To Make Policy Changes Happen, We Have to Be in the Room

The following is a transcript of the video above, from our webinar on “Remaking the Economy: Black Food Sovereignty, Community Stories.” View the full webinar here.

Brielle Wright: I’m on a couple of food policy councils, and it has been very rewarding. I don’t know that I knew as much about food policy before I got involved in these spaces. And I think this is what kind of pushed me in terms of the advocacy space, not realizing how much is connected to the food that we eat. I don’t think people realize that even when it comes to urban planning and how a community is set up or where certain money is being spent within a community, in terms of sidewalks or what grocery stores are being built, we’re not at a lot of these policy meetings. We’re not—at least people of color. When I have gone to some of the city council meetings or community meetings for whatever it may be, sometimes I’m the only person of color in the room…And depending on the event, I could be the only Black female in the room. Depending on what agriculture organization or workshop it might be, again, I’m going to be one of very few…

There was a situation where an organization helped a family keep their land from a road, a highway, major highway going through their land. And when I saw that, I was like, wow, they put a lot of money behind this. And it was a great thing, right? But would they have done the same thing for me? And when I saw it, I also thought, this was done because people understood policy. Not just food policy, but they understood policy, and they were involved in community meetings. They were involved. They knew what urban planning looked like. They had somebody on the board to advocate for them. They had all of these different things happening in the background that stopped this from happening. They understood the—gosh, what is it called?—the agriculture district. They understood that about their communities. I had never even heard of that before. But there are things where you can set up to have your land put into say, a “voluntary ag” district. I’m part of that. So, before you can bulldoze through my land, there’s got to be a meeting about it. A lot of people don’t know that those things exist. The biggest thing with policy for me is that—or how it relates—food policy, urban policy, all of the above, one of the things I’ve learned is we have to be involved in these meetings. We have to understand what’s taking place, we have to know people, we have to train up our children, we have to train up the people who could go in and represent us in an amazing way for things to happen, for change to be made. So just in this whole food policy—policy period—we have got to educate ourselves, we have got to be intentional, and we’ve got to strategize. That way we can see these changes happen, so that we can see things not just taken from us so easily.