In search of a new recipe for solidarity

The limitations of the fundraising dinner and the role of food workers in collective liberation

The following was originally published in the print and digital Deluxe Food Edition. Order a print or digital copy to support the only Palestinian magazine in the United States.

Cooking is one of my favorite elements of being human. In preparing a meal for others, I embark on the experience of reconnecting with the land, my ancestors, and the timeless gift of gathering my community for a moment of shared (and often softened) attention. In a society that continues to oversaturate and alienate us from each other, food — whether growing, cooking, or merely eating alongside others — asserts our humanity and our inextricable interdependence with the land and one another. 

In a world increasingly on fire, the question of what we draw our attention toward when we come together becomes increasingly important. After all, food — aside from nourishment — has always been a way of stewarding something inherited, sacred, generous, place-based, and most importantly, communal and relational. 

I began cooking over 10 years ago, starting at restaurants and shifting to a supper club hosted in my backyard. Today, I produce pop-ups and experimental catering menus. My craft is how I connect with my Lebanese ancestry from my place in the diaspora in the U.S. And in the past year, my responsibility in sharing the food of my people with a society and country complicit in the ongoing genocide and war against my people has led me to further interrogate my role and responsibility as a chef and cultural producer. 

I’ve questioned what is actually possible when we come together through food (and cultural work), particularly how gathering through food can truly be an effective tool for international solidarity with Palestine. This led me to dialogue with other food industry peers as well as organizers who I suspected were holding similar questions amidst this political moment. As a person deeply committed to the prospects of a material reality that meets everyday working people in their dignity all across the world — from Asheville,  N.C., to Palestine — these questions have shaped my sense of individual responsibility and I believe they should also be shaping our industry's understanding of our collective responsibility.  

Palestine is a food issue

Since October 2023, we have witnessed Israel manufacturing food scarcity to starve Palestinians. Our U.S. government has spent at least $17 billion of taxpayer dollars on military aid to Israel to fund this genocide. This scale investment is incomprehensible to average American food workers, who under capitalism, must constantly anticipate and adapt to resource scarcity in their own lives. Though deemed essential workers in a society where families struggle to access even the time needed to feed themselves, hospitality workers typically lack affordable healthcare, guaranteed livable wages, or adequate government support during crises — as the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our industry demonstrated.  That contradiction alone should inspire us all to be invested in ending the war and genocide occurring in Palestine and reallocating resources toward addressing contradictions nationally. Palestine is a food issue. 

Consider the assassination of chef Mahmoud Almadhoun, founder of the Gaza Soup Kitchen, who was struck by an Israeli drone on Nov. 30, 2024. Like many of our industry peers, I was devastated by this killing — a clear sign of systematic attacks on Gaza's food workers. As his brother wrote for The Nation on Dec. 11, "Mahmoud’s killing wasn't just an attack on my family; it was a message ... meant to silence the helpers — the humanitarians who stand in the way of Gaza's complete erasure." Palestine is a food issue. 

Israeli forces and settlers have relentlessly killed several more food and land workers in Palestine this past year. Yousef Abu Rabee, who tended to a nursery in Beit Lahiya, north Gaza, was murdered by an Israeli drone strike last October. Bilal Saleh, a Palestinian olive farmer, had his life taken by a settler while harvesting his crop near Nablus in October 2023. Mohammad 'Medo' Halimy, just 20 years old and known for blogging, sowing, and stewarding plants as part of his commitment to "plant something every day," was killed in Gaza on Aug. 26, 2024. The pattern and mounting loss of life is heart wrenching to track, and inspires the question: what if these were our farmers and chefs? Would our industry respond differently? 

“They want our culture to die, and they want our [ancient] ruins to be destroyed, our food to be stolen, our lands to be stomped on, and our farmers to be killed,” Lebanon-based chef Maya Noise shares with me.

What's happening now in Palestine is undeniably a food, land, and humanity issue. And this reckoning has prompted all of us clear-eyed and open-hearted enough to draw connections across continents and across industries to reimagine our skills and power to figure out our place in stopping this genocide. 

