Shifting Power in San Diego for Food Equity: Reflections on Power Mapping at SoPL
Welcome to the second post in our 2026 School of Political Leadership (SoPL) blog series! This year, 10 food justice leaders are building powerful advocacy campaigns that drive racial, economic, and environmental justice in our food and farm systems🌱🌟
By: Derrick Robinson, Reconnecting Foodways, University of California Cooperative Extension
The San Diego food system scene is filled with communities, families, and folks who care about eating good food, at home and away from home. Since I moved to the area, food system leaders in the region have allowed me, a non-native San Diegan, to hold space and support them. Much of this support has come from my connection to the San Diego Food System Alliance (SDFSA), a local food justice organization and HEAL member. Together we’ve worked on food worker justice campaigns, education and advocacy of local elected officials and community members on the importance of healthy food.
So when I heard there was an opportunity to partner with food system leaders and regional partners from Olivewood Gardens and Mundo Gardens on a campaign for HEAL’s School of Political Leadership (SoPL), I had to make sure I found a way to be a part of the movement. These organizations are all doing work to reconnect the Southeast San Diego community using food sovereignty as the context and glue needed to rebind our neighborhoods towards community.
Historically, we have struggled to build progressive political movements in our region. Thankfully we are seeing movement in our region through the work of organizing campaigns like Project New Village’s “Good Food District”, and the Center on Policy Initiatives, Alliance San Diego, and other labor partners work mapping local food systems. The San Diego Food System Alliance is also building more support for food justice movement work in our region through their Food Vision 2030 Stewardship Committee.
Our Reconnecting Foodways team consists of organizations who are a part of this movement and want to ensure committee members have the tools needed to effectively influence and shift political power in the San Diego region. That’s why the support of SoPL and the HEAL Food Alliance have been vital towards our goals. Our team hopes to gain resources that help us truly align the efforts of organizations, communities, and families with our desire to shift power to increase equity in the San Diego food system and our communities.
What motivates me to do this work
My lifelong mission to ensure our food system supplies all community members with healthy, safe, and affordable food began when I was a youth. I watched my grandfather, a former sharecropper from rural southwest Georgia, grow collard greens, melons, peppers, peas and chickens in his backyard.
He taught me how to reduce food waste by using our food scraps to feed the chickens, and how peas and other cover crops help regenerate the soil. He instilled the value of knowing where our food comes from and that everyone should have access to food, meaning make sure you don’t let your family, friends, and community members go without food when we are blessed with so much bounty.
This is why I have stayed with the food equity movement for over three decades. It’s also why I focus my personal and professional career on identifying and fixing the problems in our food system at all levels.
The SoPL power mapping exercise reminded us that coalition building is vital towards helping us move power. Collectively, the Reconnecting Foodways team represents a significant population in the San Diego region that has historically been marginalized to ensure that corporations and other entities are supported on the backs of our communities. Sometimes this has meant taking advantage of workers in food production and processing and taking advantage of communities being separated to allow for the construction of roadways to export food products to wealthier communities at a low cost to large food corporations using the ports in our region (i.e. Dole).
Each of the organizations and communities we represent are separate, yet they still have the same needs. The power mapping exercise helped me contextualize how the work that I do with UCCE San Diego is vitally connected to the work that our local community-based organizations are doing. While we have different approaches, it is still significantly intertwined through our expected outcomes and goals.
This is why, for our region, taking a holistic approach is so important, because being siloed is what allows the exploitation of our communities to continue. SoPL helps us to strategically align our goals and outcomes so we can produce actual change for our regional communities.
Vision for SoPL and reconnecting foodways in the San Diego region
I appreciate being a part of this cohort, because I see how the problems we face in our region and communities aren’t vastly different from what other regions and communities are experiencing.
This is important because in coalition building we are often apprehensive to share outside of the coalition. In SoPL we are encouraged to learn from each other through real experiences and have a space to openly and safely share lessons learned, failures, successes, challenges, grievances, etc. Openly discussing our lived experiences is what ensures we don’t all make the same mistakes and can really stand on the shoulders of the giants we are learning with.
SoPL is such an imperative resource towards helping us reach the goals of our team and cohort. This program helped us realize how our region’s leadership and community advocacy has shifted towards supporting progressive movements to improve our food system, and how to engage organizations and communities looking to make our food system and communities more equitable.
Our hope is that, as SDFSA members, we can work collectively to implement San Diego’s Food System Vision 2030 and help build the type of changes we, as a regional community, have agreed will guide us into the future of our food system.
About Derrick Robinson!
Dr. Derrick Robinson is the University of California Cooperative Extension Advisor, focused on Urban Agriculture, Food Systems, and Environmental Issues in San Diego, CA. Dr. Robinson brings a wealth of experience to this role, having previously served as a Senior Researcher and Policy Advocate at the Center on Policy Initiatives. His diverse background includes positions as a research economist and professor at esteemed institutions such as the University of San Diego, University of California, Agriculture & Natural Resources, University of North Florida, Tuskegee University, Mississippi Alabama Sea Grant Consortium, and Auburn University. He holds multiple degrees in economics, communication, and geography. In his current role, Dr. Robinson leads applied research and extension programs to support policy makers, non-profits, urban food producers, and other stakeholders in the agricultural and food systems sectors.