by Marion Nestle
Jun 4 2011

Tony Kushner: Respond to the planet’s cries for help

The playwright Tony Kushner gave his much fought over graduation speech at John Jay College yesterday.  I could not find the complete text online, but here’s what the New York Times says he said (with some editing):

Engage with society’s thorniest issues…find the human in yourself by finding the citizen in yourself, the activist, the hero in yourself.You face a beset and besieged world…Rspond to the planet’s cries for help.

There’s injustice everywhere. There’s artificial scarcity everywhere. There’s desperate human need, poverty and untreated illness and exploitation everywhere.

Everywhere in the world is in need of repair.  So fix it.

Solve these things.

And what does this have to do with food politics?  Everything.  It’s what the food movement is about.