Just in from The Grist… Slow Food USA’s Future
Slow Food USA: Social Justice on the Menu
By Tom Philpott, Editor of The Grist
“If you haven’t noticed yet, Slow Food is about to get political!” announced Erika Lesser, executive director of Slow Food USA. She was addressing the Slow Food USA chapter — for one day, Terra Madre had broken into meetings of regional and national contingents.
Few could have missed the political turn. Unlike many Slow Food USA events I’ve been to, there were few or no odes to the transformative power of a perfect peach. Here, speakers focused on how to broaden access to healthy, ecologically raised food.
Josh Viertel, Slow Food USA’s new president, set the tone. He announced that the organization would from now forward pursue two main priorities: youth organizing and social justice. “Our food system disproportionately hurts poor people and people of color, and alternatives aren’t accessible to those groups,” he said.
He said that in the past, the group had focused its rhetoric on values: commitment to “good, clean, and fair food,” for example. From now on, it would emphasize rights. “Access to good, clean, and fair food is not a privilege,” he declared. “It’s a right, and we have to make that clear.” That message, he insisted, was the most important one that delegates could bring back to their communities.
He also vowed that Slow Food USA would work to avoid doing something it has been accused of doing in the past: suck the air out the sustainable-food movement by hoarding resources and media attention at the expense of social-justice activists.
