But how was this critical food provisioning infrastructure established? Who are the workers that make it possible? And where should it go in order to advance a more just food system? These are the questions Dr. Jennifer Gaddis seeks to answer in her 2019 book The Labor of Lunch.
Dr. Gaddis is an assistant professor of Civil Society and Community Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In this conversation, we discuss the politics of participatory research, the centrality of racial justice organizing to the success of the food movement, and the stunning connections between school food and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and uprisings against white supremacy in the United States.