Every student in college has experienced some sort of group project where one person feels like they are doing most of the work, or simply experienced not the best group dynamics. Learning to be part of a group is a lesson in itself and teaches much more than the content of the project sometimes. Sometimes we get super lucky and are in a group with people who are all willing to help and are interested in doing their best. Fortunately I got lucky with this project and I’m happy I did because having every members investment really contributed to our success in papers and the very action itself.
Before taking “Political Ecology of World Food Systems”, we would have been quite surprised if someone told me I’d finish the course standing outside the HUB amongst trash centered around a single hamburger. Now that the class has concluded, we could not imagine a better way to finish off the quarter. The class’ complexity opened the door to much intrigue and complex discussions regarding the simple, yet daunting question “so how do we fix this?”. Many times we addressed the lack of simple solutions to the systemic issues we are entangled in. We have realized that there is no quick fix to remedy the layers and years of historical wrongdoing to the people and our planet. After everything we have learned and digested in the course through lecture, reading material, videos, and quiz section, the answer we were all searching for was in the very essence of our own assignment: The Action Project. Create some sense of agency and follow through. Make positive change with global implications. These words mean so much more to us now that we have taken the course, than on the first day of class when Professor Litfin was going through the syllabus. To a large degree we addressed our very own question and uncovered the fundamental meaning behind it all. The answer is: go out and do something. Agency is stronger in numbers and seeing examples like La Via Campesina really are a testament to that. I look forward to being a part of something even larger than our action project but just knowing the attainability of change through our actions is anything more that I could have learned in lecture.