Turshen - Feed the resistance: recipes + ideas for getting involved

For Jennie, because it takes a village
and Im so grateful that you are mine.

Text copyright 2017 by Julia Turshen.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 9781452168432 (epub, mobi)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data.
Names: Turshen, Julia, author.
Title: Feed the resistance / Julia Turshen with contributions from Maya-Camille Broussard, Anthony Thosh Collins and Chelsea Luger, Erika Council, Devita Davison, Cheryl Day, Jocelyn Delk Adams, Von Diaz, Yana Gilbuena, Mikki Halpin, Hawa Hassan, Jocelyn Jackson, Callie Jayne, Jordyn Lexton, Preeti Mistry, Peoples Kitchen Collective, Stephen Satterfield, Nik Sharma, Shakirah Simley, Bill Smith and Antonio Lopez, Bryant Terry, Tunde Wey, and Caleb Zigas.
Description: San Francisco : Chronicle Books, [2017] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017024414 | ISBN 9781452168388 (hc : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Cooking. | LCGFT: Cookbooks.
Classification: LCC TX714 .T878 2017 | DDC 641.5dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017024414

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Typestting by Frank Brayton

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Practical Activism:
If You Want to Do Something, Dont Try to Do Everything

Food Is Like Sex.
It Is the Provocation.

Seven days into Donald J. Trumps presidency, six days after so many of us marched across the world, I sat in a church recreation room with my wife, Grace, near our home in the Hudson Valley at an immigrants rights meeting. We were listening to a local organizer explain in two languages how to know and protect your rights and how to be an active ally. As we listened, news alerts went off on phones, ding ding all over the room, giving us all updates on the first version of the travel ban the President wished to enforce. It felt as if no matter how quickly we rallied to find a solution, the problem itself wouldnt even stand still. Change, its been said, is the only constant. In that moment we were reminded so clearly that resistance must always be changes companion. Complacency was no longer a privilege any of us could continue to afford.

In this new world, which in so many ways isnt new at all and is just old without the guise of false security, resistance is the new normal. Many have been getting into what Georgia Congressman John Lewis refers to as good trouble for decades. For some, activism is inherited and tightly woven into their fabric. For others, activism is a less ingrained part of life, a match just struck.

Were living in a time of upheaval and the call to activism is loud and clear. In figuring out the shape of my own activism, I keep thinking about heroes, about folks like John Lewis who dont wait for permission or instruction. I am constantly reminded that heroes operate in all different ways. Many are loud, while many embody that beautiful Rumi quotation to Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.

I am fairly new to regular activism. While I am a gay, Jewish woman living in rural America, at the end of the day I am a white, able-bodied, cisgender, educated, financially secure person in America. Therefore my resistance has always been on my own terms. I have always had the luxury of choosing when, where, and how I want to be active in my community (if at all). I understand how rare this is.

A silver lining of this new administration is the transformation of so many folks, myself included, from being sometimes activists to being fully committed members of the resistance. Its no longer a few sprints here and there. Its a marathon and our cadence is ours to determine, so long as we keep moving.

For me, that movement comes in the form of feeding people in all the ways I know how, but doing so with greater purpose and recruiting others to do the same since we are indeed stronger and more capable together. I have always regularly volunteered with food pantries, hunger relief organizations, and programs like Gods Love We Deliver and Angel Food East (they both provide homemade meals for people homebound with chronic illness). But I havent always quite seen the connection between this kind of work part and the resistance. It took something else for me to connect the dots.

A few days after the meeting in the church, Grace and I were on our way out of another meeting in our community at Citizen Action of New York, a statewide group with a local branch not too far from our home. Did I hear you say you knew about food? Callie, the meeting leader, asked me as I reached for the door. I told her I did and that I write cookbooks. So youre organized. You can be our Food Team Leader. When I asked her what the Food Team was, she informed me that it wasnt yet. That I would be starting it. In that moment, Callie let me know exactly how I could both reframe the work I was already doing and also amplify it. I know food and I know how to effectively organize. Why not just put those skills toward feeding, quite literally, the resistance?

From that day forward I was put in charge of communicating with other folks in our community who also love to cook and wanted to do something helpful. Together we would make sure there was something to eat at every single meeting at our Citizen Action branch. Together we would make sure folks like Callie and other organizers didnt have to think about what was for dinner. In saving them that time and providing the food, they could continue their important work and be guaranteed the comfort and nourishment of a homemade meal. Just like cooking for people in my community who cannot cook for themselves, feeding the resistance was something I could, and continue to, happily commit to. An extension of my profession and my passion, this work fuels me, too. Finding that connection makes the work, and my resistance, sustainable.

In this work I am constantly reminded that food has true power. On the most basic level, resistance, just like any other active thing, needs to be fed in order to sustain. Beyond that, food touches on just about every single issue that matters. Being interested in food, really caring about it, has a domino effect. You start caring about where it comes from, what it means to the people you are feeding, and what it means to be fed.

To think deeply about food is to also think deeply about the environment, the economy, immigration, education, community, culture, families, race, gender, and identity. Food is about people, all people. It is the most democratic thing in the world, lowercase d, and affects all of us. All of us. It is the thing we, the entire world!, all have in common. Therefore it also has the power to inform us about where we come from, inform how we express and share ourselves, and ultimately has the power to bring us together with empathetic understanding. It is no wonder that bread, fruit, wine, and even water itself are symbols in just about every religion and culture.