More Than Local
Jennifer Gaddis’ new book, “The Labor of Lunch,” broadens the spotlight on school meals. Without diminishing the importance of healthy, local foods, Gaddis explores the activist work that brought the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) to where it is today, exposes the systemic roadblocks preventing a new “economy of care” within our schools, and suggests actions readers can take now to be a part of the solution.
What made you last think about school meals? When your child started Kindergarten? During Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! Campaign in 2010? Not since you graduated high school?
To many, school meals are boring—as enticing as the thought of reading a 200+ page book on a dull government program. Food Connects works to dispel people’s biases of the former, partnering with school nutrition programs to incorporate more local food and scratch cooking, and to share stories of their success. Gaddis does quick work of the latter in her introduction:
Ultimately, school lunch is about community. It’s also about the conflict between civil society, the government, and the private sector over what children should be fed, whose responsibility it is to feed them, who should do the work of feeding them, and what, exactly, this work should entail. More often than not, food for children to eat at school is prepared by a woman—a child’s caregiver, a private sector factory worker, or a public sector lunch lady—for free or for poverty wages.
Labor of Lunch, p.5
All of a sudden—five pages in—school lunch doesn’t feel as innocuous as previously thought.
The history of the NSLP starts back in the early 1900s with feminist activists Emma Smedley and Ellen Swallow Richards taking on the work of a nonprofit lunch program and advancing the new science of home economics. What’s most striking in these early sections of the book are the examples of how far we’ve come—far stricter food safety regulations and cafeterias finding a permanent home in schools—adjacent to conversations we’re still having today—debates over universal free meals and for-profit vs non-profit lunch programs. It’s a good reminder that progress isn’t always linear and successful activism is a balance of ideology and pragmatism.
One of these pragmatic compromises made by early activists sets the stage for the dichotomy we’re still working to dissolve today—that school nutrition programs need to “break-even” financially, despite no other school program shouldering the same expectation (imagine the administration expecting the science department to raise revenues to cover the cost of lab equipment). Due to the conservative, mostly male, school boards and administrations dictating policy, in the newly created school lunch programs, cheapness—at the expense of quality and workers—reigned supreme.
The next three chapters—much of the book—is a chronicle of the persistent efforts of schools to reduce costs and corporations to eke out profits. Both, typically, at the expense of those serving our kids and most affecting poor people and communities of color. Along with women, BIPOC leaders were often on the frontlines fighting for change. The 1960s saw Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s Poor People's Campaign call upon the government to provide free lunch to all poor children and the Black Panther Party running the Free Breakfast for Children Program. Following in the 1970s was a conservative backlash and opening up of cafeterias to private corporations.
The Labor of Lunch closely follows New Haven chapters of the labor union Unite Here, as well as the Minneapolis Public Schools, as examples of how to establish better economies of care within schools. These labor movements have emphasized the inextricable connection between food justice and racial justice. While both should be taught to our students, they should also be practiced in our schools.
In Windham County, we can look to Windham Central Supervisory Union (Seed2Tray) and Windham Northeast Supervisory Union (Farm to School Cafe), as well as individual schools such as Putney Central School and Marlboro School, to find schools valuing labor. In all these cases, staff saw their pay increase and were offered school benefits. These are the test pilots for our entire region as we move back to locally-focused school nutrition programs that value their workers and the quality of the food.
Gaddis concludes by suggesting a “more expansive vision of what food systems could look like if we focus our collective efforts on transforming the NSLP into a hub for food justice—real food and real jobs—in every community across the rural-urban divide” (215). From the push for universal meals to local food hubs and community kitchens, much of that work has already taken hold in our region. With widespread community support and creative solutions, we could find our community leading the next step in the food justice movement.
Order your copy of The Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools today.