After a morning Blessing led by Wisdom of the Elder's Rose High Bear, Multnomah County Chair Marissa Madrigal welcomed participants thanking the community for their work around food systems, policy, and justice. Chair Madrigal highlighted Multnomah County's core values of providing for the basic needs of residents, protecting the health of residents, and a focus on sustainability efforts to address the unfortunate reality of Oregon as the second hungriest state in the nation, and the disproportionate impacts of a food system distribution that leads to chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease in low-income communities and communities of color.

Keynote speaker, LaDonna Redmond, founder of the Chicago-based The Campaign for Food Justice Now, spoke about how to improve access to healthy foods and food justice when she took the stage. Redmond told the crowd that in order to address food justice, organizations need to address historical trauma rooted in racism and oppression. She also spoke to the power of food as a tool for organizing, and called on Oregonians to recognize historical injustices and apply analyses of race, class and gender when confronting issues of food access and health disparities.

"For me food justice is introducing the elements or lens of race, class and gender into a conversation that uses food as a tool to organize people to achieve justice," Redmond said. "In my book, the goal is not just to get the food, the goal is to get the freedom."

The day was organized by 6 unique tracks of community presentations culminating in an interactive work session around the areas of:

• Food Justice in Our Schools

• Neighborhoods in Action

• More than Sustenance, Food As Healing

• Getting Back to Our Roots

• Addressing Hunger & Nutrition

• Equity in Access, Good Food For All

Presentations are posted online here. And you can also take a look at theKeynote Presentation and Table Topic networking lists.

Lunch provided a time for folks to network and discuss particular "Table Topics" around areas such as food safety, healthy equity, institutional purchasing, food carts, foraging, and retail, just to name a few.

This year, additional efforts were made to remove barriers to participation by providing a sliding scale of registration fees, translation services, childcare, and transportation subsidies. Please fill out our feedback survey to let us know how we can continue to improve and have more populations be involved in food system conversations.

The 2013 Multnomah Food Justice Summit was possible thanks to the Food Advisory Board, all the community presenters, sponsors, and the planning staff.