DC -- Anacostia Community Museum -- Exhibit: Food for the People: Eating and Activism in Greater Washington (Interior portion):
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Description of Pictures: Food for the People: Eating and Activism in Greater Washington
April 17, 2021 – September 17, 2022
With every bite of food we eat, we have an opportunity to help remake an unjust and unequal food system.
Do you know where your food comes from? Who produces, processes, and prepares it, and in what conditions? Why is fresh food available in some communities, and not others? And who -- if anyone -- is responsible for ensuring that everyone has access? Food for the People explores these questions by looking at the greater Washington, D.C., area’s food system, the inequalities that shape it, and the people working to transform it.
Take a deep dive into the food issues of the nation’s capital -- past and present -- with this outdoor and indoor exhibition featuring artifacts, art installations, videos, and hands-on interactives.
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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
FOOD4P_210807_008.JPG: Food Matters
FOOD4P_210807_016.JPG: 46% of US land is used for grazing livestock, growing crops for livestock, or growing crops for humans. Still, the US imports 15% of its food from other countries:
94% of the seafood that Americans consume annually is imported
32% of fresh vegetables are imported
55% of fresh fruit is imported
FOOD4P_210807_018.JPG: 1.4% of the US federal budget went toward SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), the nation's largest anti-hunger program.
FOOD4P_210807_020.JPG: Restaurant and food service jobs
8% of DC workers are employed in restaurant and food service jobs.
9% of Maryland and Virginia workers are employed in restaurant and food service jobs.
FOOD4P_210807_023.JPG: 13% of people in DC have a diet-related chronic illness like diabetes or heart disease. DC's African American residents are six times more likely that white residents to die from diabetes0-related complications.
FOOD4P_210807_027.JPG: 37% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to food production, transportation, and packaging.
FOOD4P_210807_030.JPG: 14.3% of DC seniors are food insecure, the highest rate in the nation.
FOOD4P_210807_032.JPG: 20% of US municipal landfill waste is food waste
FOOD4P_210807_038.JPG: Food for the People
Eating & Activism in Greater Washington
FOOD4P_210807_049.JPG: Myth of the American Farm
FOOD4P_210807_052.JPG: Reality of the American Farm
FOOD4P_210807_068.JPG: The Food System
FOOD4P_210807_072.JPG: From chick to chicken
Production
FOOD4P_210807_074.JPG: From whole live chicken to packaged wing
Processing
FOOD4P_210807_079.JPG: From processing plant to carry-out restaurant
Distribution
FOOD4P_210807_081.JPG: From carry-out restaurant to your mouth
Preparation & Consumption
FOOD4P_210807_085.JPG: From table to garbage
Disposal
FOOD4P_210807_094.JPG: A Taste of Home
Preserving Local Food Cultures
FOOD4P_210807_097.JPG: Honoring and Serving Salvadoran Food
FOOD4P_210807_107.JPG: Nam-Viet Restaurant: One of the Last in "Little Saigon"
FOOD4P_210807_111.JPG: A Taste of Home
FOOD4P_210807_113.JPG: "The COVID-19 Effect"
The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated the restaurant industry. Just between March and December 2020, more than 100,000 restaurants across the country permanently closed. Many more have since.
FOOD4P_210807_119.JPG: Food in the former Chocolate City
FOOD4P_210807_124.JPG: Capital City Mambo Sauce
FOOD4P_210807_127.JPG: Mumbo sauce
FOOD4P_210807_133.JPG: "Gentrification is cultural genocide."
-- Richard "Dickie" Shannon, longtime owner of Horace & Dickie's
FOOD4P_210807_156.JPG: From Chinatown to Chinaburb
FOOD4P_210807_158.JPG: El Gavilan
FOOD4P_210807_169.JPG: A Taste of Home
FOOD4P_210807_176.JPG: This electric mitad grill
FOOD4P_210807_177.JPG: Wing Kong Yao
FOOD4P_210807_179.JPG: Wing Kong Yao
FOOD4P_210807_181.JPG: Traditional Salvadoran apron
FOOD4P_210807_182.JPG: Street Vendors
FOOD4P_210807_189.JPG: Street Vendors
FOOD4P_210807_190.JPG: Maria Isabel Guevarra
FOOD4P_210807_193.JPG: Food as a Human Right?
FOOD4P_210807_198.JPG: 1930s-1950s
Most of the federal food policies that we know today -- from food stamps to farm subsidies -- were created in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. America's food system almost collapsed during the Great Depression. In the face of drought and rising hunger, the federal government stepped in to keep farms running and stomachs full.
But everyone did not benefit equally from the policies and programs of this "New Deal." Black farmers and farmworkers were often denied access to government farm aid. Meanwhile, millions of struggling Black families were written out of new federal welfare programs like food stamps.
