Miah Ulysse
Principal, Rūted Solutions
In 2019, I was the co-chair to plan the Minnesota Food Justice Summit, the largest statewide conference about food systems in the country, with about 500 people in attendance. We had shifted the name, from centering on access to justice, and did a lot of fundraising work for scholarships. We centered BIPOC voices wherever we could.
Something I won’t forget is working through the sixty-six-page evaluation after the event and reading a mix of comments. Many uplifting ones called out how people felt it was the first conference they felt they could bring their whole self to, and many were thankful that the connections and histories between food and colonization were front and center. However, I also read comments about how we were being racist towards White people, that those things were in the past and we need to move forward, and that racism in the food system doesn’t exist.
I took the role as co-chair because I’m sick of the food justice movement being co-opted and weaponized by White folks against Black and brown folks. We’re constantly being gaslit and convinced that our ideas are not our own. I wanted to be a voice for my community.
