The People’s Harvest Forum, Still Breaking Ground

The third annual People’s Harvest Forum is coming up! The People’s Harvest Forum is a grassroots forum on radical food politics where we discuss the central role that the corporate takeover of food systems plays in today’s social justice and environmental problems, and learn about grassroots solutions to defending and reclaiming our food systems.

Supervisor Eric Mar on Taking Political Action for Health Equity

In 2015, we honored the location of our first forum by focusing on food struggles in the Bay Area and other urban spaces. In 2016, following the presidential elections, we spoke about the politics of our food system. We’ve had amazing speakers, from anarchist veganic food growers and soda tax champions to sitting San Francisco supervisors. We bring together people from different walks to enable a cross-pollination of ideas and to build a complete, holistic view of our food system and how to change it. This year will be no different.

The theme for 2017 is Resources – resources that multinationals usurp and monopolize and resources that communities can mobilize, defend and reclaim to build a People’s food system. We will explore land, seeds, and labor… but also policy as a commons, cities as a resource, and reclaiming the narratives that depict us.

Do your homework before the forum – get your hands on Roxanne Dunbar’s “An Indigenous People’s History of the United States”.

We have an INCREDIBLE roster of speakers this year. We are honored to welcome author Roxanne Dunbar who will speak of the central role of land in colonization and anti-colonial struggles and of the continuity between past and present forms of colonization; Antonio Diaz of PODER, an organization that has successfully organized for community control of public spaces; Dr. Linda Alvarez, a political scientist who will speak of the commodification of migrants under neoliberalism, and many many more. Check out our speaker page and don’t forget to check back as people are still being added.

Like so many other projects and movements, this forum looks to address poverty and environmental degradation through our food system. However, it is completely unique in that it is the only event of the sort – anywhere in the world – to work within a vegan ethic. What do we mean by that? We do NOT mean that we are putting forth veganism or veganic farming as solutions to these problems, and we do NOT mean that we are exploring the “connections” or “intersections” between different forms of oppression, or animal rights and food justice, or what have you.

What we mean is that in the same way that other conferences – whether they promote biotechnology or agroecology – take it as a given that dogs are not going to be farmed or eaten, we take it as a given that cows, pigs and other animals are no different. Speakers who present on permaculture and agroecology do so within those parameters, and so theirs is a vegan permaculture and agroecology. Veganism is not the solution we are proposing; rather, it is the ethical framework within which we discuss solutions such as agroecology.

We treat veganism as a normative ethic without waiting for the mainstream to get there. In so doing, we have created the only conference of the sort to counter the pro-animal agriculture rhetoric of the food movement, to give a platform to veganic farmers, and to normalize veganism.

Please save the date, RSVP and share!

Support this project. This is a grassroots, all-volunteer effort. Any donation makes a difference.
Check out the forum website for more information.
Watch presentations from previous People’s Harvest Forums.