Food. Justice. Work.
The Checkout centers the voices and efforts of essential workers on the frontlines of our food system. Now more than ever, our food system is in a constant state of flux, radical change and crisis. From political economy and supply chain analysis to public policy, labor organizing and community struggles, The Checkout will expand the horizon of what is necessary to create a just, equitable and progressive food system.
The Checkout is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network.
Episode 179: George Milton On The UNFI SSA Controversy
The Checkout speaks with CEO and Co-founder of Yellowbird Hot Sauce about a controversial new supplier policy being rolled out by the grocery industry’s largest natural and organic product wholesaler.
Episode 178: Robinson-Patman Act 101 with Daniel Hanley
The Checkout does a deep dive on the Robinson-Patman Act with antitrust scholar Daniel Hanley of the Open Markets Institute.
Episode 177: Part Two: Mexico Takes on GMO Dogma
The Checkout presents part two of an interview with Timothy Wise on the Mexican resistance to U.S.-grown GMO corn. Mexico’s case rests on science and is a huge challenge to GMO dogma.
Episode 176: Part One: The U.S.-Mexico GMO Corn Standoff
The Checkout presents part one of a two part interview with trade policy scholar Timothy Wise on the Mexican resistance to U.S.-grown GMO corn.
Episode 175: HEAL Food Alliance Takes On The Farm Bill
The Checkout dives into the Farm Bill with Navina Khanna of HEAL Food Alliance and what food workers want to see in this massive legislation.
Episode 42: UFCW Local 770, Hazard Pay and The Struggle For Dignity
The Checkout presents a special episode featuring John Grant, President of UFCW Local 770 in Southern California, as well as Maria Hernandez, a UFCW Local 770 rank and file retail clerk. Maria’s store is one of seven being closed by Kroger in response to the municipal hazard pay mandates that the union fought for.
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Episode 40: Dr. Abdul El-Sayed on Medicare For All
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed discusses the corrupt and wasteful private healthcare system and why need Medicare For All and a true public health system.
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is a physician, epidemiologist, educator, author, speaker, and podcast host. He is a commentator at CNN and his newsletter, The Incision, cuts into the trends shaping our moment. His three books include Healing Politics: A Doctor’s Journey into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic (Abrams Press, 2020), which diagnoses our country’s epidemic of insecurity and the empathy politics we will need to treat it; and Medicare for All: A Citizen’s Guide (Oxford University Press, 2021), co-authored with Dr. Micah Johnson, which offers a no nonsense guide to the policy. He is the host of “America Dissected,” a podcast by Crooked Media, which goes beyond the headlines to explore what really matters for our health. He is a Senior Fellow at the FXB Center for Health & Human Rights at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and a Scholar-in-Residence at Wayne State University and American University, where he teaches at the intersection between public health, public policy, and politics.
In 2018, Abdul ran for Governor of Michigan on an unapologetically progressive platform, advocating for universal healthcare, clean water for all, debt-free and tuition-free higher education, a pathway to 100% renewable energy, and to rebuild the barrier between corporations and government. Abdul holds a doctorate in Public Health from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, as well as a medical degree from Columbia University, where he was a Medical Scientist Training Program Fellow and a Soros New Americans Fellow. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with Highest Distinction from the University of Michigan. He is a native Michigander who was born and raised in Metro Detroit, where he lives with his wife, Sarah, a mental health doctor, and daughter Emmalee. He is a proud member of the National Writers Union, AFT Local 477, and SEIU Local 500.
Episode 30: Winona LaDuke
“The Line 3 Pipeline goes through the heart of our wild rice territory and wild rice is our most sacred food. This battle is about the wild rice. It is our responsibility to protect the wild rice.”
“People need to understand that this is the Holy Land.”
From http://www.honorearth.org/speaking_engagements : Winona LaDuke is an internationally renowned activist working on issues of sustainable development renewable energy and food systems. She lives and works on the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota, and is a two time vice presidential candidate
Episode 25: Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and The Fair Food Program
“If you have a lot of purchasing power, you can drive prices down. At the same time, if you have a lot of purchasing power, you can demand more humane conditions, you can demand compliance with fundamental human rights in your suppliers’ operations, you can improve the lives of millions of people… if you decide to wield that same volume purchasing power for good as opposed to evil.”
“The reasons all these mechanisms work are the market consequences in these agreements with the buyers. If a grower is found out of compliance, the buyer has to suspend purchases. All of this comes together to form an actual enforcement of the rights in the Fair Food Code of Conduct. That’s the power of the purchase order.”
