Foundation Journal

Representatives of Hunger-Free Minnesota, an important statewide Minnesota initiative on hunger, held a press conference today ( streamed live on UStream ) in Minneapolis. The conference was preceded by a recorded segment which included first-person accounts by people that have recently sought food assistance. These stories documented strong emotions experienced by a range of people receiving food assistance, including veterans, immigrants, a financially-strapped teacher, elderly people, a person making ends meet after a job loss, a woman facing home foreclosure after a divorce -- all people not typically considered as needing food assistance. After the recorded segment leaders of a coalition of food and health corporations, along with leaders from non-profit emergency assistance organizations, spoke about the Minnesota initiative to fill a gap of 100 million meals. Emery Koenig, a senior vice president with Cargill, spoke about efforts to increase the storag...

Following the important food safety legislation (Senate S.510 bill) has been difficult because of the shifting positions by small food growers and multinational corporations. Amendments increased the complexity of the bill, such as the Tester Amendment. However, a key Senate vote appears likely on Monday, November 29 as reported by SFGate.com. Looking past dire warnings was not difficult, such as statements like how the bill "would outlaw gardening and saving seeds" and how "food safety is a Trojan horse for Monsanto" to dominate more of food production. A November 4 food safety roundtable on Grist.org clarified the positions of some: The Senate is expected to vote tomorrow [11/17/10] on the Food Safety Modernization Act -- and possibly pass it by this weekend. Yesterday, we posted our Food Fight participants' heated -- and lengthy -- debate over whether S. 510's provisions will harm small farms or producers. They also discussed whether the Tester-Ha...

Harvest of Loneliness: The Bracero Program was screened at the new Student Union at University of Missouri--Kansas City (UMKC) on Thursday, November 4. The film documents the history of the program through the personal stories of families that participated in the temporary farmworker effort between 1942 and 1964. If the program is remembered in US history it is portrayed as an innocuous employment campaign to fill jobs left by individuals that fought in World War II and Korean War. The film depicts the program using inhumane treatment of the workers, mainly recruited from Mexican rural areas. From the overcrowded staging areas to processing facilities, Mexican workers were scrutinized and fumigated before being assigned to work in produce farms in California and the Southwest. Then they were forced to work long hours without proper food, water, shelter, or medical care. The promise of receiving higher wages than paid in Mexico was largely unfilled. After the screening at UMKC,...

Filmmaker Jamie Moffett was in Kansas City to screen and discuss the film at Screenland Crossroads on August 1. The film is a riveting retelling of death squad crimes, but leads to a hopeful outlook for present-day Salvadoran society and challenges US audiences to keep El Salvador in their sights. The film explores a first-hand recollection of the years when El Salvador was inflicted with US-trained death squads leading to the deaths of 70,000 civilians between 1980 and 1992. "Return to El Salvador" follows the lives of two families -- one where a union leader was threatened by security forces and another with a former FMLN militant. The well-organized and flawlessly-produced film steps through the history of El Salvador from the days of the 1992 peace accords, back through years describing large landowners domination of the economy, forward through 15 years of horrendous death squad crimes committed against teachers, union organizers, and peasants by US-trained military fo...