"[Zionists] attack land, burn olive trees, destroy water wells and the list goes on. So I think that begins to reveal a responsibility and role for cultural workers,” said Niki Franco, my dear friend, anti-war organizer, and podcast host. 

It is not news that the culinary world is already a site of political contestation, too. We know this to be true when prestigious institutions of our industry, such as the Michelin Guide, celebrate Israeli restaurants en masse, without acknowledging a single Palestinian restaurant. In consequence, this legitimizes the culinary thievery that is part of Israel's colonial project to rebrand and take ownership of the indigenous cuisine of a people whose societies are older than their state. Left unchecked, these institutions normalize the violence of Zionism at the expense of our American hospitality scene’s integrity.

Attuned to the political and moral responsibility of our industry, food, hospitality, and land workers invested in a life-affirming industry and world responded with action.

In October 2023, Hospitality for Humanity sent a pledge asking hospitality workers to commit to actionable solidarity with the Palestinian people. In its first month, the petition amassed over 1,000 signatures. Co-organizers Reem Assil and Ora Wise told the Museum of the African Diaspora that part of this success resulted from the culmination of already having built organized industry relationships prior to October 2023, which positioned them to mobilize more readily for Palestine . This was one of the most exciting early interventions I witnessed: A framework created to share with peers and support organizing efforts within our industry through direct ask. The pledge includes demands for divestment among other action steps, that industry peers can dialogue with one another around. 

There were other experiments from food and hospitality workers mobilizing for international solidarity efforts with Palestine, too.  Over the past year, I witnessed an abundance of cultural events and productions flood my digital feeds. Bake Sales for Gaza, Food and Feast Fundraisers for Lebanon, Raffles for Palestine — the culinary events are vast and persistent. The through line? Raising funds and distributing resources from American consumers to send aid to Lebanon and Palestine. 

As a Lebanese pop-up chef long invested in Palestinian liberation, I’ve been amazed to see such a rise in public response and experimentations in solidarity across our industry. The underlying mandate is clear: Amidst U.S.-funded genocide, the hospitality industry must disrupt business — and as is often the case for consumers of our industry – pleasure as usual. Reimagining our power as food workers for social change is an investment, and part of the recipe that could feed and nourish all of our collective toward greater dignity in a new world to come.  Even when it means completely rethinking our work, we have a responsibility to meet this moment. Still, fundraising through cultural events alone may not be enough.

Or as Franco put it, “Decolonization is not an event; it's a continuous process. So I would pose that to cultural workers: How are you going to transform your process to contribute to decolonization?“ 

Donation-based dinners allure everyday consumers into our restaurants and community spaces to consume things they would already be inspired to consume. Could our industry offer more meaningful forms of international solidarity with the Palestinian people? Are fundraisers the most politically effective use of our resources as food, land, and hospitality workers? If not, then what is? 

Compassionate consumption vs. solidarity

One concern I have with donation dinners and fundraising as a primary strategy for solidarity is that we may signal to the world and our peers that compassionate consumption alone is enough to change our collective conditions. The fundraising dinner, while important in its role for redistributing life-saving resources, is ultimately still a transaction rooted in pleasurable consumption for Americans. We could (and should) ask more of everyday dinners who are inspired to leave the confines of their digital screens (saturated with horrors and hot takes) for our events. Capturing the isolated concern of everyday Americans and convincing people to believe they could actually change something should be a central goal. What would it mean if everyday people understood what's happening in Gaza as more than merely a humanitarian crisis but rather a revolutionary moment that impacts the future of all of us and our collective world? 

"Sometimes you see with liberalism when you donate, 'good, you're good,' right? Like, 'I gave money, so now I feel better. I look better. I can move on.' Like, ‘I addressed this thing.’ I don't particularly like that,"  Vivi Nguyễn, a Chicago-based baker and mutual aid organizer, reflects on this vulnerability of our otherwise well-meaning events. 