FOOD4P_210807_200.JPG: A shopper uses food stamps while checking out, 1939
FOOD4P_210807_204.JPG: "We got a picture of a gorge, with farm surpluses on one cliff and under-nourished city folks with outstretched hands on the other. We set out to find a practical way to build a bridge across that chasm."
-- Milo Perkins, first Food Stamp Program administrator, 1939
FOOD4P_210807_206.JPG: The Food Stamp Program was created in 1939.
FOOD4P_210807_209.JPG: Food stamps from the first Food Stamp Program.
FOOD4P_210807_211.JPG: Food stamps from the first Food Stamp Program.
FOOD4P_210807_213.JPG: Free Breakfast Program for Children flyer, DC chapter of the Black Panther Party, 1970.
FOOD4P_210807_221.JPG: "The BCP (Breakfast for Children Program) represents the best and most influential activity going for the BPP and, as such, is potentially the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to neutralize the BPP and destroy what it stands for."
-- FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, memo to FBI offices, 1969
FOOD4P_210807_223.JPG: The Black Panther Party's DC headquarters
FOOD4P_210807_229.JPG: 1960s-1970s
Hunger, poverty, and racism took center stage in the 1960s and 1970s. The civil rights and Black power movements sought to address the shortcomings of existing federal programs while also creating new, community-run alternatives. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson introduced bold food aid and anti-poverty initiatives and activists pushed for these policies to be genuinely inclusive. Locally, organizers like Barry Farms resident Etta Horn rose up to highlight the rampant hunger in the nation's capital and the discriminatory practices of the city welfare agency. Their work resulted in more just food aid and welfare policies for the nation.
FOOD4P_210807_245.JPG: "I believe that when the local and federal government isn't providing resources in response to a serious crisis, providing food and supportive relationships is the same thing as radical activism."
-- Carla Gorrell, founding Executive Director of Food & Friends
FOOD4P_210807_248.JPG: 1980s-1990s
During the 1980s, the federal government made major cuts to food stamps and other anti-poverty programs. The HIV/AIDS epidemic was in full swing, a homelessness crisis was sweeping the nation, and many of the District's most vulnerable residents were literally dying of starvation.
In response, Washingtonians mobilized to feed their neighbors. Many of the large food non-profits that operate in the region today -- like the Capital Area Food Bank, Martha's Table, Food & Friends, and DC Central Kitchen -- were birthed in this moment. But the activists behind these organizations did more than serve food. They also forged community among marginalized people and pressed for the government to re-invest in solutions.
FOOD4P_210807_251.JPG: An early photo of the national AIDS Nutrition Services Alliance.
FOOD4P_210807_258.JPG: "That's not the elderly and needy you're talking to in those food lines. There are people who take advantage of those things."
-- Robert Leard, administrator, USDA Food and Nutrition Service, 1982
FOOD4P_210807_265.JPG: Cartons of USDA cheese
FOOD4P_210807_267.JPG: "We've looked and looked at ways to deal with this, but the distribution problems are incredible. And you cannot permit a disruption of sales. Probably the cheapest and most practical thing would be to dump it in the ocean."
-- US Department of Agriculture official discussing surplus cheese, 1981
FOOD4P_210807_269.JPG: This was the first public day of the exhibit and some of the signage still had to be worked out.
FOOD4P_210807_271.JPG: "There are children in the Mississippi Delta whose bellies are swollen with hunger... These conditions are not confined to rural Mississippi. They exist in dark tenements in Washington, DC, within sight of the Capitol, in Harlem, in South Side Chicago, in Watts."
-- Senator Robert F. Kennedy
FOOD4P_210807_281.JPG: "Our aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it."
-- President Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964 State of the Union Address
FOOD4P_210807_288.JPG: NWRO political buttons, c. early 1970s
FOOD4P_210807_291.JPG: "We are not nutritionists. We cannot speak technically of diet deficiencies. But we do know our city, its streets and its people. We know hunger and its gnawing away here in the nation's capital. We know babies are dying here because their mothers are malnourished... Thousands upon thousands of our older citizens, barely subsisting on meager monthly stipends, go without adequate food for days and weeks on end."
-- Etta Horn, National Welfare Rights Organization
FOOD4P_210807_305.JPG: An Iowa farm foreclosure auction, 1933
FOOD4P_210807_312.JPG: Destroy Livestock, Get Paid
FOOD4P_210807_315.JPG: In 1954 Congress established the Special Milk Program
FOOD4P_210807_319.JPG: Supporting agriculture
FOOD4P_210807_321.JPG: A Notice to Appear for Physical Examination, 1940
FOOD4P_210807_323.JPG: School children
FOOD4P_210807_328.JPG: In 1981, the Reagan administration
FOOD4P_210807_335.JPG: How much DC Public Schools spends on lunch ingredients: $1.50
FOOD4P_210807_344.JPG: DC is a national leader when it comes to improving school meals.
