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About the series: Our Food, Our Right
The Food Justice Project of CAGJ has published three editions of Our Food, Our Right. Each combines hands-on tools for change with community recipes and political awareness to engage YOU in joining in the struggle for food justice! Our Food, Our Right promotes community knowledge sharing, self-sufficiency, accessibility, and food justice through a food sovereignty framework.
Cover Artist: Morgan Brown
Our Food, Our Right: Recipes for A New Normal (3rd Edition)
Our Food, Our Right: Recipes for a New Normal (3rd edition) features art, stories, and recipes from over 30 contributors. Explore illustrations, personal narratives and poems from Indigenous Alaska, Punjab, Puerto Rico, and the Pacific Northwest. Enjoy comic strips, block prints, and instructions for creating a fortune teller. Savor recipes for tea, truffles, soups, salmon, lumpia and more.
These illuminating pieces stitch together food justice narratives that offer insights into the challenges of 2020. The murder of George Floyd galvanized us, while the global Covid pandemic, ongoing climate crises, and intense election season forced us into a new normal of chaos and uncertainty. By centering (re)connection with land, culture, and community, we invite a vibrant vision for working together to build a more just and generative world with food sovereignty for all.
ISBN 978-1-952149-00-9
164 pages, 5.5 inches by 8.25 inches
Thank you to our 3rd Edition Book Sponsors!
Central Co-op
Marc Auerbach
Ellysia Banks
Niaz Dorry
Sara Lavenhar
Orion Montoya
Kristel Peterson
Cover design: Annie Brulé, Illustration: Nikki McClure, Photo: David Lynch
Our Food, Our Right: Recipes for Food Justice (2nd Edition)
Our Food, Our Right: Recipes for Food Justice (2nd edition) takes you on a journey through many of the current globalized food system’s failures, and showcases creative solutions that communities worldwide are designing to regain control over their food, and the health of their bodies and neighborhoods. The product of over 50 contributors’ collected efforts and wisdom, this guide has the tools you need to take back your food choices and stand up for all people’s rights to good, healthy and culturally appropriate food! CAGJ published the 1st edition (read more about it below) in 2010. The 2nd edition was published in 2012, with a focus on “Stories of Change” – stories of successful initiatives locally and globally that are helping to create more sustainable food communities.
Read the Table of Contents for the second edition
ISBN 978-0985342029
216 pages, 10 x 8 inches
Thank you to our 2nd Edition Book Sponsors!
BIG THANKS to everyone—so many of you!—who helped raise funds to make the second edition happen.
Mary & Raymond Camezon
Naomi Kageyama
Steve Lansing & Bonnie Valiton
Judy Pigott
Janie Starr
Our Food, Our Right: Recipes for Food Justice (1st Edition)
Cover Artist: Kacy McKinney
Our Food, Our Right: Recipes for Food Justice (1st edition) is a CAGJ Food Justice Project publication (72 pages) that combines hands-on tools for change with community recipes and political awareness to engage YOU in joining in the struggle for food justice! Our Food, Our Right promotes community knowledge sharing, self- sufficiency, accessibility, and food justice through a food sovereignty framework.
Topics include:
- Composting and container gardening
- Effects of NAFTA and the WTO on farmers and food
- Basics of food preservation: canning, pickling, freezing, and drying
- Stories of Change: Food Justice Around the World
- Farmworker Organizing in Washington State
- CSA’s, farmers’ markets, and community kitchens
- Local community resources for getting involved in strengthening local food economies, everywhere!
And much more! Also features illustrations and design by local artists!
How much does it cost?
In an effort to make this guide as accessible as possible, we are offering Our Food, Our Right (1st edition) for $5 – $20, sliding scale donation! Bulk discount: Buy 5 for $50!
The guide is valued at $15; if you are able to pay $20 or more, you help us subsidize 100 free copies that will be distributed to local food justice organizations serving disadvantaged communities, as well as food banks, shelters, and community centers.
Reviews:
Listen to an interview with CAGJ’s Director Heather Day about food sovereignty and “Our Food, Our Right”
Read what people are saying about the 2nd Edition!
“Turn on the television and surf a few channels. You will inevitably find some celebrity chef either whipping up a gourmet delight, traveling to savor some exotic cuisine among faraway, folksy villagers, or telling you what not to eat. What passes for cooking education is actually food pornography, and while the recipes are appetizing, the stories are tasteless, packed with titillating information that misses the real drama of food. The Community Alliance for Global Justice has an antidote for food pornography: Our Food, Our Right: Recipes for Food Justice. It is a cookbook that tells the story of food sovereignty, the right of people to determine their own food and agricultural systems. That means that as well as mouth-watering recipes this collectively-produced book also shares stories of the struggle to make our food fair, healthy, accessible and sustainable. It comes from the movement to feed the movement. Now that is truly nurturing.”
– Eric Holt Gimenez, Executive Director, Food First
“People, public policies, and great local food are pretty much the big stories of the day. And when they come together in such abundance as do in the second edition of Our Food, Our Right, well, it makes for a very satisfying meal. From the opening prayer — a way to grace this book — to the final chart diagramming humankind’s descent into the Monsanto Inferno, Our Food, Our Right is well provisioned with important food news, profiles of food heroes, and delicious local recipes. You’ll find between its covers what you need to become not just a good food consumer, but a good food citizen as well, and you’ll no doubt get a little spiritual uplift along the way. There are at least a million-and-one ways we might find our way back to Paradise through food, community, and the fair treatment of our fellow human beings. I guarantee you that you’ll find most of them in Our Food, Our Right. ”
– Mark Winne, author Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart-Cookin’ Mamas: Fighting Back in an Age of Industrial Agriculture
“I’ve selected Our Food, Our Right [OFOR] as the textbook for my Sustainable Food System Practices class at Seattle Culinary Academy. It starts by introducing the concept of Food Sovereignty, which is how I begin my class. It is full of examples of what people have accomplished to bring about positive changes in our struggling food system. The Farmer Profiles chapter is a reminder that farmers’ struggles and successes are interrelated to our communities. I feel that it is a great educational tool for aspiring culinary professionals who want to make food justice part of their work.
OFOR is a “sustainable food” guide for people wanting to initiate positive changes in their kitchens, backyards, communities, and world. The DIY food growing and preservation chapter is a great way to make changes at home. Stories of local and global food activism are inspiring. Readers will find many references to help gather more information and find ways to get involved and bring about change. This book is an informative and motivating resource for anyone wanting to improve our food system.”
– Gregg Shiosaki, Instructor, Seattle Culinary Academy
Questions?
For more information about Our Food, Our Right, email [email protected] or call (206) 405-4600.
