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Abstract
During the last three decades of the twentieth century, food played a central role within New York City social politics. As the urban liberalism that characterized New York during the 1960s yielded to an era of fiscal conservatism and neoliberal social policies, solutions to hunger and poverty emerged from the grassroots that relied on private initiative, often spearheaded by nonprofit agencies. The chapters that follow examine an antipoverty organization that led a campaign for school lunch and sponsored the city’s first free summer meal program, a food cooperative, a meal delivery service for people with AIDS, and an advocacy organization that also established the city’s first food bank. Together, these case studies reveal how, in a context of retrenchment, direct service provision became a key form of food activism, contributing necessary sustenance to a range of New Yorkers while connecting people to broader reform efforts. The dissertation argues that food activism both derived from and strengthened contemporary movements, such as the fight for community control in Black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods, the post-Vietnam War New Left, AIDS activism, and resistance to austerity.
