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Food Sovereignty
What does Utopia mean to you?
Growing up, I would think of it as a fantasy sort of realm, a way of living. You want to be in a space where everyone feels free to do what they want. There’s no negativity and all resources are shared by all. There’s peace and there’s harmony, throughout. It’s that magical place, that you as a human being, want to aspire to where you have a connection and harmony with not only humans, but with animals and plants as well.
Maybe that’s that’s why we wanted to tackle this question — because Utopia feels like this really perfect faraway ideal that’s almost unattainable, but when we think about community gardens, that almost feels like an applied utopia, a small scale version that we can study and possibly scale up. So how could you, or how would you, apply Utopia to the work that you do in community organizing or community gardening?
I’m doing it right now— living in my world and living my dream, working in community with the friends who shared a dream that we put out into the universe. We said, “One day, we’re gonna farm together,” and now we’re farming together and we live very closely together. We try to provide a safe space for the people that work with us and make it a place that follows our values. We’re rooted in food justice, and it’s something that we strive for. We’re not perfect because we’re human but there are tools and strategies out there that when we do have conflict, we can deal with it holistically. One thing to be very careful about Utopia is the human aspect. You do have frailties, you do have pitfalls, and you do have things that sometimes don’t meet your expectations. The ideal shouldn’t be perfection because then it doesn’t feel real. I remember growing up, and thinking to myself, “Wow, what if I had the ability to clone myself?” And then I say to myself, “Karen, what if everyone was like you? How boring would that be?” So even in Utopia, you have to make space for mistakes and to grow from your mistakes. Mistakes challenge you and and falling down challenges you, so, do we really want to strive for a place where everything is perfect? Or do you want to live in harmony? I wouldn’t say Utopia but harmony is where you’re able to find that level of balance.
I know you work a lot in food justice, which is an ideal for many of us, just like collective liberation is. They are really big ideas, but when I think about a world that’s utopic there IS food justice. So how do you approach those ideas within the work that you do?
Just give people a chance to be human. Give people a chance to have resources and land. Give people that opportunity to be themselves. I find that the world does not look at abundance, or who we are as people, but instead, always looks at scarcity. There’s this idea that if we give something to somebody it’s being taken away from someone else. All we ask for, especially people of color, is opportunity. We’re not taking away anything from anyone. We want what all people want: clean water, fresh food, to be healthy, to have a roof over their head, and the ability to provide for their family. I want to see people, no matter who they are, have the same opportunity as the next person: the same opportunity to buy a house, to live in an apartment, to live in any neighborhood and to have free access, without barriers. I just want people to look at people as being human, instead of judging them by race, religion, ethnicity or wealth. It’s very, very basic. When I walk in the door, the first thing people notice is that I’m Black. The second, that I’m a woman. Those are the two things I’ve been first recognized for all my life and I’ve never had a chance for people to look at me as just being me, just being human. For instance, I look at what is happening in Texas, how the governor has sent people on buses as if they’re products. How do we accept the notion, when people’s relatives came here as immigrants — not my relatives — who came enslaved, but how do we reckon with that when people deny others the same opportunity? There’s so much fear, because for so long you’ve been the oppressor, and now the country is starting to turn brown, diversify and it scares them, because of their own history of oppression and abuse. They’re triggered by brown and Black people in power because they’re afraid that they are going to replicate the oppressor, and do the same thing that they’ve done to us for so many years. So now you have to position yourself to hold on to what you feel is your value. But in the end, you’re going to lose because you cannot stop change. Either you embrace it or it’s going to change without you.
You mentioned that people need the opportunity to have land, clean water, and food, which seems inherently “Utopic” in and of itself, but how do we create access to land?
We have to change the dialogue as well as how we assess land. I had to change my whole concept of land ownership. How do we own land, or own anything when we don’t live long enough? I had to change my framework, because I realized I can no longer say I own anything. I can be a steward of the land, I can take care of it, but we’re not on Earth long enough to own it. We don’t really own anything. We can’t own anything because we’re gone in an instant. When you go on, the house doesn’t go with you. The land doesn’t go with you. You might think that that house is going to be in your house for generations and it might be! But it also might not be. Do you own it? Or do you just happen to be on this earth at this point in time? You can be a caretaker of land, you can have a home and enjoy it, but do you really own it? You don’t own anything—Nature owns it; it goes back to nature. It goes back to the universe.
How do we foster stewardship? Or how do we foster connection, or reconnection to the land? And how did we lose that connection to begin with?
