The Revolution Will Not be Televised, But it Will Present at a Conference

The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved is a new book by Sandor Ellix Katz, who I will hopefully hear speak at The Food Project's 2007 Urban Agriculture conference: Farming the City:
Changing the Way We Think about Food, Hunger and Health, in a couple weeks.

That is one of three conferences I plan to attend in April. On the preceding day, April 13th, the Radcliffe Institute is hosting a conference on Food and Gender with an AMAZING speakers' line-up, including my former professor Joan Jacobs Brumberg, economist Amartya Sen and activist Vandana Shiva. I am super-psyched for this one.

10 days later, I'll be flying out to Traverse City, MI to attend the Kellogg Foundation's 2007 Food and Society conference as part of the Food Project's BLAST Youth Initiative- also very excited, despite the many days of class I'll be missing.

I feel like this recent burst of energy and publicity around the food system is part of a revolution, but I also have to admit that going to conferences where talking heads, no matter how radical their talk is, sit around in climate-controlled rooms with catered lunches, is not what strikes me as a revolution. Of course, I am currently in academia, but one would think that in such a practical discipline as food policy there would be a little less banter and a little more action. Well, I hope to blog through the conferences and let you know what progress is being made. One sign of hope is that one of the keynote speakers at the Food & Society meeting will be the head of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Florida, who were the major force behind the "Boycott the Bell" campaign- they pick the tomatoes that go into most Taco Bell and Pizza Hut products.

For now I leave you with the ever-relevant lyrics to "The Revolution Will Not be Televised" by Gil-Scott Heron, on which the title of the book is based:

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back after a message
bbout a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.