Monday, May 14, 2012

Fair Food Update Rev. Noelle Damico


Dear Friends,
On Mother’s Day we remember the commandment to “honor thy father and mother” and give thanks for the many ways mothers promote well-being within families.  But farmworker mothers, who labor in the Florida fields providing food for families across America, struggle to feed their own families. You can help change this.

This Mother’s Day weekend, mothers have come together — from both ends of the supply chain. Farmworker mothers and consumer mothers, bound by their universal desire to provide for their families, are uniting their voices to invite Publix Supermarket to become a part of the Coalition of Immokalee WorkersFair Food Program.  You can support their call by signing the  “Publix: Support farmworker mothers” Petition on change.org .
“On Mother's Day, we ask that you, Publix executives, recognize our affliction and the necessity of just wages for us as farmworkers, who as mothers are responsible for feeding our children," said Immokalee mother Carmen Esquivel.
The Rev. Tricia Dillon Thomas, a Publix customer and Presbyterian minister explains, "As a mother it is important to me that the food I put on the table is planted and harvested while maintaining farmworker dignity.  I cannot very well ask the Lord to bless the food and forget the farmworker."
This Mother’s Day, pray that mothers everywhere would be treated with dignity.  And sign the petition to help make that possibility real for mothers picking in the Florida tomato fields. 
Learn more about the PC(USA)’s support for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the Campaign for Fair Food.
The Rev. Noelle Damico
Associate for Fair Food
Presbyterian Hunger Program
Mobile: (631) 371-9877
noelle.damico@pcusa.org
https://community.pcusa.org//page.redir?target=http%3a%2f%2fwww.pcusa.org%2ffairfood&srcid=7384&srctid=1&erid=6859473



Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) | 100 Witherspoon Street | Louisville, Kentucky | 40202-1396
(800) 728-7228 | (502) 569-5000 | Website | Email

Dear Friends,
On Mother’s Day we remember the commandment to “honor thy father and mother” and give thanks for the many ways mothers promote well-being within families.  But farmworker mothers, who labor in the Florida fields providing food for families across America, struggle to feed their own families. You can help change this.

This Mother’s Day weekend, mothers have come together — from both ends of the supply chain. Farmworker mothers and consumer mothers, bound by their universal desire to provide for their families, are uniting their voices to invite Publix Supermarket to become a part of the Coalition of Immokalee WorkersFair Food Program.  You can support their call by signing the  “Publix: Support farmworker mothers” Petition on change.org .
“On Mother's Day, we ask that you, Publix executives, recognize our affliction and the necessity of just wages for us as farmworkers, who as mothers are responsible for feeding our children," said Immokalee mother Carmen Esquivel.
The Rev. Tricia Dillon Thomas, a Publix customer and Presbyterian minister explains, "As a mother it is important to me that the food I put on the table is planted and harvested while maintaining farmworker dignity.  I cannot very well ask the Lord to bless the food and forget the farmworker."
This Mother’s Day, pray that mothers everywhere would be treated with dignity.  And sign the petition to help make that possibility real for mothers picking in the Florida tomato fields. 
Learn more about the PC(USA)’s support for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the Campaign for Fair Food.
The Rev. Noelle Damico
Associate for Fair Food
Presbyterian Hunger Program
Mobile: (631) 371-9877
noelle.damico@pcusa.org
https://community.pcusa.org//page.redir?target=http%3a%2f%2fwww.pcusa.org%2ffairfood&srcid=7384&srctid=1&erid=6859473

Action Alert - Presbyterian Office of Public Witness


Action Alert: House Bill (HR 4970) is NOT a real VAWA

Last Tuesday, the House Judiciary Committee marked up and passed the Adams (R-FL) version of the Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization, HR 4970.  This bill fails to live up to the bipartisan Senate-passed bill (S 1925), which provides improved protections for particularly vulnerable populations. In fact, this House bill turns back the clock on the Violence Against Women Act and is NOT a real VAWA reauthorization.
 
 
The PC(USA), together with our interfaith partners, has been working to support the Senate-passed VAWA reauthorization (S 1925) and to defeat this harmful House bill that hurts and excludes certain survivors of violence from protections and access to the help and services they need. In some cases, the Adams bill gives more rights to perpetrators than to victims.
 
The Violence Against Women Act, enacted in 1994, recognizes the insidious and pervasive nature of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, an stalking, and it supports comprehensive, effective, and costs saving responses to these crimes. VAWA programs, administered by the Departments of Justice and Health & Human Services, give law enforcement, prosecutors, and judges the tools they need to hold offenders accountable and keep communities safe, while supporting victims.
 
The Senate-passed bill includes provisions that provide new protections for Native American women, immigrants, and LGBT victims. The Adams bill (HR 4970) approved by the House Judiciary committee not only fails to include these new provisions, but actually rolls back important protections, including confidentiality, for immigrant victims. In essence, this bill is picking and choosing which victims of domestic and intimate partner violence should get help.
 