“Whatever they call social responsibility in the food industry has been a joke, a fraud… it is absolutely empty and soulless and unreal. It is everything that has not worked and has been done for public relations purposes for the corporations, not the workers. That all became clear when Covid came down and all these outbreaks came to the press, did any of the Buyers of all that meat step up and say that we can’t allow this to keep happening? Not one.”
Episode 23: Ma'raj Sheikh and Good Food Policy Action in Chicago
“What we’ve learned is that food justice is really racial, economic and land justice.”
From https://www.chicagofoodpolicy.com/our-staff : Ma’raj Sheikh is a daughter of immigrants, descendent of liberation leaders, and a Castanea Fellow. Land, food, and justice are in her blood. Ma’raj has worked across many areas of food system development including soil bioremediation, bioenergy, stakeholder relations, consulting in the edible insect industry, and advancing racial equity in land, food, and water access. As a National Science Foundation Fellow, Ma’raj moved to Iowa from Southern California to learn about industrial agriculture from the belly of the beast - studying Sustainable Agriculture and Community and Regional Planning at Iowa State University. Prior to starting at CFPAC in January of 2020, Ma’raj served as Director of Equity and Community Engagement at Community GroundWorks (now Rooted), where her work focused on improving stable land tenure for Hmong refugee farmers and leading Gardens Network, a partnership with the City of Madison and UW-Extension, that provides support services to a member base of 65+ community gardens across Dane County, WI.
From https://www.chicagofoodpolicy.com/services : CFPAC co-develops, facilitates, advocates for, and supports implementation of policies that advance food justice and food sovereignty in Chicago and across the region. CFPAC envisions a food system where all Chicagoans, regardless of race, class, gender, and/or social identity, have the right to healthy and culturally-appropriate food produced through community-driven, ecologically regenerative, and economically viable processes. The Council recognizes the history and modern maintenance of structural racism in Chicago and across the country that have led to massive inequities in land access, food business ownership, food security, and political power along lines of racial identity. CFPAC works to address these inequities and dismantle racist structures in the food system by building local political power, supporting frontline workers throughout the food system, and facilitating Black/Brown partnerships and understanding.
Donate: https://chicagofoodpolicy.z2systems.com/np/clients/chicagofoodpolicy/donation.jsp?campaign=1&
Episode 20: Rev. Heber Brown of The Black Church Food Security Network
“The Black preachers coming out of the Civil War were very clear eyed about the priority of land for the Black community to help us move forward with our aspirations for freedom and self-determination…
“Black folk can’t go into any other space and enjoy the autonomy they do in the Black church… it’s a powerful incubator space. ”
From https://www.heberbrown.com/about and https://blackchurchfoodsecurity.net : Rev. Dr. Heber Brown, III is a Community Organizer, Social Entrepreneur, Base Builder, and Network Weaver and Senior Pastor of Pleasant Hope Baptist Church in Baltimore, Maryland. He is the Founding Director of Orita’s Cross Freedom School. Based on the Freedom Schools of the 1960's, Dr. Brown works to reconnect Black youth to their African heritage while providing them hands-on learning opportunities to spark their creative genius and build vocational skills. In 2015 he launched the Black Church Food Security Network a multi-state alliance of congregations working together to inspire health, wealth and power in the Black Community. The BCFSN accomplishes this by partnering with historically African American churches to establish gardens on church-owned land and cultivates partnerships with African American farmers to create a grassroots, community-led food system. Dr. Brown's dedication to service has been widely recognized. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Ella Baker Freedom Fighter Award and The Afro American Newspaper’s “25 Under 40 Emerging Black History Leaders” award. In 2018, Baltimore Magazine named him a Visionary of the City and the Baltimore City Office of Civil Rights presented him with their Food Justice Award. In 2019, he received the coveted Emerging Leaders Award from the Claneil Foundation and has presented and lectured at many institutions of higher learning including Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC), Drew Theological School, Wake Forest School of Divinity, and the Black Theological Leadership Institute at Princeton Theological Seminary.
The Black Church Food Security Network utilizes an asset-based approach in organizing and linking the vast resources of historically African American congregations in rural and urban communities to advancing food and land sovereignty. They are on a mission to organize the strength and focus the assets of the Black Church toward advancing health (physical and spiritual), economic opportunity and self-determination in the African American community.
