This episode of The Dig is brought to you by our supporters at patreon.com

and by University of North Carolina Press,

which has loads of great titles,

perfect for dig listeners like you.

One that you might like is stirrings,

how activist New Yorkers ignited a movement for food justice by Lana D. Povitz.

In the last three decades of the 20th 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 D. Povitz demonstrates how grassroots activism continued to thrive, even as it was transformed,

by the unrelenting erosion of the country's already fragile social safety net.

The first book-length history of food activism in a major American city,

Stirrings reveals 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.

Stirrings, how activist New Yorkers ignited a movement for food justice by Lana D. Povitz.

Out now from the Justice, Power, and Politics series at University of North Carolina Press.

Welcome to The Dig, a podcast from Jacobin magazine.

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