Stirrings

In the last three decades of the twentieth century government cutbacks stagnating wages AIDS and gentrification pushed ever more people into poverty and hunger reached levels unseen since the Depression. In response New Yorkers set the stage for a nationwide food justice movement. Whether organizing school lunch campaigns establishing food co-ops or lobbying city officials citizen-activists made food a political issue uniting communities across lines of difference. The charismatic usually female leaders of these efforts were often products of earlier movements: American communism civil rights activism feminism even Eastern mysticism. Situating food justice within these rich lineages Lana Dee Povitz demonstrates how grassroots activism continued to thrive even as it was transformed by unrelenting erosion of the country’s already fragile social safety net.<br/><br/>Using dozens of new oral histories and archives Povitz reveals the colorful characters who worked behind the scenes to build and sustain the movement and illuminates how people worked together to overturn hierarchies rooted in class and race reorienting the history of food activism as a community-based response to austerity. The first book-length history of food activism in a major American city <i>Stirrings</i> highlights the emotional intimate and interpersonal aspects of social movement culture.