FOOD4P_210807_349.JPG: Where does the extra money come from?
FOOD4P_210807_350.JPG: How much a US school system might spend on lunch ingredients: $1.25
FOOD4P_210807_352.JPG: Over 30 million students eat a National School Lunch Program (NSLP) meal each school day.
FOOD4P_210807_356.JPG: "If a candy bar has only one nut in it, we feel it is above our minimum nutrient standards."
-- US Department of Agriculture official, 1979
FOOD4P_210807_370.JPG: Jacket of Mitch Snyder, c 1980s
FOOD4P_210807_377.JPG: Mitch Snyder (center), leader of The Community for Creative Non-Violence (CCNV), with fellow activists, 1981
FOOD4P_210807_380.JPG: California Congressman Pete Stark
FOOD4P_210807_381.JPG: CCNV regularly visited the dumpsters
FOOD4P_210807_383.JPG: DC Mayor Marion Barry
FOOD4P_210807_401.JPG: Is food a human right?
What does that mean?
Having a "right" means that it is guaranteed and protected by the government.
So what is our government's responsibility when it comes to getting enough quality food to eat?
Americans disagree on what it means to create a system that guarantees the right for people to be able to feed themselves.
FOOD4P_210807_402.JPG: The UN Definition
As defined by the United Nations, a "right to adequate food" means that the government guarantees that people have access and means to feed themselves.
Adequate food also means that the food available is healthy and culturally appropriate.
FOOD4P_210807_416.JPG: Does the government agree with you?
FOOD4P_210807_457.JPG: Food Aid and the Government Today
FOOD4P_210807_462.JPG: "Access to healthy food is both a human right and a public health crisis. We need to push our governments to recognize healthy food access as one of their fundamental responsibilities. This means public investment that creates systemic change: dollars for school food, tax incentives for grocery stores, Medicaid reimbursements to buy fresh groceries."
-- Lauren Shweder Biel, Executive Director of DC Greens
FOOD4P_210807_474.JPG: "Building relationships -- and meeting needs based on those relationships -- helps us learn to depend on the people in our direct community. It builds trust. And we need that trust in order to demand what we deserve from the city. Mutual aid is the foundation for revolutionary, radical change."
-- Alexis McKenney, East of the River Mutual Aid organizer
FOOD4P_210807_513.JPG: Ingredients for Food Justice
FOOD4P_210807_534.JPG: The museum's board is given a tour of the new exhibit.
FOOD4P_210807_540.JPG: Table
FOOD4P_210807_561.JPG: Rise of the Supermarket
FOOD4P_210807_567.JPG: Back to the Roots
FOOD4P_210807_580.JPG: The People Behind the Plate
(From Farm to Table)
FOOD4P_210807_605.JPG: Weighing the True Cost of Supermarkets
FOOD4P_210807_608.JPG: Public Markets and Mom-and-Pops to Supermarkets and Farmers' Markets
FOOD4P_210807_614.JPG: "There was a void for healthy, inexpensive food.... it was also a community center where you could get some education... You could come to Fields of Plenty and tap into what was going on about building the boycott to South Africa, how to support the Sandinistas, how to link up to the co-op movement. That was part of what we saw ourselves as trying to cultivate this further empowerment, further activism while we were serving people directly."
-- Patrick Merloe, co-founder, Fields of Plenty
FOOD4P_210807_634.JPG: Consumers Take Action
FOOD4P_210807_636.JPG: A Giant in the Brookland neighborhood, pictured one week before it was scheduled to close in March 1972.
FOOD4P_210807_638.JPG: A Safeway supermarket damaged from the unrest that followed Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in April 1968. Only a few store closures were the direct result of this kind of damage. Supermarket companies had already begun consolidating stores and relocating to the suburbs before the unrest erupted.
FOOD4P_210807_640.JPG: The first Giant opened at the intersection of Georgia Ave. and Park Road NW in 1936. The number og Giant stores across the region almost tripled during the 1950s.
FOOD4P_210807_644.JPG: Consumers shop at a Giant Food supermarket on Wisconsin Avenue NW in DC, 1942. The invention of the modern shopping cart, like the rise of the supermarket, revolutionized the food shopping experience. Popularized in the 1940s, the cart allowed shoppers to purchase more groceries at one time, unlike the carry-around basket that preceded it.
FOOD4P_210807_646.JPG: "Let's face it. Many stores are closed not because they operate at a loss, but because they are marginal and the profit could be more advantageously invested elsewhere."
-- Joseph Danzansky, chairman, Giant Food, 1978
FOOD4P_210807_649.JPG: Between 1968 and 1978, over half of the District's supermarkets closed. The industry determined that larger-format stores were more profitable than the smaller supermarket buildings that dotted American cities.
