Put Your Politics Where Your Mouth Is! March 10-14th, 2014.

Put Your Politics Where Your Mouth Is is an annual week of talks, teach-ins, and skill sharing around food justice on campus and beyond. This series of events is coordinated by The Midnight Kitchen and The People’s Potato - two campus-based collective soup kitchens that serve by-donation vegan meals to McGill and Concordia students as well as the general Montreal community.

Our goal is to provide spaces to skillshare, discuss and learn about the politics of food. This year workshops and events will focus specifically on the ways food politics intersect with race, racism and white supremacy. Workshops and events will highlight the ways in which Indigenous Peoples and People of Colour are impacted by a variety issues related to food politics, as well as resilience and resistance in the face of dominant food systems which inflict violence upon the lives, bodies and lands of racialized people.

We have prioritized the voices of self-identified People of Colour and Indigenous Peoples in the selection of workshops and workshop presenters.

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█ MON MARCH 10 @ 15h30: Structural Racism in Montreal Food Systems

Through sharing their experiences and engaging in group thinking, the participants will critically examine their food system with an anti-racism lens. Part teaching and part experiential, the participants will be presented with key anti-racism concepts and will also have to respond to scenarios. Depending on the amount of participants, the group can be divided by level of familiarity with anti-racism activism. The end goal is to sensitize the participant to the importance of anti-racism in meaningful activism.

This workshop will not to provide all the answers. There is no quick solution to structural racism. It’s a process, lifelong for some. This workshop should serve as an initiation of much needed dialogues and research. “If racism was constructed, it can be undone. It can be undone if people understand when it was constructed , why it was constructed, how it functions, and how it is maintained”

Some concepts that will be explored: positionality, whiteness, colorblindness, structural racism.

Lev Bukhman Room (2nd Floor), SSMU building (3600 McTavish)

https://www.facebook.com/events/373127186160765/?notif_t=plan_user_joined

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█ TUE MARCH 11 @ 13h: Fat Embodiment, Race, and Class

If we are not working to break down the systemic and racialized oppressions which are inherently connected to food consumption, contemporary food politics can risk bolstering and maintaining racialized, fat-phobic, and capitalist oppression. Food politics can become another way of exercising modes of control over systemically marginalized peoples and promote fat phobia and fat shaming. Food based movements often participate in advertising a hierarchy of foods and, thereby, a hierarchy of peoples with racialized and classed peoples being targeted unfavorably by these hierarchical eating practices. People of Colour and Indigenous peoples are specifically targeted by these capitalist driven food hierarchies as they are less likely to have access to “elevated” kinds of food. Food and weight loss movements often attempt to limit agency through fat shaming, and promote the neoliberal construction that the “consumer” is fat due to personal choices. This reinforces not only negative stereotypes about fatness but also about race. If food politics movements don’t take into account the systemic issues framing consumption, their movements risk spreading a highly racialized capitalist agenda through modes of bodily control.

Room B-30 (Basement), SSMU building (3600 McTavish)

https://www.facebook.com/events/1428511190725674/?ref_newsfeed_story_/

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█ WED MARCH 12 @ 18h30: Closed Dinner for People of Colour and Indigenous-identified Folks

The Midnight Kitchen and the People’s Potato would like to invite all self-identified people of colour, Indigenous, mixed-race, or non-white people to join us for an evening of free food and discussion. We would like to create a space where we can hangout, meet other POC, network, talk about issues of race and racism, how politics fits with our identities as POC, community building, healing, creating spaces for ourselves, representation etc. Though there will be a strong discussion aspect to this hangout, this can also be a low-key time to get to know each other, enjoy food and plan other events for the future if we’d like. So, please do not feel intimidated by the discussion aspect, we encourage people who are new to race/radical politics to come as well.

Food will be provided by the Midnight Kitchen and the People’s Potato, but everyone is welcome to bring a vegan dish or snack to share if they’d like.

We’ll also bring zines to share.

People’s Potato Kitchen, Hall Building 7th floor, 1455 De Maisonneuve W.

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█ THU MARCH 13 @ 18h30: Solidarity Across Borders’ Winter Feast! A Community Dinner

The Food for All committee of Solidarity Across Borders fights for healthy food for all, especially for those with precarious immigration status. We work with a variety of food organizations around the city to make food services accessible for migrants without status. We also provide direct food support rooted in relationships of solidarity and mutual aid to people living in Montreal who are struggling with the immigration system.

We are part of a larger campaign called Solidarity City that aims to strengthen our networks of community resistance to the violence of the immigration system. In building a Solidarity City we are demanding access without fear to all city services for residents of Montreal regardless of immigration status, and we are working to make border controls unenforceable in our communities.

This event is co-organized with Put Your Politics Where Your Mouth Is, an annual week of talks, teach- ins, and skill sharing around food justice on university campus’ and beyond, organized by the People’s Potato and Midnight Kitchen. This year workshops and events will focus specifically on the ways food politics intersect with race, racism and white supremacy.

Centre William Hingston, 419 rue Saint-Roch (metro Parc)

https://www.facebook.com/events/1453847108178702/?ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming

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█ FRI MARCH 14 @ 16h00: Red Urban Project Cooking on First Nation Meal

Red Urban Project Cooking on First Nation Meal: a free cooking workshop by Alan Harrington. Come learn how to make Three Sister’s Soup and Fry-Bread or Baked Bannock!

This workshop has a limited number of spaces, so please RSVP to peoplespotato[at]gmail.com as soon as possible.

People’s Potato Kitchen, Hall Building 7th floor, 1455 De Maisonneuve W.

https://www.facebook.com/events/550788098362729/?context=create&ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming

Thanks to CCSL for funding this event!

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