ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the relational politics of food justice advocacy in the gentrifying city of Denver, Colorado. Using rhetorical field methods, we reflect on “Planting Just Seeds,” an advocacy tour of food justice projects set within the context of dispossession in the region. Authored by two participants of the tour as well as its organizer, we describe how advocacy tours can operate as social movement tactics, assisting to elevate alternative voices and counter dominant spatiotemporal geographies. By highlighting interdependence and women of color food movement leaders, the tour allowed participants to deepen their understanding of relationships among food, land, and power. First, we review scholarship on advocacy tours as tactics for social and environmental justice movements. Second, we introduce interdisciplinary literature on intersectional food justice advocacy. Third, illustrated by key moments throughout the tour, we highlight three themes we found to be most salient: rooted cartography, relational food justice, and regeneration. Ultimately, we argue that social movement analysis should take seriously not only critiques of crises we face, but also the labor required for remapping rooted and regenerative relationships among our human and nonhuman world.
