Students of conscience should boycott Local Foods

By Matti Haacke and Jorge Zazueta     11/19/24 10:50pm

Editor’s Note: This is a guest opinion that has been submitted by a member of the Rice community. The views expressed in this opinion are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of the Thresher or its editorial board. All guest opinions are fact-checked to the best of our ability and edited for clarity and conciseness by Thresher editors.

Local Foods has served, for many years, as a casual Houston restaurant option for Houston residents, including Rice students. Folks on campus will notice that this option has become more proximate, as a Local Foods location claims space on campus in the Brochstein Pavilion. 

In late October last year, after nearly a month of escalating genocidal violence perpetrated by the Israeli settler colonial regime with U.S. collaboration, several Houstonian restaurant owners fundraised for “relief efforts in Israel.” However, the donations went partially to Israeli Defense Forces soldiers carrying out the expanding Israeli decimation of Gaza. Among the participating restaurants, Local Foods owner Benjy Levit donated the full proceeds of the day from two of his restaurants. 

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This comes after a year of genocide and a year of pointed outward apathy from Rice administration — including a refusal to recognize the scholasticide and to respond seriously to harassment from Zionist students and faculty. In addition, internal suppression of solidarity work for Palestinian liberation through refusal to allow using microphones at vigils and other restrictive protest policies in response to last semester’s legal Liberated Zone, the explicit integration of Zionist-aligned Local Foods is an insult to affected communities on campus. 

Particularly affected are Arab, Muslim and Palestinian students, many of whom continue to check on their families back home as the unimaginable violence — that Levit’s proceeds support — continues. 

Consent and support for genocidal violence are constructed at every level of society — achieved through the media’s dehumanization of Palestinians  from the highest levels of American governance, and through the normalization of pro-occupation sentiment in society by way of grassroots-esque campaigns such as Levit’s. It is our responsibility to contest this construction at every level that is accessible to us. An easy one is refusing to patron the on-campus Local Foods. 

Under the guise of neutrality, university leaderships across the U.S. have crushed student solidarity movements with Palestine to maintain Zionist environments on campus. Though it would seem that this partnership with Local Foods is accidental, in reality, it reflects a political environment fostered by the school’s administration. On several occasions, top university administrators have called meetings with Students for Justice in Palestine organizers to “dialogue” towards a better campus environment  — meetings that have been accompanied by zero public condemnations of the genocide and scholasticide in Gaza, for the record. 

In one meeting at the beginning of this semester, President DesRoches, Provost Dittmar and several other administrators asked for concrete suggestions for changes on campus. SJP organizers specifically asked that Local Foods not be brought to campus due to the Zionist politics of its owner. When this was mentioned directly to Rice’s top brass, it was followed by a flurry of seemingly-concerned jottings on each of their respective notepads. However, these concerns were not, ultimately, heeded by Rice administrators. 

Students, staff and faculty of Rice University have a moral obligation to refuse support of Local Foods, and to condemn the decision to bring this Zionist-aligned entity onto campus. 

Instead, get your coffee from Chaus, and demand better options from the university that continues to make a mockery of the concerns of grieving students.

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