Food Justice Snacks
Good morning, lovely digital sangha!Today just wanted to share a few tasty tidbits I've picked up around the internets, fitting with our month-long theme of the Dharma of Food Justice.On MinorityNurse.com, one Registered Nurse (RN) offers advice on how to provide meals suitable for Buddhist patients. I love the idea of a health care system that provides culturally appropriate foods to people! Though it shouldn't just fall on the nurses to do it as individuals; ideally it would be an orientation built into the system. (Well, let's be real: ideally, health care would look different in a lot of ways!) Anyhow, check out what Gihan ElGindy, RN, MSN, from Virginia, has to say. She even explains the Five Precepts!Buddhist blogger Patricia McBroom offers insightful updates and analysis on "water wars" on The California Spigot: "A journal committed to local governance and the public interest." A longtime meditator at the Berkeley Zen Center and frequenter of the BZC's socially engaged Buddhist study group, Pat refreshes her readers with straight talk, lively writing, and uncompromising commitment to water rights for everyone.
One is reminded of the climactic scene in the Wizard of Oz when a fearsome image of the wizard is projected onto a wall, with booming voice and belching smoke – until Dorothy's little dog, Toto, trots over to a booth and tugs back a curtain, behind which a white-haired gent is shown pulling levers. Dorothy was being frightened by a magic show.Where is Toto when we need him?But if smoke and mirrors are clouding California's future water plans, people on the ground – including opponents from north and south – are working together better than ever. Without any state managers in charge, the people who supply water and protect resources are doing what lies in the best interests of everyone: meeting together in democratic groups, under the name “Delta Projects Coalition,” to figure out how best to repair and pay for improved levees. It's about time.
On grist.org, Twilight Greenaway wonders whether "food righteousness hinder[s] system-wide change."
Don’t get me wrong; I have voted with my fork for the last half-decade (although I have to press extra hard to get it to leave much of a mark on the ballot). And I love hearing people’s tips, recipes, and strategies for avoiding the slime/glue/corn byproducts that are so cheap and easily available to most of us. (Here’s a recent favorite from a friend who brings her rice cooker on the road and makes impressive meals in hotel rooms!) But let’s pat ourselves on the back and then move on to see what else we can do.
And last but not least, on the Environmental and Food Justice blog moderated by Dr. Devon G. Peña, I loved this fascinating article about food sovereignty in México and the United States.
The Zapatista method of democratizing governance from the grassroots, which includes the cooperative reorganization of food systems through the principles of autonomy, represents a viable method to work against the expansion of the republic of property and resist the other predatory qualities of the capitalist economy that threaten to further degrade food sovereignty.
Happy reading, everyone!* * *[Top Photo: Spring Green Fruit Salad by Kathy Patalsky]