To Donate or support the BCFSN: https://blackchurchfoodsecurity.net/donate/
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Episode 19: Leah Penniman of Soul Fire Farm
“We appreciate the legacy of George Washington Carver at Tuskegee University, who convinced an entire generation of farmers in the late 18th century to practice regenerative… cover crops, mulching, composting, diversifying their crops…
“ It’s a tragedy to rob Organic of it’s proud history to imagine that it is new, an innovation of the West. ”
From https://www.farmingwhileblack.org/team and https://www.soulfirefarm.org : Leah Penniman is a Black Kreyol educator, farmer/peyizan, author, and food justice activist from Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, NY. She co-founded Soul Fire Farm in 2011 with the mission to end racism in the food system and reclaim our ancestral connection to land. Leah holds an MA in Science Education and BA in Environmental Science and International Development from Clark University, and is a Manye (Queen Mother) in Vodun. Leah has been farming since 1996 and teaching since 2002. Soul Fire Farm is an Afro-Indigenous centered community farm committed to uprooting racism and seeding sovereignty in the food system. Their food sovereignty programs reach over 10,000 people each year, including farmer training for Black and Brown growers, reparations and land return initiatives for northeast farmers, food justice workshops for urban youth, home gardens for city-dwellers living under food apartheid, doorstep harvest delivery for food insecure households, and systems and policy education for public decision-makers.
Indispensable resources from Soul Fire Farm:
https://www.soulfirefarm.org/media/publications/
https://www.soulfirefarm.org/portfolio-items/food-sovereignty-action-steps/
https://www.soulfirefarm.org/portfolio-items/equity-guidelines/
https://www.soulfirefarm.org/media/farming-while-black/
Take Action:
Policy demands: https://www.soulfirefarm.org/get-involved/take-action/
Reparations: https://m4bl.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Reparations-Now-Toolkit-FINAL.pdf
Fairness for Farmworkers Act: https://www.harris.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Fairness%20for%20Farm%20Workers%20Act%20One%20Pager.pdf
Justice for Black Farmers Act: https://www.motherjones.com/food/2020/11/black-farmers-have-been-robbed-of-land-a-new-bill-would-give-them-a-quantum-leap-toward-justice/?fbclid=IwAR1unD-AUvcnYkDBkV2dHBVxUyyiaZS8NtpYTq1O490XAqucUMT3yznQVu4
More on George Washington Carver: https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/george-washington-carvers-legacy-went-beyond-peanuts
Donate: https://www.soulfirefarm.org/support/
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Stream The Checkout on Apple Podcasts - Spotify - Stitcher - Google Podcast
“ It’s a tragedy to rob Organic of it’s proud history to imagine that it is new, an innovation of the West. ”
From https://www.farmingwhileblack.org/team and https://www.soulfirefarm.org : Leah Penniman is a Black Kreyol educator, farmer/peyizan, author, and food justice activist from Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, NY. She co-founded Soul Fire Farm in 2011 with the mission to end racism in the food system and reclaim our ancestral connection to land. Leah holds an MA in Science Education and BA in Environmental Science and International Development from Clark University, and is a Manye (Queen Mother) in Vodun. Leah has been farming since 1996 and teaching since 2002. Soul Fire Farm is an Afro-Indigenous centered community farm committed to uprooting racism and seeding sovereignty in the food system. Their food sovereignty programs reach over 10,000 people each year, including farmer training for Black and Brown growers, reparations and land return initiatives for northeast farmers, food justice workshops for urban youth, home gardens for city-dwellers living under food apartheid, doorstep harvest delivery for food insecure households, and systems and policy education for public decision-makers.
Indispensable resources from Soul Fire Farm:
https://www.soulfirefarm.org/media/publications/
https://www.soulfirefarm.org/portfolio-items/food-sovereignty-action-steps/
https://www.soulfirefarm.org/portfolio-items/equity-guidelines/
https://www.soulfirefarm.org/media/farming-while-black/
Take Action:
Policy demands: https://www.soulfirefarm.org/get-involved/take-action/
Reparations: https://m4bl.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Reparations-Now-Toolkit-FINAL.pdf
Fairness for Farmworkers Act: https://www.harris.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Fairness%20for%20Farm%20Workers%20Act%20One%20Pager.pdf
Justice for Black Farmers Act: https://www.motherjones.com/food/2020/11/black-farmers-have-been-robbed-of-land-a-new-bill-would-give-them-a-quantum-leap-toward-justice/?fbclid=IwAR1unD-AUvcnYkDBkV2dHBVxUyyiaZS8NtpYTq1O490XAqucUMT3yznQVu4
More on George Washington Carver: https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/george-washington-carvers-legacy-went-beyond-peanuts
Donate: https://www.soulfirefarm.org/support/
Follow The Checkout on Facebook - Instagram - Twitter.
