competing paradigms
as i lurch forward in fits and starts toward pointing to the systemic reasons behind all of the disillusioned and dispossessed issue areas along the border, i had an offer from the state’s health and human services department to collaborate on creating a food stamp program for citizen children of immigrant parents living in the colonias of southern NM. i paused only momentarily before explaining the old teach a person to fish adage adapted for our new age… really? food stamps? when we have land aplenty to create small sustainable plots for farm workers to use their culturally appropriate and place-based knowledge to work, play, and improve livelihood through direct access to their own life choices so they are no longer homeless, no longer hungry, i actually had to explain that in my humble opinion ‘hunger’ is more than a simple physiological signal that rumbles in the belly. hunger is a deep desire for access to the resources and materials and infrastructure that so many of us simply take for granted. this is the basis for the sustainable farming institute, for pointing to the structural and epistemological violence inherent in developing expanded access to damn food stamps. i got kind of angry.
i am elated to take 12 colonia youth up to Santa Fe on Friday for Environmental Justice day at the state Legislative session, a promising mix of intergenerational rumpus, meaning music and dancing and food and inter-group exchanges, mixed with meaningful conversations and face-to-face meetings with policy makers and authorities, about how they can really partake in the system, through recharged power and collective voice, to participate in the mundane every day. we will live, work, and play at the Rotunda and Halls of History, meet other youth groups engaging on similar levels in the democratic processes that make up their connections to their presents, pasts, and futures, hit the farmer’s market, tour the back rooms of the food coops, and talk with those who have forged paths in the more affluent areas of northern NM, finally interested in collaborating in the sad, poor south. i say that sarcastically.
environmental justice is inextricably linked to food justice, to fighting myths and stereotypes about poor latino communities, marginalized neighborhoods of color, where will vs. skill mindsets still pervade. i met today with a friend who is working in faith-based communities to mobilize those who pray to manifest as those who say, and can learn to speak the language of authority and policy in order to speak to inequities. equity is ‘just spaces.’ it is the juxtaposition, as least right now, of liberal ‘safe spaces’ where we hang a rainbow and say, okay, chubby, dark, gay kid, you have flaws but we take all flaws here. it is calling liberal ‘safe spaces’ bullshit and demanding that ‘just spaces’ refuse ideological oppression, epistemological violence, and continued insistence on policies of domination. wait for me. i am coming.
in light, en solidaridad, y con carino,
laura
