"Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." Matthew 6:10
The food system hits close to home for me. While I had been exposed to some of its injustices in the past, my spring semester's public health nutrition class gave me the opportunity to learn more deeply about the complexity and wide-reach of food.
What we eat is intimately connected to our agriculture, which has tremendous impacts on ecological balance, immigration, animal/human rights, environmental toxicity, and politics. What we produce inevitably influences our grocery stores, our physical and financial access to food, the foodservice industry, international trade, transportation, culture, health and nutrition. What's produced but not consumed transforms to issues related to food waste.
Thinking about the problems caused by our broken food system is crippling, and this paralysis extends to all of the social justice issues our world faces. Children have been cruelly ripped apart from their parents. My hometown is currently divided on a proposal to introduce armed police officers to public schools. My university faced violence, open and repeated acts of intolerance, and tragic death this past year. Last summer, I met cancer patients who struggled with their disease, other chronic illnesses, emotional pain, food insecurity, and immigration issues -all at once.
One day in class, my Spanish professor initiated a spontaneous, class-long discussion about the discrimination our campus was facing. Before we left with heavy hearts, he looked at each of us squarely and said, "Chicos, no sean complacientes."
Don't be complacent.
But what can we do in addition to praying? What actions can we take
right now?