The action group I was a part of worked with Slow Food Washington to help gather resources to inform the SF community about Washington House Bill 2777 (SHB 2777), also known as the “Tamale Bill.” Slow Food is an international organization that promotes its three pillars of “Good, Clean, and Fair Food for All” through community engagements. The legislature created by another non-profit Ventures Marketplace permits home cooks to legally sell food without a commercial kitchen which directly aligns with Slow Food’s mission for fairness as it supports local businesses. Our role was to create a digital toolkit to engage the SF Washington community about SHB 2777.

The first page of our rough draft of the digital toolkit

Highlighting the importance of relationships with community members and other organizations in order to enact collective change, the project provided me a window into how a fairly large organization operates and the importance of communication. I learned tangible ways to get involved such as donating, volunteering time, or working with people in the community to create positive change.

Slow Food started as a wide-scale movement against the globalization of Western fast food and now as an organization, its mission is to support marginalized communities in taking active roles in the food system. My involvement in this project shaped my understanding of the importance of food sovereignty in local communities. Monica White, the author of Freedom Farmers, also shares a similar sentiment about the importance of food sovereignty through community-led organizations. White illustrates the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network’s successes in creating food security and economic autonomy through community farming. (White, 127)

All SF chapters are volunteer-driven communities working on different campaigns and initiatives important respective to their own needs in regards to food.

COVID-19 has disrupted the global economy and the food system, exposing weak links such as working conditions, overproduction, and trade deals leading. In a broader lens, allowing community members to start their own business out of their kitchen is one of the many ways communities can build toward food sovereignty. SHB 2777 and other campaigns like it proves that within a living system comes evolution and adaptation to challenging circumstances. This state legislature is one of many examples of how people’s direct relationship to food creates a personal, deeper understanding of the entirety of the world’s food system.

Also, just a few of the many resources out there to get involved in regards to the abolishment of the police: https://linktr.ee/acab

Work Cited:

White, M.M (2018). Drawing on the Past toward a Food Sovereign Future. Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement (pp. 117-140) Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press.