The Politics of Food: Health Disparities and the Epidemic of Food Insecurity in Texas

Name: Texas Mobile Institute - The Politics of Food: Health Disparities and the Epidemic of Food Insecurity in Texas — Vanderbilt Divinity School
Start: 2021-10-07T18:00:00-0500
End: 2021-10-08T14:30:00-0500

Food is political. There are policies and systems that govern and decide which communities have access to healthy food and which ones do not. An estimated 4 million Texans, including children, struggle with hunger and food insecurity which leads to health disparities.

With the reality of a still-present pandemic, compounded by financial instability and lack of a livable wage, the number of people – especially Black, Latinx and Indigenous peoples, who are impacted by hunger is alarming. How do we dismantle the barriers that cause food insecurity, food deserts and food apartheid? Leaders in health, policy, academics, grassroots activism, and faith will come together to name the barriers and identify solutions that are working.

If you missed the event, click below for the video recordings.

Thursday, October 7, 2021 | 6:00PM-8:00PM

“In Conversation: Food Insecurity is Antithetical to the Gospel”

Welcome

Rev. Dr. Teresa Smallwood, Associate Director, Public Theology and Racial Justice Collaborative, Vanderbilt Divinity School, Nashville, Tennessee

Speakers:

Reverend Yvette R. Blair-Lavallais is a food justice educator, public theologian, and pastor. She is an ordained elder and serves as the Senior Pastor of First Christian Methodist Church in the Red Bird area of Dallas, Texas.

She is a candidate for the Doctor of Ministry at Memphis Theological Seminary, with an expected graduation date of May 2022. Her work focuses on the intersection of food apartheid, displacement, and gentrification of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous peoples. Her doctoral research project is “Reframing the Narrative of Food Insecurity: Creating a Faith-Based Policy that Addresses Food Apartheid in the Red Bird Community of Dallas.”

An international speaker on food justice issues through a theological framework, she has been a featured panelist for Bread For The World’s Global Advocacy Summit, Conversation with the White House and she has presented her work on the systemic injustices of food insecurity at conferences including the Political Theology Network conference at Union Theological Seminary in New York, Rural Women’s Studies Kitchen Table Talk to Global Forum at the University of Guelph in Canada, and the Leadership Academy at Vanderbilt Divinity School.

An award-winning writer, Rev. Blair-Lavallais is a Public Voices Fellow of The Op Ed Project, a fellow of Vanderbilt Divinity School’s Public Theology and Racial Justice Collaborative cohort, and a 2017 academic fellow of Princeton Theological Seminary’s prestigious Black Theology and Leadership Institute. She is also a 2013 Magna Cum Laude graduate of Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. Rev. Blair-Lavallais is a native of Dallas, Texas, and holds a BA in Journalism from the University of North Texas. She and her husband, the Rev. Carl M. Lavallais, live in Dallas.

Rev. Peter J. Johnson was born in 1945 in Plaquemine, Louisiana. The middle of five children, his mother, Evelyn, was a domestic and his father William, also known as “Big Bill”, was a lumber jack and president of the local NAACP. Peter’s grandfather had been active in civil rights issues back in the 1930s.His foray into civil rights took place as a teenager when he convinced a hometown gang of young toughs, calling themselves the Trojans, to transform themselves into an NAACP youth chapter in which Peter served as president. He attended schools in Plaquemine and decided to attend Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. By the time he reached Southern, he was almost a full-time civil rights worker. His motto was, “Have picket, will travel”.

His early career was spent with civil rights icon Dr. James Farmer and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Peter started going to jail in the Civil Rights movement at the age of 18. It was during this time, in 1963, that he helped organize the Louisiana delegation to the historic March on Washington where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous “I Have A Dream Speech”.

After the March on Washington, Peter was involved in a major movement to establish Freedom Schools. The schools were to teach people in the South how to pass the literacy exams so they could vote. This effort was a joint partnership between CORE, SCLC, SNCC and the NAACP. It was during this time he also helped to organize and lead the Burgaloosa, Louisiana March to Baton Rouge which went through the heart of the Ku Klux Klan territory in Louisiana. This was the bloodiest march Peter was ever involved. It was a march against the violence, intimidation and brutality against Blacks. The fact the protesters made it to the capital alive was a testament to their fortitude. This march gave rise to the Deacons of Defense who later had a movie and several books written about them.

In 1964 Peter received an invitation to study at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D. C. This organization, which still exists, was a Think Tank on how to impact policy, how to influence governmental policy and a deeper understanding of government and politics. Peter was working with the Southern Leadership Conference and CORE during this time.

