Name: Klara Moss
Social Justice Group: Food insecurity in NYC (B)
Date of Fieldwork: January 24, 2025
Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Museum of the City of New York
What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork:
On Friday, our grade visited the Museum of the City of New York. We had a tour guide who took us through an exhibit of activism in our city. There were about 10 different walls that focused on separate rights movements. For example, there was a disabled rights wall that showed artifacts like microphones that were used during marches and talked all about the steps to get the 504 law passed. Another wall zoomed in on trans rights and many of the hardships trans people face/faced and some of the activists who support the movement. Unfortunately there was no wall that really benefited my group which has the topic of food insecurity, although there were small facts around the room that stood out to me. I watched a video on food desserts in the city and how a group called Harlem Grown is trying to help with the homelessness and hunger issues. The man in the video was walking through Harlem one day and counted 53 fried chicken restaurants within 3 blocks and no healthy food options. He was blown away by this and it encouraged him to start a sustainability garden. He believes that “if a child plants it, they will eat it”, and that they are “planting seeds in the ground but also in kid’s heads”. In NYC there are a total of 35,000 homeless kids and 100% of the kids in the school they were focusing on in this video have families that rely on food stamps.
Later we asked our tour guide about what the city was doing to combat food insecurity and she responded with some facts about the WIC Check which is the governments plan to get groceries to Women, Infants, and Children. They’ve been thinking about urban planning, urban farming, and community gardens, which are also places that would be interesting for us to volunteer or do fieldwork at.
Even though this museum wasn’t exactly specific to our topic, I got some helpful information and truths to our city, and also learned a lot about other activism in NYC.
