SOLIDARITY | Connecting Across the Food Chain

~Co-presented with Real Food Media~

For the 21.5 million people who work across the food chain—from farm fields to meat packing factories to grocery stores—their jobs were already among the most low-paid, exploitative, and dangerous in the economy before COVID-19. The crisis has only heightened the stakes for food workers. Today, in the midst of the pandemic, these workers are among the most impacted while they toil to keep food on our tables. In this third conversation in the 2022 Roots of Resilience series.

Leah Douglas is the agriculture and energy policy reporter at Reuters. Previously, they were a staff writer and associate editor at the Food and Environment Reporting Network, an independent, nonprofit newsroom. Leah’s reporting has been published in the Guardian, the Nation, the Washington Post, Mother Jones, NPR, the American Prospect, Time, and other outlets. Leah’s reporting has been cited in dozens of print and television media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, AP, NBC Nightly News, and John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight. In 2021, ​Leah was a fellow in the U.C. Berkeley – 11th Hour Food and Farming Journalism Fellowship and won two awards from the National Association of Agricultural Journalists for feature and investigative reporting. ​Leah was the 2020 recipient of the National Farmers Union Milt Hakel Award for excellence in agricultural reporting.

Ligia Guallpa, Workers Justice Project / Los Deliveristas Unidos

For more than twelve years, Ligia Guallpa has been organizing New York City’s day laborers, construction workers, domestic workers, and, most recently, app-based delivery workers to build a government and economy that works for all of us. She is currently leading some of the most important issues of our time, including immigration, workers rights, climate change and runaway inequality. She is the co-founder and executive director of the Worker’s Justice Project and Los Deliveristas Unidos. Under her leadership, WJP has 12,000 members and is growing.

Suzanne Adely, Food Chain Worker’s Alliance

Suzanne joined the Food Chain Workers Alliance in 2017. A former New York City educator, she has a background in community organizing, public interest law, and international worker advocacy. Suzanne worked with several community-led organizations in Chicago and New York before beginning her global labor rights work.

Host Anna Lappé, Real Food Media

Anna is a national bestselling author, a renowned advocate for sustainability and justice along the food chain, and an advisor to funders investing in food system transformation. A James Beard Leadership Awardee, Anna is the co-author or author of three books on food, farming, and sustainability and the contributing author to fourteen more. One of TIME magazine’s “eco” Who’s-Who, Anna is the founder or co-founder of three national organizations including the Small Planet Institute and Small Planet Fund. In addition to her work at Real Food Media, Anna developed and leads the Food Sovereignty Fund, a global grantmaking program of the Panta Rhea Foundation. East & North Africa and elsewhere.

Find out more about The New School at Commonweal on our website: tns.commonweal.org. And like/follow our Soundcloud channel for more great podcasts.