Write to your Representative today! Tell him/her to vote NO on HR 4970- it’s not the VAWA reauthorization we want.
 
We applaud members of the Judiciary committee who attempted to improve the Adams bill by offering amendments (all of which failed) to include vulnerable communities, such as Native women, LGBT victims, and immigrants. Ranking Member John Conyers (D-MI) even offered a substitute amendment that closely mirrors the bipartisan Senate-passed bill, but that amendment was not allowed to be considered or debated. In the end, the improving amendments were not adopted, and Committee members who stand with ALL victims of violence voted NO. Find out if your Member is on the Committee and how he/she voted below.*
 
Despite these disappointing results, we are not giving up. The VAWA Reauthorization is essential! Instead of the Adams bill, the PC(USA) supports HR 4271, introduced by Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI) -- a bill that mirrors the bipartisan Senate-passed bill. The first step is to urge the full House to vote NO on the Adams bill, HR 4970, and to support instead HR 4271, an inclusive VAWA that is a real step forward for all victims of violence.
 
 
For more information, check out www.4vawa.org.
_____
*Members who voted in favor of HR 4970 in committee: Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX), Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-CA), Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA), Rep.  Steve Chabot (R-OH), Rep.  Darrell Issa (R-CA), Rep.  Randy Forbes (R-VA), Rep.  Steve King (R-IA), Rep.  Trent Frank (R-AZ), Rep.  Jim Jordan (R-OH), Rep.  Tim Griffin (R-AR), Rep.  Thomas Marino (R-PA), Rep.  Trey Gowdy (R-SC), Rep.  Mike Ross (R-AR), Rep.  Sandy Adams (R-FL), Rep.  Mark Amodei (R-NV)
 
*Members who voted against HR 4970 in committee: Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX), Ranking Member John Conyers (D-MI), Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA), Rep. JerryNadler (D-NY), Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC), Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN), Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), Rep. Pedro Pierluisi (D-PR), Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL), Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL), Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA), Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO)

