Chicago Food Justice Mayoral Forum 2023 Municipal Election Questionnaire
Introduction
The Food Justice movement is focused on addressing the historic and current inequities disproportionately impacting low-income and communities of color throughout the food system. Systemic racism and the corporate consolidation of power in food production, distribution, and access has led to labor exploitation, environmental degradation, and higher rates of diet-related disease in Black and Brown communities across Chicago and beyond. In response, the Chicago Food Policy Action Council (CFPAC) with many partners and allies facilitate the development of policies seeking to achieve the food sovereignty of Chicagoans and ensure their power to produce and access sustainable, fair, nutritious, affordable, and culturally significant food.
We are looking for Chicago’s Mayor to wholeheartedly fight for the rights of communities by pushing a progressive agenda addressing these issues. It is vital the Mayor also creates processes and infrastructure within City Hall to center community control, transparency, and equitable pathways for community wealth building. Chicago’s food policy and investments should look comprehensively at the food system as a whole. This holistic view of the food system includes environments where food is produced, processed, distributed, stored, prepared, sold, shared, and celebrated: across community farms & gardens, commercial & home kitchens, restaurants, warehouses, food pantries, groceries, corner stores, and cafeterias. The policy and investment strategies should support wealth creation opportunities while addressing issues of diet-related disease, safe & living wage jobs in the food industry, food waste reduction, sustainable energy generation, access to healthy and culturally appropriate foods, and environmental impacts of industrial agriculture.
The Mayor has the power to move the City of Chicago into a recognized national leader of food justice, thriving local food systems, and vibrant, healthy communities. Mayoral leadership is key to leveraging the resources and capacity to create a political atmosphere where the city can work alongside organizations like the ones who put this questionnaire together.
The aim of this document is to inform the 2023 Mayoral candidates on pressing food justice issues today and inform Chicago voters on their positions.
This questionnaire was developed by the Chicago Food Justice Rhizome Network, a group of passionate individuals and organizations across the Chicago region that collaborate on advancing a more equitable and sustainable food system.
CFPAC sent the following questions to all mayoral candidates on Wednesday, January 18th, 2023.
Racial Equity
Chicago’s history is plagued with racist practices like redlining, unfair taxation, and corruption of power. To build something better, we must start with properly acknowledging the root causes of the inequities low-income, BIPOC Chicagoans are still burdened with today. Not only do we see the effects of racist policies resounding today, there are ample examples of the ties between lack of food access and racially motivated systemic disinvestment.
Food justice advocates recently have preferred a term coined by Karen Washington, ‘food apartheid’ over ‘food desert,’ as this language shift names the root cause of the issue, setting the stage for a conversation around how to address it. ‘Food desert’ implies that a neighborhood is barren, which is hardly true of neighborhoods on the South side of Chicago. In fact, the majority of urban agriculture is happening on the South and West sides. ‘Food desert’ also implies that it’s a natural occurrence. Contrary to popular belief, deserts are thriving ecosystems, which serve a larger purpose in global ecosystems and biomes. Deserts are supposed to be there, neighborhoods which lack grocery stores are not. ‘Food apartheids,’ result from long-term systemic disinvestment. They are not accidents, or natural, and with intentional action and collaboration, there are ways to support a community in creating long term, sustainable points of food access.
From CFPAC’s perspective, investing in long term food security and addressing food apartheid on the South and West sides of Chicago could include the following: tax breaks for community operated, BIPOC-owned and operated grocery stores, working to remove barriers for BIPOC community members, particularly immigrant populations who could grow and provide additional access to cultural foods, to open their own gardens, farmers and food retails, encouraging entrepreneurial food ventures like street vendors and cottage food operations, and investing in communities on the south and west side that have been without food access for years.
How will you ensure wealth building opportunities for BIPOC food businesses, workers, coops, and farms are centered in your food justice advocacy and policy development?
How will you commit to providing all Chicago residents with access to fresh and affordable produce from retailers (both large and independently owned) that are invested in community health and well being through deliberate, long-standing, and sustainable investments, starting with historically divested neighborhoods?
How will you ensure that those at the forefront of systemic inequities (especially BIPOC, undocumented, LGBTQ+) people are at the forefront of both conversations and solutions around food equity in Chicago?
Good Food Purchasing
Chicago City Council’s passage of the Good Food Purchasing Policy (GFPP) as a resolution in 2017 was an excellent first step toward reshaping institutional procurement priorities and practices. GFPP commits the City’s public meal programs to assess the transparency, equity, and accountability of their purchasing practices and shift their food spend toward local, sustainable, healthy, fair and humane food products over time. While meal program administrators have been taking great strides to implement GFPP, there is still much more the City can do to remove the many structural barriers that impede progress to shift their food spend to local, regenerative, and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) food producers.
