Yvonne Yen Liu

Since its founding in 1996, the Community Food Security Coalition has been the leading voice for people of color and the poor in a food movement that often marginalizes them in favor of well-heeled “foodies.” This summer, the coalition announced that 2012 would be its last year of operation. The announcement left those of us in the food movement reeling. Although the timing was not deliberate, it seemed fitting that a gathering about the future of the food justice movement, Food + Justice = Democracy, had been planned to take place just months after the coalition’s announcement.

As a small girl, Enei Begaye knew to be quiet when visiting friends’ houses. Nearly everyone in the 4,900-person town of Kayenta, Arizona, part of the Navajo Nation, worked in the area’s coal mines, Black Mesa and Kayenta, which operated twenty-four hours a day. Begaye and her friends would play quietly so they wouldn’t disturb sleeping elders back from the night shift.