Student Food Justice Struggles Against the Prison Food Industrial Complex and the Prospects for Abolition in Higher Education

Keywords: food justice, abolition, prison industrial complex, higher education
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Monday
Session Start / End Time: 2/28/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/28/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 9

Abstract

This paper looks at the growing student food justice movement on college campuses throughout the United States (US). By one estimate nearly 7.5 million meals are served to college students in the US every day, costing billions of dollars every year. Many of the major food service providers are entangled in a food system that exploits workers, destroys the environment, churns out unhealthy food, and of increasing concern, supports the prison industrial complex. The paper first traces the history of early efforts to change procurement practices at US universities, including through food worker rights, fair trade, and organic campaigns, and eventually, the comprehensive Real Food Challenge. The paper then turns to the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement and how it has shifted discourse and practice on college campuses to address anti-Black racism and grapple with prison abolition. Part of this shift has entailed the formation of nationwide groups like Uprooted and Rising, as well as local campus struggles to push universities to divest from major food service providers with ties to the prison food and agricarceral industrial complexes and shift procurement policies to align with intersectional economic, racial, environmental, and food justices. This paper discusses why food is both a site for and an extension of prison abolition and why food justice scholarship and organizing must grapple with prison abolition within powerful institutions like education given their extensive economic power and moral agenda setting authority.