Food Justice Newsletter May 2012



This Mother’s Day weekend, farmworker and consumer mothers are calling on Publix Supermarket to become a part of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food Program.  Please support them by signing the Publix petition on Change.org.
Food Justice Americorp VISTAs shaking up the hallowed halls of 100 Witherspoon
PHP is blessed to host four Anti-Hunger Empowerment Corps VISTA volunteers this year. They have each contributed to this Food Justice E-news. Learn even more about each of the VISTAs and the program here.
Celebrate World Fair Trade Day!
Rachel graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in Agricultural Economics. She is passionate about sustainability and food.
World Fair Trade Day is this Saturday, May 12. Fair trade provides economic opportunities for farmers, ensures transparency and accountability, and includes standards on gender equity, child labor, working conditions, and caring for the environment. Here are a few ways to get involved on Saturday and beyond:
Deconstructing Food Justice
Jonathan Krigger is a native of Louisville and recently graduated with a degree in Political Science from the University of Louisville, but deep down he is a philosopher.
From a practical and personal standpoint, what does it mean to engage in “Food Justice” work? In what sense is this idea “Justice” used? Are we personally acting from the perspective of our theology, our middle class ethic, our privilege, our sincere desperation or from some other place? I ask these questions to you earnestly. We each come from somewhere and where we come from dictates our encounters with others. We are each guided and blinded by our perspectives, in the same way that saving our poor “little brown brothers” at once tasted of nobility and foulness in the moment of its speaking. If you, as a reader, approach this from some moral obligation you feel compelled to fulfill, this is legitimate. If, for you, this work touches on some pure altruism or serves as a visible badge of liberal humanism, this too is legitimate because it is your own lived reality. No matter where you are coming from, it is necessary to seek out ourselves. How does your perspective guide your relation to the recipients of your Justice? What is true for you? When our particular core truths enter into dialogue, we are made naked and sincere in our work. This is foundational work. This cannot remain invisible if we are to speak together of justice and justice work.
Modern-day gleaning
Before coming to PHP, Laura Stricklen did congregation-based community organizing in Dayton OH after graduating from Wooster College. She majored in Sociology and Religious Studies.
As my seedlings become darling little adolescents with so much potential for producing a bountiful harvest, it is hard to face the global reality that--even in the face of such abundance--roughly one third of the food produced worldwide for human production is lost or wasted. But instead of getting lost in the numbers or bemoaning the failures of humanity, one next step requires us to ask what are we going to do about it?
For those of you who answered “find a way to rescue perfectly good food from the clutches of our waste management system” (which I’m sure was probably about 95% of you dear readers out there…), the USDA has created a toolkit to demystify the process of creating a successful gleaning network to collect excess produce from farms, farmers’ markets, and gardens and reduce the amount of food that we waste.
Contact me if you wish to talk about starting up gleaning in your town.
A Food Justice tour of Louisville
After two years in Ghana serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer, Arianna King worked with multiple species at the Flying Goat Farm in Maine, her home state. Ari is the National Food Security Coordinator and is available to consult with you about your plans to bring justice to your church and community.
A few weeks ago the National Slow Food Congress convened in Louisville to talk food at their biennial conference.  The 150 participants came from all over the country to slow things down for a few days and discuss the praxis of slow sustainable food systems.  The program included opening remarks from Mayor Greg Fischer who spoke of the progress of his “Healthy Hometown” initiative and encouraged others to join in the fight.
The highlight of the conference, however, was a much needed Food Justice tour of Louisville, planned and facilitated by volunteers at New Roots Inc., a PHP grantee. On the tour, Slow Food Congress participants boarded a TARC Bus and took the time to visit a few neighborhood projects working to increase access of fresh local produce in areas of the city where groceries stores are scarce and fresh produce is unheard of.  
One of these stops included a visit to the Redeemer Lutheran Church in the Shawnee neighborhood, located in the west end of Louisville, a known food desert.  Shawnee Fresh Stop organizers work tirelessly to perpetuate a healing conversation about the “food apartheid” in Louisville as well as offering local produce in a communal setting to neighborhood residents.  Former PHP VISTA, Blain Snipstal referred to the bounty of a Fresh Stop produce share as, “the best CSA in the city”, and because it is priced on a sliding scale, it is accessible to anyone interested in eating healthy.
Fresh Stop director Karyn Moskowitz, organizer Nathaniel Spencer and VISTA Arianna King spoke to the Slow Food Congress on the Food Justice tour about the importance of making slow, healthy, sustainably grown food available to ALL individuals, through the process of cultivating community leaders and educating community members about the importance of healthy eating.  
The Shawnee Fresh Stop is in its second season and has already recruited several new leaders from the community to organize this season’s events through a popular education dialog called the Shawnee Food Justice Class.  The class is designed to build leaders and motivated community members to start Fresh Stops throughout Louisville. It is people empowerment programs like the Shawnee Food Justice Class that will be sowing the seeds of justice even deeper into the Louisville food system for years to come.  It was a pleasure and an honor to share the Food Justice work being done with such a large group of individuals interested in the current issues with our food systems.
More Food Justice news. . . next month an update on the fate of the Farm Bill
Justice for workers in the food chain
A fair deal for California’s farm workers
Civil Eats - April 10, 2012
...a growing “domestic fair trade” movement aims to formally recognize and reward farms that are working to address social justice. The Agricultural Justice Project (AJP) has developed a set of fair labor guidelines under the Food Justice Certified label, which was born out of dissatisfaction with the US National Organic Program’s failure to address workers’ dignity and rights... While more than 70 Canadian farms are Food Justice Certified, only eight in the United States have received certification. There is now a burgeoning effort to bring the label to California, with Santa Cruz County-based strawberry grower Swanton Berry Farm among those leading the way. Read more.
Getting a schooling in urban agriculture
New Orleans school cultivates a generation of forward-thinking farmers
Grist - April 9, 2012
I met Nat Turner, a former New York City public-school teacher, in New Orleans in November, 2010 surrounded by mountains of compost, beautiful vegetables and many volunteers and budding farmers. Nat moved to New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward on Thanksgiving Day, 2008. He didn’t know anything about gardening — “I could barely keep a cactus alive” — but he had a vision to start an urban farm that would be a vehicle for educating and empowering the neighborhood’s youth. He’d been making service trips to the Big Easy with students, but he wanted an opportunity to dig deeper, literally and figuratively, into the city’s revitalization. Read more.
Please consider making a gift to the Presbyterian Hunger Fund. Together we can end hunger!
 
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) | 100 Witherspoon Street | Louisville, Kentucky | 40202-1396
(800) 728-7228 | (502) 569-5000 | Website | Email
 
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Bread Webinar and Conference Call Thursday, May 17

To:
pattyredwoodshae@sbcglobal.net
Bread for the World
Monthly National Grassroots Conference Call (and Webinar) 
Thursday, May 17, 2012
4-5 p.m. Eastern Time
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Register now to receive simple instructions on how to call and log in.
Please join Bread’s expert organizing and policy staff for our next National Grassroots Conference Call (and Webinar) on May 17.
Once you register, you'll receive an email confirmation with the login information for the call and Web portion. We hope you'll join us!
Bread's monthly national grassroots conference calls take place the third Thursday of every month at 4 p.m. Eastern Time (please adjust for time zones). Check Bread's event calendar for more information.
Peace,
LaVida Davis
LaVida Davis
Director of Organizing and Grassroots Capacity Building

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