It’s because we thought that Utopia was a house, a backyard, a car, and a job. We lost that connection. And in the end, when Armageddon comes, you can’t eat a car, or jewelry, or Bitcoin. The people who are going to survive are the people who know how to grow food. An orchard or the crops that I’m growing are priceless. We have to get back to the land, back to that call, back to what’s really real and what nourishes us. If we say that we turn to dust when we die and we return to the earth then we have to renew that connection to the earth. We’ve lost that because we were reaching for materialistic things that are empty. Going back to the land, being in the land, and building thankfulness for being a steward of the land is so satisfying. Those that are returning to the land by becoming farmers and caretakers are starting to see that connection again as we work with nature, rather than against it.
How would you say food sovereignty and even generally, just growing our own food and cultivating our connection with the land nurtures our mind body spirit? How is that utopic?
I say each and every day that someone made that long trip along the transatlantic coast, that ocean, that journey for me to be here. The suffering that they had to go through for me to be here means something and I got to tap into that. Someone sacrificed their life so I can be here and be in tune to that. To understand what it takes as a people to try to hold on to that legacy, that history, or how I got to be my being is so, so important. By understanding that then you understand the importance of community and the importance of learning about your legacy and the history in your family. I don’t know who that person was… I’ll find out maybe one day, but someone made a lot of sacrifices… a lot of sacrifice along the way for me to be here. I needed to be here in a place that’s far, far away from my ancestors. We need to stop for a second and acknowledge the ancestral lineage that we all have, and to be mindful of what that means, especially for people of color, and especially for African Americans who didn’t come through Ellis Island. We came here enslaved. So I think about going back and reaching out to that person along the line who gave me life to be here.
How do we reconcile that relationship with the land as peoples whose ancestors were enslaved, as people who are immigrants, as people who are refugees, and as people who are settlers? How do we find connection maybe to a land that’s not ours? And what does that seem like?
It’s not ours! Like I said, I’m farming on land that I can’t say is my land. All I can say is that I know that there are Indigenous people on this land, and they have given me the chance to be a caretaker. And that’s how I look at it. I can’t look at it as “Oh, I’m in Chester, New York, and I’m on land that I have no connection to.” I have been given that land to be a caretaker and I asked their permission to be that caretaker, and I try to take care of that land to the best of my ability.
How can the readers who read your interview apply utopia? How do we build the world that we deserve?
Treat each other with kindness. With love. It is so simple. Kindness and love. Easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy.
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{
"article":
{
"title" : "Food Sovereignty",
"author" : "Karen Washington",
"category" : "interviews",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/food-sovereignty",
"date" : "2023-08-25 12:00:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Newsletter_Banner_KarenWashington.jpg",
"excerpt" : "What does Utopia mean to you?Growing up, I would think of it as a fantasy sort of realm, a way of living. You want to be in a space where everyone feels free to do what they want. There’s no negativity and all resources are shared by all. There’s peace and there’s harmony, throughout. It’s that magical place, that you as a human being, want to aspire to where you have a connection and harmony with not only humans, but with animals and plants as well.",
"content" : "What does Utopia mean to you?Growing up, I would think of it as a fantasy sort of realm, a way of living. You want to be in a space where everyone feels free to do what they want. There’s no negativity and all resources are shared by all. There’s peace and there’s harmony, throughout. It’s that magical place, that you as a human being, want to aspire to where you have a connection and harmony with not only humans, but with animals and plants as well.Maybe that’s that’s why we wanted to tackle this question — because Utopia feels like this really perfect faraway ideal that’s almost unattainable, but when we think about community gardens, that almost feels like an applied utopia, a small scale version that we can study and possibly scale up. So how could you, or how would you, apply Utopia to the work that you do in community organizing or community gardening?I’m doing it right now— living in my world and living my dream, working in community with the friends who shared a dream that we put out into the universe. We said, “One day, we’re gonna farm together,” and now we’re farming together and we live very closely together. We try to provide a safe space for the people that work with us and make it a place that follows our values. We’re rooted in food justice, and it’s something that we strive for. We’re not perfect because we’re human but there are tools and strategies out there that when we do have conflict, we can deal with it holistically. One thing to be very careful about Utopia is the human aspect. You do have frailties, you do have pitfalls, and you do have things that sometimes don’t meet your expectations. The ideal shouldn’t be perfection because then it doesn’t feel real. I remember growing up, and thinking to myself, “Wow, what if I had the ability to clone myself?” And then I say to myself, “Karen, what if everyone was like you? How boring would that be?” So even in Utopia, you have to make space for mistakes and to grow from your mistakes. Mistakes challenge you and and falling down challenges you, so, do we really want to strive for a place where everything is perfect? Or do you want to live in harmony? I wouldn’t say Utopia but harmony is where you’re able to find that level of balance.I know you work a lot in food justice, which is an ideal for many of us, just like collective liberation is. They are really big ideas, but when I think about a world that’s utopic there IS food justice. So how do you approach those ideas within the work that you do?Just