Decolonized, Community-Rooted™ Food Justice: The Process of Shifting Power and Decision-Making in Food System Planning Processes

Imagine Any CommunityTwo white men are chatting in the hallway of an esteemed academic institution-well-regarded leaders in their fields of expertise, one a lifelong academician and one with political aspirations, both with a desire to leverage their knowledge to do good work.An idea arises: "Let's make our city a model food community!We could get all the policies right here, then share that model out broadly."Through relationship and a long track rec ord with philanthropic organizations, the men get funding.The academician hires a white woman as the proj ect lead.The politician calls for a public announcement of the idea.They launch the proj ect.In the community, no one knows this is happening.No one asked for it to happen.Despite this real ity, the proj ect begins.And so did our story.Our story is also where this narrative shifted, with a process of harm and healing that evolved into a dif fer ent way of being.The story is not a formula or a model, but a narrative of our institution-initiated "food system solution" and how it evolved into a decolonized process that laid the foundation for systemic change in our community.Similar to Bellante et al. (see chapter 15), we offer our story as a mechanism for preserving historical activism, challenging dominant narratives in the food industry, and amplifying the work within BIPOC communities to envision and realize a more equitable and just future for food.Here, we detail our emergent process (figure 13.1), highlighting individual experiences from initial outreach to the dissolution of the formal effort, cut 13 Decolonized, Community-Rooted™ Food Justice: The Process of Shifting Power and Decision-Making in Food System Planning Pro cesses