Food Justice Undone: Dr. Hanna Garth in Conversation with Zaakiyah Brisker

Join us for a conversation with author Dr. Hanna Garth and activist Zaakiyah Brisker!

Dr. Hanna Garth’s book, Food Justice Undone, draws on twelve years of ethnographic research to examine how Black and Brown communities in Los Angeles are disproportionately affected by food injustice. Dr. Garth explores the stakes of social justice in South Central Los Angeles and how health problems in low-income Black and Brown communities can be solved through individual acts of resistance rather than structural change. Joining Dr. Garth is Zaakiyah Brisker, founder of South Central Wellness Club.

About the participants:

Dr. Hanna Garth is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. She is the author of Food Justice Undone & Food in Cuba and co-editor of Black Food Matters. Her scholarship is broadly focused on the ways in which marginalized communities struggle to overcome structural inequalities and prejudice as they attempt to access basic needs.

Zaakiyah Brisker is a writer, organizer, and founder of South Central Run Club and South Central Wellness Club, community-centered initiatives using movement and wellness as tools for collective healing and resistance to displacement in South Central Los Angeles. Their work bridges running, political education, and cultural organizing to create spaces where wellness becomes a pathway to community self-determination. Zaakiyah also works in communications and narrative strategy with the California Black Power Network and writes on culture, belonging, and survival in changing cities. Their work has been featured in outlets including the Los Angeles Times, Runner’s World, and KCRW.

About the book:

Food Justice Undone breaks open the privilege and promise of food justice to envision a radical liberatory future.

Food justice activists have worked to increase access to healthy food in low-income communities of color across the United States. Yet despite their best intentions, they often perpetuate food access inequalities and racial stereotypes. Hanna Garth shows how the movement has been affected by misconceptions and assumptions about residents, as well as by unclear definitions of justice and what it means to be healthy. Focusing on broad structures and microlevel processes, Garth reveals how power dynamics shape social justice movements in particular ways.

Drawing on twelve years of ethnographic research, Garth examines what motivates people from more affluent, majority-white areas of the city to intervene in South Central Los Angeles. She argues that the concepts of "food justice" and "healthy food" operate as racially coded language, reinforcing the idea that health problems in low-income Black and Brown communities can be solved through individual behavior rather than structural change. Food Justice Undone explores the stakes of social justice and the possibility of multiracial coalitions working toward a better future.

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