Individual institutions have taken great first steps towards implementing the program. For example, Chicago Public Schools serves antibiotic-free chicken drumsticks from an Indiana-based poultry company every month, and have committed to one meatless day per week to reduce their carbon footprint. The Department of Family and Support Services has written strong GFPP language into their contracts for the Golden Diners program for senior citizens and is working with their main food vendor, Open Kitchens, on implementation. In order for these institutions to seriously impact the food system for equity and sustainability, they still need long term financial support, technical assistance, aligned procurement policies, and coordination from the Mayor’s Office.
Coupled with additional support for institutions, the city needs to continue to invest in developing a more robust and diverse food supply chain. This means reducing barriers for urban and peri-urban farmers, especially those who identify as BIPOC, while also encouraging institutions to be more flexible in their contracts and demands.
Lastly, GFPP can be leveraged to build more equity in Chicago’s food system outside of public institutions alone. Other wholesale and institutional food service providers can join the Metro Chicago Good Food Purchasing Initiative and commit to shifting their food spend toward community-centered values. The City of Chicago has a central role to play in promoting partnerships between local farmers and restaurants, offering tax incentives for local grocers, food retailers, and other anchor institutions that opt into GFPP, and encouraging private and charter schools to adopt GFPP standards.
How will you reduce barriers for BIPOC farmers and food businesses that want to supply food to City-run community food access sites (schools, senior meals, summer meals, emergency food, festivals, etc)?
How will you budget for GFPP implementation with City of Chicago’s departments and sister agencies?
How will you incentivize and encourage local institutions and private sector partners to abide by GFPP standards and purchase from local and regenerative farmers that grow culturally resonant foods for Chicagoans?
Local Access
In Chicago, over 16% of households, and 22% of households with children, are experiencing food insecurity, meaning they struggle to have consistent access to healthy and affordable foods. Food access should be a right to all Chicagoans; no one should have to worry about where their next meal will come from.
In November 2022, the Whole Foods market in Englewood closed its doors, unexpectedly to many, after just 6 years in the neighborhood. This leaves the community as it was prior to their opening, with more limited options for fresh and healthy foods. Unfortunately, similar scenarios have taken place in other communities of color across Chicago, including the closure of an Aldi’s in Auburn Gresham in June 2022 and closure of Food 4 Less in Back of the Yards in October 2022. The neighborhood has proposed solutions and lobbied the city for support in identifying and supporting a community owned grocery store or cooperative to take the place of Aldi, with no response from the city. Cooperative grocery stores tend to be more successful and are less likely to suddenly leave neighborhoods since they rely on community buy-in and investment.
Access to resources and capital to begin farming operations within the Chicago region is also an important component of local food access. Many residents are interested in activating the thousands of vacant lots that the City of Chicago owns with urban agriculture projects. These vacancies can become productive land to grow food for the community, support local entrepreneurial growers, provide community access to green space, maintain beneficial habitat for wildlife, and boost neighborhood economies. These sustainable agriculture projects can include community gardens, urban farms, mobile markets, farmers markets, shared kitchens, and cooperative enterprises. A majority of the 10,000 vacant lots that the City of Chicago owns are in the South and Southwest sides of the city, which are among the areas of the city with the least points of food access.
Transportation can also be a significant barrier to food accessibility. Extending free or heavily discounted access to public transportation for SNAP-eligible households is one step that can alleviate this barrier in accessing affordable foods, which is a project currently being piloted in Pittsburgh, PA.
What policies would you implement that would guarantee every neighborhood has retail access to fresh, high quality foods?
Most of Chicago’s largest and best attended farmers markets are on the North side. What will you do to incentivize and invest in community-led points of food access on the South side of Chicago?
What will you do to support the activation of vacant, city-owned lots specifically for the purpose of sustainable urban farms and gardens? How will you guarantee continued (and increased) access to land used for food production in the city, including reducing barriers, such as difficulty accessing water, prohibitive sales laws, etc?
Farm and Supply Chain Labor
The 21.5 million people who work in our food and farm systems across the United States are essential to its functioning and serve as its foundation in keeping communities fed. Yet the City of Chicago does not explicitly address these workers’ rights, especially those that are excluded from federal labor and employment law. We urge the incoming mayor to include a “food worker” title that supports all food workers and their families, and to include protections and support for farm and food chain workers who are upstream in the supply chain. Our recommendations for this title focus on equalizing and improving labor laws, while holding bad actors accountable for labor abuses.
