It’s hard to imagine anyone who has never been to a potluck, even if the event was called by another name. You know, it’s a gathering where multiple people are in charge of bringing food together, but people just show up with whatever they feel like bringing. Church events, block parties, friendsgivings, BBQs, family cookouts, club fundraisers and more are the sites of various potlucks. They feature lots of salads and other good dishes to pass around a table or serve buffet-style. More importantly, they are big community events, usually with a “more the merrier” attitude.
Unfortunately, wherever these communities have waned, potlucks have suffered with them. Many of the church folks, organization and club leaders, etc., are in their seventies and eighties with hardly a soul stepping up to replace them as the main organizers of voluntary service. There are lots of causes for this: the internet, the stricter laws on the use of public space, the privatization of these areas, and a general mentality of consumerism. When I was a kid, we all just congregated in parks, in front of school, at community centers, and in malls with quite a bit of freedom in our activities so long as we were home in time for supper.
Now, children at the park are often thought to have negligent parents. Most spaces are extremely segregated by age, with any age-mixing suspected of pedophilic intent (not without merit to some of those suspicions.) Generally, a climate of fear has descended across most of America because nowhere seems to be safe anymore. The news has put it into our minds that any place could be the next Columbine (now Uvdale), or Highland Park. Every festival, every theater, and every sporting facility has moved toward tight security to control everything that comes through the gate. This is said to prohibit weapons, but it also is profitable when nobody brings their own outside food. And, as I mentioned, consumerism is a big factor. Sharing is bad for business when your business is selling as many units to individuals. Gatherings which don’t require an internet connection in which every thought is collected and every movement surveilled by big tech hurt the data mining industry. We are absolutely encouraged to stay in our little boxes, and not mingle in ways that are organic, unknowable to a far-away oligarchy, and therefore uncontrollable.
What I have just described was true in 2019, but since about February of 2020, every one of you, dear friends, probably viscerally feel these descriptions as the gradual descent into this new society was sped up like the cables cut in an elevator shaft. The potluck was made extinct. And not just the big block party kind where dozens or hundreds of people gather in the street to share food. Small birthday parties, graduations, and other more intimate celebrations became online or even “drive by” celebrations. I saw a birthday party like this. About 10 cars stopped by a house in the neighborhood. That house had decorations on the front lawn declaring it was a child’s birthday. The cars opened their windows, stuck balloons out the sides, sang “Happy Birthday” and drove away. It was bizarre. I was once invited to an “annual spaghetti dinner” that an organization was having on Zoom for the first time in which every home participating was supposed to make their own pasta and eat together in front of the screen. I did not attend.
From about March 2020-mid May 2020 in my area of Wisconsin, our executive branch used an emergency order to shutdown governments, businesses, public spaces, and more. It was taboo to be seen gathering with other humans, even more so without a mask. As summertime went on, the taboos persisted, but much of Wisconsin was no longer following any recommendations, and with the passage of the EUA vaccines in early 2021, the vast majority of vaccine takers ditched their masks too. It is now July 2022, and a few cities in Wisconsin are gripping tightly to the threats of mandatory masking, lockdowns, and more. Milwaukee Public Schools was one of the last institutions in Milwaukee that demanded masking even while the rest of the city had shed its requirements. Of course, most other school districts either didn’t put mask mandates in place, or have long since dropped them.
That is somewhat of an aside, but I find it important to document the mentality of this unprecedented time. In March 2020, we were told there was a deadly virus sweeping the world, and our institutions just needed “2 weeks to slow the spread” so hospitals weren’t overwhelmed. That turned into months, and then “slow” was swapped with “stop.” Some areas are still working toward a “zero covid” policy, while others have recognized that, like with all viruses, humanity is unable to control every individual particle on the planet. Since many people don’t know where their neighbors, families, and friends stand anymore, the kneejerk reaction is to stay quiet and try not to start an argument. This has kept our communities from being reignited even as some groups are beginning to see each other again. I’ve talked about masking as well because, as it turns out, we need to have our mouths uncovered to eat food. The most successful reignitions to communities I have seen so far choose to ignore any pandemic talk, and put no stipulations on gathering. That way, everyone is welcome, and anyone who is still stuck in March of 2020, paralyzed with fear, won’t become the morality czar of the party.