give people a chance to be human. Give people a chance to have resources and land. Give people that opportunity to be themselves. I find that the world does not look at abundance, or who we are as people, but instead, always looks at scarcity. There’s this idea that if we give something to somebody it’s being taken away from someone else. All we ask for, especially people of color, is opportunity. We’re not taking away anything from anyone. We want what all people want: clean water, fresh food, to be healthy, to have a roof over their head, and the ability to provide for their family. I want to see people, no matter who they are, have the same opportunity as the next person: the same opportunity to buy a house, to live in an apartment, to live in any neighborhood and to have free access, without barriers. I just want people to look at people as being human, instead of judging them by race, religion, ethnicity or wealth. It’s very, very basic. When I walk in the door, the first thing people notice is that I’m Black. The second, that I’m a woman. Those are the two things I’ve been first recognized for all my life and I’ve never had a chance for people to look at me as just being me, just being human. For instance, I look at what is happening in Texas, how the governor has sent people on buses as if they’re products. How do we accept the notion, when people’s relatives came here as immigrants — not my relatives — who came enslaved, but how do we reckon with that when people deny others the same opportunity? There’s so much fear, because for so long you’ve been the oppressor, and now the country is starting to turn brown, diversify and it scares them, because of their own history of oppression and abuse. They’re triggered by brown and Black people in power because they’re afraid that they are going to replicate the oppressor, and do the same thing that they’ve done to us for so many years. So now you have to position yourself to hold on to what you feel is your value. But in the end, you’re going to lose because you cannot stop change. Either you embrace it or it’s going to change without you.You mentioned that people need the opportunity to have land, clean water, and food, which seems inherently “Utopic” in and of itself, but how do we create access to land?We have to change the dialogue as well as how we assess land. I had to change my whole concept of land ownership. How do we own land, or own anything when we don’t live long enough? I had to change my framework, because I realized I can no longer say I own anything. I can be a steward of the land, I can take care of it, but we’re not on Earth long enough to own it. We don’t really own anything. We can’t own anything because we’re gone in an instant. When you go on, the house doesn’t go with you. The land doesn’t go with you. You might think that that house is going to be in your house for generations and it might be! But it also might not be. Do you own it? Or do you just happen to be on this earth at this point in time? You can be a caretaker of land, you can have a home and enjoy it, but do you really own it? You don’t own anything—Nature owns it; it goes back to nature. It goes back to the universe.How do we foster stewardship? Or how do we foster connection, or reconnection to the land? And how did we lose that connection to begin with?It’s because we thought that Utopia was a house, a backyard, a car, and a job. We lost that connection. And in the end, when Armageddon comes, you can’t eat a car, or jewelry, or Bitcoin. The people who are going to survive are the people who know how to grow food. An orchard or the crops that I’m growing are priceless. We have to get back to the land, back to that call, back to what’s really real and what nourishes us. If we say that we turn to dust when we die and we return to the earth then we have to renew that connection to the earth. We’ve lost that because we were reaching for materialistic things that are empty. Going back to the land, being in the land, and building thankfulness for being a steward of the land is so satisfying. Those that are returning to the land by becoming farmers and caretakers are starting to see that connection again as we work with nature, rather than against it.How would you say food sovereignty and even generally, just growing our own food and cultivating our connection with the land nurtures our mind body spirit? How is that utopic?I say each and every day that someone made that long trip along the transatlantic coast, that ocean, that journey for me to be here. The suffering that they had to go through for me to be here means something and I got to tap into that. Someone sacrificed their life so I can be here and be in tune to that. To understand what it takes as a people to try to hold on to that legacy, that history, or how I got to be my being is so, so important. By understanding that then you understand the importance of community and the importance of learning about your legacy and the history in your family. I don’t know who that person was… I’ll find out maybe one day, but someone made a lot of sacrifices… a lot of sacrifice along the way for me to be here. I needed to be here in a place that’s far, far away from my ancestors. We need to stop for a second and acknowledge the ancestral lineage that we all have, and to be mindful of what that means, especially for people of color, and especially for African Americans who didn’t come through Ellis Island. We came here enslaved. So I think about going back and reaching out to that person along the line who gave me life to be here.How do we reconcile that relationship with the land as peoples whose ancestors were enslaved, as people who are immigrants, as people who are refugees, and as people who are settlers? How do we find connection maybe to a land that’s not ours? And what does that seem like?It’s not ours! Like I said, I’m farming on land that I can’t say is my land. All I can say is that I know that there are Indigenous people on this land, and they have given me the chance to be a caretaker. And that’s how I look at it. I can’t look at it as “Oh, I’m in Chester, New York, and I’m on land that I have no connection to.” I have been given that land to be a caretaker and I asked their permission to be that caretaker, and I try to take care of that land to the best of my ability.How can the readers who read your interview apply utopia? How do we build the world that we deserve?Treat each other with kindness. With love. It is so simple. Kindness and love. Easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy."
