This month, Repast welcomes Southwestern Law School Professor Andrea Freeman to discuss her book, Ruin Their Crops on the Ground: The Politics of Food in the United States, from the Trail of Tears to School Lunch, published by Macmillan Publishers in July 2024.  This book describes and analyzes how food is used by the U.S. as a tool of colonization and oppression and discusses some avenues to alter this trajectory.

Here, Diana, Michael, and Professor Freeman discuss her theory of food oppression, government programs to supply food to people, the role of milk in food oppression and discrimination, the dietary guidelines, and possible avenues of change, among other things.

Andrea Freeman is Professor of Law at Southwestern Law School in fall 2023.

Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.

Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.

You can buy Ruin Their Crops on the Ground here. 

You can find Professor Freeman’s bio and links to her other work here.

Professor Freeman was interviewed on NPR about her book here.