Here in Chicago, workers at the El Milagro tortilla factory recently walked out in protest with the demand for increased wages, safer working conditions, and a workplace free from sexual harassment. Despite their organizing efforts, workers are still reporting they’re being “worked like machines,” and that the company did not follow through on many of the promises they had previously made. A similar campaign is unfolding with 24 food workers at the United Center, where dishwashers report being required to work for 35 days straight without a day off. Chicago needs a Mayor that understands the value food workers bring to the city; one that is committed to standing up for workers in holding employers accountable through a well-resourced Office of Labor Standards with clear power of enforcement.
The City’s own purchases of food should also support fairly produced products and hold accountable the corporations present within the supply chains of public meal programs. The City of Chicago’s Good Food Purchasing Policy can be leveraged to put pressure on food corporations in the public supply chain with egregious labor violations or ongoing labor disputes by being required to share where they purchase their food from with the public.
The Mayor’s agenda can also support fair livelihoods of restaurant workers throughout the city. Chicago could set a precedent among other large cities in implementing policy to ensure stable living wages, reforming tipped wages, adequate paid leave, and benefits like health care and retirement funds for workers across the food service industry.
How do you intend to build on the Office of Labor Standards’ resources and enforcement authority to hold employers accountable, especially in the food industry?
Will you commit to ensuring that food service corporations that win public contracts with City of Chicago departments and sister agencies make their food purchases publicly transparent so we know which food corporations are being supported with the City’s funding?
Will you support a “One Fair Wage” for tipped workers, eliminating the tipped minimum wage for restaurant workers?
Local Entrepreneurship
High rates of unemployment coincide with neighborhoods that lack ample access to fresh, healthy, locally produced foods. While we know that systemic symptoms like this tend to have compounding impacts, incentivising local entrepreneurship has the potential to both decrease unemployment and increase food access across the city. Building agency and resiliency in communities that are impacted the most by unemployment can improve numerous individual and collective health impacts, reduce vacant buildings and lots in disinvested areas, and create local jobs for community members.
Many organizations have been working to reduce employment and barriers to small food businesses, increase the number of local food businesses feeding Chicagoans, and increase the number of people involved in Chicago’s local food supply chain. The Illinois Stewardship Alliance worked with a coalition of farmers, small food businesses, advocacy organizations, and food justice advocates to clarify cottage food laws in Illinois to permit home kitchen small businesses to sell their products direct to consumers at farmers markets and online. The Home-to-Market Act has the potential to have a significant equitable impact in Illinois, enabling entrepreneurs to begin a business out of their home kitchen rather than needing the capital to be able to finance a shared kitchen or private space. Additionally, a survey conducted by the Illinois Stewardship Alliance found that 77% of cottage food entrepreneurs are owned by women.
There are also many institutions within Chicago that are working to train the next generation of urban and peri-urban food growers. The Chicago Botanic Gardens’ Windy City Harvest hosts their apprenticeship program to train farmers on how to create business plans and best growing practices for soil based growing, aquaponics, and hydroponics; Advocates for Urban Agriculture has a farmer-to-farmer mentorship program that pairs farmers with each other so they can skill share and learn from one another; Plant Chicago leads a Circular Economy Leaders Network of small food businesses working together to achieve a scale that is typically unattainable individually; and the Angelic Organic Learning Center facilities a program called Upper Midwest Collaborative Regional Alliance for Farmer Training (CRAFT), a farmer-led training alliance organized by small and sustainable farmers. Programs like these encourage local entrepreneurial food projects in Chicagoland and will require consistent investment from the city level to continue and expand to reach more Chicagoans interested in feeding their neighbors.
How do you intend to support the development of sustainable, humane and livable wage jobs within the Chicagoland food supply chain?
How will you better support and coordinate efforts to train beginning farmers and food producers across the City of Chicago and its foodshed?
How will you incentivize and invest in local processing, aggregation and distribution of local, regeneratively grown food products to and among Chicago communities?
Environmental Health in Planning
Historically and currently, the City of Chicago has approved and financed development in low-income communities of color without prioritizing the concerns of community residents or analyzing the impact on public health and the environment. This was the case with the re-development of the former Crawford Coal Power plant in Little Village and North Lawndale, which community members had envisioned as a facility for urban agriculture and value-added food processing. Instead, City Council approved a nearly $20 million tax break for a distribution facility that will adversely affect air quality in the area. A similar situation happened with the potential relocation of General Iron from affluent Lincoln Park to the working class South East side. Organizers fought for months and even leveraged a multiple day hunger strike with very little acknowledgement from the city. This development practice continues to disenfranchise frontline communities and exhaust already limited resources without proposing alternatives that promote the health and wealth of communities.
