Wiretap reports: “‘If I give food to the hungry, they call me a saint,’ Brazilian Bishop Dom Helder Camera once famously quipped. ‘But if I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist.’ Colorado-based food gatherer Justin Baker will tell you he isn’t really interested in being either one. Rather, the 24-year-old honcho of Conscious Alliance is more into swapping one kind of hunger for another — the appetite for music and art, and the desperate craving for, well, food. But the carte du jour of this non-profit is definitely more Chef Boyardee than escargot.
“For the past two years Baker and other former students from the University of Colorado have been using a particularly different approach to the standard canned food drive. Working with rock bands and festival promoters nationwide, Conscious Alliance trades concert-goers original rock art posters for foodstuffs which Baker then distributes to the Indian reservations that constitute some of America’s most poverty-stricken counties. ‘This is emergency food as we see it,’ Baker says. ‘There is so much aid that we send out of the country when there is so much needed right here at home . . . People in Boulder [Colorado] don’t realize that six hours away [in Pine Ridge, South Dakota] is a straight-up third world country.’”
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The Mississippi Free Press produced this story through the MFP Solutions Lab, supported by the Solutions Journalism Network. This series digs into Mississippi’s systemic issues and sheds light on responses to them in other communities. Beyond just reporting on problems, these stories interrogate their causes and inspect potential solutions.