Even where gatherings are occurring, sharing food is often a concern. Before 2020, we already had the ingredients for nationwide germaphobia and other food-fears though. Many towns require for Halloween that the candy must not be homemade, and must be individually wrapped from a factory in order to avoid possible drugs and razor blades. The school lunches I’ve seen are not made in-house, but sent in Aramark trucks (yes the same company that serves prison food) and warmed up in individually wrapped bags and served on Styrofoam trays with individually wrapped plastic utensils. Even grocery stores have been caught packing individual fruits in Styrofoam containers. God forbid food that comes out of the Earth be anything but 100% sterile. Some of these fears came about when I was a child and there were a few viral news stories about possible nefarious activity around Halloween. There are a lot of warranted fears that have been cultivated due to the factory farm industry constantly recalling products that make people sick. There was also that Anthrax scare in which a few politicians were reportedly mailed Anthrax, and therefore the entire country was cautioned to duct-tape and plastic-wrap their homes to keep themselves safe. Now, with the morally reprehensible charge that you might spread covid through your potato salad, communal food sharing is even more taboo than ever. Coincidentally, hunger is more present than ever in our communities. I can’t speak to other people’s priorities, but I know that if people don’t eat, they get sick and die.
Some things simply aren’t adding up with the fear of sharing food. Why would anyone be more afraid of the home cooking that has lovingly come out of our neighbor’s kitchen than a heart-clogging, individually-wrapped catering from a fast food joint? If we think about viral spread, why would we be more suspicious of the people we live by everyday handling our food than the factory line of workers we will never meet? Why would locally grown food that the growers are happy to eat be suspect while the factory food that is constantly being recalled for its sickening microbial content is not? Factory farmed food is also packed with herbicides, pesticides, antibiotics, and preservatives too, but those factors seemed to be tuned out completely under government scrutiny. Shouldn’t we expect the people we have personal relationships with would be more careful to feed us with delicious and nutritious food than some faraway and faceless entity? When I cook for my family, friends, and neighbors (or give them fresh food from my garden), I feel like I have a duty to do the best I can to serve good food. I certainly have no profit incentive to cut my bread with sawdust. Nor would I feed my people anything I would not eat myself, including products I knew were contaminated with rat droppings.
So we clearly have some major problems going on. We have communities that are being crushed to crumbs, and a food system that is wasteful, toxic, and totalitarian. We have free-floating fears about each other, and are being compelled to live mostly solitary and contained lives. I’ve hardly mentioned the problem of our economic system in which trinkets like TVs may be cheap, but food, housing, and medical care are unaffordable to most people. At least 70% of us are deep in debt, so when emergencies at home happen, that only increases the hunger, homelessness and despair. Almost no family has escaped the devastation caused by poisons from industrial America, big agriculture, the military industry, big pharma, or the other drug markets. No matter where you are on the political spectrum, if you don’t have butlers and maids, yachts or private jets, you probably have a sense that things are not going right and that something has to change. That, friends, is a sense of revolution.
The word revolution has a lot of weight. It brings to mind mobs with pitchforks, torches, and guillotines. Spikey-haired teens with piercings, black clothes and bricks. Men on horses with muskets. Especially younger people have the impulse to “burn it all down.” Anything less is considered incrementalist hogwash. And, while I believe there is a place for personal defense including the right to bear arms, I don’t want a bloody revolution. I want a peaceful life, and I want for my family members, friends, and neighbors to have peaceful lives. I don’t want to risk my child becoming an orphan, and I don’t want to risk losing my child either in the violence of a revolution or the following vacuum that could end up a terror. Many of our lives are threatened and snuffed out everyday in the system that we have, and for those people, the risk of violent revolution may be looking pretty good. Also, brutality may be visited upon us by oligarchs who refuse to cede power anyway, but I still choose a peaceful revolution. The opposite of hunger and austerity our people suffer with now is bounty. The opposite of neglect is care. The opposite of violence is peace. In order to truly turn over the old system for something better, burning should mostly be reserved for the fire pits and barbecues we encircle with our neighbors.