Stream The Checkout on Apple Podcasts - Spotify - Stitcher - Google Podcast
Episode 18: Brian Yazzie On Cooking In Two Worlds
“We’re fighting for our indigenous rights, we’re fighting for what is beneath our feet, what is our food…
“I use the philosophy of cooking in two worlds, having that ancestral memory but with the modern techniques, with the modern times.”
From https://www.yazziethechef.com: Brian Yazzie (a.k.a. Yazzie the Chef) is a Diné Chef from Dennehotso, Arizona which is located on the Northeastern part of the Navajo Nation. He currently resides in Saint Paul, MN and has a degree in Associate of Applied Science (AAS) in Culinary Arts from Saint Paul College. Yazzie focuses on bringing together hyper-local indigenous ingredients from the streams, rivers, and forests to revitalize healthy indigenous cuisine.
Episode 17: Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez On Organizing Essential Workers
“We have a system that is happy to accept undocumented workers’ labor but not their full humanity…
“ We can create a system that understands essential work should be paid as such, that if you risk your life to take care of society, you should be paid more.”
From https://www.cristinatzintzun.org: Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez founded and led two of Texas’ largest voting and civil rights organizations: Jolt, a Texas-wide organization focused on energizing the Latino vote, and Workers Defense Project (WDP), winning the passage of local and state laws protecting the rights of hundreds of thousands of workers. Cristina is a former 2020 US Senate candidate. She was named “Hero of the New South” by Southern Living Magazine and her work has been featured on NPR, Vogue, The New York Times, MTV, USA Today, Univision, MSNBC’s Up Late with Alec Baldwin, among others.
Episode 16: Errol Schweizer on Taste Radio
“We have the most work to do in the food industry.”
We started The Checkout for a few reasons. One, we are food industry lifers and wanted to do a show about food from an insider’s perspective. Two, we felt we needed to center the efforts of working class and BIPOC folks on the frontlines. Three, there is so much injustice and inequity in the food industry and we need to change that. And four, we feel a deep sense of love and solidarity with our colleagues and want to recognize and give a voice to the work they do everyday of the year to feed the world. We hope you enjoy The Checkout and this interview with Ray Latif on Taste Radio.
Episode 15: Chris Smalls and The People Vs. Amazon
“Our mission is to create a rank and file democracy of essential workers… to get enough workforce behind us that we have more power than Congress itself…
“Until we have enough power to tell Amazon or any employer we’re not going to work unless you meet our demands.”
From tcoew.org : The Congress of Essential Workers (T.C.O.E.W.) is a collective of essential workers and allies across the United States coming together under a common goal: to support each other in a fight for better working conditions, better wages, and a better world. T.C.O.E.W. was founded by Chris Smalls, a former Amazon warehouse manager who was fired by the company after organizing a protest against the company’s abysmal handling of the COVID-19 pandemic that has put hundreds of thousands of workers at risk without proper PPE and social distancing regulations.
The TCOEW Vision:
A living wageAll workers are shareholdersJob securityPaid sick leave and hazard pay at full pay rate Free healthcareNo wage cap1-hour lunch breaksPPE to be provided at all timesChildcareMonthly bonuses
To support Chris Smalls: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-chris-smalls-who-was-fired-by-amazon
For more info: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/02/dear-jeff-bezos-amazon-instead-of-firing-me-protect-your-workers-from-coronavirus , https://twitter.com/Shut_downAmazon and https://tcoew.org/about/
Episode 14: Leah Douglas on Covid19, OSHA and meat plant workers
“There’s definitely a need for the private sector to step up in reporting this info and making it publicly available.”
Leah Douglas has been doing Pulitzer-worthy reporting on Covid19 and here she gives us the big picture on the pandemic, OSHA and the meat racket.
From thefern.org: Leah Douglas is an associate editor and staff writer at FERN. Prior to joining the team, she worked for three years as a reporter and policy analyst with the Open Markets Institute, where she researched economic consolidation and monopolization in the food and agriculture industry. She founded and wrote Food & Power, a first-of-its kind resource on food sector consolidation. Her writing on food, agriculture, and land policy has appeared in The Nation, CNN, Fortune, Time, Slate, Civil Eats, and more. For more, see: https://thefern.org/2020/10/could-the-food-system-face-a-new-covid-19-wave-ahead/ and https://twitter.com/leahjdouglas .