On June 9, we welcomed about 50 Equal Exchange worker-owners, 50 members of our Action Forum, and three coffee producers, together for a day of shared learning at our first-ever People's Food System Summit. With topics ranging from how climate change is impacting small-scale farming communities, to the manipulation of the "Fair Trade" movement, to the consolidation of the food system, it was a day that left many of us wondering, what can we do about it? How can we organize consumers?
Categories: Community
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Rink DickinsonJune 5, 2017Over the last year we have had the chance to organize and meet some of our strongest supporters at Action Forum events. In person, from the West Coast to the East Coast, and in virtual forums, we have tried to articulate what we know needs to be built and why we need your participation to succeed. It has been interesting and a challenge. A bunch of you have jumped in with us, and we thank you, while others have expressed confusion around what exactly the Action Forum is and does.
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Phyllis RobinsonMay 23, 2017Cooperation among cooperatives is the sixth international cooperative principle. Few organizations can lay a stronger claim to putting it into action than Equal Exchange. Since our founding 31 years ago, our very mission, organizational model, and business practices are lived out in adherence to this core value.
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Ashley SymonsMay 16, 2017Edith Stacey-Huber is passionate about food. She is the creator of the food buying club Authentic Provisions just outside of Ann Arbor, Mich. Authentic Provisions aims to reconnect people in the community to the food, land and farmers who sustain them, through collective purchasing outside of the corporate food system. Edith is also a member of the Equal Exchange Action Forum and will be presenting at our upcoming People’s Food System Summit on June 9-10.
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Nicole VitelloMay 1, 2017Today is International Workers Day, also known as May Day, which has roots in U.S. history, but is barely recognized here as it is officially in 66 other countries and unofficially in many more. Yet we owe our eight hour work day and five day work week, among other labor protections, to the 300,000 men, women and children who walked off their jobs on May 1, 1886, to protest their working conditions and lack of power in the growing capitalist industrial system, of which their labor was a necessary part.
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Rob EvertsApril 27, 2017In the lead up to May Day, we would like to share the voice of a worker in the food service industry. As you will hear, profits in this industry are often at the expense of exploited workers. We wish to support the hopes and aspirations of food workers too often invisible to consumers, from those who harvest the crops to those so critical to the success of the restaurant and fast food industries.
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Equal ExchangeApril 11, 2017How can citizen-consumers come together as a political, thinking community? What can we learn from past efforts to reform the food system, and from the current efforts of others involved in the movement for food justice? Equal Exchange has taken the step to create a community of people working together to deepen our collective understanding of these issues and to take actions where strategic, through the creation of the Equal Exchange Action Forum.
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Equal ExchangeMarch 28, 2017In Part One, we described key problems we need to address, challenge and solve if we want to create a just food system. In Part Two, post one, we dug into the successes and failures of Fair Trade and Certifications as food system reforms. And now, we look to Food Co-ops and Boycotts. Equal Exchange grew directly from the food co-op movement. The Equal Exchange founders—Michael Rozyne, Jonathan Rosenthal and myself—all worked at the New England food co-op warehouse. This was a secondary, consumer-owned warehouse that was initially collectively run when we began and then had a general manager four years later as we were exiting Northeast Co-ops for the birth of Equal Exchange in the mid-1980s.
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Equal ExchangeFebruary 21, 2017At Equal Exchange, we think about food every day. We think about the foods we sell, the farmers we purchase from, shipping logistics, the marketplace, and other day-to-day details. We are also deeply consumed in thinking about the broader food system: what is working, what is broken, how ownership and power are distributed, and how to develop alternative models. Ultimately, we are working to bridge the gap that exists between farmers and consumers.
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Dary GoodrichFebruary 14, 2017For me, this Valentine’s Day feels different. Yes, I’ve got chocolate on the mind—as Chocolate Products Manager, I think about it all the time—but there are two other things I keep coming back to. First is the current state of U.S. politics and the division that seems to be the defining character of our country at this time.