In 1970, Peter next set his sights on the giant grocer Safeway. The largest grocery store chain in the Southwest had a reputation for accepting Black dollars, but not hiring Blacks at their stores as cashiers and managers. He organized a boycott of the chain which lasted for more than a year and resulted in the chain’s executives agreeing to a covenant in which Blacks would be hired in positions in the front of the door, and not just the back.

Peter then organized and led a Campaign Against Hunger and Malnutrition. He felt it was appalling that a city as large as Dallas had no place for emergency food for the homeless, dispossessed and poor. It was during this campaign that he went on an 18-day hunger strike on the steps of Dallas City Hall. His hunger strike resulted in the Dallas City Council establishing a program called Operation Assist which provided monies to establish an emergency food program. The other result was the establishment of the Department of Human Resources which works with Welfare recipients and poor working families.

In more recent years Peter has tackled the issue of homelessness, gun violence, poverty “not being a condition, but a disease;” establishing community gardens in the inner city, immigration and the economics of ‘teaching a man to fish’.Peter is currently the founder of the Peter J. Johnson Institute on Nonviolence and is working on an autobiography and documentary titled, “Outside Agitator”. He and his wife Dolores have two children and six grandchildren.

Friday, October 8th

Morning Panel 10:00 AM – 12:30 PM

Welcome

Rev. Dr. Teresa Smallwood, Associate Director, Public Theology and Racial Justice Collaborative, Vanderbilt Divinity School, Nashville, Tennessee

Moderators

Rev. Yvette R. Blair-Lavallais and Candace Thompson

Panelists

Dr. Yvette M. Wingate is the Health Equity Coordinator for Tarrant County Public Health, where she has served for 22 years. In this role, she has provided presentations, trainings, and consultations on relevant topics, including health equity and disparities, COVID-19 disparities, food insecurities, roots of health inequities, cultural humility, diversity, inclusion, racial equity, social justice, and the incorporation of culturally and linguistically appropriate standards in public health. Dr. Wingate has experience facilitating community and executive-level leaders in a variety of conversations that will improve their organization culturally. She is a conceptual thinker, who can create synergy and guide groups towards developing strategic goals and objectives. Dr. Wingate coordinated the development and implementation of the Tarrant County Community Health Improvement Plan to address health issues impacting communities with the greatest need. Due to her leadership of this community-wide strategic planning process, she was awarded the National Association for County and City Health Officials’ Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnerships Navigator Program designation.

Dr. Jacquelyn M. White serves as the Program Leader of the Family Community Health (FCH) unit under the Cooperative Extension Program at Prairie View A&M University, one of Texas’s historically black colleges and universities. Dr. White has over 20 years’ experience providing leadership to the FCH Extension agents in 19 Texas counties. Additionally, she has extensive experience working with limited resource individuals and families, providing information on emerging family issues including socioeconomic & health disparities, food insecurities, nutrition education, money management and many more related topics.

El Paso County Commissioner David Stout championed the creation of El Paso County’s Healthy Foods Financing Initiative, the El Paso County Redistricting Commission, an appointed body meant to minimize political influence on the redistricting process, and the establishment of two National Historic Districts in Downtown El Paso. Stout serves on the Local Mental Health Authority Board of Trustees, the El Paso Central Appraisal Board of Directors, the Conference of Urban Counties Board of Directors, the Texas Council of Community Centers Board of Directors, NAMI Texas State Board, Project BRAVO Board, Medical Center of the Americas Board (honorary), Downtown Management District Board (ex-officio), and on the United Way of El Paso County’s Family Resiliency Center Advisory Committee.

Rev. Dr. Angelique Walker-Smith is Senior Associate for Pan African and Orthodox Faith Engagement at Bread for the World in Washington D.C. She brings global, national, and local experience as a faith thought leader, journalist, speaker, preacher, and author. President Clinton, Senator Richard Lugar, former Indiana Governor (VP) Mike Pence and two of her alma maters, Yale Divinity School and Kent State University have awarded her with high distinctions of leadership. She received her doctorate degree from Princeton Theological Seminary and is former Executive Director/Minister of the Church Council in Indianapolis, Indiana, member of the Home Mission Board for the National Baptist Convention USA, Inc., a World Council of Churches Central Committee member & Rapporteur of the related Communications Committee, Governing Board member of the National Council of Churches in the USA, WCC-Ecumenical Theological Education Commissioner and a President of Historic Black Churches at one of the widest represented ecumenical bodies of Christianity in the USA, Christian Churches Together (CCT). She is also the international convener for the Africans and Africans in Diaspora-Manchester Conference, Convener of the Pan African Working Group for the Advocacy for Africa Network (AdNA) in Washington D.C. (AAD), and Convener for the Pan African Women’s Ecumenical Empowerment Network-WCC. Most recently, she was selected to be a member of the Preparatory Working Group for the new UN Permanent Forum of People of African Descent.

Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price is the ranking member of the Dallas County Commissioner’s Court, and the most visible proponent of justice and liberation in the State of Texas. He serves District 3.

Known fondly as “Our Man Downtown,” Price came to elective position and to his purpose in a mercurial fashion. He was elected as the first African American to the Dallas County Commissioner’s Court and has served for more than 35 years. He remains as passionate and popular as the day he took office on January 1, 1985.

Commissioner Price fights for inclusion among institutions that traditionally resist minority participation. To name a few of his duties, he serves as Chairman of Dallas County Civil Service Commission, Chairman of Jail Population Committee, Vice President of the Dallas County Juvenile Board, Chairman of Jail Sanitation and Maintenance Committee, Vice President of the Dallas County and Housing Finance Corporation, Chairman of the Public Health Advisory, Bioterrorism and Safety.

Price is the Founder and President of KwanzaaFest, Inc., the largest community, cultural event in the state established in 1991. In 2010 the event recorded 48,456 in health screening which equated to $1,043,090 in free health care. KwanzaaFest plays host to an excess of 50,000 patrons and embraces the seven principles of the African American holiday, Kwanzaa.

He tells it like it is without regard to audience or prevailing opinion. The history of Dallas reflects that Commissioner Price has been an active Warrior for justice by protesting in the streets as well as in the boardroom. He is known as a faithful friend and a formidable foe. Much like the Apostle Paul, wherever he goes his advocacy for justice is sure to cause a riot or a revival.

12:30PM-12:45 PM - “A Food Justice Story” Documentary

Q&A with Dallas filmmaker Elroy “EJ” Johnson. We will see the trailer to this documentary which premiers this November and we’ll hear about food injustice through the lens of a filmmaker and documentarian.

Break 12:45PM – 1:00 PM

1:00 PM -2:30 PM Afternoon Panel | Activism in the Community

Moderator:

Candace Thompson MPA, MSSW, CHWI; Community Outreach Manager for Baylor Scott and White; food justice activist

Panelists

Kendra Richardson is an abolitionist, a leader, and a native of Fort Worth, Texas. She is a graduate of Stephen F. Austin State University with a B.S. in Sociology and Cultural Anthropology. Kendra is the founder of Funky Town Fridge, a mutual aid organization dedicated to combating food insecurity in Fort Worth. Her work has been featured in Fort Worth Weekly, Fort Worth Magazine, Dallas Morning News, Food & Wine, and the LA Times. She plans to add locations throughout the city and continue to feed community members living in areas of food apartheid.

Jesse Herrera is a visionary leader with Grow Southeast in Fort Worth, Texas, working collaboratively with Tarrant County Commissioner Roy Charles Brooks’ office, to combat food insecurity in the Stop Six community, where in a 34.8 square-mile radius there are nearly 100 corner stores and only two grocery stores. The community is in a declared food desert. He is the Founder & Executive Director of CoAct, where he uses design methodologies to develop strategic responses to today's most pressing social challenges. A native of Fort Worth, Texas, he spent his teenage years as a gang member. After a near death experience and a blessing of circumstances, he left the life behind and pursued his education, becoming the first in his family to graduate from college. As a former gang member, he understands the impact of social isolation and the value of exploring the intimacy of human challenges. This life experience, the insights gained through professional experience, and his insights from traveling globally form the foundation of his work. Recognizing design as a creative problem-solving process, Jesse utilizes design as an instrumental force to better understand the underlining causes of today’s challenges, identify opportunities for impact, and build solutions that contribute to achieving a creative and inclusive future for all.

Ples Montgomery, IV is the Executive Director of the Oak Cliff Veggie Project, a non-profit organization empowering people to feed themselves rather than being fed by a system. This Dallas-based organization which is named for one of the largest communities in the city, Oak Cliff, promotes a model of education, cultivation and preparation in addressing food insecurity in under-resourced neighborhoods. He and a team of volunteers teach agriculture and plant-based lifestyles to improve overall health, cultivate fresh produce and partner with churches to grow community gardens, and they prepare food for more than 1,200 families each month through their weekend distribution and cultivation projects.

Oak Cliff Veggie Project programs include: The Veggie Store Initiative, The Cultivate The Community Garden Initiative, The Garden Warriors Initiative and The Kitchen Warriors Initiative. These programs are designed to empower traditionally under-served communities with the knowledge and resources to control what they eat and how they eat it.