Our cultural events, at their best, have the power to appeal to everyday American consumers and inspire them to leave the confines of their digital screens, where their grief and humanitarian concern live in isolation and in separation from their own self-interest. We can invite them to spaces that can not only raise money but help them see and understand their own stake in what's unfolding around us – through education and connection to broader political strategy and campaigns.

“Giving somebody else money because you feel sorry for them … is not the same as saying, ‘I am redistributing my labor, money, or whatever resources I have to work toward a world that isn't so fucked up for all of us,’” Nguyễn said.

People who lead mutual aid projects often contend with this phenomenon —  helping everyday people who want to be on the right side of humanitarian crises to differentiate mutual aid from charity. In our American culture, finding the spark that inspires a sense of saviorism and charity is often easier than galvanizing the critical thinking, vulnerability, and self-interrogation that helps us see ourselves as part of the same cycle and oppressive systems that create gaps in our basic human needs and daily conditions to begin with.  

For many, mutual aid is the hyper-local organizing strategy that attempts to deliver real-time dignity for everyday people amidst the violent, isolating, and exploitative impacts of capitalism and imperialism. It rejects the idea that there are the haves and the have-nots. Instead, mutual aid highlights that a global and national system of power and resource imbalance exists, and we need to reconfigure it all together. 

When we tailor events to everyday people's social appetites — such as eating delicious food or attending fun and engaging social events — we risk facilitating just that: an effortless virtue check mark for social-political humanitarian contribution, events that let us see those we’re “helping” as separate from ourselves. 

“There is significant value in doing a fundraising dinner that can provide material support to a family – that is important and I don't want to understate that. But that is not going to equate to advancing political strategy,” said Franco. 

Ensuring people leave these events with some next steps for organizing toward liberation is essential, Franco added, so as to create a “ripple of power building.”

“We have a responsibility that goes beyond one-off events, one-off fundraisers. It's actually a question of how do we contribute meaningfully to liberatory struggles in everything we do. It's a daily practice,” Franco said. “It's almost like a way of nourishing ourselves and our spirit, like we do when we are preparing food … we don't want to go days and months without eating. Similarly, how do we not go days and months without contending and making meaningful political contributions?” 

During a film and food cultural event I helped produce in Miami in 2023, Zaina Alsous, a community organizer and poet, reflected powerfully on this tension, and opportunity, another way.

“I want to be clear about what this is and what it is not. This is not a revolutionary activity. This is a moment to look around and remember that we are not alone. There are millions of people all over the world who feel as deeply as we do that Palestine will be free. What a gift that is.”

Case study: Anti-Imperialist Gathering pop-up

In a sea of events from the past year centered on pop-ups as fundraisers, one stood out.

Tian Bryant, an industry peer, fellow cook, and land worker that I first met on a farm volunteer day in upstate New York a few summers ago, was one of the chefs behind an event titled "Anti-Imperialist Gathering." Moved to curiosity by the clear political positioning and collaborators behind this pop-up event, I wanted to know more.

The Anti-Imperialist Gathering, I would learn, was the culmination of a broad network of relationships. Many had sprouted before the genocide began and were now postured to continue organizing together for Palestine, with helpful infrastructure already in place. This event included strategic collaborations across a variety of entities: organizers from FIG, a food systems collective, Asians for Palestine, and 18MillionRising, a progressive political organization “organizing Asian Americans towards taking collective action online and offline.” 

The gathering affirmed the opportunity to streamline and sustain impact over time through organized relationships and political formations with industry professionals rather than one-off, isolated events.

The gathering represented those “invested in building long-term power to defund and divest from the weapons industry and halt institutional support for U.S. imperialism everywhere,” 18MillionRising’s states on their Asians for Palestine statement. “We connect the genocide in Gaza to U.S.-sponsored violence, here in our own cities and around the world, to move us all toward collective liberation.” 

