ABSTRACT

This chapter brings the literature on the civil rights tradition of community organizing more centrally into contemporary food justice struggles, specifically addressing the white privilege that tends to figure in much of contemporary alternative food activism. It assumes a collective writing structure and moniker to discuss the struggle around food or environmental justice within the case of the Newtown community in Gainesville, Georgia. Through a partnership with academics from the University of Georgia, lawyers and environmental engineers from various organizations in Atlanta, the Newtown Florist Club has been undergoing a long-term planning process to regain an increased degree of control over their neighbourhoods. The chapter uses the unfolding of these planning processes for the sake of interrogating local efforts within a more robust historical and geographical context. The Newtown Florist Club has been struggling against racial oppression and environmental injustice since 1951.