Why Environmentalism Includes Food

What is Environmentalism?

Environmentalism is the fight to protect the environment including animals, land, water, air, and more from violence, displacement, and pollution. Many people think of environmentalism as "white hippie tree huggers", but the concepts weren't even originated by white activists, but rather Black & Indigenous people trying to survive under colonialism. Colonialism inherently steals culture, land, people, labor, knowledge, and more to exploit it, and the impact this has had on the people and the land is detrimental. Pollution from pesticides, carcinogens, data/surveillance centers, fossil fuel use, wars, radiation, chemical additives, lead poisining, food preservatives, and more cause irreversible damage to our psyche, our food, our ecosystem, and the planet. "Conservation" of land (if owned by the U.S. government) is not considered environmentalism, because it continues to displace indigenous nations. Advocating for land conservation is a form of white supremacy/narcissism because it implies that all human activity is unethical, when in reality it erases the 10,000 year old indigenous knowledge of humans living in harmony with land. You can learn more about environmental racism in Ventura County here. 

Why does Environmentalism include food? 

Environmentalism includes food because colonization impacted everything down to the type of food we consume. The majority of death today in the United States colonial empire is caused by what we eat (heart disease), and colonialism took away our ability to grow our own food. This forces us to rely on grocery stores filled with pesticides, large farms that abuse immigrants, and unethical Big Agriculture practices such as torturing animals before they get to our dinner plate. Our mind, body, soul, and land are all being poisoned by colonialism, so you cannot discuss environmentalism without discussing what we consume. 

Why does Food Sovereignty matter to the "revolution"?

Sovereignty means to support oneself without others interferring, and food sovereignty means a community is able to feed & support themselves without others interferring. "Big Ag" or Big Agriculture significantly reduces food sovereignty because large corporations & monopolies control access to seeds, land, pesticide use, and more. This means that local community gardens and farms have less support, and less education surrounding harmful affects of pesticide use. This leaves local communities and independent farmers with fewer choices over what they grow, how they farm, and what people eat. 

Leftist organizers often romanticize a revolution against the ruling class or the United States empire but don't imagine what a world without colonialism would look like. 

An Indigenous lawyer, author, teacher, and activist once said "We use 10% of our energy educating ourselves and learning about... problems, where the harm is coming from. A lot of these problems are being actively kept alive on life support. We need to let them die a natural death by withdrawing our support for their continued existence rather than annihilating them. 10% in stopping the flow of harm coming towards us, in the warrior tradition it means you stand in protection of life by stopping the flow of harm coming towards you without harm to other because it's a stand that recognizes the sacredness of all life. A full 80% of our energy is spent visioning and creating a world in which we wish to inhabit. So if we think about what we feed grows, we understand that basic construct, then we are feeding the world in which we want to inhabit and stop investing so much of our time and energy focusing on what we don't want to continue." -Sherri Mitchell 

How can a revolution exist if none of us can eat? 

In essence, 10% of our time should be figuring our what's oppressing/harming us, 10% on stopping that oppression, and 80% of our time should be spent focusing on building a better world!