Attorney and author Corban Addison will shine a light on the intersection of food, race and money as he takes his audience behind the scenes of a landmark war in the courtroom that brought the once invincible pork industry to its knees.
As part of Campus Sustainability Week at Elon University, international bestselling author Corban Addison will deliver a keynote titled “Beyond ‘Wastelands:’ Pigs, Pollution and a Community’s Fight for Justice” at Elon University on Oct. 15 at 7:30 p.m. in McKinnon Hall.
Between 2013 and 2020, hundreds of residents of rural eastern North Carolina fought to hold the world’s largest pork producer, Smithfield Foods, accountable in court for longtime environmental harm to their air, water and ancestral land. Attorney and author Corban Addison chronicles that story in his book “Wastelands,” recipient of the 2023 Reed Environmental Writing Award from the Southern Environmental Law Center.
“Wastelands” recounts the triumph of human courage and community persistence in the face of insurmountable odds, as well as an untold civil rights story that resonates with America’s current reckoning on race. It exposes the hidden side of agribusiness, the dangers of corporate capture in the state legislatures, the challenge of holding rich and powerful industries to account in the courts and the true cost of one of America’s favorite breakfast foods – bacon.
In this visually rich presentation, complete with video footage and animations from five federal trials, Addison will shine a light on the intersection of food, race and money as he takes his audience behind the scenes of a landmark war in the courtroom that brought a once invincible industry to its knees.