In 2018, the Natural Resources Defense Council provided a map analysis of the Cumulative Burden of Environmental Exposures and Population Vulnerability in Chicago by census block groups. The “cumulative impacts score” takes into account both burden for environmental exposures as well as vulnerable population characteristics, including percent of low income and minority population. Perhaps to no surprise, Southwest and South side communities have some of the highest cumulative impact scores, demonstrating high exposure to environmental hazards such as diesel emissions, particulate matter, proximity to disposal facilities and noxious odors.
It is critical that the next mayor of Chicago provide actionable steps to address the disparities in environmental burden to ensure all Chicagoans are afforded healthy environments to live, work and play.
How will you support environmental health planning across the city that improves air & water quality, urban agriculture & food accessibility and reduces waste production?
How will you collaborate with food businesses/companies to end environmental injustices resulting from food system activity, like diesel emissions, compromised air and water quality, etc?
How will you support green economic development and BIPOC entrepreneurship in these communities including renewable energy, green transportation, food waste and composting, stormwater management, habitat restoration, and energy efficiency programs?
Individual and Community Health
According to the 2021 data brief published by the Chicago Department of Public Health, The State of Health for Blacks in Chicago, there is a 9.2 year life expectancy gap between Black and non-Black Chicagoans. Furthermore, in 2019 a study by New York University found that residents in Streeterville live to be 90, whereas just 9 miles away in Englewood, residents only live to be 60. That is a 30 year difference in life expectancy less than 10 miles apart within the City of Chicago. Both of these reports cite food-related illnesses as a significant cause to this life expectancy gap, suggesting that better access to healthy foods and nutrition education could be a viable solution. As it stands, the city can be doing more to support residents seeking to increase their community’s health through increased access to culturally relevant, nutritionally dense, and fresh food.
Holistic health requires us to work on multiple levels simultaneously. We need to be reactive and ready to address urgent harm while considering the systemic causes of the health problems plaguing Chicagoans. Equitable local food system development is one way to provide both short and long term benefits to Chicagoans through economic advancement opportunities and also has the potential to result in several positive health outcomes for both individuals and communities. The development and preservation of green spaces and urban agriculture in high density areas limits additional greenhouse gasses, diesel emissions, compromised water and air quality, while simultaneously providing places for community members to connect with one another, learn a new skill or hobby, and spend time outdoors.
It’s also important to mention that “healthy foods” can look very different household to household, and even person to person. Healthcare settings rarely acknowledge the root cause of diet related symptoms, over prescribing medications and falsely equating health with slim bodies. Ensuring all residents in Chicago have ample access to food is providing people with the resources and options to explore and define what healthy eating habits looks for them within their cultural foodways. With additional support from school systems and nutrition educators, Chicago can empower residents with knowledge to improve both their individual health and the community’s health.
How would your administration address the systemic issues causing negative, diet-related health outcomes rather than putting the responsibility on individuals?
Will you commit to listening to and working with the individuals who are seeking to create new points of local fresh food access within their neighborhoods while creating equitable economic development? Provide some examples of what working with residents would look like.
Diverting Food Waste & Composting
Food waste is a massive and avoidable source of carbon and methane emissions, and is also an untapped source for healthy meals, alternative energy, and an opportunity to implement circular economy practices through regenerative soil production. Unlike other major cities across the U.S and globally, the City of Chicago has done little to reduce, recover, and redirect wasted food. There is no city-wide commercial or municipal composting system. The city has yet to establish comprehensive regulations to support and encourage responsible composting businesses. There is great benefit for redirecting city food waste to proper channels for reuse and recycling. For example, adding in a city wide waste stream for organic materials could reduce the amount of contaminated recyclables, which has the potential to increase the city’s recycling rate (which currently hovers around 10%).
Food waste, both on the household level and supply chain level, can contribute to environmental injustice. In improving the city’s waste reduction strategies and management systems, it will be imperative that the city works closely with trusted organizations and seeks the input of the people living near planned projects, as the new Green Era project in Auburn Gresham has been very intentional in doing as it launches operations.
There are several changes that could be made swiftly by any administration to reduce wasted food in Chicago. Examples include providing funding and incentives for composting farms and businesses;committing to improving recycling through removing the financial incentive for city agencies to claim that recyclables are contaminated, mandating use of finished compost product on city-owned and managed properties, and declaring that farm and yard compost is no longer considered "hazardous waste."
How would you create a city wide composting program within your term of office?
How will you incentivize and support food retail, restaurants, and wholesale food businesses, especially the Midwest's largest produce terminal, International Produce Terminal, to recover and donate food to community outlets including mutual aid groups and food pantries?
All Mayoral Candidates have been invited to a forum, happening February 10th, 2023 from 4:00 - 5:30PM at UIC Student Center East to publicly answer some of the questions included in the questionnaire. The event will be streamed virtually and will have Spanish translation and American Sign Language interpretation.