E4A Cooks for the Hungry, Closes Annual Action Week

Student activists cooked vegan food for the hungry yesterday, marking the end of Action Week, an annual program sponsored by Education for Action (E4A).

The event was the last of a series of projects and panels dealing with the theme, "The Politics of Food."

E4A, a Radcliffe-sponsored group, works to promote social justice and activism through education, according to board member Rosslyn Wuchinich '99, who helped organize the week's events.

Action Week is meant to reinforce E4A's educational mission by concentrating on a particular issue that changes each year, Wuchinich said.

"What it's meant to do is pull out connections between different issues and, frequently, between different movements for social change or different forms of repression," she said. "With food, people rarely think about it as a political issue."

As part of Action Week, E4A sponsored a panel presentation on Monday entitled "Feeding Exploitation: Where Harvard's Food Comes From."

Speakers included E4A board member Matt Davis, who discussed Harvard's food purchasing guidelines.

Ingrid Senaan, the regional organizer for the United Farm Workers (UFW), also spoke about the UFW campaign to unionize workers and promote fair working conditions in California's strawberry fields.

Student activists Daniel R. Morgan '99, who is currently organizing a new student group to deal with labor issues, and Marco B. Simons '97, founder of the Burma Action Group, also addressed the issue of activism on campus.

Simons described his organization's successful fight to convince Harvard Dining Services (HDS) to revoke its contract with Pepsi in light of the company's investments in Burma. He cited the group's work as evidence that student activism can affect change within the University, especially when students aim their efforts at HDS.

"In general, activism aimed at HDS has been pretty successful," Simons said, citing the responsive nature of the HDS bureaucracy.

E4A also hosted a panel discussion Tuesday night on vegetarianism entitled "The Personal is Political," in addition to "Consuming Culture: The Politics of Ethnocentrism and Food," held Wednesday evening.

The vegetarian panel dealt with global food distribution and the political ramifications of eating meat, according to panel organizer Katherine H. Gibson '99.

"Vegetarianism is seen very much as a personal choice," Gibson said. "We wanted people to examine how they saw their personal choices affecting things beyond themselves."

For yesterday's final Action Week event, E4A members served food to the hungry with the Cambridge chapter of Food Not Bombs, a national network of activists which aims to make people aware of hunger.

Food Not Bombs operates under the motto that "food is a right, not a privilege," said E4A board member Amahl A. Bishara '97.

"Part of the reason we're interested in working with [Food Not Bombs] and other direct-service groups is they have a very politicized and radical outlook towards [social issues]," Wuchinich said

Food Not Bombs operates under the motto that "food is a right, not a privilege," said E4A board member Amahl A. Bishara '97.

"Part of the reason we're interested in working with [Food Not Bombs] and other direct-service groups is they have a very politicized and radical outlook towards [social issues]," Wuchinich said