A newly established Tulsa community group is honing in on food insecurity issues.
The Forum for Real Economic Emancipation, called FREE, is hosting an event Friday titled “Manufactured Hunger & the Fight for Food Sovereignty” at St. Jerome Parish Church, 205 W. King St.
Doors open at 5:30 p.m. and the free event starts at 6.
Led by its president Clara Mattei, FREE is a group that studies how local problems impact global systems and imagines how they could work differently.
“FREE is an attempt to show how critical and empowering knowledge is a very important component of this struggle to re-democratize our economy and have more agency in how our economy is shaped,” said Mattei, an economics professor at The University of Tulsa.
Mattei said Friday’s conversation will have three speakers. Raj Patel, research professor at The University of Texas and author of “Stuffed and Starved,” will discuss why hunger persists in a world of abundance and what Tulsa can learn from global movements reclaiming food systems.
“We have almost a billion people in deep hunger around the world and there is actually enough food to feed everybody,” Mattei said. “In Oklahoma, we have very similar statistics: 1 in 4 children are actually facing hunger, and we know that food is being constantly wasted.”
Nico Albert Williams, a Cherokee chef, educator and founder of Burning Cedar Sovereign Wellness, will discuss Indigenous foodways and the paths to creating food sovereignty or real decision-making power over their local food systems.
Katie Plohocky, founder and president of RG Foods, a Tulsa non-profit that seeks to expand access in food insecure communities, will discuss cooperative models that bring fresh food into communities.
“In understanding the limits of our current economic system, we can also get creative about alternatives,” Mattei said. “And these alternatives — we shouldn’t just wait for them to be proposed by the elite that run this system. They should come from citizens and communities everywhere.”
The event will include a free dinner and child care, music and poetry. Attendees are encouraged to register on freefreeforum.org.
News decisions at the Tulsa Flyer are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
