Narsiso Martinez and Alfredo Zeferino are both important figures in the United States’ current political and cultural landscape which connects food, migration, and activism. By using an ecological lens to intellectually engage with their work and circumstances, I seek to demonstrate the connections between their efforts of organizing and resistance to the everyday experiences of people across the United States. In other words, Zeferino and Martinez’s mission, work, and lives are intrinsically linked to every person in the U.S. who eats. Whether a person buys strawberries at the grocery store, or eats the lettuce on a fast food chain’s burgers, they are connected to the people who picked that food.
Food is a rich site of mediation, which reveals complex, interconnected, and heterogeneous environments. In this project, I present the connection between food, activism, and migration in the United States, and draw attention to individuals who are on the forefront of organizing and resistance efforts. It is my overarching aim in this project to contribute the element of food to the reader’s mental map of migration. Specifically, I aim to contribute food as an intensely urgent site of mediation, as it serves as a connecting point for activism, resistance, and labor within the migration ecology.