Recently, a group of TFP staff and youth went to the 2005 Community Food Security Conference in Atlanta. This is one in a series of reflections on that event.

CFSC, yes another acronym, but aren’t you curious to know what it stands for? The Community Food Security Coalition’s annual conference took place this year in Atlanta, home of the Braves, the Georgia Peach, Stone Mountain, and most importantly for me, Martin Luther King, Jr. This year’s theme focused on the Civil Rights movement, which for me was something that I touched on in school, but never had a deep understanding of the struggle for rights that I now take for granted.

The conference’s main purpose was to bring together people working in the food security movement, meaning access to affordable, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food for all people at all times. What does it mean to be in a movement and how can I relate food to the civil rights movement? Through my work at The Food Project, I have come to understand that food affects all people because we all eat. Issues of race, gender and social and economic class are all related to food in some way. I am working within this movement to make a food system that feeds all of us equally. Yes, there are inequities that still exist even though the U.S. produces an excess of food, mostly for export while 33 million people – including 13 million children – live in households that experience hunger or the risk of hunger (Pediatrics. Vol. 110 No. 4. October 2002).

After visiting the Martin Luther King, Jr. national park site in Atlanta, seeing his birthplace and the myriad of historical photographs, films, recordings, and information regarding his life and those that worked with him, I had a much better sense of the sacrifices millions of people made to secure the rights afforded to all citizens of the United States. It was an emotional and inspirational experience that made a lot of sense when relating it to other areas of social justice through food. Most importantly for me was the reaction from youth that accompanied us on the walk to Sweet Auburn, MLK’s neighborhood. When it is difficult to define the food movement, it’s helpful to look into the past, at other movements throughout history to gain some perspective and know that we are working together, with millions of others, sometimes in very different ways, but we are not alone.