By Genoa Barrow | OBSERVER Senior Staff Writer
Most people don’t think about where the food they eat comes from and how it got to their plates.
Becoming a vegan helped local activist Miko Brown rethink her choices. She’s now helping others develop a deeper understanding of the global food system and the context and history that shapes it. Brown has dedicated her life to exploring animal exploitation in relation to social change and food justice. She’s currently director of social justice initiatives for Farm Sanctuary, the country’s first farm animal sanctuary and advocacy organization.
Brown, who has a master’s degree in social change, got into the work in 2013 while in service projects through AmeriCorps. Brown and fellow activist Dana McPhall recently finalized participants for a Farm Sanctuary program, “Social Justice and Our Food System.” The free virtual program uses a social justice framework to explore veganism, patterns of oppression and injustice in the United States food system, and the treatment of farm animals.
“What we’ve heard from previous participants and witnessed in the program is that people were able to develop a deeper understanding of the issues of our food system and the context and history that shapes the food system in a way that they wouldn’t have been able to otherwise,” Brown said.
“At Farm Sanctuary, our efforts to address the injustices experienced by animals used for food continuously reveal that the story of one animal survivor is a reflection of a pervasive pattern of harm throughout our food system that also impacts farmworkers, communities, and the environment,” said McPhall, the sanctuary’s director of education and community engagement.
The program provides a learning community where participants can “gain an understanding of the historical roots and contemporary manifestations of this harm, and can develop strategies for disrupting that harm and pursuing a just, sustainable, and compassionate food system for all,” McPhall explained.
Founded in 1986, Farm Sanctuary provides lifelong care at sanctuary locations in California and New York for animals rescued from abuse, fosters just and compassionate vegan living, and advocates for legal and policy reforms.
Animal Rights Activist Discusses Vegan Life
By Genoa Barrow | OBSERVER Senior Staff Writer Black vegans have been in the spotlight a lot recently and local activist Miko Brown said it’s more of a movement than a moment. Brown is director of social justice initiatives for Farm Sanctuary, the nation’s first farm animal sanctuary and advocacy organization. The OBSERVER recently sat…
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Brown started her vegan journey after a friend she met through AmeriCorps told her about how animals are treated in the current food system.
“That inspired me to want to find a way to continue the work I had been doing engaging in service projects with communities by doing service with a community specifically dedicated to caring for farm animals,” she said. “In the process of figuring out how best to do that, I came across the concept of farm animal sanctuaries, organizations that provide care and refuge for farm animals in spaces where the animals are able to live out their lives freely without being used by humans for food.”
Brown interned at two farm animal sanctuaries, including a Farm Sanctuary shelter in Orland.
She’s called to do the work, much as a pastor would be to preach the gospel. She’s a shepherd for a different flock.
“My plan had originally been to complete my internship at Farm Sanctuary and then pursue a master of divinity and master of arts in social change to do community ministry focused on promoting equity and social justice,” Brown shared. “However, my internship at Farm Sanctuary was a very transformative experience and I felt moved by the potential I saw in sanctuaries to be liberatory spaces dedicated to promoting and practicing care and justice for animals, humans and the planet.”
She changed course, literally, and started working for Farm Sanctuary while pursuing a master’s of arts degree in social change. Today she works to prioritize and advance equity and social justice.
“At Farm Sanctuary, we ground our work in an understanding of our current food system as a legacy of colonization and a reflection of the White supremacist ideology underlying colonization,” Brown said. “With that in mind we recognize that human oppression, animal oppression, settler colonialism and the destruction of the planet are deeply intertwined and that we must engage with these issues holistically to dismantle the entangled roots of oppression, inclusive of care and justice for animals.”
Championing the cause of food justice and animal exploitation in the Black community isn’t as hard a sell as some would think.
“I don’t think of it in terms of our knowledge of food justice and animal exploitation, but rather in terms of the conditions that are present in our communities in relation to issues of our food system,” Brown said.
“Often within conscious food movements, like the vegan movement, there can be an orientation toward focusing on individual awareness, behavior and change, but it feels really important to consider these issues in terms of context and systems. Patterns of oppression and injustice are, unfortunately, foundational to the history of the U.S. – a country built and established through practices of colonization, genocide, racism, enslavement, displacement, theft and assimilation that disrupted Black and Indigenous peoples’ relationships to land and our freedom to determine and define our own systems of food production.
“We see the legacies of those harms and a continuation of those harms in so many ways in our communities with racial and economic disparities in who has access to healthy, affordable, and desirable food choices that align with our well-being and values.”
Even within that deep history of food injustice, activists see the resilience, strength, and power of the Black community as leaders in the food justice movement, Brown said. “I’m thinking of activist and community organizer Fannie Lou Hamer, who recognized how essential food and our ability to grow our own food are to liberation; and comedian Dick Gregory, whose activism included food and nonviolence toward animals,” Brown shared.
With all that African Americans have experienced, especially of late with demands for social justice and change, some will wonder about a focus on animals. Brown said the two are related. “We really think about it holistically as a systems issue where we recognize the unjust roots of our food system and the harmful patterns that are reflected throughout the food system as a result of those roots,” she said.
“We see these exploitative patterns where workers are harmed, animals are harmed, communities are harmed, and the planet is harmed and we orient toward community organizing, coalition building, and systems change to address those shared harms. It isn’t a matter of trying to sell the issue of animal exploitation to our communities. Rather, we connect with our communities to understand how these patterns of harm within our food system are affecting them so that we can engage in solidarity in service of a food system shift for our collective benefit. We understand social justice for humans to be inextricably connected to justice for animals, given the entangled roots and pervasive social forces that drive and motivate oppression.”
The Sacramento region prides itself on its agricultural roots. Brown said farmworkers should be treated better.
“Sacramento is known as the farm-to-fork capital of the world, with millions of acres of farmland that directly supply local restaurants, businesses, and community members with a diverse range of farm-grown food throughout the year,” she said. “When I think of Sacramento I also think of the movement for farmworker justice and the 1966 farmworker march from Delano to Sacramento, where thousands took part in the nearly 300-mile historic trek to demand better wages and working conditions for agricultural workers. I think of the legacy of labor leader César Chávez, the work of Dolores Huerta, organizations like the United Farmworkers, and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers who have done critical work to advocate for justice for farmworkers because, historically, they have not been treated justly.”
Farmworker justice, Brown said, is essential to food justice.
“Specifically, with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, agricultural workers have been considered essential workers,” she said. “Yet despite being considered essential, farmworkers and the harmful conditions they experience are often hidden from those of us eating the food they produce, who typically are not aware of who is harvesting our fruits, grains, and vegetables and at what costs. The pandemic has highlighted pervasive and systemic injustices experienced by farmworkers and has further exacerbated pre-existing issues including vulnerability to injury and disease; inadequate protection and safety protocols; low wages; and workplace abuse, harassment and exploitation.”
The enrollment period for this year’s community engagement workshops is closed, but those interested in participating in the next cohort can visit FarmSanctuary.org.