If we truly want to subvert this system we live under, then we need to do the opposite of what the system is doing. The whole system is based on profiteering from war, destruction, control, and surveillance. Therefore, to break away from that, we need to do things that build community, form democratic consensus about issues in the community, and foster a culture of respect and freedom. In other words, we need to have as many potlucks as we can!
Potlucks check all of the boxes. When we share food, we build a community of people who feel the love and commitment of the folks around them to feed each other and keep the good vibes going friendly conversation. When we organize a potluck, we need a democratic consensus on when and where everyone will show up, and that people will show up with something to share. The potluck itself fosters a culture of respect and freedom because everyone is free to bring what they like, and each participant eats with gratefulness that her neighbor cared to bring a dish (even if it isn’t their favorite dish). At a time when we need a revolution, the patriots are not the people flying the flags and playing the red versus blue political game. The patriots are actually the ones out there with the grill, nonchalantly handing plates of hotdogs and kebabs to whomever is standing nearby. Our most rebellious are those people inviting anyone and everyone to supper, those people armed with corn on the cob and too many zucchinis.
I’ve known many people who think of patriots as those people fighting in the war machine, and others who believe patriots should be itching to die fighting the government. I think these ideas come mostly from Hollywood and its romantic ideals of the lone justice dispenser. But we know that the whole point of our system is to package people away into individual units that can be easily controlled and overpowered. Their main tool to accomplish this task is fear. They are constantly calling for mandated isolation, lockdowns, tightened security and surveillance. Their mandate is built to restrict, to control, and to starve people out who don’t fit their mold.
We all saw the result of the lockdowns with the long lines of cars waiting to collect boxes from the food banks. This is why food is such a key component of a true revolution. Whomever controls the food really controls the people. So having food sovereignty is an act of taking back that control. Every time you grow a pot of herbs in your apartment window or rip up your lawn for an edible garden, or share garden grown food to neighbors, you are participating in a revolution. I know that most of us are not equipped to homestead and live off the grid. I know that most land has a small pool of owners.
But the potluck revolution has the upper hand. No matter how paved over the world is, the dandelions thrive in the cracks. No matter the taboos that keep us isolated, people have still been driven to gather. No matter the paywalls and the individually packaged items built for a consumer world, each tomato has a ton of seeds! Literal feces and rotting scraps compost into the best fertile soil. We have been tricked into believing we have nothing. But even if what we have is little, we have nature’s ability to provide, we have our personhood and we have each other. We have empathy innate in us all which has to be deprogrammed to make soldiers (with varying results). This empathy also drives us to want to share meals. Most of us have trouble depriving our dogs, much less another human sitting nearby. And any proud cook is driven to share his taste sensations.
So let us arm to the teeth with pastas and veggies, fruit baskets and baked goods, hummus and chips. Let’s come together with a smorgasbord of smoked fish and granola bars at the same table. Let’s agree to have a nice meal together. Let’s do it again with more locally grown and produced foods each time to build our food sovereignty. Let’s occupy the parks with picnic blankets, and the suburban lawns with edible gardens. The best time to have made changes was anytime before people got this hungry, lonely, and generally deprived. But the second best time is as soon as possible. Nobody is coming to save us from the debt, the pollution, and the general decay of our cities and communities. But we can be the people we have been waiting for, and we don’t even need to sacrifice our lives and tear more families apart. In fact, it is encouraged to bring the grandparents and the babies along. Invite everyone to the potluck, and if more show up, “the more, the merrier.” Cede no territory, and let our battle cry ring, “I’m glad you could stop by. Grab a plate!”