Food fights against austerity

2013-05-11 · first published in Climate & Capitalism · 193 words

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via Climate and Capitalism

Disparate struggles in desperate times: how workers and farmers in Spain, New York, and Greece are challenging neoliberal austerity

In August 2012 two hundred members of the Andalusian fieldworker union SAT organised a ‘food expropriation’. They walked into the local Carrefour and Mercandor supermarkets, loaded their trolleys with rice, beans, potatoes, bread – and left without paying a single Cent.

According to Caritas Internationalis roughly 350,000 Andalusian families are mal-nourished. Children are reported to faint in classrooms. It’s no surprise this action struck a chord with millions of people across the Spanish state. Especially given the ‘food expropriation’ fed a total of 26 families across three municipalities and forced Carrefour to donate 12 trucks of food to local NGOs.

Disparate social struggles connect the democratisation and de-commodification of food and land to the fight against austerity in the Global North. Land occupations in Andalusia, fast food worker strikes in New York City, the Potato Movement in Thessaloniki and international calls to boycott ‘blood strawberries’ from Nea Manolada, Greece could strike at the heart of the system, rejuvenate workers’ movements and create counter-hegemonic alternatives to neoliberal austerity.