Anyone that harbored a false sense of hope that when the clock turned to 2021 all of the hardships of 2020 would magically evaporate, knows that the passing of time alone does not cure all. To overcome the challenges our country and culture face, the tool required is accountability. And we can tell you from experience: accountability is hard.
This week we're reminded of one of our biggest struggles with accountability in January 2013. That year on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we watched Barack Obama take the oath for his second presidential term, and we wrote about our personal and professional roles in perpetuating systemic racism. Eight years later, we're still working on it.
To honor Martin Luther King Jr.'s full legacy we are remembering that he and the ideas for which he advocated were considered radical at the time. And while his most well-known area of advocacy was to eradicate racism, by the time of his assassination in April 1968, he spoke freely of the 'three evils': racism, poverty, and war.
In August 2020 we made what could be considered a radical change to our posting policy at GFJ: we no longer post positions that do not pay minimum wage or higher. We chose to hold ourselves accountable as a job posting board to the undervaluing and sometimes outright exploitation of labor.
Yet our choice doesn't relieve us of challenges. We continue to grapple with the reality that our decision disproportionately affects small farms, many of whom, for better or worse, rely on low paid team members to keep their farms afloat. And as many of those farmers continue to remind us, they themselves make little to no profit as business owners. It seems easy to point out that a system built on these realities is broken, less so to come up with answers that satisfy the many individuals affected.
Here are the conflicts we're grappling with:
- It's not our intent to place an additional burden on small farms, who are caring for people and the land through their work. Yet the impact of not allowing them to seek team members through GFJ is burdensome.
- We don't believe that money is the only valuable form of compensation, and this policy does not honor the spirit of care included with many important non-monetary job benefits, such as housing, food, and education.
- We don't have all the answers (though we are learning from much more valuable and experienced voices on the subject - like Chris Newman of Sylvanaqua Farms). And it's hard to make a strong policy change when you don't have all the answers. Yet this very truth brings into question a lot of other assumed truths, such as what existing power structures are we relying on to make us feel that we have the 'right' to exert our power as a small business, and are they serving us? We've been looking for an effective solution to the issue of living wages for all jobs for ten years - now it's time to try a different solution.
The truth must be acknowledged: agricultural labor in the United States (and many other places around the world) has a direct line back to enslavement. Farms in this country first built their businesses on exploiting labor, and the system has been skewed as a result ever since.
We, alone, are not going to change the system. But we can no longer fail to use our power to shed light on it and continue to work together toward change.
Over the next few newsletters we will share what has come of these conversations and hope to inspire action that will collectively move us all forward. In the words and sentiments of Dr. King,
And we must know on some positions, cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?” Vanity asks the question, “Is it popular?” But conscience asks the question, “Is it right?” And there’re times when you must take a stand that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but you must do it because it is right. - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1967 address to Atlanta's Butler Street YMCA, The Atlantic
Yours in food, justice, and food justice,
Tay + Dor
photo by Alexa Romano
