This time in the classroom, the answer, “It’s complicated,” simply wasn’t going to cut it. Instead, students challenged the articles. And they brainstormed. We dropped the big picture talk and brought the conversation back home. Finally, we stopped talking in favor of the thing we wanted most–to start doing. There we were sitting in a classroom at Portland State University, in the urban core of one of the most progressive cities in the country, yet no organized student movement for food justice was happening on campus.

Bingo.

What I witnessed in the months following the founding of Food Action Collective–the culminating project for the class–was something beautifully transformative. I saw students cultivating empowerment in ways that spread contagiously across campus. On a snappy, drizzly day in the spring of 2012, a sundry lot of students clustered beneath two borrowed tents between classes to plunge their hands into rich, damp soil as they planted kale, strawberries, peas, nasturtiums, and a slew of other edibles during a container gardening workshop, Food Action Collective’s first event.

It was an odd spectacle: A truck bed overflowing with soil, blue tarps fluttering beneath students hunched over dirt-filled containers–all of this happening directly outside of Smith Memorial Student Union, the nucleus of campus. The crowd swelled with curious onlookers and FAC’s member-interest form was flipped over to create more space for sign-ups.

In the weeks that followed, students posted updates about their containers’ progress to Facebook and Instagram and exchanged tips for soil care and harvesting. Students began bringing bags of homegrown greens to munch on and share during meetings. Now, students can grow year round in FAC’s demonstration community garden plot.

This summer, FAC members gathered to plan PSU’s first annual Food Week, beginning October 21 and ending on October 25, the day after National Food Day. The majority of annual funds are channeled back into the community through locally owned businesses like Mixteca, a Oaxacan catering company that makes delicate, authentic tamales featuring regional flavors, and Nawitka, a social catering enterprise that provides employment and training opportunities for Portland’s Native American and Alaskan Native community.

Other Food Week events include a service-learning day at Oregon Food Bank, a preview screening with the creators of the in-the-works documentary, Gaining Ground, and a food policy panel discussion that will pull students into the dialogue around PSU’s food sourcing practices and strategies.

Though co-chairing a student organization while balancing school and work can be less than graceful, it’s immensely fulfilling. Now, each time I find myself lost in the systemic challenges wormhole, I rebound a bit more quickly. Although I may not be drafting new global policy that will save family farmers the world over, at least I’m doing something, right here, right now, in the place I love and call home.