involved in those decision making systems
is severely restricted.
One of the things our organization does is work with youth.
And, we have a lot of conversations how young people
are not considered often-times valid citizens yet
in determining what should happen. So, when you're having a conversation about school food,
do those conversations about school food include talking and working with young people
around organizing for what they want to see in terms of good food in their schools?
So, those are some of the ways that you can see
how power dynamics operate to exclude people
from being able to determine what their food system should be like in their community.