Beltway Area Indymedia

On Day 2 of the National Conference on Organized Resistance (NCOR), I attended a discussion on class and race within the social justice movement as well as a workshop presented by members of DC Central Kitchen.

I have written previously, as has someone else, about the shortcomings of NCOR, and so I won't rehash that except to note it here. In the context of some disappointment with NCOR, I attended these two sessions of the many that were offered.

The discussion on class and race in social justice organizing was attended by 43 people who participated in a "fishbowl" format, which involved the facilitators choosing random people in the room to participate in the discussion while others listened. Since there was a rule that what was said in the room stays in the room, I cannot go into the particulars of the discussion. However, I can say that the room consisted, unlike many other discussions at NCOR, mostly of activists from the DC organizing community. It also exposed many challenges and assumptions that people have about race and class. Since the point of the session was simply for discussion, there were no ultimate points or outcomes out of the session. Nevertheless, it was a rich discussion that exposed many stereotypes about our organizing, many of them perhaps false.

Secondly, I attended a workshop given by two members of the DC Central Kitchen, Liz and Hillary. The DC Central Kitchen is a nonprofit organization that serves 4,500 meals a day mostly to several of DC's shelters, as well as some senior centers, and to individuals on the street. The workshop, which also involved a video, explained how the DC Central Kitchen operates and its various programs. Founded by Robert Egger, the vision of the DC Central Kitchen was to eliminate waste while empowering the DC homeless population as part of the solution toward realizing the goal of feeding the population. The Kitchen receives most of its food from surplus (not leftover) donations from restaurants throughout the city, and it trains many homeless, unemployed, ex-convicts, and others in culinary courses that both help the kitchen provide the meals while helping empower the students to find future employment. Approximately 75% of graduates in recent culinary (and the sanitary food handling certification that accompanies it) are placed into jobs.

Hillary answered questions about the confusion over the first city contract ever received by the DC Central Kitchen in 2006. During that time, many grassroots DC activists concerned with these issues were confused over the contract fight and believed that the DC Central Kitchen had stopped serving some of the homeless shelters, including Franklin Shelter. Members of the DC Anti-War Network (DAWN) had raised money in order to provide a meal for members of Franklin Shelter, which they carried out. According to Hillary, there was a lot of misinformation and that although Robert Egger did engage in a hunger strike that the DC Central Kitchen never stopped producing and serving meals. Soon after, the city gave a contract to DC Central Kitchen that exists to this day.

Hillary and Liz also spoke to the organizational structure of DC Central Kitchen, which Hillary acknowledged was run by a Board and through a traditional hierarchical structure. Both suggested that although the model was hierarchical, not against the system, and that Robert Egger was no radical who would work with anyone, that in some ways that what they were doing was still against the system because it uses the resources of the system to empower people most oppressed by society.

There was much more to this presentation, including greater detail about the operations and various divisions of DC Central Kitchen, including their for profit catering service that mostly employees graduates of the culinary school.

I should note that the presentation had fewer than 10 people in attendance; a large number of people during that time session chose to attend a workshop on "radical intimacy." I can't speak to that or whether that workshop was worthwhile, but it is interesting to note that one of the relatively few workshops related to what happens in the District of Columbia was so poorly attended.