}
,
"relatedposts": [
{
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"author" : "EIP Editors",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/black-liberation-on-palestine",
"date" : "2025-10-17 09:01:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/mandela-keffiyeh.jpg",
"excerpt" : "",
"content" : "In understanding global politics, it is important to look at Black liberation struggles as one important source of moral perspective. So, when looking at Palestine, we look to Black leaders to see how they perceived the Palestinian struggle in relation to theirs, from the 1960’s to today.Why must we understand where the injustice lies? Because, as Desmond Tutu famously said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”{% for person in site.data.quotes-black-liberation-palestine %}{{ person.name }}{% for quote in person.quotes %}“{{ quote.text }}”{% if quote.source %}— {{ quote.source }}{% endif %}{% endfor %}{% endfor %}"
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{
"title" : "First Anniversary Celebration of EIP",
"author" : "EIP Editors",
"category" : "events",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/1st-anniversary-of-eip",
"date" : "2025-10-14 18:01:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/WSA_EIP_Launch_Cover.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Celebrating One Year of Independent Publishing",
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}
,
{
"title" : "Miu Miu Transforms the Apron From Trad Wife to Boss Lady: The sexiest thing in Paris was a work garment",
"author" : "Khaoula Ghanem",
"category" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/miu-miu-transforms-the-apron-from-trad-wife-to-boss-lady",
"date" : "2025-10-14 13:05:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Cover_EIP_MiuMiu_Apron.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Miuccia Prada has a habit of taking the least “fashion” thing in the room and making it the argument. For Spring 2026 at Miu Miu, the argument is the apron; staged not as a coy retro flourish but as a total system. The show’s mise-en-scène read like a canteen or factory floor with melamine-like tables, rationalist severity, a whiff of cleaning fluid. In other words, a runway designed to force a conversation about labor before any sparkle could distract us.",
"content" : "Miuccia Prada has a habit of taking the least “fashion” thing in the room and making it the argument. For Spring 2026 at Miu Miu, the argument is the apron; staged not as a coy retro flourish but as a total system. The show’s mise-en-scène read like a canteen or factory floor with melamine-like tables, rationalist severity, a whiff of cleaning fluid. In other words, a runway designed to force a conversation about labor before any sparkle could distract us.From the opening look—German actress Sandra Hüller in a utilitarian deep-blue apron layered over a barn jacket and neat blue shirting—the thesis was loud: the “cover” becomes the thing itself. As silhouettes marched on, aprons multiplied and mutated—industrial drill cotton with front pockets, raw canvas, taffeta and cloqué silk, lace-edged versions that flirted with lingerie, even black leather and crystal-studded incarnations that reframed function as ornament. What the apron traditionally shields (clothes, bodies, “the good dress”) was inverted; the protection became the prized surface. Prada herself spelled it out: “The apron is my favorite piece of clothing… it symbolizes women, from factories through to serving to the home.”Miu Miu Spring 2026 Ready-to-Wear. SuppliedThis inversion matters historically. The apron’s earliest fashion-adjacent life was industrial. It served as a barrier against grease, heat, stain. It was a token of paid and unpaid care. Miu Miu tapped that lineage directly (canvas, work belts, D-ring hardware), then sliced it against domestic codes (florals, ruffles, crochet), and finally pushed into nightlife with bejeweled and leather bibs. The garment’s migration across materials made its social migrations visible. It is a kitchen apron, yes, but also one for labs, hospitals, and factories; the set and styling insisted on that plurality.What makes the apron such a loaded emblem is not just what it covers, but what it reveals about who has always been working. Before industrialization formalized labor into factory shifts and wages, women were already performing invisible labour, the kind that doesn’t exist on payrolls but sits at the foundation of every functioning society. They were cooking, cleaning, raising children, nursing the ill. These tasks were foundational to every economy and yet absent from every ledger. Even when women entered the industrial workforce, from textile plants to wartime assembly lines, their domestic responsibilities did not disappear, they doubled. In that context, the apron here is