"It was a fundraiser … but that wasn't necessarily the main goal. The main goal was to create a space where these issues could be talked about, held, celebrated, grieved over a labor of love," Bryant said. 

Bryant said the dish he created for the dinner, “soft hearts,” was inspired by the discovery that the same Chinese dates he held sacred in his ancestral memory were being grown and harvested by Palestinians in Palestine. This event was an opportunity for him to connect the ingredients and memories of his own people’s ancestry with the Palestinian liberation movement. Celebrated in Chinese medicine for their Qi nourishing and heart-balm effect, Byrant would offer the dish as balm to the hearts of everyone invested in taking action toward the dignity for the Palestinian people.This exemplified one of my favorite parts of being a chef: The unique power we possess to honor and draw connections across cultures, cuisines, and struggles, in order to humanize and learn about each other along the way.

Beyond the dollar, relationships as our greatest resource 

Food remains an incentivizing tool to get people to participate in things they may otherwise be uninvested in. The idea that people still need to be motivated to take action for Palestine can frankly feel disgusting after over a year into genocide. Or as Noise put it, “Solidarity should just be a human reaction.” Still, it remains that food organizing is a terrain through which we can and should contend for power. Our efforts toward building power through our culinary events however, can only go as far as the development and political clarity of ourselves, and our collaborators organizing these events.

Without study, we will struggle in our role as creators of cultures to draw connections between our daily, personal lives and important moments in liberation movements such as Palestine. “For us in the West, we actually have a duty to be in more disciplined and closer, more profound study of the revolutionary ancestors of the region, who have already laid out some roadmap for us,“ Franco said. 

This type of study and sense of collective accountability, often facilitated through membership in political organizations and participation in local campaigns,  anchors us in a legacy of historical lessons learned during previous revolutionary moments, including regarding the role and responsibility of cultural workers in such times. Shielded with this kind of knowledge and collective accountability helps our experiments better address and avoid the liabilities of ignorance. 

“It's hard to move people toward a political strategy without organization,” Franco said. “And without that, again, we fall into the traps of individualism.” 

The good thing is as chefs, food workers, pop-up producers, and so forth, we do not need to have all the answers as individuals. We simply need to be intentional about designing our events with the right collaborators and being clear about the needs of our audiences. That means asking ourselves who we can invite into this dinner to ensure guests leave with new knowledge, deepened capacity to connect current political moments to their own self-interest, and, most importantly, connections with local community organizers and campaigns for long-term action, beyond our fundraising events. 

Restaurants are localized, place-based offerings to entire neighborhoods and sometimes generations of families. They serve as sites for building and nourishing relationships — from producers to chefs to workers and guests. Restaurants have a unique power to gather and unite people into physical spaces – oftentimes doing so across values. 

“Chefs, community gatherers, [and] cultural workers have a really important role to play because we need to stitch together more third spaces and more spaces for people to be in community together,” said Alex Ding, organizer and co-director of Dissenters, an anti-war organization. “We are so alienated in our American culture, and we cannot organize and reach people in alienation.”

As political conditions continue to intensify locally and globally, our industry must gather and nourish communities with even greater intentionality. We must make restaurants sites of sustainable nourishment, yes, but also sites of political reckoning. It is our responsibility to lead with clarity of the culture we believe in, to invite people into a way of belonging and values that represent the future we aspire toward. 

So while these cultural productions as fundraisers alone may not get us to our ultimate goal, they will continue to bring people together. Each gathering offers an opportunity to strengthen coalitions for the world we're trying to create. 

We are producers of hospitality, after all, leaders in making people feel welcomed enough and cared for enough that they could be inspired to see an issue differently than the more exhausted, alienated, and media-influenced versions of themselves might otherwise choose. It is part of our magic and responsibility. To get there, we need a longer-term vision that includes a critical analysis of our own self-interest in the struggles we seek to support. We need relationships and collaboration with organizations that root us in a political vision across time. Through food, and for land, we can protect one another and the ways of our world toward a future that serves us all.