FOOD4P_210807_661.JPG: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, thereby introducing America's first federal minimum wage: 25 cents per hour. The law excluded agricultural and service workers at a time when most African American workers fell into one of those categories. Because restaurant workers and Pullman porters were not covered by the law, they had to continuing relying on tips.
FOOD4P_210807_664.JPG: "Negroes take tips, of course. One expects that of them -- it is a token of their inferiority. But to give money to a white man was embarrassing to me."
-- John Speed, journalist, 1902
FOOD4P_210807_667.JPG: In the 1901 Puck magazine illustration, a Pullman car porter confronts a railroad company boss about declining tips. The porter argues that the company should begin paying employees a salary. Porters were often depicted in white media as greedy people who lived large off of tips. In reality, they worked 20-hour shifts for very low wages.
FOOD4P_210807_685.JPG: To
FOOD4P_210807_694.JPG: "The boss would yell at you to speed up. 'Fast speed! Why are you slowing down?' They take people for their robots, and we are human. We cannot do the same thing like a machine. It's really painful, physically."
-- Unnamed poultry worker
FOOD4P_210807_697.JPG: A poultry worker displays his injured finger in 2008. Poultry workers suffer amputations at three times the rate of the average American worker.
FOOD4P_210807_700.JPG: In 1939, Eastern Shore businessman Franklin Perdue began doing something virtually unheard of: selling chickens for their meat. Perdue was one of the first farmers in the country to industrialize the process of raising broiler chickens.
FOOD4P_210807_703.JPG: A farmer collecting chicken eggs, 1939. In the 1930s, most chicken farms raised birds in order to sell their eggs. Outside of farmers, few American families ate chicken meat on a regular basis.
FOOD4P_210807_704.JPG: A vigil created by the co-workers of chicken processing pant workers who died of COVID-19 in 2020. A t the beginning of the pandemic, the broiler chicken industry lobbies for its workers to be considered "essential." Many plants simultaneously increased work speeds, squeezed more workers onto the processing lines, failed to provide personal protective equipment, and pushed workers to work while sick. These conditions helped make chicken plants across the country early hotspots of the pandemic.
FOOD4P_210807_706.JPG: "One day in 1990, I came to the plant, and I had about two hundred bushels of crabs to pick. And I had only three pickers. We tried hiring people from Washington, DC and interviewed probably 100 people, and [only] one actually showed up to work. So I took the step of ckecking into migrant labor through the federal H-2B program, filled out the paperwork, and got approved."
-- Jay Newcomb, manager, A.E. Phillips Seafood
FOOD4P_210807_726.JPG: Farm
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the critical importance of farm labor for our economy and our food system. But the people who plant, tend, and harvest America's food are still excluded from most federal labor protections. The estimated 47% of farmworkers who are undocumented are especially vulnerable to abuse, dangerous conditions, and exploitation on the job. Activists in the Washington region and across the nation are pushing for higher wages, stronger workplace safety protections, overtime pay, and unemployment benefits for farmworkers.
What do we owe these most essential workers?
FOOD4P_210807_733.JPG: "One thing I wish consumers knew? That there are months of time and prep put into each crop we grow. That we actually care about what we're doing. That there's a lot of hard work that goes into this, and that we're growing right in DC's backyard."
-- Adam Miller, manager, Miller Farms
FOOD4P_210807_735.JPG: "Since it is very contagious, we didn't know at what moment we could catch [COVID-19]. Thank god we are fine right now."
-- Jose Lopez, migrant farmworker
FOOD4P_210807_737.JPG: "No industry should feel entitled to limitless labor from their employees. The exclusion of farmworkers from fundamental protections like overtime is a racist leftover from the Jim Crow era when the Fair Labor Standards Act was written."
-- Lisa Zucker, legislative attorney, New York Civil Liberties Union
FOOD4P_210807_759.JPG: "Farmworkers bring in so much food to feed you and me and the whole country and enough food to export to other places. The ironic thing and tragic thing is that after they make this tremendous contribution, they don't have any money or any food for themselves."
-- Cesar Chavez, UFW Co-Founder, Los Angeles, June 1974
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2021 photos: This year, which started with former child president's attempted coup and the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic, gradually got better.
Trips this year:
(May, October) After getting fully vaccinated, I made two trips down to Asheville, NC to visit my dad and his wife Dixie, and
(mid-July) I made a quick trip up to Stockbridge, MA to see the Norman Rockwell Museum again as well as Daniel Chester French's place @ Chesterwood.
Equipment this year: I continued to use my Fuji XS-1 cameras but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000.
Number of photos taken this year: about 283,000, up slightly from 2020 levels but still really low.
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