a quiet manifesto for the strength that goes unrecorded, unthanked, and yet keeps civilization running.The algorithmic rise of the “tradwife,” the influencer economy that packages domesticity as soft power, is the contemporary cultural shadow here. Miu Miu’s apron refuses that rehearsal. In fact, it’s intentionally awkward—oversized, undone, worn over bikinis or with sturdy shoes—so the viewer can’t flatten it into Pinterest-ready nostalgia. Critics noted the collection as a reclamation, a rebuttal to the flattening forces of the feed: the apron as a uniform for endurance rather than submission. The show notes framed it simply as “a consideration of the work of women,” a reminder that the invisible economies of effort—paid, unpaid, emotional—still structure daily life.If that sounds unusually explicit for a luxury runway, consider the designer. Prada trained as a mime at Milan’s Piccolo Teatro, earned a PhD in political science, joined the Italian Communist Party, and was active in the women’s rights movement in 1970s Milan. Those facts are not trivia; they are the grammar of her clothes. Decades of “ugly chic” were, essentially, a slow campaign against easy consumption and default beauty. In 2026, the apron becomes the newest dialect. An emblem drawn from leftist feminist history, recoded into a product that still has to sell. That tension—belief versus business—is the Miuccia paradox, and it’s precisely why these aprons read as statements, not trends.The runway narrative traced a journey from function to fetish. Early looks were squarely utilitarian—thick cottons, pocketed bibs—before migrating toward fragility and sparkle. Lace aprons laid transparently over swimmers; crystal-studded aprons slipped across cocktail territory; leather apron-dresses stiffened posture into armor. The sequencing proposed the same silhouette can encode labor, intimacy, and spectacle depending on fabrication. If most brands smuggle “workwear” in as set dressing, Miu Miu forced it onto the body as the central garment and an unmissable reminder that the feminine is often asked to be both shield and display at once.It’s instructive to read this collection against the house’s last mega-viral object: the micro-mini of Spring 2022, a pleated, raw-hem wafer that colonized timelines and magazine covers. That skirt’s thesis was exposure—hip bones and hemlines as post-lockdown spectacle, Y2K nostalgia framed as liberation-lite. The apron, ironically, covers. Where the micro-mini trafficked in the optics of freedom (and the speed of virality), the apron asks about the conditions that make freedom possible: who launders, who cooks, who cares? To move from “look at me” to “who is working here?” is a pivot from optics to ethics, without abandoning desire. (The aprons are, after all, deeply covetable.) In a platform economy that still rewards the shortest hemline with the biggest click-through, this is a sophisticated counter-program.Yet the designer is not romanticizing toil. There’s wit in the ruffles and perversity in the crystals; neither negate labor, they metabolize it. The most striking image is the apron treated as couture-adjacent. Traditionally, an apron protects the precious thing beneath; here, the apron is the precious thing. You could call that hypocrisy—luxurizing the uniform of workers. Or, strategy, insisting that the symbols of care and effort deserve visibility and investment.Of course, none of this exists in a vacuum. The “tradwife” script thrives because it is aesthetically legible and commercially scalable. It packages gender ideology as moodboard. Miu Miu counters with garments whose legibility flickers. The collection’s best looks ask viewers to reconcile tenderness with toughness, convenience with care, which is exactly the mental choreography demanded of women in every context from office to home to online.If you wanted a season-defining “It” item, you’ll still find it. The apron is poised to proliferate across fast-fashion and luxury alike. But the deeper success is structural: Miu Miu re-centered labor as an aesthetic category. That’s rarer than a viral skirt. It’s a reminder that clothes don’t merely decorate life, they describe and negotiate it. In making the apron the subject rather than the prop, Prada turned a garment of service into a platform for agency. It’s precisely the kind of cultural recursion you’d expect from a designer shaped by feminist politics, who never stopped treating fashion as an instrument of thought as much as style.The last image to hold onto is deceptively simple: a woman in an apron, neither fetishized nor infantilized, striding, hands free. Not a costume for nostalgia, not a meme for the feed, but a working uniform reframed, respected, and suddenly, undeniably beautiful. That is Miu Miu’s provocation for Spring 2026: the work behind the work, made visible at last."
}
]
}