OUR STORY

This group was soon joined by the Human Rights Clinic (HRC) of the University of Miami’s Law School, under the direction of acting co-director Denisse Córdova Montes, an international expert on the right to food. From the first meeting of this community of practice, Denisse and her law students provided legal consultation to Maine and West Virginia advocates. The clinic’s law students wrote legal briefs and produced popular communication tools as they interacted with the Maine Attorney General to respond to legal challenges to the resolution before it was passed in November 2021. Soon after the passage of the constitutional amendment for the right to food in Maine, a municipal resolution on the Right to Food written by local advocates was unanimously adopted in December, 2021, by the Morgantown City Council in West Virginia. Although not binding, it fueled advocates in other municipalities and across the state. In that same year, Delegate Danielle Walker, a Democratic representative in the West Virginia House of Delegates, introduced legislation known as the Right to Food, Food Sovereignty, and Freedom From Hunger Amendment (HJR 30) and again as HJR 12 in 2022. Though the proposed legislation has yet to move out of committee, a group of people across West Virginia with personal experience of food insecurity, came together to form a leadership circle which was formalized as Voices of Hunger West Virginia: Towards the Right to Food.Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Northwest Harvest convened a Right to Food Advisory Council in Washington state to provide the decades-old, independent food bank and anti-hunger organization with guidance on its approach toward a statewide movement. Public education forums were launched in Spokane, Yakima, and Seattle, leading to a formation of a statewide campaign coalition. As the news of Maine’s victory spread in late 2021, additional state advocates from Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, and California joined the community of practice to learn and contribute. In late 2021, this fledgling community of practice formally launched as the National Right to Food Community of Practice, the first national network of state and local advocates advocating for food as a human right in cities, towns, counties, and states across the country.