Flying the Coop: How to be a food activist beyond the college campus

by Vera Fabian

When asked to write for a blog about the food movement in colleges, I replied that I didn’t feel comfortable speaking from a student’s perspective, having graduated in May 2007. That’s beginning to feel like a long time ago and so much progress has been made since my days as an active student organizer that I’m hardly a reliable source on college food issues. I would, I added, be happy to write a piece on how to continue our work as food activists post-graduation. Every month I receive emails or calls from friends or friends of friends who are nearing graduation and wondering how they can get involved in food. The first time someone called I was shocked and then nervous. What would I tell them? And why were they calling me?

I am hardly a master on the subject. In fact, this very topic is a frequent cause for worry as I begin to think about my next steps as a food activist. It’s become clear that, unlike other professions, there’s no obvious path to follow into food work. Most of us enter college either undecided or sure we want to pursue a certain career (I was dead-set on becoming an environmental lawyer), and then something happens:we read a book or spend a summer interning on a farm, and suddenly we’ve found our place. There’s no turning back. When people ask us what we want to do, we aren’t quite sure how to put it into words. ‘I want to work in food,’ we say, and our relatives ask us if we’re going to go to culinary school. We then try to explain that we’re a part of this emerging movement of people young and old, in every corner of the world, who are devoting their lives to defending our human right to enjoy food that nourishes our bodies, the earth, and the people who produce it.

In choosing food as our work, however, we are not just making a smart career choice. We are choosing a way of life. As a college graduate I have learned that the first year out in the ‘real world’ is more about learning how to live than anything else. Which perhaps says something about what we are working towards. Unlike other activists, us food folks find ourselves in a head-on conflict of culture. We see that this country is going to have to drastically change the way it lives before it can be a truly sustainable, healthy, and happy place.

After 17 years of schooling, we find our education sadly incomplete; real education teaches us to live socially, culturally, economically, and politically responsible lives. Instead, we spend our final months in school frantically competing for a few, largely corporate positions. An educated citizen knows what to put first, what is really important, what one really needs. This movement will thrive because it is made up of scrappy individuals who can find solutions that are within reach of everyone in their day-to-day lives. To be educated citizens, we must take responsibility for ourselves as members of the economy and as members of our neighborhood. Our movement, which seeks for very public change, begins privately; it is far easier for us to make economic sense in our own homes and communities than for enormous corporations to convert overnight.

Many of the lessons we have learned in college should be a firm foundation as we leave our campuses behind. You’d be amazed how much time recent grads spend lamenting the fact that they miss the college life: living with friends, cooking and eating together, having a solid community of people they know and respect, being surrounded by activism and the desire for positive change, and the buzz of minds opening and growing all around. In their new lives, off campus, they feel isolated and unfulfilled. We must do more to make our adult lives rich, useful, and gratifying.

We have been called to do what we know is the best work we can do; we have been blessed with what Carlo Petrini calls ‘enjundia’, the sacred passion. We have no choice but to receive it, take it in wholeheartedly, and return it to the world each day, in everything we do. It may be a risky path to take, but I have confidence that this country will welcome the change so long as we bring it to them boldly and with all that we are. We are all here because we grew up with the knowledge that something was gravely missing. Let us ask ourselves who we are. Where are we from? What do we know? What can we teach? What do we need? What do we know we have that is good? How might our work be healthful? And how might our lives be beautiful? Let that be our common ground as we step out into the wider world, faithful citizens who will not go unheard.