Visual notes by Rianna Eckel for the Maryland Food & Prison Abolition Project‘s May 2022 Food Sovereignty & Abolition Public Roundtable
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“Abolition is world-building. It is building the worlds we want and need.”
–Robyn Maynard from Rehearsals for Living with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
“The project of abolition is concerned with arriving at the possibility of freedom.”
-Ronaldo Walcott, from Food & Freedom: Dreaming Food Justice Futures Through Prison Abolition
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Hi there community of practitioners,
Looking forward to gathering with you next week, our last for 2022.
We’ve been curious for some time to have a learning conversation as a CoP centering Abolition in relationship to Food Justice and Food Sovereignty and are looking forward centering that learning in our session next week.
👥 So-called “BC” Food Gateway Community of Practice
🌺 November Monthly Gathering: Abolitionist Food Justice and Sovereignty
📅 November 15, noon – 1:30 PST
Interested in joining the CoP?
🌠 North star curiosity: What might abolitionist wisdom invite us into feeling, dreaming, doing, stopping, rebuilding, creating through food and food justice work?
We recognize this conversation and invitation is big and might invite us to a learning edge. We’re feeling that too and are holding closely a reminder from the White Noise Collective (who you may remember facilitated a session for us a year ago) that “Facilitators are not experts. We create these spaces because we want to learn about these things.”
We hope this call opens up and makes it possible for us to build towards a shared analysis around food and abolition (Katie German dropped some wisdom when she visited the CoP last Spring about the importance of building shared analysis in community). We’re very compelled to center abolitionism in our collective curiosity and practice around food justices and sovereignties and how this can support us as a community of practice in futuring, dreaming and “rehearsals for living” towards abolitionist, just, and sovereign food systems.
We’ll spend our time together in a mix of solo reflection and small group conversation in response to some abolitionist wisdom we’ll lift up, including clips from 🎧 this conversation, and some futuring/visionary fiction play, honouring Food Culture Collective and Walidah Imarisha alongside adrienne maree brown for this language.
🌸 We invite you to spend some time engaging with some of what we’ve shared here ahead of our time together. Not a requirement though! Wherever we’re coming to the conversation from is perfect. 🌸
Some places to learn
Here are some places we’ve found helpful in our learning so far. In the abundance of so much wisdom and work on abolition out there, we’re especially amplifying resources from so-called “Canada” alongside work from the so-called “US” context, especially where food is part of the analysis. Abolition is a global project. We are reminded to think about what might be shared and what might be unique in so-called “BC” and “Canada”.
🔊 Podcasts & Webinars
Food & Freedom: Dreaming Food Just Futures Through Prison Abolition by FoodShare TO
Kanav Kathuria of Maryland Food & Prison Abolition Project on Food & Justice w/ Brenda Sanders
Food Sovereignty and Abolition: A Public Roundtable by The Maryland Food and Prison Abolition Project
📰 Shorter Reads
Incarceration, Abolition, and Liberating the Food System by Ashanté Reese
Radical Farmers Use Fresh Food to Fight Racial Injustice and the New Jim Crow by Leah Penniman
📚 Books
Rehearsals for Living by Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Policing Black Lives by Robyn Maynard
Black Food Matters: Racial Justice in the Wake of Food Justice edited by Hanna Garth and Ashanté M. Reese
On Property by Ronaldo Walcott
Abolitionist Agroecology: Food Sovereignty and Pandemic Prevention by Maywa Montenegro de Wit
Abolitionist Intimacies by El Jones
Disarm, Defund, Dismantle: Police Abolition in Canada edited by Shiri Pasternak, Kevin Walby and Abby Stadnyk
Border and Rule by Harsha Walia
The Skin We’re In by Desmond Cole
Friendly reminders about joining
👥 This is not a webinar, you will be invited to have your camera on where possible and be in breakout rooms as well as use the chat and/or Google Jamboard if it’s available to you. We’ll be using the Zoom breakout room and chat functions, it is always helpful to update your Zoom.
📱We can support folks calling in If it is more accessible for you. Let us know and we’ll gladly work with you on making sure you have what you need to participate.
⌨️ A live auto-generated transcript and closed captioning will be available. We expect there are access needs not met by this container and invite you to let us know how the CoP sessions could be more accessible as we work our access, inclusion, and disability justice practices.
Looking forward to learning and dreaming abolitionist food futures (thanks for this phrase, Dara Cooper) with you,
Zsuzsi & Keira