The Center for Latin American Studies will host Eric Holt-Gimenez, Executive Director of Food First, as he presents "Food Movements Unite! Strategies to Transform our Food Systems," on Tuesday, February 14 at 1:30 p.m. in the Ohio Staters Inc., Traditions Room of the Ohio Union. Holt-Gimenez will speak again Tuesday afternoon in the Ohio Union, this time in the Lower Level Meeting room, from 4:30 - 6:30 p.m. on "Rising to Meet the Challenges of Food Justice." Holt-Gimenez will address the idea that the balance of forces cannot be changed unless fragmented food movements forge a common platform based on common grounds.

In his preface to his book Food Movements Unite! Strategies to Transform our Food Systems, Holt-Gimenez says, "Whether it was due to growing pauperization, growing inequality, growing unemployment, or growing precariousness, it’s only normal that people started resisting, protesting, and organizing around the world. Social movements are by and large still on the defensive, facing the offensive of capital to dismantle whatever they had conquered in the previous decades. But even if perfectly legitimate social movements of protest are growing everywhere, they remain extremely fragmented. What is needed is to move beyond fragmentation and beyond a defensive position into building a wide progressive alliance emboldened by the force of a positive alternative."

The latter talk will include a conversation following Holt-Gimenez’s comments to explore how Columbus’ vibrant food justice community can draw from and may already be responding to his work and that of Food First. Holt-Gimenez is hosted by the School of Environmental and Natural Resources, Center for Latin American Studies and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race & Ethnicity.

For more information, please contact Erika Colijn at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Eric Holt-Gimenez

Eric Holt-Gimenez is Executive Director of Food First and has extensive experience working with small-scale farmers, food producers and efforts to change food systems domestically and internationally since 1977. He has worked within and studied food system intervention projects throughout the U.S., Latin America, El Paso, Mexico, Africa and Central America. Currently, Food First is exploring corporate food chain investments in urban areas and its impact on land acquisitions in the urban environment in Detroit and Oakland.